Sub 4 hours marathon

Background: Due to work travel in mid Oct 2018, I had to take a decision to skip running Bangalore Marathon. As a result, I ramped down my running mileage in Sep as there was no marathon in sight. This sadly also meant I would not run a marathon in 2018. But hey ho!

Surprise training plan: Amongst numerous topics that we talk during our runs, during one of such easy runs with Shailja Singh, we were discussing which would be a good marathon for me to train for, she suggested I run the Mumbai Marathon in Jan. Given the horrid weather in Mumbai, I was not too inclined and got myself off that trap. I casually told her I could consider running the Tokyo Marathon (if I made the lottery) or run the New Delhi Marathon in Feb. Shailja at that time was making a training plan for herself for Tokyo Marathon, New Delhi Marathon a week earlier was a perfect race to choose, that way we could training together is what she said. After that chat/run in the morning, I got to work and was quite surprised to see a 13 weeks training plan starting Nov 26 through Feb 24 from Shailja in my email.

Pre-training: I spent most part of Oct training for Airtel Delhi Half Marathon (ADHM) and my Vegas trip. On hindsight not running Bangalore Marathon was a blessing in disguise, it clashed with my return from the US and I didn’t want to toe the line for a marathon in less than 24h flying in on a transatlantic flight. ADHM date clashed with Bangalore Marathon, I decided to register for that race and routed my return to Delhi on Sat in time for the race on Sun. I was in pretty good shape in Oct and did manage to get some running during my work trip as well. I comfortably ran a 1:43 in Delhi (that was my 2^nd sub 1:45 race in 2018). My love for ADHM seem to never cease! Post ADHM, I continued to play the waiting game with many easy runs to log mileage and eagerly waiting for Nov 26^th for the marathon training plan to kick in.

Training: In the 90 odd days between Nov 26 through the Feb 24 (race day). I ended up running more than 1000 km (1066 km to be precise). 80+% of the runs were easy/conversational pace, I didn’t hassle myself to ‘complete’ a workout, I rested if I needed to, I skipped a workout if I was hungover. I didn’t think twice to put my feet up and enjoying a drink or two if I had to. The training plan involved 4-5 days of running in a week which was a change in the way I used to train earlier, there were a few occasions when my body did get sore, resting and patience helped with the healing 😊. Weekend long runs: 10 out of 12 weekends, I covered the planned distance. The pace for most of these runs were easy. The 2 weekend runs where I didn’t manage the planned distance were either prior to a race (I ran Tata Steel Kolkata 25K & Tata Mumbai  1/2 Marathon during this period btw) or recovering from the said races. 3 weeks prior to the marathon and during taper time, all long runs were at target marathon pace. I did only 4 runs that were 30+ km, rest were <30 km, i.e. not a lot of running.

Race day: Everything panned out well during the race. Ran 1^st half in 1:54:12 (5:26/km) & 2^nd in 1:52:37 (5:22/km), ran the last 1.5 km at a sub 5:00/km pace. Anytime during the race, I didn’t feel the fatigue – probably I ran way too conservatively?! – which is usually how I have been running races (maybe that approach needs some tweak 😉). A Sub 4-hour marathon was always the desire, I was delighted to see a sub 3:50 on the board. Ms Singh has been great training partner, we had some great time training in the last 90 days for this race. During the training process, there have been some areas wherein I need to make improvement which would be hopefully be my focus than drinking too much Single Malts in the off season.