Focus with Gem

It’s the weekend before half-marathon training officially starts. I’ve been back in the gym and done a couple of runs this week to prepare me for it starting. I also did a spin class, which, if you follow my TikTok you’ll know I really regretted signing up for… leaving the house in the evening is really hard.

I’ve done three gym sessions following the push, pull, legs split while ensuring I incorporate deadlifts, chin ups, bench and hip thrusts. I’ve picked exercises that compliment those big compounds so that I build strength in my accessory muscles.

I’ve also done two runs, which is one less than I hope to be doing as part of my training. Although I did do that spin class, I mentioned. It was very much an endurance workout, which is technically what I need for long distance running!

So I’ve planned my programme and for the first time my half-marathon training isn’t distance based, it’s time based, for example, my long runs are ‘60mins’ rather than ‘10km’. I’ve never trained for distance this way before, but my last runs on this plan are like 2hrs so that’ll be taking me close to the 13.1 miles (21km). I mean it’d be nice if I was covering that distance in 2hrs by that stage, but we’ll see.

My week is going to look like this:

Monday: Strength training

Tuesday: Tempo interval run

Wednesday: Strength training

Thursday: Rest day

Friday: Strength training/easy run

Saturday: Rest day

Sunday: Long run.

It was really important to me that I managed to fit two rest days in because it’s in the rest periods that the magic happens. That does mean that Friday is a double session, but it is the easy run of the week so I think it’ll be okay. The problem, I think, with chasing both distance running and strength goals is that I don’t really feel like I’m committing 100% to either of them. Ideally when training for a half-marathon I’d be running 4 times a week and similarly when strength training I’d be training 4 times a week. In this programme I’m only going to be doing 3 for each. It’ll be interesting to see how well I do missing one session a week for both.

So the first 4 weeks of my programme has been typed up, printed out and stuck to my fridge. I’ll be able to cross off each workout as I go, which I find to be really motivating. Fingers crossed it works again this time. I officially start on Monday. Wish me luck!