Health & Beauty
SIMPLY LIVING FRANCE
PAGE 54
Training for a Marathon Last time, I told you about how I came to find myself signing up for the Paris Marathon. So how are my preparations going? Here are some of the things I’ve learnt so far.
Training Plans The first thing I did after signing up was a search online for marathon training plans. This was when I got my first shock. All the plans I could find assume that you’re already running 15km at a time, which I wasn’t! Luckily these plans were also only 12 weeks long, which meant I had a couple of months to get my butt into gear before I needed to embark on one of these plans! I created for myself a little ‘Pre Marathon-Training Training Plan’. My goal for this was to get into the habit of regularly running, at least three times a week, no matter what the weather was doing, as well as increasing my longer runs. Most training plans have you running at least three times a week. You have an Easy Run, which is a shorter, slower paced run. A Tempo or Interval Run, where you work on your speed by adding in some faster paced intervals. And then a Long Run which is exactly as it sounds. The plan I’m using bases these on time spent running rather than overall kilometres, so long runs start off at about 60 minutes and gradually build up to about 3.5 hours.
The Right Shoes The next thing I did was chat to friends who have experience running marathons. This was my second shock; did you know that your feet swell up when you run long distances? Or that your toenails can turn black and fall off?! That was fun to learn! I went to a running shop and, on the advice of my friends, bought myself a pair of trainers that are one and a half sizes bigger than I would usually wear. They are designed for marathon running so have more cushioning than other trainers I have had in the past and are very comfortable. Which is just as well because I could probably feed myself for a month on what they cost! The salesman must have been ecstatic, he even managed to convince me to buy a couple of pairs of anti-blister socks. (No, I’d never heard of them either, but they seem to be working).
