It’s the end of week one on the Road to Kraków and Liam thought it might be worth sharing how he’s training for the marathon. Gabi will be taking a different aproach and we’ll talk about it in different posts.

There are so many training plans out there, on so many websites and in so many books. That’s before you head on into looking at social media posts, with everyone showing that their way is the best way. With all this I struggled to figure out what training plan to follow (and I must follow a training plan or I’ll go too hard!).

After a small amount of though I decided to use the Garmin Connect marathon training plan – level one. This is the most beginner friendly training plan available for a marathon through the website. It’s super convenient as I’ve a Garmin watch and the training plan just pushes through to my watch. Then all I need to do is select the training option and select today’s workout. Then off I go. Not too much thinking, just doing as I’m told.

I’m going to try to write up a weekly update on the training plan and review at the end how it went overall.

Week one’s training was made up of two rest days, two cross training days and three runs. I’ve added in a little more with our daily yoga practice and doing a runners strength and mobility training session after each run.

Now, as a caveat, this probably overall won’t be the fairest review of a training plan as I’m starting off with a knee injury which is limiting my running a little. Tuesday, the first training session called for a 30 minute easy run, so on to the treadmill I went and combined a bit of running with some walking. A nice easy session to open the account for 2020.

The second running session on Thursday was a 30 minute steady run, now I’m not entirely sure what the difference between steady and easy is but I ran slightly more than I did on the Tuesday. The walk breaks dropped a little and I added a few slightly quicker sessions just to mix things up.

The final run of week one was a long run on Sunday. This one, well, this one didn’t go entirely to plan. It called for 3x Walk 10 minutes, Easy run 20 minutes. Unfortunately before the end of the second set my knee was hurting so I couldn’t run. I tried, I failed. Still Managed to get nearly over 6km done which is a huge improvement on recent attempts.

For the cross training I decided to hop on the turbo trainer for an indoor bike, this very much with an eye towards the triathlon season and trying to build some bike fitness ahead of trainnig. It’s also nice and easy on the knee!

Looking back over the first week, it’s a nice introduction. The run/walk of the long run and the short length of the mid-week runs make for a really great starting point for someone with lower fitness or experience. I think had it not been for my knee it’d have been comfortable.

On to week two and the introduction of a tempo session. Fingers crossed the knee holds up!