Leeds Marathon Training Week 3

Into the 3rd week of training and I'm starting to feel the increase in mileage kicking in, my feet are starting to feel like they do after 5 days of walking around Glastonbury...although thankfully I'm managing to get a bit more sleep than I do there!

This is what was on the plan for the week...

3 03/02/25

Rest/Cross train

Run Club/60 mins

10 mins easy running 30 secs fast running; 1 min jogging – 4 reps 10 mins easy running

Pilates/Cross Train

Swim/gym/rest

parkrun

Peco?

And here is what I actually achieved...

Monday - a rare scenario of working from home and I made a promise to myself that I would do my best to always get out for a run if I was working from home. I went out for a "recovery" run at lunchtime and did 4.4KM at a slow and steady pace (6.48 per KM) and enjoyed getting out in the daylight and maintaining my step goal! It was mostly what my Garmin had suggested!

Tuesday - I wasn't sure if I was definitely going to be at run club as I was toying with the idea of going to my online bookclub, but I'd not finished the book and so I joined group 5 for the progression session week and enjoyed running and chatting with people and we covered 8.82KM at a punching 6.17 per KM and it was nice to head out following Dan's route that is quite different to what I plan. I find run club when I'm not leading always gives me new ideas for routes!

Wednesday - I was hoping to run on Wednesday, but I was overly busy with meetings in Barnsley and back home to meet a new potential guide leader and so I didn't run and to be honest, I think I needed the rest! I did at least manage to maintain my step goal streak.

Thursday - It was a bright day and I had a reasonably free lunchtime and so I took my run kit and took advantage of my amazing office as they give us complimentary showers, shampoo, shower gel, conditioner *AND* towels! I went as fast as I could for 30 minutes and covered 5.2KM along the canal with an average pace of 5.21 per KM.

Friday - I had a hectic day with lots of meetings and was working from home, but I had also got an appointment at 3pm for a coil fitting. As a woman it can sometimes be hard to follow a training plan as out of nowhere your hormones can make your life really difficult. For the past few years I've really been struggling with low mood at certain points in my cycle as well as the fact I've had low iron because I've only had around 4 "bleed free" days per month. I'm still struggling to be "heard" by the doctor as I think I probably just need HRT as I have had private tests showing I have low Oestrogen (and the symptoms kicked in after I stopped taking the combined pill), but I did finally decide to try out the suggestions of a mirena coil. They provide good vidoes and I naively thought I'd be able to just get up and log back on at work, but my heart rate dropped down to around 36 BPM and all I was good for was lying on the sofa for the rest of the evening with a hot water bottle and sweets and chocolate that Alan had bought for me. I lost my step goal streak!

Saturday - I wasn't sure if I would be up for running parkrun, but actually like many cramping symptoms, once we set off at Pontefract parkrun I was fine and I stuck with Alan for a reasonable effort of 30.28 and then showered at the gym next to the racecourse and headed down to London on a train to visit my parents.

Sunday - A long run day. I'd hoped to get to Peco, but as my Dad isn't doing so well with his Parkinsons and Dementia, I decided to spend his birthday day with him and we booked to go for a curry. It meant I was organised enough to get out for my long run early in the day and I ran up to Bushy park (past the OG parkrun start!) all the way through the park to Kingston (where I used to go to school) and then back along the river and past Hampton Court. It was pretty muddy, but decent conditions and I covered what my Garmin suggestd of an hour and 11 mins at a goal pace of 6.15 per KM. In realtity it was more like 12.8KM at an average pace of 6.12 per KM.

Total week's activity of 31.9KM and I've chipped away again at my 1000 mile goal and I'm now only 3.3 miles behind where I should be at this point in the year. 

Leeds Marathon Training Week 2

Its's 14 weeks until race day, deceptively long enough to feel like a "long time away", but still only 14 weeks...which will race by! This is what I had planned for this week. 

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
2 27/01/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 5 mins at marathon pace 2 mins recovery 5 mins at marathon pace 2 mins recovery 5 mins at marathon pace 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	100 mins easy

And here is what I actually achieved...

Monday - An actual rest day, I did do my 10 minutes of pilates in the evening to keep strengthening to avoid injury, and I maintained my step goal, but it was very much a day of rest otherwise.

Tuesday - I had volunteered to lead group 4 for Hyde Park Harriers and I'd re-used a route from a few years back towards the Cross Green Industrial estate and covering around 9KM aiming for a pace of between 6.00 - 6.25 per KM. I had managed to repress the memory of the 1000s of traffic lights and leading a big group of 20 meant there was an elapsed time of 1hr 1 minute, but only 45mins 48 seconds of moving time. Jane kindly pointed out that it was 7.40pm and I was only at the turnaround point, so I adjusted the return route, managed to avoid as many traffic lights and we were back in good time and covered 7.66KM with an average pace of 6.15 per KM. I then took my Garmin's suggestion and modified a sprint workout and run around the carpark. I skipped the 15 minute "warm up" and mostly focussed on the 15 second "sprint" segements which were different, but fun. I covered a total of 11.06KM across the two runs

Wednesday - You'll see in the plan I had a structured session, but I was quite tired and had slept badly and had a rare WFH day and the sun was shinning, so I listened to my body and went with a Garmin suggested recovery run and did 5.15KM in 33.56 over lunchtime and enjoyed the sunshine.

Thursday - It's always hard to train on Thursdays as I have Guides at the end of the day. The traffic is also awful and I was catching up with my new boss and I'd left for work early...only to be only 10 minutes in before my usual time as the traffic meant it took me more than twice as long as usual. So it was an enforced rest day, but I did my Pilates and maintained my step goal.

Friday - Working in recruitment, you occasionally qualify for things and get to go on exciting lunches so I went to Birmingham and had a lovely meal in a restaurant called "Pasture" very meat orientated! And I had an ale, a glass of fizz, a small glass of red wine and a couple of ale shandies. My Garmin always knows if I've had alcohol and it raised up my stress levels and I had a poor night of sleep, I did maintain my step goal at least wandering to and from train stations!

Saturday - As always it was parkun and we were on the out and back course at Pontefract still, I had a steady run for most of the run and in the last KM had a bit of a sprint finish and finished in 29.14.

Sunday - A long run day. We'd been discussing where to go for our long run and I remembered that at the start of Leg 1 of the Leeds Country Way you run along a section of the "Linesway" which I remember being reasonably flat and importantly free of traffic. Alan plotted a course of around 16KM which would take us around 100 minutes and fit in with both of our plans. We started off well, but ended up taking an accidental detour around very muddy bits of St Aidans and so there was a lot more walking involved as well as a trip to the visitors centre toilet! We parked in Garforth (it's not that far away from the train station if anyone else fancied doing it) and ran out and back, but with a loop at the end. The weather was gorgeous, but the end of the run was somewhat ruined by us crossing a road junction, being over the halfway point to have a man in a car aggressively beep his horn and tell us to look where we were going - an interesting comment given he drove up behind us and entered the road we were already crossing. Alan pointed out that we had right of way...although I'm not sure how well the lesson on the Highway Code had sunk in at that point!

Total week's activity of 38.6KM and I've chipped away at my 1000 mile goal and I'm now only 6.7 miles behind where I should be at this point in the year.

Leeds Marathon Training Week 1

I've still 15 weeks until Race Day so this week was mostly about the mindset of getting back into the habit of running longer and further each week.

This week here is what I had on the programme...

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1 20/21/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 30 secs fast running; 1 min jogging – 4 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	90 mins easy

And here is what I actually achieved...

Monday - 30 mins running short hill repeats - 4.5KM at 6.43 mins per KM - I hadn't planned well, so I did this in the evening after dinner, in the dark, up and down the road that goes up to my house which is about 150 in length. In fact it's so close to my house that people might not even see it on Strava due to my privacy settings - it wasn't ideal for a first training run, but what I did get was the fact I didn't make an excuse *not* to run.

Tuesday - I was down to lead #RunAndTalk with Hyde Park Harriers, but no-one had signed up or changed their mind at the last minute so I ended up running in Group 4 and having a lovely chat and catch up with Grace where we discussed nutrition on long runs. Grace prefers gels with the scientific reason that no chewing means that it doest trick your body into thinking a meal is on it's way. I prefer either Shot Bloks or Kendal Mint Cake...but I'll talk more about nutrition in a later entry, but mostly I'm clumsy and hate the sticky hands that I get trying to take a gel whilst running. EDIT - Grace has kindly read my blog and has kindly pointed out a slight correction - she pointed out that often people struggle with gels more as they *don't* chew and so nutrition arrives into the stomach without the stomach being prepared for it - so key to avoiding stomach issues is to "chew" a little to alert your stomach to nutrition. In Group 4 I paused my watch, so at the end kept running to get 8.8KM total with a pace of 6.33 mins per KM. Why 8.8k? I'm trying to hit a yearly mileage goal of 1000 miles so each day is 4.4KM to hit that target, so I knew I was due a rest day so it was good to get one day ahead.

Wednesday - Work is very all consuming at the moment and so I didn't leave the office until very very late, I could have done a similar session to Monday, but I listened to my body being tired and had an unplanned rest day instead.

Thursday - I try and plan Thursday as a rest day as I'm usually a guide leader in the evenings and I'm very often not able to muster the energy to get out for morning runs (more on that later, but it's mostly due to being on a dose of Amytriptline for migraines so that the first hours of my day I feel like a zombi. This day I had to go to my "Manchester" office which was actually in Altrincham and so I spent over 4.5 hours driving and so my exercise was maintaining my step goal streak walking around outside in the dark after dinner!

Friday - Another rest day, I went to the cinema as a last minute choice instead of heading home - saw "Better Man" - it's worth watching if you haven't seen it!

Saturday - parkrun of course! Whilst Woodhouse Moor will always be my spiritual "home" parkurn and I've never updated it on my profile, I've now done more runs at my *actual* local of Pontefract, in fact I've done 162 there and only 95 at Woodhouse Moor. Ponte is usually an essentially 1 lap route, but it's been on an out and back course for months and I think this time we were about 100m short, still a good run of 4.9KM at an average pace of 6 mins 6 seconds per KM.

Sunday - I had 90 mins in my plan and helpfully so did Alan and so we travelled to Ricall to run a route we've run a few times during marathon training. It's the Solar System route which is around 10 miles long and takes you into York with small models (to scale!) of the solar systerm and positions (to scale) until you get to the sun in York! Today we wanted ease and to be able to control our pace sensibly and so we got just past Uranus before turning back. We covered 13.35KM in 6 mins 35 per Km which was a decent pace for that distance (although if you want a flat route, this is hard to beat in Yorkshire!)

Next week I've got plans to lead group 4 on Tuesday, probably rest tomorrow, but make sure I get in at least one extra run with some intervals as well as parkrun and a Sunday long run.

I also need to make more effort on my sleep as I'm certainly feeling that training for a marathon 14 years plus since I first ran one, I can't function well on the 4 hours sleep that I did in my early 30s!

I will also be setting up my marathon sponsorship page and will raise money for Parkinsons UK and Alzheimer's Research UK as these conditions are so devasting and my Dad has had both for the past 3 years - more research and support is so sorely needed. 

Leeds Marathon 2025 - lets go!

 "Just enter the London marathon ballot, you might get in" that was what Alan had said to me last year, and so I tried and failed to get a place, only Alan succeeded.

"Enter the club ballot and then you can run and train with me for London." and so I tried and failed to get a place. I considered Manchester marathon as I did that back in 2019, the last time Alan got into London and I didn't, but it's now on the same day as London.

I entered a few competitions, didn't get a place and then I was sat on the sofa on New Year's Eve and looked at other potential marathons and decided to sign up for Leeds again...

Why?

• Despite being incredibly challenging and hilly, it's a pretty beautiful course!
• The logistics mean I can stay in my own bed and get a predictiable night of sleep and the breakfast I want
• Alan can drop me off and pick me up if needed!
• The support last time was *INCREDIBLE* from Hyde Park Harriers, friends, family and even people like the lady who was the celebrant when me and Alan got married! -  I felt like a celebrity and I reckon that makes it an absolute no-brainer for me!

It's now 16 weeks to go...and I've written my plan! Fortuantely I still run regularly enough that I know I mostly just need to build in longer Sunday runs and add an additional session into my week on top of Tuesday Run Clubs and Saturday parkruns. I also need to keep an eye on strength and conditioning and if I can monitor what I'm eating and how I'm sleeping as they play a major part in training weeks before the race.

I'm a qualified CIRF, but I qualified in late 2019...I was all set to coach people in the club to achieve amazing things in 2020, but we all had to stop and so I wrote a number of sessions for the club that we could all do remotely instead.

5 years later I thought I'd commit to sharing a summary each week of my training and I'm happy to help anyone with coaching, advice and help who is training for a Spring Marathon - please get in touch. I might even try and arrange some fun long run sessions for people to join me on.

So here's my full plan below.

• It's got rest sessions built in, whilst I've built it around my schedule, someone could use it and move the sessions around, but it's important to have days with lighter loads to allow your body to recover
• It's working from my current base of running which despite a seasonal cold is still pretty decent, if you are faster/slower or already run more or less, it would be wise to adjust the sessions accordingly.
• I've built in planned races, I would take a view the following week if I needed to lighten my sessions at all.

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1 20/21/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 30 secs fast running; 1 min jogging – 4 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	90 mins easy
2 27/01/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 5 mins at marathon pace 2 mins recovery 5 mins at marathon pace 2 mins recovery 5 mins at marathon pace 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	100 mins easy
3 03/02/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 30 secs fast running; 1 min jogging – 4 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	Peco?
4 10/02/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 6 x 3 mins at half marathon pace with 90 secs recovery 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	Temple Newsam 10
5 17/02/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 3 x 8 mins at marathon pace with 2 mins recovery 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	Snake Lane 10
6 24/02/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	30 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	105 mins easy
7 03/03/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 30 secs fast running; 1 min jogging – 4 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	115 mins easy
8 10/03/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 5 mins steady running; 5 mins faster running; 5 mins easy – 2 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	130 mins easy
9 17/03/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 10 mins at marathon pace; 3 mins jogging – 3 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	Sheffield Half Marathon
10 24/03/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 15 mins at marathon pace; 3 mins jogging – 2 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	150 mins easy
11 31/03/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	20 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	165 mins easy
12 07/04/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	15 mins easy running 40 mins at marathon pace 15 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	Race half marathon/0 miles
13 14/04/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 5 mins tempo running; 5 mins easy running – 3 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	180 mins easy
14 21/04/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy running 15 mins at marathon pace 1 min brisk running; 1 min walking – 4 reps 10 mins easy running	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	90 mins easy
15 28/04/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy jogging Run 1 mile at marathon race pace, 10 mins easy jogging – 2 reps	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	parkrun	60 mins easy
16 05/05/25	Rest/Cross train	Run Club/60 mins	10 mins easy jogging 10 mins easy running Run 1 mile at marathon race pace; 10 mins easy jogging – 2 reps	Pilates/Cross Train	Swim/gym/rest	Volunteer at parkrun!	RACE DAY!!

 Wish me luck!