UKC

Hi,

A friend and I have entered the Scafell trail marathon in June 2015, so as of tomorrow we have 26 weeks to prepare.

For the last 2/3 years at uni I've not ran much at all but maintained a good general fitness and am very active.

I went for my first jog out in while tonight and just did a short 4 mile route at a slow pace (~8.5 minute miles) which was fine, just getting the legs used to it again really! Though I obviously need to start upping my game a lot!

Any advice on how to approach this would be very helpful as I've never actually trained for anything like this before. I'm not looking to get an amazing time, I don't really have a clue what constitutes a good time for the race to be honest, but it would be good to feel comfortable throughout. My friend did a different trail marathon in 4:07 earlier this year so that's a vague target for us I guess.

Initially I was thinking of starting slower to get back into the swing of things, maybe 3 days training per week until New Year and then starting to up my game.

I thought that running to work 2/3 days a week, 2 miles in the morning and then take a longer 5-6 mile route home, combined by a longer off-road run at the weekends to start getting more used to the terrain. Then in the new year maybe having 4 days on per week and upping the total mileage each week.

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated. I'm happy that I can get the lever of fitness to get around in a reasonable time, but just not sure how to structure training for trying to push myself on it a bit more. I'm pretty clueless around anything like this...

In reply to James Malloch:

I think the 3 times a week for the next month or so is a good idea, mix it with some leg strenghtning exercices and good stretching exercices and core training 3 times a week should help fend off injury later down the line.

In reply to James Malloch:

Hi James,
I have just taken a look a look at the times for 2014 race, and a time of around 4.10 would put you in the top 5.
You cant compare one road marathon to another, trying to do it with trail marathons is even more pointless ( sorry to sound rude ), I have run the same trail marathon 3 times and although the route has been the same ever year the weather leading up to the race change it from hard packed trails (almost road compression) to spongy but not wet.

As for training, getting out 2/3 times a week sounds good and do a long run every other weekend.
You will want to do at least one run a week on trails, due to the shorter daylight hours make sure you have a good head torch ( I recommend any of the Petzl range )

The best thing to do is get out, do some jogging, do your long run of 20 miles at least twice leaving a month between them. But more importantly come race day, Enjoy it.

Hope that might help in some little way.
Ashley.

P.S The bloke that came second in 2014, Ricky Lightfoot ran a time of just under 4 hours ( has a road marathon time of under 2h 30m. ) just so that you can get an idea for how much slower the elites are going compared to their road times.

In reply to James Malloch:

Good advice on here - I would emphasise the 'long' run - try to do one every couple of weeks, but what constitutes long will change as you get fitter, but build up to the 20 miler over time.

But with all of them, do them slowly - you should be going at a pace that really seems quite easy and its tempting to run too fast - maybe a minute or more slower than what you would normally run at a brisk pace. Also every 3 weeks cut the long run back to give your self a break.

Also, try to get some experience of fast descents - these trash your quads and you need to get used to it.

In reply to ashley1_scott:

Ricky would be under 2:25 on a road marathon I think..

I'd ignore other race times, just incomparable. This isn't a typical trail marathon at all.

I ran a trail marathon this weekend in 3:17 and that was with similar ascent but very fast non-tech trails and very gradual gradients.. I was descending under 6 min mile pace I'd not do that on Scafell..

I'd just follow a normal marathon training schedule, build your miles, bit of speed work, and then throw in hill reps and a few fell runs, hilly trail runs.