14 Week Marathon Training Plan

This will be the marathon training program I will be following in prepration for my first marathon in Singapore:

https://bridgerridgerun.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/how-to-run-a-3-hour-marathon-a-just-enough-training-approach/

In summary
The three training sessions or essential workouts are:

• Workout 1 is a tempo run at marathon race pace
• Workout 2 is Yasso 800m
• Workout 3 is a long easy run finishing with some marathon pace

Three sessions a week for 14 weeks, with increasing mileage, and tapering from the 11th week. Marathon pace has been selected as 4:09 min/km to get under 3 hours with buffer for drink breaks during the marathon.

Why did I chose this plan?
There are many marathon training plans that are available online. I liked this particular one as:
1. It has a manageable number of sessions per week (3 each week), that will allow me to focus on bike sessions in between. Note: I do understand that recovery/rest is important, however I will manage intensity on the bike during the early weeks or easier sets of this training plan.
2. The training strategy makes sense to me. i.e you train at the pace you want to run.
3. The training plan is simple and can be adjusted to suit your preferred target finishing time.

Target Race (s):

This plan will be used for my first Marathon, which I have chosen as the Sundown Marathon in Singapore, on the 25 March 2017. Due to the humidity and heat in Singapore, and this being my first marathon, I will not be attempting to run a 4:09 pace. I will try and hold 4:15 - 4:20 min/km to achieve a time under 3 hours and 15 minutes (buffer time for walking through aid/drink stations). Following this race, I will be doing a deep dive to understand the shortfalls between the plan and the race result and revise the training plan accordingly for a marathon race in Melbourne, Australia in October 2017. My goal will be to run under 3 hours for this race. Using this blog to track each session will help me understand what can be improved for myself to achieve the sub 3 hour marathon.

Target Race for the 14 week plan