NOTES FOR

2:09 EVENTS
TRAINING PLANS
PREPAREd by
MIkE GRATTON, 1983 LONdON
MARAThON wINNER
There are two golden rules whichever
level of improver you find yourself: a)
Build-up very gradually, and b) You
must rest and recover before training
becomes beneficial.
Building-up: Even if you come from
a good level of fitness, trying to build-
up too quickly will certainly get you
injured. Running is a repetitive activity
that involves your foot hitting the floor
repeatedly with considerable force
being transmitted up through the legs
and into the lower back. The reason
that experienced runners can handle
such high levels of training is because
they have taken years to get there and
are conditioned. Your body adapts to
new stresses and a product of regular
running is that your bones will slowly
harden and become more resilient to the
new forces, but it takes time. Fit people
beware: your engine (heart & lungs) may
find it easy but after a while your legs
wont.
Rest & Recover: The natural thought
is that you get better when you train
hard. While that is not altogether untrue,
the reality is that your body actually
gets fitter while you are resting. Heres
how it works: during hard exercise your
body gets tired, waste products build
up and energy levels fall as you have
used up fuel - you are technically less
able than before you started training! If
you continued the same level of activity
over several days you would become
progressively more tired and eventually
you will breakdown either with injury or
illness. However, when you stop and rest
your body starts to repair the damage,
which it will do to a higher level than
before as the body recognises a need
to adapt to the new stresses that youre
subjecting it to.
Frequency: A regular training pattern
is more important than any one session.
There is a cumulative effect from
training regularly which is not achieved
by doing all of your training on one or
two days each week.
Going the Distance: For all but the
highly trained it is not sensible to try to
run the full marathon distance before
the big day. Most runners should aim
at a target time of 2 to 2hrs 30mins as
Time-on-Feet. The distance run in this
time isnt critical, but for many a run
of 20 miles about 4 weeks before the
marathon is good for confidence.
Your training is done to encourage
physiological changes in your body
one of these is the ability to use
different forms of energy. The most
efficient energy source is glycogen
basically a sugar stored in the muscles.
This will last for about 1 _ hrs of fairly
rigorous exercise like running but
less than that if running at a fast pace.
At lower levels of exercise and after the
glycogen has gone the body learns to
use fat for energy which we all have a
big supply of.
The problem is that the body
does not convert fat to energy very
efficiently. However, it can be improved
by doing runs of over 1 _ hrs. The
2-hour runs have been found to be ideal
(regardless of the distance covered in
that time). It is sufficient time on your
feet to help train the energy systems, it
encourages local endurance in the leg
muscles and joints and it teaches you
how to run efficiently. The occasional
run over 2 hours is good for confidence
but in general longer will not mean
fitter as you will not recover adequately
to do your other training.
Amount of rest: Some leading
athletes appear not to rest at all to
run at world class level you have to
achieve and survive high quantities of
training. These are the fittest and most
economical runners usually with huge
backgrounds of training.
Initially, they are not like us; we
expend enormous amounts of energy
with each stride as the shock wave
from each step knocks the wind out
of your lungs. It is natural that you will
feel more tired than these genetically
gifted people and you must give sore
legs time to recover. Over time your
increasing fitness will make you more
like them and you will be able to absorb
more training.
How much rest is down to you, we
all have different needs, but a rule of
thumb is that if your muscles are sore
to the touch in the two days after a
hard session then should take a rest
day or run easy until the soreness has
gone. Avoid doing two consecutive
hard days and aim for a pattern of
hard, followed by rest, easy and steady
before returning to hard.
Speed and ability are not necessarily
good indicators of how efficient a
runner you may be slower runners
may simply not have the cardio-
vascular system (heart & lungs) to run
fast, but can run forever without getting
injured. Conversely, plenty of fast
runners regularly get injured because
the bodywork is not as strong as the
engine. Unfortunately, it is a suck-it-
and-see situation, and youll find out
soon enough, but you can reduce
the risks by keeping to a systematic
programme with built-in rest days.
Your Health: Everyone should be aware
that there is a risk involved with active
sport heart defects leading to death
being the most serious. That scare out
of the way for the vast majority of
people active sport will improve your
health and wellbeing.
Before setting out on an exercise
regime you are well advised to visit your
doctor for a check-up. A good doctor
will be pleased to see you and should
give you some advice on setting out
particularly if you have had a health
problem like asthma, diabetes or suffer
from carrying excess weight.
The down side of training for a
marathon is that the daunting nature
of the event requires you to take on
more exercise than is normally advised.
While sensible levels of exercise will
improve your health, the levels needed
to train for a marathon can lead to your
immune system being suppressed. You
will notice that sleep can become more
difficult, your legs dont recover from
runs as quickly, and your resting pulse
rate may be slightly higher than normal
- all of which may be precursors to sore
throats, colds that wont go away or
flu. If youve gone this far you must
stop and recuperate. When you start
up again start at a lower level and feel
your way back gradually but beware
where you were before is what got you
ill in the first place!
Food & Drink: A healthy diet and high
fluid intake are essential. Your body
burns carbohydrate for the energy you
need to run, it also needs protein to
help it recover from the damage done
by hard exercise and it needs vitamins
and minerals to maintain its health. So
what you need is a good balanced diet.
Make sure you are taking in plenty of
carbohydrate but make sure you are not
surviving just on carbohydrate a plate
of pasta on its own isnt a balanced diet.
If you are taking in a lot of fruit and veg,
yet still get colds you may need to look
at vitamin supplements but they are
not essential if your general health is
good.
Liquid is essential. Even on a cold
day you will lose a lot of liquid through
both sweating and breathing if this
does not get replaced your body cannot
function properly. So make sure you
drink regularly, before, during and after
exercise either water or an isotonic
sport drink, the choice is down to taste
although research does show that
liquid is absorbed more quickly during
exercise when taken as an isotonic
drink.
Race Practice: For the beginner,
taking part in a couple of pre-
Marathon events is an important part
of the learning process. racing is very
different from running on your own:
your perception of pace will alter and
you will almost certainly run quicker in
the first few miles than you thought, and
you will experience running with several
thousand people trying to step on your
heels or stopping dead in front of you.
The experience can be frustrating if you
are unprepared, so practice the whole
thing about getting there, queuing for
the loo (several times) and finding the
start. A 10km race is a good starting
point and a half marathon in the last
month will give you some confidence
about doing the distance and will give
you an idea of your potential marathon
time so that you can plan your pace
strategy.
Tapering Down: As training can take
up to two weeks before becoming
effective you dont need do much in
the last two weeks. It is far better to let
the body recuperate and build up its
energy reserves in this period. There
is a balance to be found: ease back
too much and you will start to lose
training effect and begin to feel a little
bit sluggish, too much and you are using
important energy resources.
Start to reduce the quantity of
training 2 weeks before the marathon,
but maintain some faster running to
keep you feeling sharp. Keep some
light training going even in the last
week its good for confidence but
dont burn up valuable energy with
unnecessary nervous training at the
last minute.
In the last 3 days concentrate on getting
lots of carbohydrate inside you and
keep fully hydrated by sipping water
regularly. Take your last carbohydrate
>>
TRAINING NOTES
A
ll people have different levels of trainability and natural
potential. It is possible for complete beginners to make very
rapid progress and move up the targets, while others find
initially that they cant achieve the early training levels.
meal in the afternoon the day before the
marathon so that it is digested properly,
then before the race and have a light
breakfast 3 hrs before the start.
Drink small amounts of water right
up to start time and take 500ml of
water on to the start line and drink it
just before the gun is going to go off
its the most valuable water youll take
on board all day. Then try to get a small
amount of liquid at each drink station
on the race course.
TERMINOLOGy
Warm-up/Cool down: It is advisable to
warm your muscles up before you start
exercising hard, this will make it easier
to perform and will help in prevention of
injury. The cool down brings the body
back to normal after exercise and helps
stimulate blood flow to remove the
waste created in the muscles during
exercise this will reduce the onset of
stiffness the day after exercise and also
help guard against injury.
If you are setting off for a walk or
run, take the first 5 to 10mins at a very
easy pace and gradually build up into
your intended training pace. As the
level of intensity of your training run
increases then so does the need for
a warm-up. A typical warm-up would
be 5mins walking, 10mins jogging
followed by gentle stretching of the
main muscle groups. If you are going to
be running full out in the session, 2 or
3 short sprints between the warm-up
and just before starting the session will
encourage a full range of motion.
After hard exercise you will have
a certain amount of waste left in the
muscles and the muscles will shorten
a little, a gentle jog cool down followed
by some gentle stretching of the main
muscle groups will help encourage
blood flow to remove waste and return
the muscles to their normal length.
Easy run pace: This should be very
comfortable running speed and may
actually be walking pace at first. Most of
your running in the early stages should
be at this level of effort you are not
being soft on yourself, you are forming a
base so you can train harder later. Once
you are established in your training
routine this pace is used as active
recovery between harder training days.
The effort is equal to 50 to 60%
training level if working with a heart
rate monitor. At this level of effort you
are encouraging the body to use the
fats in the blood as energy this is
an important process in making you
a more efficient user of energy thus
increasing the distance you can run
before becoming depleted of the bodys
usual energy source: glycogen.
Steady Run: Running with more effort,
but you should be in control and able
to talk to people while running often
called conversation pace. The long runs
should be done at steady pace once you
have developed your base fitness at
the Easy Running Speed. Equal to 60
to 75% training level if working with a
heart rate monitor.
Tempo or Threshold Running:
These runs are done at a speed that
you can just about maintain for a
long period of time tempo running
is specific to the speed you might
run a race, i.e. projected marathon
pace, half marathon pace or 10km
race pace. Threshold pace is the pace
that you can maintain for 1 hr without
becoming anaerobic - it means that
your heart is supplying exactly the
oxygen needs of the working muscles
anything faster and you would
produce excessive lactic acid and be
forced to slow down. For most people
it is around 85% of working heart
rate or equal to your 10 mile or half
marathon speed.
Repetition Running: These are
sustained efforts at 10km speed or
faster which are held for 3 to 10mins. In
between the efforts you should take 3
to 5mins recovery (best taken as a slow
jog rather than standing still) repeat
the efforts 4 to 6 times.
Interval Running: Short faster bursts
of speed (1 mile to 5km speed) held
for between 1 and 3mins. Recovery jog
should be equal to the effort time (i.e. 1
min fast 1 min slow 1 min fast, etc)
repeat 10 to 20 times depending on
length of the effort.
Fartlek: Swedish word meaning speed
play. This is an ad hoc form of interval
training where you run fast and slow as
you feel taking in sprints up hills, down
hills, different surfaces (grass, sand,
road).
Hill Running: These can take two forms:
Hill Repetitions usually on a
moderate slope that you can run up
without dramatically altering your
running style. You simply sprint up
and jog down typically the hill will be
around 400m long.
Kenyan Hills run on a circuit of
between 800m to 1,000m with an equal
amount of ascent and descent. You will
run in a continuous fashion around the
circuit for a period of time, typically
20mins, maintaining the same effort on
both the up and down sections.