How I trained for the Windsor Half Marathon

Photo by Chris Houghton

Strength, speed, stretching, and sustenance: How I trained for the Windsor Half Marathon

It was a cool partly overcast day, the last day of September 2018.  I lot of people I knew had been training hard: doing hills and speed work through winter and summer, and the hard work paid off with more than a handful of PBs both for the (tough) course, and for the distance (13.1 miles). 

I followed a pacer, and at the end of the race, I had a handful of PBs myself (pretty much everything between 1 and 13.1 miles was a PB for me). It was my best run for both the course and the distance. In 2017, I did WHM in 2hrs 07mins in hot conditions, and essentially without training. This year (2018), I did it in 1hr 41 mins. In terms of distance I beat my half-marathon previous best achieved at the Thorpe Half Marathon by around 13 minutes.

In addition to the conditions and the pacing being perfect, I undertook a training program, starting in the winter of 2017, that included the following elements: strength training; speed and hill work; stretching, and tinkering with diet (not least, eating prior to and throughout the race); as well as keeping a training diary.

Strength

Here I follow the Vertue Method (Yellow Kite Publishing), which uses a combination of weights and pilates/yoga movements to build up musculature and strength in the hips, glutes, abdomen, and arms. Using a 10kg kettle ball I do a daily (5 times/week) exercise routine with warmups. There are 10 warmup moves that include glute bridges, yoga lunges, caterpillar to plank, resistance band squats, hip/heel thoracic, and down-dog walks.

The main part of the ‘pilates’ workout includes a 1/3/3 group of sets. The first single set includes standing/sitting with weight, single-leg alternating lunges (15/leg), chair push-ups (15); and weight-lifting (15 per arm). The second set includes 3 reps each of 15x single-leg glute bridge with 10kg weight on the hip, per leg; and a side leg-lift to work the glute minimus. The final set, with 3 reps each, is for the abs, and it includes pushing arms-extended 10kg weight towards the ceiling (from lying on back position); leg crunches (again towards ceiling); and 30 ‘bicycles’.  I finish off each set with 5 ‘cobras’ and side-planks.

The strength training that I do has noticeably improved my core firmness and flexibility, and I can feel the difference when I am running, especially through turns, on hills, and in the linkages between shoulders/arms, and legs. I went from having lower (leg) strength only to having a balance between my upper and lower halves. I do not have ‘grid’ lines on the tummy, as these have very little correlation with running well (thanks to insta/Shona Vertue for this observation), but there it is pleasant to feel fit, and to notice a little bit of body shaping and sculpting through arms, to stomach, and down through the thighs.

Stretching

Before doing the strength work I do stretches from Hobrough’s Running Free of Injuries (Bloomsbury Publishing). I actually met and briefly spoke with Paul Hobrough, who has worked with Mo Farah.  From his book, you do (daily, 7 times/week) a set of stretches: oyster (3 times 15/leg); calf (45 seconds per leg against a wall); a set of 3 different hip-opening moves; single-leg squats (3 sets of 15); and 2 minutes of towel grabs with the toes. The latter (foot exercises) are really important because not only did they help with a nerve/metatarsal injury I had, but they build up strength in this often-neglected area: the feet!

The feet are literally the only point of contact between our bodies and the ground (when running), and yet we tend not to exercise the feet per se. We barely think about our feet, except perhaps when buying shoes.  Even then we are kind of just coddling them, swaddling and over-protecting with fancy technical materials, when what we need to be doing is making them stronger.  With this said, I’m not a huge proponent of barefoot running due to having injured myself prior to Endure24 2018 after a little barefoot session.

The Hobrough moves described above literally saved me, and might be the single most important thing listed here, because they got me out of an IT Band ‘hole’ before and after my first marathon. Not only did they vanquish the ITB thing, but I’ve continued doing these stretches every single day (and will continue) way past the point where the pain was gone. 

Speed work

This happens weekly, usually on Tuesdays, and more consistently throughout the winter. It comes in a variety of forms, from repeating 200m (20 times), 800m (8 times), or ‘pyramids’ (200, 400, and 800m in ascending and descending reps), with short recoveries in between. I try really hard not to miss these sessions, as for me they result in the most noticeable and quick improvement in running performance.

The other side of doing speed work is hill work, and the reason I say this is that if you do both you will get much faster at running up hills, to the point where they don’t feel difficult. This last WHM I don’t remember the hills much at all, because they weren't really an issue.  What I remember is running down them, really fast in the case of the ‘pink house’ hill, where I was ‘released’ by my pacer (a fellow Runnymede Runner), and took off to smash a bunch of PBs along the way to the finish line.

Sustenance

I’m not on a diet, but I’ve lost 40 pounds in the 2.5 years since starting running. I eat as much as ever, but at the same time, I’ve upped my miles. Also, at the same time, I’ve changed what I eat. My diet contains more beans and corn; and fewer sugary desserts, though I indulge nightly in a ‘smoothie bowl’ of yogurt, honey, berries, cereal, and milk.  I eat oatmeal with milk and berries for breakfast every weekday morning, and on long-run days we usually have a big brunch afterwards.

According to Noake’s Lore of Running and Jurek’s Eat and Run (Bloomsbury), I need to eat while I run, especially in the early part of the race.  I did this in the WHM this time.  I ate oatmeal with peanut butter, chia seeds, blueberries, and milk first thing (6 am). At 7 am I ate two pieces of whole grain seed bread with peanut butter; and a banana.  Between 8-9am I ate a couple of small granola bars washed down with Lucozade. By 9:30 I’d had a toilet break, and had my pockets loaded with one small (Nakd) granola bar, and a handful of Fruit Jellies.  Before each hill I ate 2-3 of the latter, for a total of around 20 of them.  I drank water at each and every aid station, ad libitum.

My sworn enemy for the race was hypoglycaemia, and with the running-diet I’d implemented (i.e. constant eating), I successfully avoided the problem of low blood-sugar that has plagued many of the races I’ve run before (especially the longer ones).

Training Diary

I keep a record of all of the above in a training diary where I can note variations on the routine, comment on how I’m feeling, on other things that are happening in life, and on things that might affect running performance.

Reading

Through reading I trained my mind, and this is the biggest, yet oddly most counter-intuitive part of the training undertaken so far. This big stack of books I’ve read (and am still reading in the case of Noakes) has upped my mental game. The brain controls Noakes’ ‘central governor’ the set of neural structures in your brain that shuts things down when you overheat, under-eat, or run out of energy.  It keeps you from killing yourself while you run.

I’ve finished the first 265 pages of Lore of Running, all the parts that get you through the physiology.  Moving forward I feel armed and ready with medical knowledge, and can’t wait to see what he has to say about training.

I’m way beyond wanting to follow any kind of ‘grid’ now for training.  It’s now about miles (without overtraining), quality, pace, and distance.  I’m signed up for Brighton in April, and that is my current grail.  I’m shooting for a sub-4 marathon time.