A typical marathon plan is 16-18 weeks (112-126 days) It’s unlikely that every day will go to plan! Things will ‘go wrong’. You might well catch a cold. You might get injured. Family and work will almost certainly compromise your training schedule. You might overdo a night out. There might be days when you can’t motivate yourself and don’t train. All of the this could well happen! We’re human and have other things in our lives.
How you deal with with these challenges are key though to doing your best in your marathon. It’s very rare that you don’t miss a training session. What do you do though? Do it the next day? Accept you’ve not done it and continue with your schedule?
This is where a good coach comes into their own.
General advice is that you can’t squeeze a block of training into a smaller period of time. Let’s say you’ve missed your long run on Sunday. You have the opportunity to do it the following day. That might be a good decision but almost certainly means you need to change and reduce what you do for the following few days.
What happens if you miss several weeks of training?
Training is progressive. You’re best doing what you have missed rather than what ‘your schedule says’, for when you get back to running. It might be that you need to go ‘back a bit’ in order ‘to go forward’. If you miss a big run or a block of training, you can’t move on to something that is more progressive. Let’s say you plan to run 16m, 2 weeks later 18m, 2 weeks later 20m. You miss the 18m. Settle on getting 18m done rather than the 20m.
Is ‘splitting” a long run a good option?
You haven’t got the time to do your 3hr run, so plan to do 90mins one day and 90mins the next? In the early stages of your training plan, this might be fine. 4-7 weeks out from the marathon, it probably is a workout missed. Better to move your long run to another day when you can do it in full. Certain physiological and metabolic adaptions will not happen otherwise.
You will always be susceptible to cold viruses in the winter. The better your immune system, the less likely you will ‘catch’ something. There is every chance, however, that you might get run down and ill. Trying to push on with your training schedule is almost certainly going to result in you becoming more ill and missing more training. A few days (even a week) off will not make any difference if the rest of your training has gone well.
The best advice we can give, is to recognise you will not do everything you want to. Your marathon might be important but there are other things in your life which are just as important… if not more so. Look at the whole period of your marathon training and try and do the most that you can. Take confidence and pride in what you have done… not what you have not done.
