If you’ve been following my blog for the past few months, you have probably noticed that I’m a little bit of a running addict and that I really love everything that has something to do with this beautiful sport. I would even go so far as calling it a state-of-mind, and not just a sport. Running did, in fact, really change my life. I have been running on-and-off several times before in my life, but since September 2020, I started taking it really seriously and I haven’t stopped since (not counting rest periods to recover from the occasional injury 😅).
In one of my previous posts you can read how I ran my first ever half marathon in October 2022 and how amazed I was by this experience. I immediately knew that I wanted to go further and decided to start training for my first ever complete marathon. Running a marathon is something that I’ve been dreaming about for a long time now, but, at the same time, is also something I don’t want to take lightly. My goal is to finish the marathon and run it in less than 4 hours, but with a big emphasis on avoiding injury at all cost. This is why I have decided to take the training process seriously and share my experiences during this training with you here. Whatever I do, I will always encounter pitfalls (as well as positive things that I have learned), and I want to share these with anyone that’s interested and is thinking about doing something similar. The process will not be easy, and it will take quite a lot of time, but I’m planning on providing a short summary about the training that I did and all problems that I encountered every 2 or 3 weeks here.
Pre-training work (and fixing some issues)
I’ve been doing a lot of research online about training for a marathon, and I’ve been looking into a lot of the different training plans, but most of them build-up to the marathon quite fast (in about 12 weeks). This is fine if you’re already running a high mileage every week and just want to prepare for a marathon with a specific timing goal in mind, but since I currently run between 25 and 30 kilometers (on average) per week, I don’t want to overdo it and risk getting injured, so I’m looking for a different plan of action here.
First, I need to make sure that all aches and pains that I sometimes experience during my runs are fixed before I start to build-up my training load and prepare for the big day. Since training for my half marathon back in October, I sometimes feel a little bit of pain in my right ankle after a run. I started to increase my “strength and conditioning” trainings throughout the week and took one extra week of rest from running, hoping that it would just go away after that, but as always this isn’t the case. I don’t really experience problems during the run, but the pain mostly starts soon after the run and can last for up to a day. After a few weeks, I decided to go see a doctor and check the issue out before it becomes too big of a problem. A few X-rays and ultrasounds later, I hear the news that I apparently have a superfluous extra little bone in my foot, which is most likely the cause of this issue.
Os Tibial Externum Type II
Having this little extra bone is not that big of a deal. Essentially, it can cause some of the tendons in my ankle to rub over the little bone, leaving it irritated and painful. In most cases, one specific tendon (the Tibialis Posterior) is weakened in people that have this extra bone since it can be (partially) attached to the Os Tibial Externum. Meanwhile, I’ve contacted my physical therapist and already went to see her and get some advice. In most cases, the issue can be fixed by performing strength exercises that improve the strength and flexibility of the affected tendon, which is what I’ve started doing about 2 weeks ago. I am still allowed to run, albeit without building up the weekly mileage and doing very intense sessions, but I’m already very happy that I don’t need to sit still and wait for everything to go away in the meantime.
In a few weeks (6 or 8 weeks), my tendon’s strength should have improved enough that I can slowly start to pick up my normal training again and completely focus on the marathon. My physical therapist told me that the Ghent University Hospital also provides a fitness test, accompanied with a completely personalised training plan. This is exactly what I was looking for. For my half marathon, I started training without much guidance and did what felt right to me, but this time I want to do it right. I also need something or someone that I can trust. There are a lot of personal coaches that promise to construct a personalised race plan, but in most cases it’s very unclear as to what education they followed to do such things and I don’t really trust it. I want something that’s supported by scientific research and that’s proven to work, which is what I hope is offered by the experts at the Gent University Hospital.
The spring race plan
I have already decided on running some epic races during the upcoming season and I would like to incorporate them into my training plan as much as possible. I didn’t buy tickets for any of them yet, but as soon as I did my fitness test, I will talk this planning through with the training advisor in Ghent. Somewhere in between these plans, I really want to fit in a full marathon, but this is something that still needs to discussed. More on that later! So far, these are the races that I want to go for, up until the end of June (more will definitely be added in future posts as more dates are announced):
National Park Run – Maasmechelen (March 5th, 2023)
A beautiful race through the only real national park in Belgium. I already participated in this race last year and I was surprised by how many people participated in the event. The weather was very bad. A storm knocked over a bunch of trees the day before and all trails where really slippery, but the surroundings where astounding. The course changes each year and this year is the first year where they also added a marathon to the list of possible distances (you can choose between 7.5km, 14km, 21km or 42km). I will go for the 14km option (same as last year). This is already a good distance, but should be doable for me at this point. I’m just hoping that the conditions will be better this year 😅.
Sofico Ghent (Half) Marathon – Ghent (March 23rd, 2023)
The second big race that I would like to add to my calendar for this spring is the Ghent Half Marathon. If everything (hopefully) goes according to plan, this will be my second half marathon. Since I work in Ghent (and also studied there), I know the city pretty well by now and it seems like a very fun plan to run the half marathon over there.
Antwerp 10 Miles – Antwerp (April 23, 2023)
One of my favourite races of all time is the Antwerp 10 miles. I ran it for the first time last year and I loved every minute of it. The weather was exceptionally nice for this time of the year and actually a little bit too warm, but because of the lovely weather, there where a lot of spectators cheering us on all the way through the beautiful city of Antwerp. The race is actually very famous in Belgium and around 40 000 people participate in it every year (making it one of the most important races in our little country). The course is well-marked and covers part of the highway where you’re (obviously) normally not allowed to run. I pass through the infamous Kennedytunnel numerous times every year, but actually running through this three-lane highway tunnel is something very special.
I’ve been training for quite some time for this special race and actually already wanted to participate in 2021, but I unfortunately had to cancel it back then since I had a pretty bad knee injury 😢. This race actually seems to be cursed for me somehow. The evening of the 2022 edition (so a few hours after running it), I started feeling a little bit funny (as if I was developing a cold). Since it was still COVID-season in Belgium, I performed a rapid antigen test and quickly found out that this cold was actually COVID… 😱 I didn’t really suffer from it much, it felt more-or-less like a cold, but I already had 3 COVID-shots at that point, so I guess these must have helped me a lot in boosting my immune system and not getting too sick.
Waasmunster 10 Miles – Waasmunster (June 24, 2023)
Another race that I participated in last year is the Waasmunster 10 miles. Waasmunster is a little village located very close to my hometown and organises a nice run over a 10 miles long track every year. Most of the times, this race is run on a very hot day (somehow, the last week of June in Belgium is always really hot with temperatures reaching more than 30 degrees Celsius easily), except for the first time that I participated in 2022. It was not cold, the temperature was around 20 degrees, but it started raining pretty hard during the run. This year, the race is back on June 24th and I plan to participate again!
The last week of 2022
We’ve already arrived at the final week of 2022 and since the university is closed between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I have a week of holidays. This extra free time is very welcome and I will be using part of it to catch up on my strength and conditioning work, together with some cycling and running mixed in between. I will be focussing on the strength exercises that I need to do to improve the strength of the tendons in my ankle (and hopefully fix the pain that I sometimes experience there during runs). I will also be going back to my physical therapist on Thursday after which I can start planning the fitness test and an appointment with the training advisor at the Ghent University Hospital. I will be closing off this year with around 1400km on the running counter and I hope to continue this trend in 2023.
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