Marathon advice

[HoleyMoleyGuacamole]

I’m thinking of training for my first marathon which is 10 month’s away. I’ve done a half before but that was years ago so starting from the start.

There are quite a few half marathons between now and then and wondered at what point in advance of the actual marathon I ought to try for one of the half marathons?

Most marathon training plans will suggest running a half about halfway through. You coul also train for a half before you begin the training for the full, unless that would involve you increasing your mileage too quickly, depending on what you are doing at the moment. I am doing the Loch Ness marathon in October; I'm doing a half in March and will do another during marathon training, which I'll start around June. If you're starting from zero, then one half about 2 months out from your marathon would do I think.

That helps! I’m worried about increasing my mileage too quickly and injuring myself

Slow and steady is definitely the way to go!

I agree with slow and steady.

I trained from C25k to marathon in a year and picked up several injuries along the way. I ran the second marathon 6 months later and it was a completely different experience... no injuries and definitely a happier run.

There’s so many runs to chose from now - best advice would probably be book a 5km then 10km and see how committed you are, then 10 miles, half and full.

Or throw all caution to the wind, book a spring 2020 marathon and go for it!!

The general rule is not to increase your total weekly mileage or ‘long run’ mileage by more than 10% each week. You coukd also think about ‘dropping back’ or having an easier session every 6 weeks to allow your body a bit of a rest.