Jogging Tip

Marathon training plans come in all shapes and sizes. They are made to suit different time commitments, different runner goals, and different levels of experience. However, no matter who made the plan, or who it is for, there is always one element that stands out to me as the most important.

The most important part of any plan is more important than how far you run and more important than how fast. It is more important than how many weeks you train for and how you test your performance.

Not everyone will agree with this, but I strongly believe that the most important thing that every excellent marathon training plan will specify is the exact quantity and timing of recovery. I believe that the most important part of any training plan is this recovery component.

Some runners see recovery as the opposite of training. They believe that it is simply a gap between productive training sessions. In reality, the training effect is only possible because of recovery. It is only when we rest that we are able to make the gains that we have worked so hard to achieve.

Now this could be called ?Classic training concept number one?. We all know this, but hear me out.

Effective training involves over-performing the level that your body is used to. This shocks your body and makes it realize that it will have to rebuild itself stronger next time. It starts this process straight away, but it is only able to get right into the rebuilding phase properly when the training (and subsequent stress) has stopped. Recovery can take the form of a rest from all activity, or a return to less stressful daily life, or even carefully planned active recovery. Which ever form it takes, adequate time and opportunity for recovery is essential for us to receive the training effect that we are working so hard for. If it wasn?t for adequate recovery we would be continually breaking our bodies down without giving them chance to re-build. This is often called over-training and can lead to injury, low motivation, illness and often premature running retirement.

An excellent marathon training plan will specify exactly when, in a week, you should run hard sessions, easy sessions and no sessions. The best programs will even give guidance on separating the sessions by specified hours. For example you can see the difference it would make if you do Monday?s hard session first thing in the morning or last thing at night. The difference could be up to maybe 16 hours of recovery leading into Tuesday?s early morning run. If you run at 6:00am on Monday and then 6:00am on Tuesday, your body gets maybe 24 hours (less run time) to recover. If you run at 10:00pm on Monday, and 6:00am on Tuesday, your body has only about 8 hours (less run time) and then it is back into the work, perhaps only half recovered.

So it is not just the quantity of recovery that is important it is the timing of recovery that really makes a difference. I firmly believe that if we are to get the most possible benefit from all of our training then we have to ensure that we recover as well as we possibly can. This can take the form of:

1) Fine tuning our sessions in a day
2) Sensible location of sessions in our week
3) Using an optimal balance of hard and easy weeks and hard and easy training phases
4) Treating ourselves to end of season recovery and perhaps even a mid-season break if we have the courage.

Now, all this talk of rest and recovery is making me feel tired so I am going to lie down and put my feet up. I have a session planned for 5:00 pm today and I want to make sure that I am over yesterdays 6:00 am session before I pile it on again. That will have given my body 35 hours (less run time) of active recovery, sleep and easy daily life to get over yesterday. Some would call this extravagant, and this is extreme even for me, but I know that my body will be 100% recovered before today?s session. This means I have made the most of yesterdays work, I am ready to train hard today, and I have significantly reduced my risk of injury.

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