I’ve signed up for my first full marathon, the Manchester one on the 3rd April on the back of last weeks half. (Madness I know as never ran further than a half)
My plan is to do a long run every 10 days from 03/11 starting with a 10 miler, adding 2 miles each time until I’ve got the 24/26 miles in the bank and know I can do it. Is this a realistic way of training for it? Or would anyone have any tips for me?
Sounds like you're on it! A long run every 7-10 days is certainly appropriate for marathon training. I would agree with Gaz that weekly is probably ideal if your body will allow it.
A few tips if I may:
* The key thing with marathon training is getting your total weekly mileage up. However, the advice is usually that this should not increase by more than 10% compared to the preceding week.
* I would also apply the 10% rule to the long run. In my opinion, adding 2 miles a week is a lot and could increase your risk of injury and/or burnout. Especially if you're concerned about going easy on your body... However, there is always the element of how you feel on the day so it might be that some weeks it feels more achievable to increase by 2 miles but if it was me I wouldn't plan for that.
* It's really important that you factor in 'cutback' weeks (sometimes called 'down' weeks). You are putting your body under a lot of strain so every third or fourth week should really be a whole week of much-reduced mileage. This is to allow recovery from the training that you've been doing.
* If you can manage more than three runs per week, that will help. Also, you will find that you gradually increase the distance of your shorter midweek runs as well as you get into the plan.
* 24/26 miles is too great a distance for marathon training. The evidence shows that there's little point or benefit in running for more than three hours (at an easy pace) in training. Depending on the person, this is typically somewhere between 16-21 miles. Any more than three hours and the recovery needed cancels out the perceived benefit of those extra miles. There is an argument that having got up to 20+ miles in training has a positive psychological benefit when the big day comes (fair enough) but there is no physiological benefit in getting up to very high mileage and, indeed, it is more likely to harm your training.
Anyway, good luck with it all. There are loads of experienced marathoners posting in this thread and I'm sure we would all like to see your progress and offer encouragement.
