The marcothon is simple, you have to run for 3 miles or 25 minutes whatever comes first, on all 31 days in December. No ifs, no buts!
The tricky thing is that there is a lot of temptation in December with nights out, Christmas meals and time spent with family all making it harder to find your own time for running.
One of the main reasons why I took part in this challenge, was because many of my clients sign up to it every year and I wish to know how I can best advise them in the future on how to avoid injury and how to space runs based on my experience of doing it.
Good ways of maintaining your progress is joining our strava group or Facebook group for the marcothon, this will help to give you some accountability to reach your goal at the end of 31days.
This is my experience of the marcothon this year. It started off quite well as my training for London marathon ( I had the Pleasure of meeting Matt, from @mhaberdeen of whom I will be running the Marathon for, see picture below) and have a plan of five days out of seven days anyway, so I thought the extra two days running 5K would not add too much to my overall load. I was wrong, It was tough.
Some days coming home from work tired, and you still had to plan your run – regardless of the Storm Debbie, Barbara or any of the recent storms that seemed to fall in December.
The challenge allowed me to take in some beautiful runs on travel in Finland, Ponteland in Newcastle and also some new routes with new running buddies in Aberdeen at parkruns, rebel runs and metro sessions.
Unfortunately for me I became a bit-obsessed with the challenge, I wasn’t able to enjoy my day until my run was completed. One example this was on Christmas Day where I was anxious about when I would fit my run in as I didn’t get it done first thing in the morning. I was able to fit the run in between opening presents and the afternoon lunch. I felt a lot better afterwards but initially I was beginning to get a little bit anxious about when it would take place and would it all be in vain.
Another time when I struggled was on a travel day with the team to Finland. I knew I would be getting up early to either travel down to Edinburgh and I wasn’t sure what time will be allocated to running at the other end once we arrived at destination. So I had planned to get up early and run at 4o’clock in the morning, but I felt so tired that I didn’t feel this is the best thing to do. I gambled on there being time once we arrived in Finland to get a run. There was plenty of time but I hadn’t accounted for the wind, the snow and ice on the ground. There was a small loop of roughly 550 m longwhich I was able to complete laps of and was able to get to the 5 K mark.
One of their beautiful runs I did included a 13.2 mile run from Westhill into Bucksburn Valley completing the Dobbies loop and back out to Westhill, it was lovely to find these new routes especially at this time in December without snow. I also included head torch runs into the program and again if you haven’t been out with a head torch I would thoroughly recommend it. On 8 December I competed in the East district cross-country, which for me is something I wouldn’t normally do, but it was fantastic to a get my miles in and represent the club in Aberdeen. Over December I have kept my long runs on the Sunday, which means getting up quite early, heading out with the head torch towards Inverurie and then back on the back roads to Kintore and also to Port Elphinstone.
So over the course of December I was able to complete 303 km. On the way to completing roughly 1782 miles for the year.
The positive things:
- Having something to aim for every day helps to keep you motivated
- Being part of running groups is great to keep you accountable for the month
- You end up covering a lot of distance with minimal recovery
- It forces you to go slow on your recovery
The negative things:
- I personally got anxious about finding time to do my runs rather than focusing on the here and now
- Because you’re running for 31days it truly emphasizes the importance of rest for the body
- It is a lot tougher than it seems as there is so much happening in December
Would I recommend it? I think it is a great for keeping motivated if you haven’t got an additional goal in mind. To add the marcathon on top of an original training plan is a bit too much and the mileage shows this. I was fortunate enough not to get injured but could definitely feel the quality of my sessions were a lot less than what they were before or it was harder to get the same quality. i.e. working a higher rate than I was previously. A management strategy was that it ran along side @stillminddynamicbody @aliyoga doing a daily yoga stretch which helped to aid recovery and very important for remaining injury free.
What are your 2019 running goals? Did you take part in the Marcothon? How did you find it?
Thanks for reading
Run Long and Prosper
James
