There’s just six weeks to go until the Hamburg Marathon and my first attempt in 2018 – the Year of the PBs – to beat my current fastest marathon time of 2:56:57. And training now enters the crucial phase, the one where we build on the foundation work and start adding speed. That’s the plan, at least. So what does that look like? Here’s what I’ve got on my sub-3 marathon training plan for the final 42 days.
Sub-3 Marathon Training: the final six weeks
This plan is very close to the one I followed back in 2014 when I ran my first and only sub-3 marathon. There are still three very important strength sessions in there each week but as we approach the race there’s now more emphasis on the running. And a lot of focus on the faster, interval work.
This represents a heavy training load too so I’ll be paying even more attention to my nutrition and my quality sleep, the last thing I want is a battered immune system making me susceptible to the dreaded lurgy.
The plan is to mix up the interval sessions, doing some on the track work and some on the road. I feel like I’m a little short on those middle distance training miles, the 11-14 milers at a decent clip, that I think build psychological fitness and so the road intervals will hopefully give me that.
I’ve spent the last three months working hard to change my body composition, to burn body fat and add lean weight and I’m made good – but not perfect – progress. According to my scales I’m at 9% body fat, down from 13%. I need to keep this heading in the right direction, though as you add more running miles, it can become harder to shift more body fat.
The Year of the PBs: 2018 goals
The Year of the PBs came about when Nike gave me a pair of the shoes the elites used in the Breaking2 project, the Nike Zoom Vaporfly Elite. These are rare running shoes indeed and so I felt I had to try and do something special. The plan is to try and beat all of my fastest times from a mile to the marathon in 2018. Here’s what that looks like:
These Nike Zoom Vaporfly Elite are big shoes to fill
