As promised, here is the first of my weekly updates on training for my first marathon.

I’m also raising money for the Yorkshire Brain Tumour charity in memory of my dad who sadly passed away 10 years ago. You can find out more here.

Monday

Kicked it off with a rest day! It’s what the plan says and I was more than happy to…

Tuesday

It’s normally track Tuesday with my running club Lindley runners but many of them chose to run Dewsbury 10k and smash some PBs. Dewsbury is a bit traumatic so I understand the need for recovery time.

This meant that I needed to get up early to fit in my intervals sesh. My friend Julia who has kindly created my training plan, also recommended some marathon friendly interval sessions.

The session I chose was:

• 1 mile warm up
• 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute efforts
• 2 times with 2 minutes jogging recovery
• 1 mile cooldown

I chose the park to do the session and ran around a loop. I don’t like doing hard efforts super early, my body is still asleep. My local park isn’t flat, in fact it’s difficult to find somewhere flat in Huddersfield!

With this in mind, I chose to focus on effort rather than a time. I like pyramid type sessions as I can play around with different paces and not just go too hard too quickly (although I am often guilty this!)

I’m happy with the session and it was quite fun watching the sun rise haha!

Wednesday

A cross training day today which involved another early morning because I had to go into the office. The trains were naff so had to get an earlier one, which still made me late.

Anyway, back on topic. Once I got home and had my tea, I did 30 minutes of weights and 30 minutes on the spin bike.

Didn’t go too mad on the bike and focused on endurance as that’s what marathons are all about…

Thursday

An easy 40 minute run. Again another early start as I didn’t have enough time to run over lunch.

Whilst it is my first marathon and I don’t have a time in mind, I still need to pace my efforts accordingly.

My marathon easy pace should be around 11.30min miles. I am struggling to achieve this right now. I think I’m getting carried away on the downhills!

Still time to practice, absolutely no shame in slowing down it’s just telling my legs this 🙄 it’ll hurt when I do those longer runs!

Friday

Another strength training day. I go to my personal trainer on a Friday and she challenges me!

The session was legs and glutes focused.

We’d previously been working on reps of 12, but she’s now upped it to 14. Again, this is to focus on endurance. Just adding two more reps are killer though!

Saturday

I woke up feeling tired and naff. It had been an intense working week with a few early mornings and I think it hit me.

Saturday’s mean parkrun for me and I’m happy it’s in the plan (with warm ups and a cooldown!)

So I should have really stepped back and taken it easy. But then the 27 minute pacer was there and well… You know how it is.

It didn’t end well. The 2nd lap I genuinely felt unwell and spent the rest of the morning feeling horrendous.

I managed 28mins 8 secs but it was not good. I must listen to my body!

Sunday

Sunday is long run day hooray! Although this first week it’s ‘only’ 60 minutes.

Haha bit arrogant of me I apologise, but I was happy to start with the idea of running for an hour.

I volunteered at junior parkrun first before running a few laps around the park and then ran the long way home.

Again the pace was too fast for what I’m aiming for. I think I need to practice on the canal, which is something I’ll be doing as the runs get longer.

Overall thoughts

As first weeks go, this was jam packed and great.

Definitely need to listen to my body and take the easy runs easy. Legs are feeling good so I’m ready for the week ahead!