As I am trying to increase my running from 5k level, to a
half marathon (and maybe eventually to a marathon, Eek!), I have been reading marathon and half marathon book written by
Sam Murphy. Some of the facts that he
came up with to do with marathons, I found quite astounding.
In the process of running a marathon you will:
- Take approx 40,000 steps
- Shrink by as much as 2cms
- Increase your heart beat to about 150 beats per minute
- Breathe approx. 40 times per minute (compared to 12-18 at rest)
- Pump 25-35 Litres of blood around your body per minute (compared to 4-5 litres at rest)
(source:
Marathon and half marathon – Sam Murphy, 2009)
Phew! Makes me tired
just thinking about it.
I have also been doing a lot of online research to try and
find the right training programme for me to follow. It has been a bit tricky as most of them are
shown in miles rather than kilometres, so I have to keep converting them using
the following chart.
Lea suggested that I look at the
Hal Higdon half marathon training plans (thanks Lea :-) and the advanced plan is ideal for the stage I am at currently (able to run an hour at a time) http://www.halhigdon.com/training/51130/Half-Marathon-Training-Guide .
I copied his training program into an excel spreadsheet,
converted it to kilometres and also added in the additional training that I
have with Val for swim training and Lynley from Tribrown Coaching (https://www.facebook.com/groups/136720836457684/
).
I like the fact that you can change the plan to suit your own needs. I should really have another rest day in
there each week, but I am hoping that the swimming will count like a rest day
as it is cross training rather than running, and also, I often find that I have
enforced rest days, if the kids are off sick, or on holidays, so I will just
take rest days when I need to.
Runners world also offers some good training plans as well
as some useful calculators (race time predictor, race split band etc) http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/racing/big-half-marathon-index/4179.html. They also offer Garmin downloads for those of
you with Garmin Watches.
Other training plans that I looked at were:
The other thing that I am learning about, is how to eat
properly for the half marathon as you are supposed to practice this before your
long training runs to ensure you don’t get any nasty surprises on the day:
I will continue to add more info as I find it.
If you have come across any good plans or info about half marathon training, then please let me know in the comments below.
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