Training plan for London Marathon

Last year I got a sub-three marathon at Edinburgh. I looked at my training block for that race and made a few tweaks this year for my London effort. As always, in addition to doing a bit of online research, I picked the brains of some of the best runners I know. In particular a couple of runners who have ran sub 2:20 in the past and another who runs sub 2:30 who really know their stuff.

Some bulleted notes:

  • Started the training block having regularly done 21-25km every Sunday for some time just as 'the Sunday Long Run'. So this is a great starting point
  • Worked hard for 14 weeks - a little longer than the Edinburgh plan
  • Ran every day, but alternated hard efforts with easy runs. Put the effort in, then recover, then repeat.
  • Kept a fast interval session in for the Tuesday (anything from 400 up to 1mi intervals) but put a longish tempo effort in for the Thursday. Worked this up from 10k to 16k through the training block
  • Kept the Sunday Long Run at a decent pace (sub 4:30/km) - took this slowly up from 26 to 36km. But didn't go any higher. For Edinburgh I went up to 40km but when I spoke to the experienced runners they said that over 36km just risks putting tears in the muscles and has minimal benefit.
  • Took the weekly distance up slowly from 80km per week to 100km per week - the longer Sunday run, moving the easy runs up to 8k min and slowly pushing the temp further gave small gains each week.
  • Added in a 20mile race (20 laps of a park) towards the end of the block
  • Finished it off with two excellent group sessions: (a) 16 mile session with one mile at marathon pace and then one mile float and (b) 4 x 5k at marathon pace. Did these midweek just before the taper. 

Training log below - dark-green=long run, hashed=effort, red=race (mainly parkruns). Also, the Strava Fitness chart also shown - (not sure how much science is behind this though)


The 20 mile race was particularly good and is a great way of seeing where you are at before the marathon - gives you a realistic idea of what your marathon race strategy should be. Also a chance to test out taking on regular gels (every 30 minutes).
20 mile race
The GPS was a little random - but I managed an even split 4:04/km pace. I was very tired, but not starting to hit the wall. Could I do the full 42km pace in proper marathon big day race conditions, with a full recovery? Maybe not - but not far off.

I do want a stretched goal for London and not just to set off to sneak under by 2:58:29 PB.

So I will aim for a 4:05/km pace. Let's say I keep this up for 37km and then drop to 4:30/km for last 5km (pessimistic) - this would give a 2:54:00 marathon which I would be delighted with.

If I aim for a 4:05/km pace and manage to maintain even splits - that would be 2:52:20 which would the stuff dreams are made of.

Let's see.

Update (25/4):
2:58:16 - After first 5k I got sucked into the pace of the pack and ended up doing 4:13/km pace instead of 4:05/km pace. Got into poor position in the field and then not brave enough to go for it.
Problem when it gets to 10k to go and you think you can smash out a negative splits fast finish. Your legs say 'no'. So didn't die away, but equally, couldn't lift things up through the gears. A little bit disappointed, but cannot complain too much about a sub-3 PB. :)

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