Can you run a marathon without it taking over your life?

Have you ever done a marathon?  Got to the end of your 20 mile training run and thought "Thank God for that! I never have to do 20 miles in training again. Ever!"  Then what happens after your one and only London Marathon?  A week later finds you up at midnight putting your name down for the ballot for next year's race.  Somehow you forgot all the time, effort and pain and you are on the road (and trail) to having a bit of an addiction.  I think that's where I am now.  Except that when I put my name down for London 2014 just after the 2013 race, I thought I probably wouldn't get in through the main ballot, so went and entered the Farnham Pilgrim and Portsmouth marathons just to be sure.

So, Portsmouth marathon approaches again and after telling my work mates that I was doing this race, which comes a few days before Christmas, the comments I got were along the lines of "Bloody idiot", and "Don't you know why people invented the internal combustion engine?" or even the eyebrow raising "So, Portsmouth marathon...how long is that one then?"  Seriously? Anyway, when I entered this one last year I thought that, as it was the flattest marathon I was likely to find this side of Amsterdam, it must be a quick one.  Even though the organisers have a video up showing a speeded up cycle ride along the whole course I didn't factor in how much harder it would make it to run on beach sections, narrow muddy paths, wide paths full of puddles, wading through the freezing cold sea at 24 miles and then slogging along into the teeth of a gale on the Southsea promenade for the last 2 miles.  It turns out even a pan flat marathon can throw up significant challenges besides the long miles.

This is going to be marathon number 8 for me in less than 2 years and like a lot of people who are keen on both their running and their family life, I have worried about how much time out from my family the training could take.  After all I have a fairly busy job as well that keeps me out of the house for over 10 hours a day.  Maybe in a few years this won't be a problem as the kids will be teenagers who would be totally bored by what their old man is doing and barely prepared to grunt to acknowledge my presence.  However, right now they welcome me home with enthusiasm; well, they do as long as I make sure I get home after The Simpsons has finished.

After having done London marathon in 2013 and religiously followed a training plan, gradually building up my mileage over a 16 week period to 20 miles and then tapering to the big day, I knew how much time a full and focussed training programme could take.  To then repeat this over 3 or 4 marathons a year seems like a huge and all consuming task.  So, to avoid my wife and kids having to reintroduce themselves to me like strangers after each event, I have not put in lots of long runs in the lead up to the marathons that followed London.

So, to start answering my question, obviously I haven't given up training for marathons altogether.  What I mean is that having trained properly and got the requisite miles in for the first marathon, the next three road marathons have shown a gradual improvement, even though I didn't ever get up to the usual 20 mile run or take 16 weeks doing it. And this has happened even though the races have been quite far apart.  London and Portsmouth were in April and December 2013, while MK and Abingdon were in May and October 2014.

Looking at the 6 weeks before each of London, Portsmouth, MK and Abingdon the weekly mileage and long runs went like this:

London 4:35:55	Weekly	35	37	32	33	15	38
	Long run	17	18	20	16	8	26.2
Portsmouth 4:14:32	Weekly	35	3	29	15	9	36
	Long run	16	3	13	5	6	26.2
M.K. 4:06:37	Weekly	9	18	12	19	34	34
	Long run	6	11	4	15	13	26.2
Abingdon 3:52:23	Weekly	31	30	17	21	33	38
	Long run	16	26.2*	9	8	15	26.2
Portsmouth 2014	Weekly	17	11	28	?	?	?
	Long run	6	6	14	?	?	26.2

*Alright, you got me. I did another marathon - jog/walking the trails of the Farnham Pilgrim.

So, how come I can show steady improvement in each marathon and yet have not very good preparation?  I think that the physiological changes that you are trying to develop through a programme of steadily increasing mileage have largely taken effect having strictly followed the plan for the first marathon.  Having done that, and followed it up with 3 or 4 marathons per year, that physiological improvement - how your body copes with the marathon miles - has obviously not disappeared in the few months between each one.  However, I must be a bit fitter overall and, if I look at other race times, I see a definite improvement across a range of distances.

My parkrun times gradually improved from around 23:50 pre-London to under 21:20 prior to the Pilgrim and Abingdon.  Similarly 10k times went from 48mins to 45mins and half marathons from 1:55 to 1:47 over the same period.  This general improvement in speed has come about by not just focussing on plodding along for very long runs at a slow pace, but specifically working on speed training.  I've kept that going from the summer and into the autumn and winter this year, even though I don't have any 10k races and Frimley parkrun is getting slower as it gets more muddy.  So, in the lead up to Portsmouth, by using my current best parkrun time as a measure of overall fitness, a recent time of 21:25 on a muddy course tells me I'm in pretty good shape.

The really big advantage of making speed sessions a key part of my training is it doesn't take very long.  I can do a range of different sessions on the streets outside my house that take no more than 30 minutes.  The other advantage is I can sometimes include the rest of the family as well.  One of my sessions is hill sprints where after a slow jog to warm up and maybe a few drills, we do sets of sprints where I run to a point 120m away up the hill and when I turn to run back so does everyone else.  We then all get back to the bottom of the hill at the same time.  Everyone puts in the same amount of effort and has the same rest and I also feel like I get a good hard session.  With a parkrun a week this also means that 2 out of 4 training runs can be with family.

To answer my original question, then.  Does marathon training have to take over your life?  Well, to begin with I would have to say yes.  At least for the first one and probably it still does if you just do one each year or every other year.  But if you feel you want to do two or even three a year, I think that the importance of hitting the long mile targets of traditional training plans diminishes.  If you are lucky enough to involve your family in some of your training, then the time out running the longer runs maybe just 2 to 3 hours a week and you might even be able to get away with doing those for just 4 to 6 weeks.  I think for me fitness for running a marathon doesn't have to be all about long miles and in fact, keeping it interesting, setting and achieving goals at shorter distances, working on form, strength and flexibility will all help you get across your chosen finish line in better shape than last time.