Time to sort out my training 🚴🏻

After having a break, I’ll be ready to get back into training in 3 weeks.

For the first 10 days of December, I upped my running mileage by 1 mile per day, up to 10, and tried to keep a consistently fast pace (6:45-7:45 per mile). See my runs on Strava.

But after that, I enjoyed having some time to rest and recuperate and have enjoyed only running when I want to, without commitment, without a plan.

This is all well and good, for a while. Now I’m itching to get back to structure and focused goals to work towards.

I like structure. I have goals.

Training 2021

What’s coming up this year? In my first article of the year, I detailed some of the races I’ve entered. They range from shorter running races up to marathons, a mountain trail race, a multi-day 135-mile ultra race and from sprint to Ironman distance triathlons.

That’s a fair bit for anyone to train for. But I can do it - sensibly, I’m sure. Let’s break it down.

Marathons

Boston (UK) marathon

• When: April 18th
• Target: sub 3 hour
• Training required: 12-week program
• Priority: A

London marathon

• When: October 3rd
• Target: none
• Training required: none - providing no injuries, residual fitness should be adequate
• Priority: B

Mountain / trail

Terrex ultra

50km trail ultramarathon

• When: May 23rd
• Target: finish within 9 hours, enjoy the experience
• Training/prep required: mountain trail running, reccy the route beforehand
• Priority: C

Ring O’ Fire

135 mile 3-day multi-stage ultra

• When: September 3-5th
• Target: finish, enjoy the experience
• Training/prep required: reccy the route beforehand, perhaps doing 1-2 of the stages independently
• Priority: C

Triathlons

Ironman¹ UK

• When: July 4th
• Target: sub 10 hours if training goes well, sub 12 hours if not on track
• Training required: 20ish week programme - self-written plan taking influence from the 26-week professional plan from David Warden that I had last year
• Priority: A

Ironman¹ Ireland

• When: August 15th
• Target: sub 10 hours if Ironman UK finished in over 10, sub 12 hours (a relaxing one!) if not
• Training required: residual fitness from the aforementioned 20ish week programme
• Priority: B

Not too much then!

Well not really. There are 2 structured training plans in there - the 12 week sub-3-hour marathon plan which I’m due to start in 3 weeks on the 25th Jan, and a 20-ish week Ironman plan that I’ll be putting together.

I have to think about when to start this one, whether winter will affect my training (it will - no open water swimming yet), and whether or not I should get an indoor bike or smart turbo trainer like a Wattbike or Wahoo Kickr.

The sub-3-hour marathon plan I’ll be following is this one that I purchased from Jonny Mellor, and I’ll be using TrainingPeaks to keep track of my progress.

2021 rough schedule

I’m going to go through what my "A", "B", and "C" races are tomorrow. That’s enough for today.

Phew. I’m happy now I’ve got that sorted. I suppose I’d best go for a run.