So, what’s the training plan, Stan?

Shaun T - Mr. Insanity

It seems to be generally accepted by people who know a lot more about these things than I do, that the best form of training for endurance sports is to do lots and LOTS of that specific activity. So for example the best training for a climbing trip is to climb as much as possible. In the case of marathons, there’s no substitute for getting the miles in.

People do complete marathons without running a lot for for weeks beforehand, but that usually means a slow time - and quite a lot of suffering during the race. I want to enjoy the day!

My training for previous marathons involved running 5-6 days a week, and building up the distance of the weekend run little by little each week. This time, daily running doesn’t look feasible: over the last year or so my right knee has started to complain if I run day after day. The knee isn’t a problem on longer runs - just so long as I take a day’s break between them. I’m going to take advice about how to sort the problem out, but I’ve come to terms with the thought that I’ll probably need to limit how frequently I go running this time. It also means I may have to accept a slower time on the day.

If I can’t run so much, how to start to get race-fit?

Between January and March 2013 a couple of friends and I put ourselves through a 60-day fitness workout programme called Insanity. It’s an intense - but highly effective - cardio/resistance fitness routine (or “total body transformation system” as it’s makers call it - how very American!) at the end of which I was really quite fit.

(Of course, pretty soon afterwards, my training Switch turned to the Off position again and in no time was Mr Couch Potato once more).

Anyway the plan at least for the next month is to alternate running one day with an Insanity session the next, to build toward fitness as quickly as possible, while I try to sort out my knee.

Which brings us to the fun bit: this morning I did my first Insanity workout for months. It was 40 minutes of “Plyometric Cardio Circuits”, involving (after warm-up) a series of sets of hard 3-minute circuits each followed by a 30 second “break”, then repeated. I had very low expectations about how this morning’s session would go - and wasn’t looking forward to it much either - but in the event it went OK … until the final set of “Level One Drills” brought on a full-blown nausea attack and I had to slack off. Mmm - nice.

I am going to be so sore tomorrow. But at least I have a training plan, or the beginnings of one.