Patrick Carroll training Blog

Road To Paris and Beyond

Introduction

Welcome and thank you for showing interest in my preparations for the Paris marathon.

The purpose of this blog is to share the training plan I have put together, provide an account of the training I actually complete, and ideally, to help people who may be planning their own training. I want to treat this as a “live” blog post so I will make weekly updates. Over the weeks I will discuss some of the thinking behind why I have chosen certain training sessions, give more detail about my strength and conditioning (S&C) sessions and touch on topics such as recovery, nutrition and race day preparation.

To put this all in context I think a brief background of where I’m coming from is necessary.

Profile

Age: 34.

Occupation: Self employed physiotherapist and strength and conditioning coach.

Training Availability: Currently aiming for 5 running sessions and 2 S&C sessions per week. I’m married but do not have children!

Training History: Competitive team sport athlete (mainly Gaelic football) until early 20’s. Running recreationally until late 20’s. More “competitive recreational” runner over the last 5 years.

Race History: I have completed 2 trail marathons and one trail ultramarathon (58k). On the road I have completed numerous half marathons, 10k’s and 5k’s. This will be my first marathon on the road.

Times: Most relevant personal bests are the ones set this year. 80mins 23 seconds for a half marathon and 17mins 10 seconds for 5k.

Paris Marathon Preparation – Week 10

A big week behind me. I have now completed my longest run which included the biggest chunk of marathon pace work I have done. There was a mid week outlier too with a return to the lab in the Mardyke for follow up physiological testing. You can hear more about both in this week’s update. 

https://www.runningbuddytraining.com/post/paris-marathon-2023

Week 11

“This week started in the knowledge that my toughest training was behind me and that the main priority was maintaining fitness, staying healthy and not worrying about gaining “new fitness”. This coincides with the tapering period that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. This update includes my taper plan and the principles I used to design it.”

Make sure to see how last week’s training went for Patrick here, this is great insight into tapering for some preparing for a marathon

https://www.runningbuddytraining.com/post/paris-marathon-2023#viewer-4dl60