Analysing My 2:39 Marathon | Learning From My Mistakes

Auckland Marathon 2022 was set to be my best marathon. My training had gone perfectly. Probably my best ten-week block of training EVER. I don’t think I missed a workout, and that wasn’t through being super addicted to training. I loved every run and only began to feel tired in my last ‘training’ week before my taper (3-weeks from the race). I felt like I had a system that was working.

What did my training look like?

After building back from Covid, I did two major blocks of training. Each block was three weeks, with a one-week recovery in between. Each week was about 650 TSS (training stress), 9hrs, 120km, 1000m elevation. I did a midweek threshold workout and a weekend marathon tempo workout each week. The rest of my runs were easy, mainly off-road and hilly.

I specifically made a point to slow my easy runs, which greatly impacted the quality of my workouts and my day-to-day recovery. For reference, most of my easy-aerobic runs were around 4:30-5min/km, 80% LTHR, 80% FTP. Last year, in building up for the Tarawera Ultramarathon, I realised that when my weekly training load is over 100km/wk or 8hrs/wk I can’t run my easy-aerobic runs at the top of my zone 2 (85-88%). Otherwise, I struggle to recover from the big weekend workouts. 

You can follow me on Strava to track my training.

Marathon Workouts

I did four marathon-specific workouts, the biggest being 30km @ target marathon power three weeks out from the race. I ran the last 10km at the top end of my goal power, averaging 3:35min/km and heart rate staying in zone 4 (sub-threshold). I felt great. It gave me a lot of confidence that I could run in the low 2:30s come race day. 

Race Week

My 2-year-old son gets gastro on Tuesday (race is Sunday), and then my wife gets the bug on Thursday. I felt fairly average from Wednesday but never appeared to have contracted the bug. The day before the race, I felt like a truck had hit me. I told Emma how disappointed I was that I wouldn’t be able to race to my potential. However, that afternoon, I felt 100% times better and thought I had finally experienced that taper-week bounce. Race morning, it was pouring with rain, and I mean torrential rain. I couldn’t find my car key, and then I lost my hotel key. Honestly, it felt like the world didn’t want me to do this race.

Process Goals

I felt so bad the days leading into the race that I made a point to write out non-outcome goals that would make the race a success. Expressing myself, having fun doing what I love, and being proud of my effort were the key goals I put together. Once I had these goals in place, I felt I lot better about running a race in which I may not be able to perform to my physical potential. 

The Race

I had my watch on 5km laps with my screen showing lap power, lap pace, real-time HR, and real-time power, which gave me a good average of what I was doing rather than looking too much into each km or mile. I’ll break down my race in each of these 5km segments.

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