Training for a Marathon with Train2move Athlete Josh Platt

I have asked some of the other team members of Train2move to begin writing some posts so they too can share their passion for training with you. The first is Josh who will be preparing for the Portland Marathon this coming October. He will be doing a basic diary of his training for you. While he trains for this we are building you our marathon training program which he will be sharing some cool features of it with you along the way.

Hey everyone, This is Josh, you have seen me in many of the exercise of the week videos. I have been one of the train2move athletes since it inception and I also am a trainer for Trinity Sports Camps. While in high school I ran cross country and track and field and, I not only had a blast doing it, but I really fell in love with running. I have always found training for any running event to be so rewarding because your success depends so much on how hard you work. I have decided to take my love for running to a new level and begin training for my first marathon.

In conjunction with this the Train2move team will be using me as a guinea pig to construct the ultimate marathon training program. We have already started construction of the program and I am very excited to share with you the process I am going through as I train for my first Marathon.

This will be my first marathon and I couldn’t be more optimistic about my training so far. With the exception of getting slightly lost in down town Portland’s beautiful Forest Park last Saturday, everything has gone extremely well. I started my training with the goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, which would be a time of around 3hrs and 10min I believe. After last weeks 17mile run I am confident that my goal is well within reach.

Throughout my training (which started back in the first week of June) I have been incorporating different types of demand to my muscular system than the traditional running program you might follow. During the entire month of June I trained with the rest of the Trinity Sports staff, building my muscular efficiency during the week through the camp workouts we have developed, and only running on the weekends. I found that the durability, strength, endurance, and especially the efficiency that I gained from our workouts made my long runs on the weekends seem very easy in comparison. Now that Trinity Sports Summer Camp is well underway I have increased my running to three to four times per week. On the days I don’t run I emphasize a Trinity Camp style mentality by doing integration workouts that focus on exercises that make all of the muscles in the body work together to perform as one. Doing these workouts, combined with the my running schedule, and long flexibility routines have helped keep my body injury free and have been the key to keeping up with my goals.

The story about my 17 mile run is a little embarrassing for me, but it proved to be a positive in the long run. While I was running the trails at Forest Park I ended up taking a wrong turn on my way back and proceeded to run downhill for more than ten minutes before realizing my mistake. Unfortunately this meant I spent the next fifteen minutes fighting my way back up the hill. By the time I made it all the way back to the right path I was seriously dreading the remaining six miles of my run. The one positive that came from this mistake was, though I had turned my 14 mile run into 17 miles, I still ran it in 2 hrs. I was pretty pumped when I realized I had managed to stay on pace, running mainly up hill, for that distance. 

Over the weeks leading up to the marathon I will be sure to keep you updated on my training progress. Check back with us each Monday and I will fill you in on how the week went and include some of the exciting training we are putting into the program.

We, at Train2move, are putting together a marathon training package based off of the training that I have been doing so far. It is being designed to help anyone from experienced competitive runners to lower level beginners succeed in obtaining their marathon goals. If you are a runner or walker who would like to share an experience or make a comment please do! We would love to hear from you!