London Marathon Training Plan

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Brr, it’s been cold here.

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Sample Coach Jenny plan

When I was trying to put together a training plan for London, I looked at many options including the Hal Higdon one that I loosely followed in the fall for Chicago and NYC. After much consideration, I decided to follow Coach Jenny’s Advanced training plan.

The main deciding factors was that Coach Jenny’s plan incorporates a rest day on Sundays which allowed for me to have the flexibility to sleep in and not worry about an additional workout during a weekend day. Also, Coach Jenny calls for a cross-training day on Wednesdays which helps break up the week’s running. I’m about to start week 6 of the plan and so far so good except for the cold. I have chickened out of running outside more than 50% of the time in the last two weeks and that needs to change, especially after buying all that winter running gear!

Here is a rough breakdown of what my week looks like for training:

—Monday: 40-50 minute easy run + strength training – usually a barre class.

—Tuesday: speed workout – I ran my first workout with the Dashing Whippets (DWRT) two weeks ago and I’m hoping to run my speed sessions with them regularly on Tuesdays.

—Wednesday: cross-training + strength training – I usually go to a spin class this day and in the class, there is a short free weight session.

—Thursday: 40-50 minute (may increase the time in the upcoming weeks) tempo or progressive run – most of these have been on the treadmill recently, but I’m trying to incorporate a second speed day.

—Friday: 40-50 minute easy run – Fridays used to be my rest days, but I actually really enjoy running on Fridays. It gives me a way to decompress from the week.

Frozen post-Saturday long run and race

Frozen post-Saturday long run and race

—Saturday/Sunday: Long run day – I prefer Saturdays for a long run because then I don’t have it hanging over my head all weekend, but depending on what our plans are, I’ve been interchanging the days as needed. I have run most of these by myself but soon the distance will be too long to do by myself. I am trying to incorporate some races into the long runs as well (this weekend, I ran some miles before and after the Joe Kleinerman 10K and ran the race at marathon goal pace) and hopefully once our schedule settles down in the next week or two, I’d like to join the DWRT for their weekend long runs.

There many things I want to focus on for this training cycle including:

—Running in the mornings. It gets dark so fast and with the cold, by the time I get out of work, I usually prefer to just run on the treadmill.

—Remembering that it is okay to have some off days. I stress out too much about not following the training plan exactly and I need to stop doing that.

—Pushing my limits more. This will be one of the first marathons that I am not training with a team and with the winter, I am getting wimpier. I am hoping by running with the Dashing Whippets that I will push myself more.

—Incorporating more core and strength training. I don’t want my body to get used to a schedule and one day a week is not enough core work. I don’t count the 5-minutes we spend in spin class with free weights (too short in my opinion). I’d really like to add another day of barre work but I have a hard time fitting it into my schedule. In the meantime, I try to incorporate more core work after runs when I am on the treadmill. Now, if I can run in the mornings, that will free up more time to take another barre class after work too.

I’ve been recapping my training in the Believe Training Journal and it has really helped capture goals and reflect on what worked and didn’t for the week. I highly recommend getting one of these even if a lot of your information is electronic. There’s just something so cool about having a red running journal!

What kind of schedule works for you during marathon training?

Any advice that you’d like to share? I love hearing new ideas.

Taylor Smart Scale Review

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A couple of weeks ago, I received a brand new Taylor Smart Scale from EatSmart Products. I love new gadgets and was so excited to get it set up.

IMG_2436 The Taylor Smart Scale:

—Uses bluetooth technology to transfer your data wirelessly to a tablet or smart phone through the free SMARTRACK app.

—Tracks weight, and estimates body fat, body water and muscle mass, and has a goal setting and tracking feature through the SMARTRACK app and can connect with other apps like myfitnesspal, mapmyfitness and RunKeeper as well.

—Calculates daily calorie intake needed to maintain current weight.

—Supports up to 8 users.

IMG_2446Josh and I set up the scale right before Christmas, perfect timing to start tracking our weight, huh?! The set up was a little more complicated than I had expected. Once we downloaded the SMARTRACK app, it took a little while to get our phones paired to the scale. It wasn’t the most intuitive, but after 30 minutes of fumbling around, we finally got it to work. Setting up your profile in the app was pretty easy – gender, body style (normal or athlete), birthday, height, activity level, and goal weight.

We each stepped on the scale with the app open on our phones. It took a few tries for the scale to transmit the data to the app, but eventually Josh and I had our base weight, body fat, body water, muscle mass, and the calculated calorie intake stored.

IMG_2449The scale is supposed to be able to recognize which user it is each time you step on the scale based on weight. If the app is active near the scale, then it will transmit the data via bluetooth. For the next couple of weeks, we both weighed ourselves daily (except for the days we were traveling for the holidays) to test out the scale. Each time we weighed ourselves, it took a couple of attempts to get the data transmitted to the app. If the scale doesn’t recognize your user profile, it will not calculate body fat, body water, muscle mass, or calories. On average, it took about 2-3 attempts before the scale would recognize us correctly and record the information. Sometimes it would get confused about which user if we both stepped on one after another even though Josh and I have a pretty large weight difference. Eventually we started clearing out the scale each time (by stepping on the edge and weighting for the scale to register 0.0) and it seemed to work better.

IMG_2489Prior to this new toy, we were using an older version of this Tanita scale that tracked weight, body fat percentage, and body water for up to two people. For the price of $59.95 on Amazon, there are definitely a number of pros despite some of the cons (even in comparison to what I was used to):

—Tracks more than one or two users. Though for us, there’s just the two of us using it.

—While the app has some room for improvement (see cons list), it is nice to be able to store your data points somewhere. I am not going to lose sleep if I am up/down a pound from day-to-day, but it is nice to be able to see historic changes where in the past, I relied on my memory and how pants fit!

—Since the app tracks everything, this will be a great feature when I am further in marathon training to capture weight and water loss before and after a long run.

—For body weight and water, the app shows your most recent data point and how it compares on a spectrum based on your profile – low (blue), normal (green), moderate (yellow), and high (red).

—The scale is pretty slick and modern looking. The platform is made from tempered glass and looks pretty stylish in our bathroom.

—Good value for the price.

The cons are not so much about the scale as it is about the SMARTRACK app.

—Bluetooth technology is not always perfect so it is expected that data transmission will not be seamless each time.

—The app is fairly basic, it shows a line graph for the data points – body weight, body water, muscle mass, and calculated calorie intake. I wish it would give more details about the different ranges, etc.

—The calculated calorie intake is based on my activity level and profile to maintain current weight. My goal weight is not factored into this calculation. It would be neat to be able to calculate calorie intake to achieve my goal weight. There are a number of programs that do this today, especially online food diaries, so it would be neat to incorporate that with the app.

We will continue to enjoy our new scale, but looking forward to future enhancements in the app.

This is a sponsored post, but all opinions and comments are my own. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all about the scale or app.