Preparing a Plan- Dublin City Marathon Training 2016.

Signing up for a marathon is the easy part, the 800 plus km training programe is the hard part. And harder still is trying to figure out a plan that works for me.

Luckily I am surrounded by seasoned runners who have been offering advice and words of wisdom but with that comes a different problem...everyone has their own ideas and opinions and there seems to be endless conflicting arguments for how best to train.

A lot of the plans I have seen so far recommend only reaching 32 km before tapering down. However.  considering that's 10km from the finishing line I feel like I need to do way more in the build up and maybe even go as far as the 38 km,  not just so I can build up the kms in my legs but also to mentally prepare for the hours of running that 42 km will take.

Realistically I am building up from my 21 km experience so I still have 20 weeks to get me ready for hopefully a continuous 42 km run. I've completed two 21km runs in the last 2 weeks and it doesn't seem to be getting easier, on the plus side I also went for my first sports massage, a task I was truly dreading but I felt great afterwards and slept like a log that night.


This weekend coming also sees the start of the Ballina Athletic Clubs running festival, of which I will do the 10km run on Friday night.
When I had completed the half marathon back in May I had had wild ambitions to try to run the marathon on the Sunday of the running festival but I've come to my senses and will only do 24 km of the course just to up my mileage and get a feel for running a full!