Mountain Marathon Training programme

Hi there, I have signed up for the Glencoe mountain marathon in October, 26.2 miles and 1600m of ascent. I have been trying to find a suitable training schedule and wondered if anyone had a suitable training programme or could advise.

I have been running for several years, but go out on my own and probably as a result don't really push myself. I tend to run 15km probably 3 or 4 times a week cycling or hill walking other days, and do a 12 mile hill run every fortnight or so. I have run marathon distance in about 4 hours on a training road run recently. A couple of years ago I was running road half marathons in just under 90 minutes but am probably a little slower these days. I know i need to do a lot more hills and speedwork and could do with a training programme to force me to do it!

Would be greatful for any advice, particularly a schedule to follow!

Thanks

I'd like to see the answers to this - I'm thinking of entering but not sure how brutal it's likely to be and I'm already signed up for a couple of events in the month beforehand so a bit worried I might knacker myself!

If it's any help, I did the Lakeland Trails marathon last weekend. About 750m of overall ascent/descent in vile muddy wet weather and it took me 25% longer than my road marathon time, which was about normal going by other people's times as well...

my bf has run countless mountain/fell races and other crazy stuff. he's pretty fast (sub 35 10k on road). his advice is to maintain your normal training as you would for any normal marathon but do your long runs in similar conditions (ie hills/rough terrain, paths) to the race you plan to do. Simples. Apparently.

I did the Saunders Lakeland MM at the weekend. My first one. The hardest thing was the fact we ran across rough country all the time, no paths even. We did plenty of power walking that got us a good result.

Enjoyed it though as I am Ultra (32mile) fit and have done lots of shorter one day orienteering events/ fell races. I think either you live in a mountain area and you run in rough country or you just get as fit as you can on the trails/roads, concentrating on time on feet rather than speed or distance.

When training I do one long run over hilly terrain. 15 - 18 miles. Hilly for me is 200'

I'm thinking about whether to sign up for this!  Would be great to hear how your training is going for it!