Swashbuckler's Marathon Debut?

Welcome MisterJinx!

Not sure where you saw 7 days but thats certainly not the case. Basically the way the 2Q plan works is you have two sessions every week. You will also have a target mileage for any given week which is specified in the plan. Once you have your two sessions done, then you can make up the remaining easy miles any way you want. They could be spread across the remaining five days or four days or three days........Obviously the less days you run means the more miles you need to squeeze into your active days.

Thursday 23rd - Easy 10k

Friday 24th - Easy 10k

Saturday 25th - Rest

Sunday 26th - Easy 7.4M

Monday 27th - Rest

Tuesday 28th - Easy 8M

Wednesday 29th - Easy 5M

Rather than talk about each run individually I'll just summarise the Christmas period.

Overall as you can see it's been all Easy running and rest days. Good advice from MacPhisto although I don't think I would have fancied a session. Although the post above from him really put my mind at ease that I didn't need to be worrying myself about staying in tip top shape over the Xmas and trying to squeeze in sessions. The hip is 100% fine since.

The rest days were mostly planned. Xmas day is always a day I take off so my wife doesn't have to hear me talking about trying to get a run in. It's her one day off a year. Lol. The 27th Rest day was after a monster Stephens day drinking session with my family back home.

Overall I've been pretty good this Xmas in terms of excess. I didn't really overindulge that much and didn't consume too much booze. I don't notice any real weight gain .

I have found the Christmas stressful in general. Between managing the three kids and all this antigen testing and coming and going it's been a drain. Like Christmas day was crazy. We met up with some family. All antigen tests were clear in advance. Felt like we were moving country we had so much stuff. I guess being off work I've been exposed to just how much work it is to manage three kids especially a really moody and stroppy two year old. Our newborn has been an absolute gem but she has the same demands and needs as any newborn. By the run on the 29th I'll be honest I was just drained. First time I've felt that weak on a run between stress, underhydrated and poor food management! Heart rate was about 10bpm up on normal. Not a great feeling knowing I was starting the marathon block on the 30th.

So there you go. Very low mileage week but that's fine. I'm more concerned with managing the work,life balance in the medium term.

Finished up the year on 2810ish miles. 348 days running. To be honest a good chunk of those rest days have been December! Very happy with how the year went. I'd like to do a deep dive on my year but really it was a case of more miles, one race and really good consistency. I fear some of that has been offset by the natural disruption that comes with a newborn. My sleep has been very hit and miss during Christmas mainly due to wanting to give my missus some respite. It doesn't help though when your off night ends up being a drinking session and then you're back on duty the next day so you are constantly chasing back that lost sleep.

So there you have it. The marathon block began on the 30th and my next update will reflect that. Im excited but at the same time apprehensive about balancing it all.

Some minor things I want to keep an eye on (not new years resolutions);

1. Diet . Less sweets and crisps and make sure I have a decent breakfast every morning.

2. Drink more water.

3. Drink less coffee.

4. Especially make sure all of the above are applied on the big session days.

Happy New Year folks. My new years eve was spent having a nice, chilled , alcohol free (for once!) night with family. Nothing too hectic. Still only got three hours sleep though. 😆

I'm well into my first week of marathon training (what on earth have I signed up for!) but my plan is to update here on a weekly basis. Of course if there are any other interactions i'll be dipping in and out. There's just a few things I wanted to note before my first "official" log update on the training. It will hopefully make it easier for non Daniels aficionados to follow. Anyone that has looked at a Daniels plan can testify that they can look pretty complicated to follow. They're not once you put in a little bit of groundwork at the beginning.

• I'm following the 2Q Daniels 41-55 mile plan. Rightly or wrongly I dont necessarily plan to rigidly stick to that mileage range. I'm hoping to peak at over 60 miles. I'll see how my body is responding over time and will adjust accordingly. If it needs to be 41-55 then so be it.
• I'm basing my paces off a VDOT , which is in turn based off recent race performance. Recent race performance indicates I have a VDOT of 58. Daniels recommends you drop a couple of VDOT for the first 6 weeks of the block and slowly build up to target paces as the plan progresses. These VDOTs/paces are guides. I do plan on being conservative if necessary. So if I dont hit the paces, I dont hit the paces. For me this is all about trying to get the right stimulus, dont get injured and make it to the start line.
• This plan is basically constructed of two big sessions a week (referred to as Q1 and Q2). Daniels has a guide on what fraction of peak mileage you want to hit in each week. The Q1 and Q2 runs are set by the plan. Then the runner fills out the remaining miles themselves however they see fit. So for example, week 1 Daniels recommends you hit 0.8 x peak mileage which would be 44 miles. As the mileage in the Q1 and Q2 are prescribed by the plan the remaining miles are easy miles in the rest of the week. For me, my plan is to have 6 days running initially and see how I go. I will likely need a couple of 7 day weeks but we will see. I'm not rigid on that. SO i'll have two session days and four easy days.
• The terminology (using some examples);
  • 2E - this means two miles easy
  • 2T - two miles threshold
  • 2M - two miles at marathon pace
  • Some sessions are at interval pace which i'm taking as 5k effort.
• I'm hoping to get one race in along the way. I had planned for two but I just dont want to mess around with the plan too much. Adare 10k will probably need to be dropped. Its a big week in the plan that week with one long vanilla run and a 12M at marathon pace. I dont want to drop either of those. Mallow 10M in March is on my radar. I'll see how training is going.
• My updates will be Thursday to Wednesday. I know this is a bit backwards and not the usual Sun-Sat or Mon-Sun that people do but its how im visualizing it. My Q1 session is a Thursday and in my mind that's when my week starts. Obviously things will shuffle a bit towards the end to accound for a Sunday race.
• Initially i'm going to keep the sessions on relatively flat routes until I find my feet. I plan on having the vanilla long runs on hilly routes. I also plan on incorporating as much of the marathon route in my training as possible. I'm lucky that I have that luxury.

That's about it I think. I must say i'm excited to have a purpose and goal to the training again. I've trained to train for long enough now. I don't expect this to be easy though, especially judging by the two sessions this week already! God knows how i'll manage the guts of the plan when it really gets tough.

You know what thats a good point and I probably misrepresented what I meant. I plan on running the vanilla runs through some of the hillier sections of the actual marathon route or at least incorporating the actual route as much as possible. I can't actually recall if Daniels makes any recommendations around the vanilla run approach.

I should say that the Q1/Q2 approach is purely for this specific plan. Daniels also has a bunch of other plan styles (Novice, 4-week cycle, 5-week cycle, time based etc). I chose this specific plan as it gives me flexibility on filling out my week and how I can squeeze things around work and family.

To your specific question - there isn't a weekly vanilla long run per se. Theres a vanilla long run every three weeks which is the Q1 session for that specific week. The other weeks all have long runs but with lots of "stuff" - mainly threshold and marathon paced.

So for example my Q1 and Q2 sessions on week 1 have both had "stuff". My other four days in week one have been 2 x 5 mile recoveries, 2 x 10k easy, then one days rest. I wont see a vanilla long run til week 3, then again on week 6, week 9, week 12 and week 15. They get progressively longer.

Well you're gonna see A LOT of that in the next 17 weeks. AMK's log is also a super one , especially at the moment as he's deep in a Daniels plan.

Daniels is challenging though. Its definitely one of the more aggressive plans.