Beating Training Fatigue

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Whilst a marathon may seem a long way, it’s the training that’s the really long slog. We’re typically doing four runs a week, two strength sessions, a couple of flexibility sessions, rolling after hard runs and timing your meals around training.

You’re going to find yourself spending a lot of time thinking about marathon training. So here are some hints to try and stop it becoming overwhelming. Firstly, at the beginning of each block of training put every workout in your diary, that’s one to four weeks worth of training. And ideally put each workout in with a time when you know that you’ll be able to do the session. Then every morning during that block, check your diary, so you know what you’re doing and when make sure that it fits around the day ahead and around what meals you’re eating and once you’ve got that sorted in the morning put it out of your mind for the rest of the day. So that you don’t spend the whole day thinking when am I going to get this session in; you can just get on with the rest of the day knowing exactly when you’re going to do the sessions.

My next tip is about the recovery weeks. You’re going to have three weeks of hard training, and during those it’s going to be a case of making sure that you get every workout in as best you can. And by the end time you get to about halfway through the second week, you’re going to start to feel it and by the end of the third week you are really going to need a break not just physically but mentally. So enjoy the recovery weeks; use them to reset your mind. You’re aiming to do roughly, and roughly is key here, half the training load of the previous week. But it’s only roughly so you don’t need to worry if a run is too short or too long, you can even skip the odd session in a recovery week just because you don’t feel like it! Use the recovery week, not just to recover your body ready for the next block of training but to recover your mind as well.

And finally, when training’s really getting tough. And I’ve had a week or more of struggling to lace up the trainers then what I like to do is find a treat run. For me, that’ll be a run somwehere beautiful; maybe along a river or, if you know me, it’ll be up a hill or just somewhere away from home that is a bit different. It’ll probably be a nice slow run with plenty of walking stops for pictures and maybe even coffee and cake at the end. The point of this run is to get you back enjoying running because quite frankly training for a marathon, you’re going to be doing a lot of running so you may as well enjoy it.