Marathon Training begins

Today is the start of my 28 week training campaign towards the Greater Manchester Marathon.  After almost a week off, I'm full of enthusiasm to get into my training plan.  Regular readers will know I'm doing a combination of plans.  Jeff Galloway's 3:45 plan from his book How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon, and Hal Higdon's Intermediate 2 plan from his book Marathon, and also freely available from his website.  Together With this I will incorporate strength work and stretching from P&D, as well as creating my own strength program using kettle bells.  There are many technical aspects to Galloway's plan, so I will try and get on here each day this week to explain the sessions, and as new ones come up later in the schedule, I will explain those too.

Here is the plan for week 1:

Monday: strength work/cross train

Tuesday: 30 minute run including cadence drill

Wednesday: 40 min run including cadence drill, acceleration glider and pace

Thursday: 45 minute run including acceleration gliders and hills

Friday: rest

Saturday: rest (usually would include strength and core workout)

Sunday: 5 miles with 3 hill repeats

You'll notice the lack of long run.  This is because during the early weeks of Galloway's plan, the focus is on form and building strength, and so the long runs are on alternate weeks, with hill work in between.

So, today was a rather pathetic attempt at a kettle bell circuit, with only 7 exercises.  I did 2 sets of 8-12 reps depending on the exercise, then I did some core work.  The good thing about kettlebels is that some of the functional exercises really count as cardio too, so I find it a bit more fun than regular free weights...