Training for my first marathon

So my triathlon season was over, time to focus on my running. I've told everyone that I'm training for the Gold Coast Airport Marathon, I need to make sure I follow through with this.

Drew had set my plan and really minimised my cycling and swimming. I was running at least 3, if not 4 days a week. Usually it involved a swing pace run of between 12-16km every Tuesday evenings. Longer runs on Thursday mornings starting at 20km and then would increase by 2km every week. Park run on Saturdays and then another long run on Sunday afternoons. Sometime to mix things up I would do a long run before Parkrun on Saturdays.

I always found it amusing when people would say that "it must be so much harder running with a stroller". I found it it fantastic for many reasons. I was able to store my Gels in the pocket near the handle, giving me easy access to them. More importantly I was able to store all the water and Gatorade I would require in a cooler in the basket underneath. After a couple of runs I had got to a stage where I could let go of the handle and grab my drink bottle without stopping. The best thing about running with the stroller was getting Sapphire involved, yes I am sure she may have been bored, although iPads are amazing and help with this. She always was quite excited to go for a run, as she very much understood that if daddy was going for a run she would be getting something out of it, at the end of each longer stroller run we would either get an ice cream or stop at the playground so she could get a good hour of fun in.

Overall, I never knew I would enjoy running as much as I did when training for the marathon. People would always say to me something along the lines of "what do you think about during your runs?" "Don't you get bored or lonely running for hours by yourself?" or one of my favourites "I could never run that far, I'd get bored". I never thought I would be able run 20 km let alone 42.2km. When running these longer distances there are a few things that go through your head:

-All the details of your training plan for the session your doing.

-Lots of numbers, such as how many seconds until the next interval, how far to go, and little milestones in between.

-What happened to you during your day.

-Whats going on in your life and what you want to do with it moving forward.

As you can understand there is a lot of time, you don't necessarily notice everything around you; unless your wanting to; but it gives you a lot of time to do some soul searching. Training for this race cleared my mind like nothing else and even though this wasn't an easy time in my life due to other aspects such as work life and financial struggles, I really did feel at peace with everything.

As the weeks went by I went from feeling like there was no chance of me being able to complete this event, to getting really excited. I had my target time of four and a half hours, I knew this meant that I would realistically need to aim for 6:15/km, towards the end I expected that I would slow down and would want a little buffer to keep me on schedule. We had changed my training to more mimmic that of the race by now, for example I would do 5km of a slower warm up pace then 20km at race pace with a 3km cool down at the end. I enjoyed these runs as for once my heart rate was not what was choosing my speed, instead this was showing me how I would feel during the race.

I will never forget my longest run during the lead up. It was June 11. I went for a run with a mate Paul. We were targeting a total of 30km, so the aim was 25km and then South Bank Parkrun. this was great. I knew if I could complete this, I could complete the race. We were able to keep my target pace of 6:15 during the first 25km. this was surprising as there were a few inclines where pushing the stroller was not fun, for example there was one coming up onto the story bridge where a group that had passed us on the flat was struggling to walk up the hill and here I was powering up there with the stroller. They very loudly decided that they needed to put a bit more effort in as it was rather amusing that someone pushing a stroller was passing them. Then during the Parkrun with 3km to go a guy congratulated me on doing my best pushing the stroller, not realising that I was 27km into my run rather than just 2km. To prove how fit I was, I still was able to do the 5km in 26:24 which was a minute faster than my 2015 PB on that course. This showed me that I would still have a decent amount of energy after 30km and adrenaline would be able to get me home.

During this running specific area of training I reached a few milestones

-Stones Corner Parkrun with stroller PB of 21:28

-Siromet Parkrun 6th overall (without the stroller as you cant do this course with a stroller or pets due to it being a trail run and there are wallabies on the course)

-1km PB of 3:51

-Half marathon PB of 1:57:09

I also learnt a few things during this training

-Anyone can run a longer distance, just slow down and place one foot in front of the other.

-Running really can clear your mind.

-Running slow, working on your endurance really does improve your shorter distance speed (I felt like I was losing speed because I wasn't doing much speed work, yet when I really pushed at park run WOW! what a difference)

-Make sure you eat the right foods when your going for a long run in the morning because most public toilets are not open before 5am