As many regular readers on my blog know, I train under Coached.

Coached is a personalised training programme that allows runners and triathletes, to optimise, track and enjoy their training.

Trained with Coached since 2016

I have been with the Coached programme since 2016.

I recently completed a full marathon in a new personal best of 3h 46min 10sec at the Rotterdam Marathon in the Netherlands.

My previous full marathon PB was 4hr 21min 36sec, set at the Nagoya Marathon in Japan before the Covid-19 pandemic happened.

This had been an improvement of 30 minutes over my previous marathon timing, completely stunning myself in the process.

Running during the pandemic

Throughout the pandemic, I was still running and training consistently with no races in sight, with the focus of my runs during this period, being easy and steady sessions targeting at building my aerobic base. 

Besides base building, I still continued to take part in the in-person speed work sessions with Coached, once a week. This was whenever Singapore’s social distancing measures allowed these to take place, albeit with compulsory check-ins and group size restrictions.

My longest runs done during the pandemic were about 21km.

Marathon training began in January 

I set up a specific training plan targeting the Rotterdam Marathon at the beginning of January 2022.

This training plan consisted of five running sessions per week with the following sessions: speed run (intervals), stamina run (tempo), long run, recovery run, and endurance run (steady). Each session had its own specific purpose and there were no “run for fun” sessions.

Coached also recommends throwing in strength training sessions per week, but I didn’t add any officially into my plan, instead opting to do some basic strength exercises on my own during my marathon training cycle. These included squats, lunges, jumping jacks, and so on.

The Coached training plan is time-based rather than distance-based.

Length of sessions

The plan started pretty tame, with sessions ranging from about 40 minutes to an hour, but the length of sessions quickly increased, with my long run hitting three hours and my stamina run just under the two-hour mark. 

Long run

Even if my marathon was flat, the long run, as I quickly realised, tended to put me on hills a lot. 

This is because Coached believes that hills are a form of speed work in disguise. 

You don’t need to run super fast on the hills and they will quickly tire out the legs, more so than running all the time on fast ground.

Stamina run

For the Coached stamina run, otherwise known as tempo run, the tempo segments do not cover the entirety of the run. 

This type of session consists of steady running, with either moderately hard, or race-paced effort intervals thrown in – depending on the stage of the plan that you are at. 

Towards the latter end, the shorter moderate hard efforts quickly give way to longer race paced efforts. 

The longest race paced tempo intervals that I had were 20 minute repeats. I think this is more than enough time to gauge whether you are comfortable at running your targeted marathon race pace without taxing the body too much.

Speed run

The speed run, endurance run and recovery run sessions, however, all continued to hover around the hour mark. 

Despite the belief that people think you have to whack your interval sessions until you vomit, this is not true for Coached’s intervals. 

While these are done at anaerobic efforts of hard and very hard, but Coached always stresses that intervals are not to be done to maximal effort.

Doing two longer sessions and one intense session (speed run) per week, is more than enough to prepare the body to cope with the demands of running a marathon, both preparing the aerobic engine as well as the anaerobic engine for that triumphant sprint finish.

Therefore, the endurance run and the recovery run are meant to be easier sessions that are targeted at helping the body to recover from the tougher, longer sessions.

Prepared and confident 

Under the Coached training programme, I felt prepared and confident of meeting my original target of a sub 4hr marathon as the marathon drew near.

The training sessions went well and I felt as though I was able to recover well from each one.

I was able to cover a distance of 30.7km for my longest single run, and even after running the back portion of this at marathon target pace on a sweltering hot Singapore morning, I still felt as though I had the legs and energy to keep on going – this is always a good sign during marathon training.

Tapering continued to go well after the peak week, and as everyone probably knows by now, I not just met my goal of running a sub 4hr marathon. I smashed my goal, completing the Rotterdam Marathon in 3hr 46min 10sec.

Thanks to Coached for the training.