The Rotterdam Diary - M minus 13 weeks

I've booked a hotel both Sat and Sun nights as I thought a leisurely bath and chill-out would be preferable to a long journey with stiff legs on the Sun afternoon/evening. The hotel is only 1k from the start/finish, so that should work out quite well. Eurostar seems the best bet for getting there and will afford the most relaxed option I think.

I started with 15 weeks to play with until M-day. I split my training plan into five 3-week sections. The first 3 week section started on Mon 28th Dec. The main aim of this 3-weeks is to move my regular BAU weekly mileage up to about 50 miles (from 40-45) and start introducing regular spells at target marathon pace (by HR zone) - so far so good (apart from the snow).

Outline training plan
* Maintain normal 6 runs/week (no 2-a-days)
* Base weekly mileage 50 @ M minus 12 weeks
* Peak weekly mileage around 65 @ M minus 3 weeks
* 3 week taper (reduce distance but not intensity of workouts)
* 1 session/week around 10k pace (perhaps some faster)
* One run/week of 60-105 min (mostly at marathon pace)
* One run/week of 105-180 (peak) min (incl spells @ marathon pace)
* Rest of mileage made up from easy/recovery days as appropriate.
* Half-marathon tune-up race at M minus 5 weeks
* 10k tune-up race at M minus 2 weeks

(special thanks to Karen Dodsworth and Pete Sibbett for their help with this!)

Setting a target marathon pace, especially in a debut marathon seems quite tricky, so I’ve opted for the relatively conservative formula of doubling recent HM time (81 min) and adding an extra 7.5>8.0%. Currently, this predicts a time of about 2hr 54>55 min. I hope to modify this target as training progresses, in particular in relation to my HM race performance on 7th March. If I can do something around 01:19:30, that would predict 2hr 51>52 min for example. I also estimate that my target HR zone for the most of the race will be 148-154 (81-85% of HR max) and I will use this in training too. Again, I may modify this as training progresses.

I have managed to get my self a good starting zone (2hr 45 to 3hr), so this should help me set off without congestion. Sticking close to target pace in the early miles will then be down to my self-discipline.