Amsterdam Marathon Build: 10 Weeks Out
We head for Font Romeu on August 17th. Holly, Puffin and I will jump in the van to Folkestone where we’ll get the shuttle over to Calais and then take 2 days to drive to Font, stopping in a couple of scenic park ups along the way. At 2000m elevation, with a lake, trails and a track to run around, it’s the ideal location for marathon prep. The luxury of being able to travel for extended periods time (and earn a living), is something I aspired to do for more years than I can remember.
Training here is going well. we had two pretty brutal sessions last week, and today - August 14th - we had our first real transition to marathon specific training.
The sessions went as follows…
Wednesday: 10/8/6/4 minutes off 2 mins recovery @ 3:53/3:46/3:36/3:29
Friday: 3 x (5 mins @ 4:00/5 mins @ 3:53/5 mins @ 3:46) off 3 mins recovery.
Wednesday: A continuous 70 minute run comprising 10 mins at 4:39 per k and 10 mins at 4:00 per k.
These were performed on the treadmill in high humidity and we were absolutely dripping after all of these sessions. Luckily, last week was a volume deload, cutting back from 3 weeks of 60+ miles to 53 miles. (If you’re increasing mileage to previously unseen heights as part of a marathon build, do yourself a favour and make every 4th week a back-down week, to allow the adaptations from the bumped up stimulus to take).
Easy running was thrown in on non-session days. Last week culminated with an 18 mile run with 300m of elevation gain on the hottest day of the year. Avg pace was 4:50 per k and avg HR was 141. Not bad considering the terrain and the humidity.
Eating has been intuitive, which is not something I could have legitimately done 5+ years ago, since even without weighing and measuring, I knew pretty well the breakdown of each and every meal I ate. And I always ate the exact same meals, day in day out. No ‘bad’ foods, except for my one cheat day per week, where I would actively seek to gain 10lbs over the course of 12 hours, eating nothing but total garbage. The theory was that the insane carb load and ensuing water retention would see me at my strongest for Mondays lifting session, and quite honestly, it worked. It was also a classic example of disordered eating.
For the most part, we’ve had decent main meals with meat, veg and fruit, and we’ve also had chocolate shells cereal, pizza, pastries and ice cream. Todays workout was followed by a coffee at Moo & Two and an insanely good cinnamon bun. This is quite typical of how high level athletes eat and, since I can’t contend physically with the elite, at least I can attempt to emulate their diets :) I do not miss the days of eating a surplus of calories (6 days per week), with only ‘clean’ foods. What a boring existence. If you’re carrying north of 116kg or 240lbs of bodyweight (like I was), it doesn’t matter how clean you eat or how lean you are, those additional kg’s are only serving to push the sands of time more quickly through the hourglass.
We have a couple more easy runs and a session before we leave on Saturday. We’re very lucky to have a lovely house sitter who some of you might know, coming at the weekend to water the plants and enjoy some time in our pretty little town.
To anyone who has taken the time to read this, thank you. When I was training to run under 3 hours, I craved blogs that documented others training to do the same thing, so I hope some of this is at least a little helpful to others out there on the same journey I was.