So my training points method is designed to ensure two things. Firstly your training is consistent week in week out. That’s from a training load perspective rather than miles. So you’ll be putting in a similar effort from one week to the next.

It also ensures progressive overload, which is the key fundamental to getting fitter. So as the plan progresses, you work that little bit harder, pretty right up to the taper.

To do that, using my method, it’s not always a case of just running more miles as traditionally is the case. Whilst that will inevitable happen, the focus is on bigger and more challenging sessions. So as the weeks tick by, both your speed sessions and marathon sessions will get tougher.

If your fitness improves then you’ll be able to take on that extra challenge without getting injured.

So your target is 140 points. Which for a 1st plan is pretty decent, and about 20 pts less than my top guys gunning for sub 3 marathons. So I feel it’s the right level for you.

How do we achieve those points? We actually only have to run 4 times per week. 1 speed session, 2 easy runs and a long run or marathon session.

We’ve got 20 weeks to Manchester and I’ve broken it down into 3 stages. The first 8 weeks are about working on speed and also building a good aerobic base. Why work on speed when the focus is the marathon? Well it’s become apparent in my 2-3 years of coaching now how there is a direct correlation between 5k times and race performances across the longer distances.

So I believe to hit that Marathon PB, we also want to bring that current 5k time down to somewhere close to 20 minutes than 21.

So I’ve put a few parkruns in there. 1 in the first week to give us a base fitness level, and then one again in week 8, to hopefully (🤞) highlight your progress during that 2 month period.

Some of the speed sessions you’ll repeat a few times, just to again monitor progress. It’s good to look back and see if paces are improving and I’m a big fan of the shorter reps just to ensure we don’t neglect those fast twitch muscles fibres which often have to come into play late in a marathon.

Complimenting the running we have a weekly spin session, and 1-2 S&C sessions. I’ve tried to ensure all the midweek sessions are 75 minutes or less, with the big sessions always happening on the weekend.

Speaking of S&C, we can tweak that as we go, depending how you find the exercises I’ve set and we’ll use the feedback for that.

The paces set on your dashboard are based on your current 5k time, so hopefully as that improves over the next 12-16 weeks, that marathon pace will drop too. Looking at quite a few of your easy runs I notice the heart rate was quite high. So it might be worth considering dropping the pace a little on those. I tend to work on RPE (rate of perceived exertion) rather than heart rate, so as long as you feel you’re keeping the level at 3/10 and can easily chat then I’m not too fussed whether you’re running 5:15s or 5:30s.

Really excited to work with you and see what progress you can make over the next 20 weeks and then at Manchester Marathon itself. Let’s do this!!