.jpg)
It's the biggest lake in England, in the heart of the beautiful Lake District, and, in May, I'm going to run a full marathon on the 'undulating' roads that surround it every day for 10 consecutive days!
This is clearly no ordinary running race so my approach in preparing to tackle this challenge must be equally unique. For me, I'll be utilising my Move.Train.Regen philosophy to focus on two key things:
Conditioning myself to be able to run the marathon distance, on a hilly course, whilst putting my body under the least amount of stress!
Developing my ability, and strategies, to recover as quickly as possible.
So what does this actually mean?
Conditioning Based on principles gleaned from Dr. Phil Maffetonne and his MAF Method, the majority of my run training will be completed within my optimum aerobic heart rate training zone, as determined using the 180 Formula. The idea being to develop my ability to run for sustained periods of time at a reasonable pace whilst relying on my relatively large stores of fat for fuel (even at a lean 10% body fat I still have approx. 70,000kcals of stored 'fat fuel!), the trick is to train at the appropriate intensity to teach the body to tap into these stores rather than demanding carbohydrate and the associated risk of 'hitting the wall'. This will also become my race pace, which will be well below PB pace, assuming I can tame the competitive spirit within!
Furthermore, I will need to work on my movement mobility, strength & stability to improve my running efficiency, reducing unnecessary wear & tear on my joints, and to tolerate the loads imposed through the continual switches from uphill to downhill and back again.
Recoverability Consistent, mini-bouts of activity throughout the day (such as short foot, squats, lunges, walking and other movement breaks) alongside back-to-back running days and double-run days, which will gradually build up to 10 or more back-to-back running days, will help develop my ability to recover.
Experimenting with different recovery strategies will also play a vital role in my preparations, focusing in particular on nutrition (daily, weekly as well as pre-, during- and post-training), sleep and active recovery sessions including breathing such as qigong or yoga.
