A Week on Skis in the Middle of Marathon Training

27th February to 3rd March. Five days skiing the Three Valleys, staying in Courchevel. 138km of piste and not a step of running.

Why I was there anyway

This was a work trip, and it was booked long before my foot became a problem. That matters, because I didn't choose to go skiing instead of training. The week was already in the diary. The injury turned up afterwards and I went anyway.

Seven weeks out from a marathon is not when I'd have planned it.

Where my training actually was

February was the worst month of the whole build. Three runs. 59km. For comparison I ran 212km in December.

The last of those three runs was the Hale 10K on the 15th, where I went in with no expectations and came out with a 41:25 PB. After that I didn't run at all. Not once, for the rest of the month.

What I did instead was ride indoors. Eleven Zwift sessions in February, because the bike didn't aggravate the foot the way running did. It kept something ticking over, but an hour on Zwift is not a long run.

So I flew out having not run for twelve days, with a marathon in seven weeks and a training plan that had already fallen apart.

The boots

The thing I was most unsure about was the boots. A ski boot holds your foot rigid, and I had no idea whether that would be a problem or a relief.

I'd bought my own custom fitted boots, and the foot was fine in them. Better than fine. Being locked into a boot that actually fits turned out to be the one thing the injury had no problem with.

The week

Five days, 138km, seven and a half hours of moving time and 27 hours on the mountain. The biggest day was the 2nd of March: 53.7km, and 73km/h at the fastest point of it.

Every photo I took all week is from that day, and they're the signs at Val Thorens, Méribel and Courchevel. That was the plan for the 2nd. Get round all three valleys and have something to show for it.

It was a good week. That's most of what there is to say about it. I skied normally, I didn't spend the week worrying about my foot, and for the first time in a month I wasn't thinking about a training plan I was failing to follow.

What it did to the running

I got home on the 3rd and ran on the 5th. 5km, easy.

Then 18.7km on the 7th. 24.3km on the 14th. 34km on the 29th, my longest ever training run. March came out at 200km, back up to where the plan had wanted me all along, and seven weeks after getting off the plane I ran 3:43:54 at Manchester.

A week off running helped. I don't think that's a coincidence, and I don't think I'd have taken that week off if the holiday hadn't forced it. Left to myself I'd have kept grinding out three runs a week on a foot that needed a rest, and I'd have arrived at Manchester in worse shape.

Would I do it again

Seven weeks out, injured, with a marathon on the calendar? Yes.

The version of this where skiing wrecks my foot and I lose the marathon is a real possibility and I know it. It just isn't what happened. I stopped running for a fortnight, did something completely different, and came back able to run further than I had all year.