Week 9 Marathon Training Thoughts
Hello! How has your first week of training in 2026 been? Mine has been ok! No proper running, but I have managed to do a little bit, alongside what I said I was going to do last week – build my fitness on the bike! I have also included my rehab, and some strength work – because strength work is still important for marathon training! So here are my thoughts from this week:
The thought of doing is often worse than the doing!
I actually wrote this a few weeks back whilst I was still properly running, but wanted to put it in at an appropriate time. However, although I haven’t been running properly, it still applies!
Sometimes, it’s just about overcoming that mental barrier of getting out the door and once you’re out there it’s not actually that bad. Anticipatory anxiety is a thing – where you dread doing something and get negative emotional and sometimes even physical symptoms as a result such as feeling nervous or an elevated heart rate. Often, when someone is experiencing this, when they eventually end up doing the event or thing they were worried about, they say “it actually wasn’t that bad!”. Our minds can play tricks on us and make us believe that our worries are real or that it is going to be awful. Try to overcome these barriers by allowing those negative thoughts to exist for a little bit, and know that it’s ok to feel that way, but then remind yourself with a positive thought that you have overcome difficult things before. Take a second to be kind to yourself, and then remind yourself of the endorphins you’ll get from completing a run, and that by getting out there, this run will contribute to your overall running fitness, regardless of how it goes! You’ve got this! The more you get out for that training run despite not wanting to go, the less the feeling of not wanting to go will occur.
I had this a little bit yesterday – I had planned to train after my coaching shift in the morning. When I finished coaching my motivation to train was very low – I was really cold (our gym is freezing at this time of year), I was hungry, I was training alone with nobody else in the gym, and I could have easily gone home. I didn’t though! I got it done – and I felt so much better for doing it. I had a bike session and some strength to do – and I did it in that order, so that I would warm up properly on the bike rather than asking my cold body to do strength work straight away. I also put my headphones in and watched an episode on iplayer to keep me entertained on the bike whilst on my own. It’s the little things you can do to help get you going! Once I had started I was fine.
Happier after completing my session!
A structured plan and having someone to report back to helps with accountability
Last Sunday, I planned my week of training. Alongside that, I have a rehab plan which includes how many and how often I should do the exercises. My physio also told me how much to run and how often. Planning my week around this helps me to get it done. It really helps to know exactly what I should be doing around my injury – rather than guessing and worrying if I am making it worse or not doing enough. So if you have a niggle or an injury, and you haven’t already, I would really recommend getting a physio to help guide you through it. And I obviously totally recommend MoveWell Physio for this if you’re in the Manchester area. If you’re worried they’ll tell you to stop running – Movewell does her best to help keep you moving – I actually originally planned to totally stop running for a couple of weeks but she advised me differently, to keep some running in, and scale it down instead. It feels good knowing that, whilst I am training and testing my achilles, there is someone I can report back to as to how it is getting on, who actually knows what they’re talking about and understands what I should be doing. Thank you Em!
My physio! (who is also my best friend)
This is the same for having a running coach too – someone else to take away the decision making (or guessing) of what to do, how far to run and how fast. And someone to report your sessions back to and get some feedback and support. That’s where I can help!
Keeping track of your sessions helps to appreciate the small wins
We are all working towards a big goal – but writing down your results after each session such as pace, distance, time, how it felt, etc can help when you can notice small things like perhaps your 5km pace was a little quicker, or perhaps you didn’t get tired at 10km like you normally do, it was 12km today. Maybe it took you slightly less time to run 15km than it did 2 weeks ago, or maybe you ran the furthest you ever have. Keeping track of this helps you to look back and see how far you have come. Maybe you had a break from running and so when you restarted, 5km felt tough. But now you’re running 10km regularly and 5km seems easy. Celebrate the small wins along the way to help you stay motivated and to make the whole process of training for a big goal enjoyable! This week I completed 3 x 14km bike sessions on the concept 2 bike erg and my time was faster on session 2 than session 1! Session 3 was purposely a touch slower because I felt tired that day, but I know that next week I am going to up it again.
Hope have a good week 2 this week – I think my achilles feels a little less swollen today so keep your fingers crossed for me that it is starting to improve!