The beginner: Carol Williamson
20 January
I cannot believe that I've got a place in the London marathon! In fact, no one can. Determined to make a decent stab at it, I log onto a running website and click on training plans. I type in my half marathon time (two hours). It tells me I am "intermediate" and spits out a training plan consisting of five shortish runs during the week and one long run at the weekend. I am armed and ready to go.
Today
There is one main problem with The Plan - I am not sticking to it. Because I got a place at the last minute, I started on Week Four of a 16-week training plan, so found myself being asked to run 10m on my first weekend. I politely declined.
Then there was the unfortunate matter of the 10-day trip to Thailand, where The Plan was pretty much abandoned in favour of a few treadmill sessions and an awful lot of mai tais. This means I am now staring down the long barrel of Week Seven's schedule, and it is fairly alarming. By the end of the week I will have run 40 miles - or died trying.
The long runs are getting progressively more insane - this Sunday The Plan reads: "18 miles. Take it easy - don't kill yourself". (Surely '18 miles' and 'take it easy' don't belong in the same sentence?). I'm conscious that I'm getting further and further off the pace, but at the same time I don't want to increase the mileage too much, get injured and not be able to train at all.
Maybe I should downshift to the "Beginner/Get You Round Plan", but that seems a bit defeatist. For the time being, I'll stick with this one but just increase my mileage gradually at the weekend. I managed 10.5m last Sunday, running along the Thames, and this weekend I'm going to try 12 or 13m around Richmond Park. The idea is to vary the location of the long run to keep monotony at bay.
The other unlikeable thing about The Plan is that it is relentless. I'm running pretty much every day, and as I run before work this means getting up offensively early - although at least I'm no longer running in the dark. I'm starting to realise that early nights in the week are essential, and big Saturday nights out are a thing of the past if I am not going to disgrace myself.
I was whinging to a work colleague that if I am going to stick to this punishing schedule, I think I need some accountability. She pointed out that if a blog on the Guardian website wasn't sufficient, then nothing would be. More helpfully, she suggested I start a running journal where I log all my training runs (distance, how I felt afterwards, etc). This seems a good idea, and at least I'll be able to track my progress.
Sam Murphy and I also meet for the first time this weekend, so I am hoping she will tweak/jettison The Plan when she sees the specimen she has to work with.
Next week: Our personal trainer's advice for Carol
The improver: Matt Kurton
The shameful truth is that I haven't really followed a training programme for a couple of years - not since I religiously stuck to a 'five runs a week' monster a couple of years back, and ended up injured. My body wasn't ready for it, I plodded on regardless, and then the inevitable happened. Which leads me to the one piece of running advice I'd give to anyone: Listen To Your Body. It will make itself heard one way or the other.
Ever since then, I haven't followed a strict weekly regime when I've been training for a marathon. I've just focused on including a long run at marathon pace (anything from 13-22m), a medium-distance faster run (up to 12m), and a fast, shorter run (usually about 8m), all topped up with plenty of swimming and cycling.
But following my first, extremely enlightening, meeting with Sam Murphy last week, I'm in the process of tweaking that. I'm considering actually following something that surprisingly like a programme again.
Sam's main conclusion was that I'm pushing my body too hard. I struggle to run more than three times a week, and she suggested one reason could be that none of my runs are run at an easy pace. It's a fair point: I do tend to be slightly obsessed with what my watch is telling me, so I've always found slowing down tough.
But last weekend I went out for a long run and ran it one minute per mile slower than normal. It felt totally unnatural, but my still-not-quite-right groin felt OK afterwards. And, miraculously, I actually felt good enough to go for a short run the next day.
I'm suddenly faced with the prospect of being able to run more frequently. Can I fit more in? I'm happy to try - that's why, with a busy week this week, you'll find me tying up my trainers at 10pm tomorrow.
So, for the next month or so, the plan is to get with the programme. I'll be doing one (slower) long run; one faster run (shorter than I have been doing - about 6m); one marathon-pace run (no longer than 8m); and a hill session.
Four times a week ... I'll let you know how it goes.
• Visit the official Flora London marathon website
Are you training for a marathon this year, or have you run marathons in the past? Share your tips on sticking to a training programme, or ask other readers for advice
