I thought I'd give you a bit of an insight before announcing my second challenge of 2020. I met with my endurance trainer Lawrence Cronk yesterday to discuss tactics for my 24 marathons in 24 days in April. When I told him about my second challenge and how much weight I had to gain he nearly fell over.
Training gets heavier
To put it bluntly, I have to gain around 15kg's in weight whilst training for and completing my 24 marathons. I'm hoping the second challenge will fall in August which only gives me 4 months in between events. Now, ordinarily I would say 4 months is plenty of time for an intense strength programme, however, this is a little different.
I'm effectively asking my body to adapt to two completely different events within a 5 month period. Whilst there is an element of strength training when training for 24 marathons, it's not that intense and you certainly don't lift heavy weights. I can't give too much away about my second challenge but it is an extreme strength challenge.
So I'm now having to follow my endurance programme and strength programme side by side. One day is a strength day consisting of heavy squats, bench press, deadlift, lunges etc. The next day is a run day which can consist of intervals or consistent runs between 1-4 hours.
So let's do the maths. I'm currently 13st7 at 5ft10. My target weight is 100kg's (15st7). I have to gain 2 stone whilst running every other day. Gaining any weight with cystic fibrosis is incredibly hard even without the exercise and burning of thousands of calories so it's going to be one hell of a challenge!
So how much do I have to eat I hear you ask? Well on any given day, I'll have to hit a target of roughly 7,000 calories a day. During the 24 marathons challenge, I'll have to consume at least 10,000 per day just to try and maintain the weight I've gained.
There's another issue with the weight gain. I'll be running heavy! Much heavier than what I'm used to so there's added pressure on my joints not to mention my dodgy ankle.
This year poses lots of questions. Like is it even humanly possible to complete these two types of challenges in the same year? Is it possible to gain 15kg's of good weight whilst running 628.8miles? It is possible to be any more crazy?
I said I'd go bigger this year just like every year. I'm sure you won't be disappointed!