Race Recap: 3:29 with Ben in Milton

Ben completed his first marathon in Milton Keynes a few weeks ago, and shares some details about his race and training with us below.

Why do you run?

I like to challenge myself! I enjoy setting an ambitious goal and working hard towards it and running a sub 3:30 marathon was a good target.

How did you get into running?

I ran a little as a kid but really started running during lockdown when all the gyms were closed. I've struggled to stay motivated with running since then but by setting myself a race target I gave myself an extra push to train over the last few months!

How was your race at the MK Marathon?

I had sub 3:30 in my head as a target for a while and training was going really well, I got the Kaizen prediction down to 3:25, but then a few weeks of life getting in the way and before I knew it it was race day and my prediction was up at 3:31.

Going for sub 3:30 felt ambitious as I hadn't done any longer distances at that sort of pace in training but I trusted the data and went for it.

I set off at 3:31 pace with the intention of very gradually increasing the pace over the race and it worked perfectly. I came in at 3:29:02, a full 57 seconds under my target time!

How does Kaizen influence your training?

Kaizen gave me the confidence to know that I was doing the right amount of training. I like to do each training run to simply how I feel that day rather than to a specific daily pace/distance and Kaizen allowed me to see each week if I was on track and then to adjust my training if necessary.

Some weeks were fast, some were slow, but with Kaizen I was able to make sure I was hitting my required training load each week regardless of what type of training I did.

Next marathon and goal?

2 days after a max effort marathon feels very soon to be planning a next race goal but then again I have entered a 35k trail race in Innsbruck next most so I guess I'd better get running! There's 2k of ascent in that race so the goal is very much just to survive.