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12 Months to Marathon - Episode 10 - Should I Follow a Training Plan · 12 Months to Marathon

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the 12 Months to Marathon Podcast with me, John Hill, the running podcast for over 35s with Marathon Dreams.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 10, we're into double figures, and today's episode is going to be should you follow a training plan?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Which might seem like a bit of an obvious question, but actually, after a couple of posts on Instagram recently, 12 Months to Marathon, make sure to follow me over there.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: A few people have asked quite a few questions and raised a few comments and a few concerns around training plans.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to talk about that today and give you my insight into that.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on with me at the moment?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so we've got a 10k this weekend in Worcester, feeling quite strong for that.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Been training for HIROX alongside that as well.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted a 10k raise to be part of my HIROX training, which I'm doing in October.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Google High ROX, if you don't know what that is, H Y R O X.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, we'll do the 10k this weekend.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I did have a PB in my head.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see how I feel on the day.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can be a little bit um flippant with it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I I feel okay.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know my level, so let's just see how we get on on the day.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Conditions look decent, it's going to be a bit cooler, I think, so we'll give it a good go.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good course.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I did my half marathon PB there, like I said last time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we'll see how we go.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a nice place to do it as well.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good course, so we'll see how we go.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into today's podcast, I wanted to just quickly talk about something I talked about last week, and that that podcast was quite popular, the zone two podcast.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: It got quite a few downloads, which I'm not surprised about, which is a good and a bad thing in my opinion.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I did a little experiment this week where I was looking at my heart rate while I was running, and I was looking at Strava and I was also looking at Garmin.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, according to Strava, based on what my heart rate was, I did a five-mile run, and I was probably at somewhere in the region of about 60 to 70%, I would say, of my physical max, so what I feel, not any sort of heart rate, how I felt, which I I think's more important than than metrics, but anyway, that's a different conversation.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So according to Strava, for 58% of that run, I was in zone four, no zone three, and for six percent of it, I was in zone four.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, he told me that over half that run was a tempo stroke threshold run.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it yeah, it wasn't on how I felt.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it just that just shows me sometimes how I'll use the word silly focusing on these metrics that I'm getting caught up in fads, like I said, can be, because you know, I I could convince myself of something different to how I felt, which isn't a good idea, in my opinion.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I'm not surprised that that one got the the the most downloads ever, and my own little experiment sort of proved the point on that in terms of just being careful around fads.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so let's talk about following a training plan.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I am surprised in a way about the amount of people who don't follow training plans at all, considering how readily available they are.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll be honest, I have never used a coach.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've self-taught myself to go from where I started from, which was 2011, was half marathon, to now, which is 14 marathons later, multiple halves and tens and high roxies and god knows what else, um, along the way.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always self-taught myself.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I ever want to go to it to another level, then I might have to get some coaching, particularly, but at the moment I'm self-taught.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And my first ever half marathon was a sub two hour.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of bravado in that because I didn't really have a plan.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought to myself, well, I need to put some distance on my legs, so I should run some longer runs, so I should do some running and then do some potentially longer runs to make sure that I'm close to the distance to ensure that I can cope with the distance on the day.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk about some I call minimum effective dose on another podcast, which is what you absolutely need to do in order to get round certain runs as in what you should be focusing on.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I just thought to myself, well, I'll I'll just you know run a few 10 miles and I'll be okay.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some merit in that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, should you follow a training plan?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: The the easy answer, of course, is yes.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, should you what's important?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the principles behind a training plan.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's important about a training plan?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the most important thing about a training plan is you are actually following a plan.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You are following something, and there is a lot in that because it creates discipline, it creates organization.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I did a video the other day where I said that you if you want to become somebody, it's but do something different, you have to become somebody different.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So following a plan for a lot of us will invoke stubbornness because human beings have got a natural aversion to authority, and that comes from childhood with parents and teachers and stuff.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we think, well, I'll show them I won't follow a plan, I just want freedom.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, without structure and without order, there is chaos, yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't have chaos and expect to run a particularly a marathon, yeah, or even you know, PB any distance, but you can't have chaos and expect to succeed in running.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Running is about discipline, it's about control, and it's about knowing that you've done the work.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so that's the first thing to note.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I would particularly follow a plan, just to get into the habit of following a plan and following a structure.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the common questions that I get is my life's XYZ, I can't follow a structure.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my life's XYZ, you know, I've since I've had my children, uh, which has happened in the last six years, um, two of them, before that, I could go for runs on a Sunday morning, you know, my wife would perhaps have a lie-in or stay in the house or do whatever, and I'd just go out running, whereas now I can't do that, so I have to modify my training schedule if I particularly when I start marathon training again, uh, which I will I will do a marathon next year, watch this space.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I have to modify my training because I can't be going out for three hours on a Sunday or whatever it might be, and leaving my wife and my two kids on her own.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to modify the days in which I do the run.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So things like that are okay, but you've got to look at the whole plan and you've got to say, right, I've got 16 weeks, for example, to train for a marathon, 12 weeks for a half of the two timescales that I recommend.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: What have I got to do in that time?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: What have I got to fit in?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the important runs I need to do across that?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there is no, and I I'm conscious here because I don't want to sound aggressive, but for me, there's no honour in oh, I just knocked out a marathon or just knocked out a half.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's no honour in that, especially if you don't do your best, because I think, well, actually, if you'd have followed a plan, you could have done your best.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not talking about circumstances here before anybody loses their mind.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying if you have if you can't follow a plan because of injury or whatever.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about any of that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about if you fit healthy and able to do it, uh, just with modifications.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the first point is a following a plan is gonna give you structure and create habits and disciplines in you that I think you need to have across the board, not just in running.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is data or over drama.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is something my coach said to me if you're not using data, you're using drama and you're guessing, and a lot of the times we apply emotion to situations that aren't emotional things, they are factual things.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, my background, as you know, is in the weight loss game, people will be upset about the weight loss versus actually looking at the data that tells them why they did it or tells them how it happened, and that's getting worse in the modern world because now we're focusing more on feelings than we are on facts, and that's a problem.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you want to run a marathon, you've got to follow the plan, simple as that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And how you feel about the plan is irrelevant, you've got to follow it, okay.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's gonna be times, I believe, if you're doing a marathon training plan properly, the way you will hate running.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in that, I do believe that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because when you get to the peak weeks, when you get to the real stuff in the middle, um, where you've got to put the miles on the legs, there's gonna be a time when you think, Oh, I've got to go out again.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That happens for me, and but that's part of it because there's gonna be probably a part in your first marathon when you go, I've got so and so to go.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like in my last sub three, in my sub-three marathon, uh, which was not the last one I did, the one before in 2023.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll always remember that one because it was a big deal for me.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had a weirdly, I had a wobble quite early.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had a wobble like nine miles, I think.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Something happened where I thought, ooh, and something happened, but then I I shook myself out of it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're doing your first marathon, I remember my first one, I was all over the place mentally, and it was one of the main reasons why we were all over the place mentally was because I didn't follow a proper plan.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I did something, but I was naive, uh, I didn't follow any structure, and then after that, when I did my five marathons in 2015 in that year, I did like a marathon for four or five weeks after another and got a PB, but all I did there was just run 20 miles, didn't recover properly, didn't do any of that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think having a plan in place will teach you firstly what I mentioned before about the discipline.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, um, you can use data, you can say, here is my plan.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I followed it as best as I could, and I got in the important runs, which is what I'll talk about in a separate podcast.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, when you follow your plan, you understand that it's not just about grant what I call in the fitness game ground and pound, it's not just about miles, it's you've got to take rest, you've got to have adaptation weeks, you've got to have weeks when you, you know, perhaps sometimes you know, a typical thing in a f in a marathon training plan, particularly when you're trying to go a bit faster, will be you'll race a half marathon in the middle of it, or you'll race a 10k in the middle of it in between all your 20 mile runs, you've got to do your distance stuff because your body needs time to rest across 16 weeks, and that's also why you know not having a plan and trying to do it in a month is also a problem if you're trying to achieve a certain time.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about circumstance here, I'm not talking about oh, I've I've been given a place in X run and I just want to get round.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking if you want to perform at your best.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we're coming from here.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think first time half or marathon run, runners, distance, you you need a plan because you do not want to get to that day, particularly marathon, and have it spoilt for you, especially if it's a big one.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're doing a big iconic event, London Marathon, Great North Run, something like that, or even one of the other marathon majors across the world, if you're lucky to do that, then what you don't want to do is have that spoiled for you because you've not followed a plan, because you've chosen not to, and that's where I'm coming from here.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about circumstances, I'm talking about choosing not to follow a plan.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, answer to your question, yes, you should absolutely follow a plan.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Another question I got asked was should you follow a plan to the letter, even if you've got good running experience?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if I was following a half marathon training plan, you know, and the first week was like a build-up week because it was, you know, would I follow that plan?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would actually follow the plan.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to find the plan that suits you.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking to get faster, you need a plan that's gonna help you get faster.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and where coaching comes in, a good what a good coach will do, like what I do with my guys in my program, is it's it's all about small course corrections, it's all about right, ask me about that particular run, that particular hilly run you did, and here's how you can effectively do that better next time, yeah.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got that feedback loop because anybody can follow a plan, yes, but if you really want to next level it, that's where a good coach comes in because they'll be able to quickly course correct.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my job as a coach when it comes to planning and coaching isn't maximum information or anything to you technical, it's maximum execution.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's do, let's get you doing, and let's get you the quickest possible results in the best possible way.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, right, let's not overload you with information.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're a runner, you need to run, let's get you out running, and let's find out as we go, kind of thing, and then come back and ask questions and get that feedback loop.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where a coach comes into a plan.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not in that place, then you will learn everything you need to know by the having the discipline to follow a training plan.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, there's no honour in just knocking a run out unless you you know you get a place in some special run four weeks to go and again.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not what we're talking about here.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about people who are trying to get better or trying to cross a very big bridge, as in like their first half or first marathon.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, 100%, in my opinion, you should follow some kind of plan.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I think if you really want to next level it, what I'm noticing is you should a get a coach, but b also get yourself as part of a community.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Community is really powerful here.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you know people in the community who have got the same aims and goals as you, it can really benefit you in the long term.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's certainly worth thinking about as well.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my take on training plans.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, the key principles of that came across very, very well.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening as always.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so don't forget jump over to Instagram 12 Months to Marathon, follow me over there for all your free daily tips and content.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to like and share the podcast or your favourite drop a heart on it if you're on if you're on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast from.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd appreciate that very much and share it with your friends.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, yeah, if you've got any questions or anything at all, pop over to Instagram 12 Months to Marathon.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can drop me a message over there, and I'd love to have a chat to you about your running journey and to see if we can help you or chat about some coaching.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more than happy to have a conversation and see if we can help you.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So enjoy your running.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening as always.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate every last one of you, and I'll see you all very soon.