In the run up to your first marathon, recovery, consistency and mindset can matter as much as miles
If you've got a fitness challenge you need help with, Professor Greg Whyte OBE is your man. A former Olympian himself, he's trained and motivated over 40 celebrities for charity endurance challenges including Eddie Izzard's 43 marathons in 50 days. This year, he's helping ainslie + ainslie co-founder Ben Ainslie to take on his first marathon.
This is Greg's no-BS lowdown on what marathon runners should expect, prepare for and focus on week by week, from now until raceday.
Week 1: Turning Up
At the very start of any challenge, the first thing you really need to be thinking about is consistency. Putting your workout plan in the calendar and making sure you hit the sessions without letting life get in the way.
Ensuring you fully commit to this crucial base conditioning in the early phase of training will reduce your odds of getting injured and improve your chances of running the time you want.
Week 2: ‘What Have I Done?’
By week two, you've suddenly realised how difficult this is going to be because of the increase in training load on top of the repetitive nature of training.
When you come to the second session of this week, it will suddenly feel harder than the first. So now you need to understand that recovery is king. Don't just think about it but actually structure recovery into your training plan.
Week 3: The Sleep Cure
Now the fatigue sets in and you’re really feeling that pressure of consistent training. So what can you do to balance this out?
It's all about sleep. Sleep is so important in that recovery process, maximising not only the length of sleep, but the quality of sleep you're getting will make such a difference in terms of energy, recovery and will help keep you consistent with your training.
Week 4: The Fuel Rule
So now you’ll be starting to understand the damage that you're doing to yourself with training. The legs are sore constantly. You're constantly hungry. You're looking for energy. So now it's about focusing on nutrition, making sure that your diet responds to what your training is doing to your body and your brain.
The critical thing here is that we often think about periodisation of training where we increase the load as we go through, but actually what we should be doing is periodisation of our diet, making sure that you always reflect what you're doing in training with what you're eating.
Week 5: Welcome to the Wall
At this phase, be prepared to hit a wall. Not the physical wall, but the mental wall.
Right now you could be thinking to yourself, ‘How have I still got two more months of this to go?’. So what becomes really important here is goal-setting, because what will keep you motivated is success. When you start hitting those short term goals, you'll start to feel that success and that will drive motivation to keep going.
"So now you need to understand that recovery is king. Don't just think about it, actually structure recovery into your training plan."
Week 6: The Muscles You Didn’t Know You Had
We're now starting to get to know those muscles you didn't realise existed, particularly in the calf.
So we all know we've got the gastrocnemius, the big head of the calf itself. But underneath that is a muscle called the soleus, which effectively straightens the foot. It's a small muscle. It fatigues really quickly and can often lead to achilles tendon problems. The lesson here is just make sure that you look after all of the leg muscles, not just the big and famous ones.
Week 7: Family Ties
The good news is that the days themselves will be getting longer in terms of daylight, but also the volume of training is getting bigger too. Now it really is about structure and planning. Make sure the people around you understand what you’re taking on eg your long run on a Sunday, with recovery, puts you out of their plans completely, so manage expectations.
Week 8: Recovery 2.0
As the big volume hits, the critical thing now is balancing it out with recovery. It's not just about avoiding injury, but illness too. You're starting to suppress your immune system because of the volume of training which makes nutrition, hydration, rest and sleep the priority at this point.
Week 9: Don’t Panic
This week is really important as the training volume gets massive. The one thing that you don't want to do is panic.
Don't start to question yourself because if you followed the training programme, if you've optimised your recovery, you're in exactly the right position to put in this monster block of training in the lead up to to the marathon.
Week 10: What Tapering Actually Means
It’s tapering time, which means that what we're looking to optimise recovery. So remember, it's not just about reducing training volume. It's also about making sure you maintain that laser focus on recovery, on nutrition, hydration and sleep. Get this right and you'll be entering marathon week in absolutely tip top condition.
Week 11: Strategy and Logistics
Now is the time to start thinking about what you're going to be doing on race day itself. It's all about the strategy. It's technical and it's tactical.
What pace are you going to go out at What pace are you going to sustain? When are you going to feed? How are you going to get to the race? Where are your family going to stand?
Make sure that you've got a plan in place. Because in the week leading up to the marathon, what you don't want to be doing is filling your brain with all those worries.
Week 12: Savouring Raceweek
You've made it. Three months of solid training. You're in the best condition of your life. The key now is just to relax and enjoy this period where the training volume has dropped significantly. Everything that you've worked for is ahead of you. Embrace it.
Post-race: You Guessed It...
The moment when all the hard work paid off and you can bask in the gory. Except, the job isn't quite done yet. It's now all about recovery. A marathon is a significant physiological insult on your body. Over the next couple of weeks, you won't feel like running immediately, but making sure you're as active as possible really matters.
Focus on nutrition and sleep to reverse the damage that you've done during the marathon itself. What you're trying to do is come back to (almost) normality in terms of your physical, mental, emotional and social conditioning.
Then you can start planning the next challenge.
NIGHT + DAY POWDER are formulated to provide round-the-clock support for rest, recovery, energy and immunity. Designed for athletes, but made for everyone.
