Marathon training: How do I make 180 cadence easy?!

Hello, hello, hello! Well, if you've been keeping up with my journey toward a marathon this year then you're probably ready for the next installment.

Firstly, have I mentioned it's hot? 🔥🌞😐

Far out it's hot!!

So that's kind of been messing with my desire to train and my ability to do anything "easy". And actually the lack of easy running this week is probably the biggest thing I want to share:

I'm still struggling to make my runs easy and I'm concerned it won't take much to overtrain.

Now before you get on your high horse and say something silly expected like, "Caroline, are you afraid of hard work? Don't you know you need to train hard?" imma gonna say "No way, José!"

Training hard more than once or maybe twice a week for very fit people is a recipe for burn out, injury or both. The rubbish we get feed in the fitness world about "just work harder" is not only bollocks, it's downright dangerous.

And, let me find my way back off my soapbox. This week's training. Where was I?

While I've been focusing on increasing my steps per minute (also known as cadence) I've been finding it really hard to keep my heart rate low. High heart rate = hard session = tired Caroline.

Now because I've been wise enough to do short runs sessions and a few (fast) walks a couple of days a week, I'm doing okay. But I can't (confidently) build from here. Something has to change first. I have to change something first.

{If you have no clue where I'm up to with this whole marathon thing you might like to play catch up. Here are the previous posts in this series, in order, for your reading pleasure 😉

I've decided to do a marathon this year!

How my marathon training is going (minimalist style!)

Update on the marathon training

Another week closer to doing a marathon in minimal shoes

TL;DR: I'm training for a marathon this year. I'm not new to running or long-distance racing. This year I am more committed to reworking my running form and I'm using this book to help me do it. This post series is my journey toward that marathon; I'm taking you with me.}

Here's what my week looked like:

Mon 23rd Jan: Did a 23:00 walk covering 2.24km. Undulating. Early morning. Easy enough.

Tues 24th Jan: Did a 22:40 run covering 2.93km. Undulating. Early morning. Half in "aerobic" and half in "threshold" (i.e. too hard). Average cadence = 174 steps per minute (spm).

Wed 25th Jan: Scheduled to walk but didn't feel like it. Ran instead for 22:31 covering 2.78km. Undulating. Mid morning. Hot! Almost all in "threshold" (too hard!). Average cadence = 175 spm.

Thurs 26th Jan: Ran even though it made it three days in a row. (Don't like fast walking much!). In 24:10 I covered 2.83km. Undulating. Early morning. 25% in "aerobic" (good!) and 75% in "maximum" (bad!!!). Average cadence = 175 spm.

Fri 27th Jan: Walked!! for 21:35 covering 2.16km. Easy! (Thank God!). Undulating. Early morning. Turned it into a moving therapy session. (That's another post for another day! But it was really good so I'll be doing that again!).

Sat 28th Jan. Did parkrun, running with a friend who I hadn't seen in months! We did the standard course with no extra, so 5km in 29:50. It was pretty flat. It was 7 am, so not that early, but baking hot!!!! 😫😧😝 About 70% was in "threshold" (hard!) and 30% in "maximum" (very hard!!!) I think this was a combination of the heat but also the part of my menstrual cycle I'm in; late Luteal is not the time to be running fast as the heart has to work harder to do everything! Still managed to do 177 spm average cadence, so that's a win.

Sun 29th Jan: Ran barefoot (yay!) for 22:02 covering 2.68km on flat ground (thank God!) in the early morning. Almost all of it was in "aerobic" (that means easy!!!!🤸🤸‍♂️🤸‍♀️) AND I managed to have an average cadence of 179 spm. 🎉🎉🎉

Other things about this week:

• Because I've been in luteal all week (the phase of the menstrual cycle where women naturally slow down and the heart wants to do slow and steady not run really faster) I think my heart rate was probably higher than if I did the exact same work in out when I'm next in the follicular phase.

• Apart from today (because we still haven't done an afternoon walk stroll yet) I've gone over 10K steps in total every day. Yay! I'm happy to claim that as done for the week as I'm already up to 8,149 for today and I've done around 12K daily as a guessimate average for this week.

• I struggled to do my strength and conditioning exercises spread out throughout each day as I had planned to last week. I still like the idea I think I just need to make it more front and centre so I don't have to keep remembering. I need more visual cues to remind me. If I can do 6 different exercises every day (rotating back around when I need to) I think that will be enough. I might need somewhere to mark it down each time I do one... 🤔

• I'm delighted that I managed to do an easy run this morning. Especially after how hot it was yesterday at parkrun (24'C feels like 28'C in the shade and about 35'C in the direct sun. And most of the parkrun was in direct sun!). I really do love running barefoot and since I do so many of my runs in the local bush on hard rocky trails it's not really ideal for my precious feet. Maybe I need to just run around the block barefoot at least once a week. Believe it or not, when your feet are as strong as mine, running on a concrete path is easy!

• Hmmm, what else? Oh, I totally failed at doing my 'running on the spot form fix' practice. I wanted to do it 2 or 3 times this week and it didn't happen. As since I'm about to slide into my menstrual phase (also known as slide onto the couch and do as little as possible phase) I don't think I'll be voluntarily running on the spot, against a wall, to music with a 90 beats per minute rhythm some how! But we'll see. We'll see. Maybe by the end of the week I might be willing to do it once. And I really do want to create the muscle memory that makes 180 cadence feel normal so then I can run that way and have it feel easy easier!

So, just so we're clear (so I'm clear!!!) next week my plan is:

• Do 6x strength and conditioning exercises per day (mostly from the book but also want to do regular things like crunches, push ups, pull ups, supermans, split squats, etc).

• Do 24-25 minutes EASY sessions with all runs being as close to 180 spm (average cadence) as possible.

• Do at least one 'running on the spot form fix' to one of my favourite 90 beats per minute songs.

• Let myself run hard at parkrun and let that be my one "hard" run for the week.

Wish me luck!!!!

All photos were taken by me while doing one of the above-mentioned marathon training sessions. I loved so many of this week's photos. I can't decide if the lady beetle or the corellas (white birds) are my favourite. What do you think?

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