By Paul Lacey
“Congratulations on entering the Inaugural Ugandan International Marathon!”
Yes, that is correct, despite my horrendous marathon history, I have entered another marathon – in beautiful but also hot, humid, hilly, elevated East Africa. Don’t get me wrong I love to run, in fact over the shorter distances I would say I’m semi-respectable, but over the infamous 26.2 miles I always seem to fall short (see finish line pic below). Take my last marathon. Brighton. I had two targets: sub 3:15, and beat my old man (who incidentally can put a few miles together). Despite leaving training until only two months before the race, I was confident my youth and athleticism would conquer. Wrong. So so wrong. I ran off a cliff at 18 miles, agonisingly crawled in at 3:35 and the old boy utterly destroyed me. I took it well. I vowed next time never to make the mistake of leaving marathon training too late.
Fast forward to Friday. I’m sat at home sipping on a beer, and who pops up on FB messenger? Why it’s Ellie Lucas from the UGM team….
“Hey Paul, do you remember our chat about the blog?”
Ummmmm “ah yeah sure Ellie” (completely forgot)
“Fab, are you ready to start and upload your training plan? Only 12 weeks to go!!!!”
What?!! I have no training plan. I’ve not even thought about a training plan. I’VE DONE IT AGAIN!!! Flashbacks of watching my 53 year old dad in unnecessarily short shorts accelerating away from me come flooding back.
So over the weekend, I did what all cool-headed and focused athletes do in this situation. I panicked. I cracked 31 miles in two days (see Strava links for Saturday and Sunday). My legs hurt. A lot. But fear not, I have calmed down, sat down, and written a plan.
Operation African Wall Avoidance
Welcome to my plan. This is what I have put together with my incredibly limited knowledge. Man I hope this works…
Train 6 days a week. Rest 1 day. Leave 1 day unplanned as a ‘see how you feel’ day. Every 4th week will be a recovery week – same training, but with 30% mileage reduction. There are three simple phases:
Stage 1. Foundation: Weeks 1 to 6. We could call this the foundation or base phase if we were feeling technical. The priority here is simple: Mileage!!!
Five out of the seven days must be made up to ten miles total for the day.
Stage 2. Specific: Weeks 7 to 10. Specific marathon target pace training. At least three out of the six runs to involve significant segments at marathon pace.
Stage 3. Taper: Weeks 11 to 12. Bring mileage and intensity down.
Race: Sunday May 24th. Death or Glory.
Now the elephant in the room. What on Earth is my race pace going to be??!!! Altitude, heat, humidity, dusty trails, epic undulations…after some contemplation I realised there were just too many unknowns, so I’m going to train for a sub 3 hour UK marathon. On race day, I will start very slowly and judge on the day what I am capable of winding up to.
Wow I’m excited!!! This is going to be incredible!!
Plan this week (Week 1):
I’ve entered a 10k on Saturday. I’m feeling strong over this distance at the moment and a nice little fitness test could be useful.
| Day | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thur | Fri | Sat | Sun | Total miles |
| Session | Rest | Altitude Centre intervals | 10 miles easy | 10 miles easy | See how I feel | 10k race | 15 miles steady | Min 55 |
| Notes | Hmmmm bed. | See next blog post! | Could be interesting / horrific | Richy park | Make up sessions to 10M |
Next week I’ll let you know how the week and 10k race went. I’ll also talk about running at altitude and my new exciting discovery – The Altitude Centre!!
