For years, I never even considered the idea of running a marathon. But as I got into triathlon and started training with a club, the distance shrank from an impossible feat to a manageable challenge. In late 2011, I decided to give the marathon a go. As sign-ups for the 2012 London marathon were long over, I picked the much smaller local Halstead marathon, which was taking place three weeks after London.
I started training in January with a few ladies who were all going to do the VLM. Due to the time difference between our respective races however, their training places were miles ahead of mine, so I was soon forced to train on my own. This, combined with the fact that my training plan’s long run increased almost weekly in mileage, meant that I was soon bored to tears and missing the diversity of triathlon training. By early March, I made the incredibly difficult decision of abandoning my marathon training and focus on triathlon instead.
Given my previous training issues, why put myself through this again, you may wonder. It started with me watching the 2012 VLM live on television. Inspired by the atmosphere, the crowds and the route, I decided that if I was going to run a marathon at all, it was going to be the London Marathon, and so I entered the ballot for the 2013 VLM.
The VLM is such a popular race that runners can’t simply sign up to it. “Normal” (i.e. not elite, charity, celebrity or other special category) places are so coveted that the ratio between places and applicants is roughly around 1:5 (that’s a rough estimate going around on running forums as there are no official numbers). The low success rate in securing a place was a contributing factor in my signing up for a ballot place. After all, I’m not usually the kind of person who wins anything, so I was most likely going to be among the 80% of “sorry, better luck next time”, right? Not so much.
The VLM website stated that successful applicants would be notified “by early October”. The last thing I therefore expected when I got home from work last Thursday (September 27th!) was to find my acceptance letter waiting for me in the post. At first, I even mistook it for my tri magazine as it was a thick pack in a plastic wrapper. But when I ripped it open, there it was: my ticket to Virgin London Marathon 2013, completed with the VLM runners magazine full of sports gear and charity advert and a few pages of training trips. I can’t describe how excited I am about getting a place, and in my first year, too!
Of course, now I need to get training. So how am I going to prevent myself falling into the same boredom trap as last year? Well, this time, my training plan is going to have two crucial changes. For one, there will be far fewer long runs. Insead of increasing my long run mileage steadily from 14 to 20 miles over the course of 8 to 10 weeks, I’m only going to do 4 really long runs, of 16, 18, 20 and 22 miles, spaced out over about 10 weeks, and with shorter (10-13 mile) “long” runs inbetween.
Secondly, I’m going to fully integrate my triathlon training into my training plan. Instead of two weekly cross-training sessions (one swim, one bike), which by their definition should be lower in intensity, the sessions, especially the bike one, will be full on endurance sessions taking the place of an additional tempo run. My plan will thus include 3-4 runs per week, one swim and one bike. Since the basic training plan recommended by the VLM consists of three weekly runs, I’m confident that my plan should be sufficient preparation. Whether I’m right, only time can tell.
