UKC

Ok. I have two months before starting marathon training proper. I've had five weeks of reasonable mileage (rolling average of 42 miles).

In a couple of weeks I will have a little more free time and be able to manage one midweek "workout" session.

What should I do with it? My main marathon weakness (based on exactly one race) is going fast for a long time.

In reply to Mark Torrance: Long quick run.. 10-13 miler.. just off marathon pace..so 1:10-1:30.. reckon they are key.. I'm doing Boston.. my plan til xmas is 70 per week.. few sessions.. just lots of steady running.

In reply to Mark Torrance: That would most likely fall under marathon training tho'. I would tend to think of 5k, 10k sessions to get a litte bit of extra sped in my legs so you have some slack to slow down to marathon pace. 4 * mile, 6-7 * 1000m, 1 minute recovery, that sort of thing.

Boston is an excellent course, I foud the 1st half a little tougher than I expected as it has a ton of little rollers to small to show on the map/profile. The peril of training entirely for the marathon at steady pace is that becomes your new race pace

In reply to wbo:


Thanks. I'm thinking this might key at the moment, moving to the longer fast runs later. I did 4 miles at around 6:30 to 6:45 earlier this week (around 50s under target marathon pace) and was surprised at how comfortable it felt. I manage quite high miles, but race very (very) rarely, so just finding out what I can do is, I guess, important.

In reply to wbo: I think you have it the wrong way around. For me it will be 70-80 miles a week steady pace from now to christmas, improve my endurance base. Then I'll start marathon training, which will be 70 miles a week but more efforts, more specialised long runs, with tempo sessions in them, intervals, hill reps, more pace work.

I think Mark lacks the fitness to run the pace he wants to for long periods and i think you improve that by just improving your endurance base. I did that this year and made nice gains.

In reply to IainRUK:

This is all very complicated, isn't it? The way I see it:

wbo argument: increase pace now (largely a psychological and gait-efficiency thing) with a view to then applying this to endurance training later, which can then be done faster

Iain argument: develop endurance now (largely a metabolic thing) so that when you come to add speed, this can be sustained.

One way of deciding which is which of the two is most likely to have sustained benefits. Given that I don't have much experience with pace, I'm thinking the former?

In reply to Mark Torrance: Just to add further confusion, this document is quite a long read but interesting

http://www.counterpartcoaching.com/hadd.pdf

In reply to Mark Torrance:
I did 4 miles at around 6:30 to 6:45 earlier this week (around 50s under target marathon pace)


What Marathon time are you aiming for?

In reply to Thickhead:

I was trying not to be too explicit about that but...

Sub 3:15 (and I'm having vague dreams of quite a bit sub 3:15). I managed 3:23 in April for a first road marathon after 18 weeks of, on average, 43 miles per week without very much specific speed work (maybe a total of five or six sessions). I'm quite old.

In reply to Mark Torrance:

3:15 seems like a very achieveable target with the training your putting in at the moment. 43miles per week is good mileage for that.

I'm more in Iain's camp - build up your stamina and endurance, make sure you can go the distance and then work on speed after.

My best marathon time was my 8th/9 (or 3rd/3 flat marathons). It does take a bit of time to get into the experience of pacing yourself and not putting too much effort in early. On the Snowdonia Marathon recently people were passing me in the first couple of miles audibly breathless and wheezing with the effort they were putting in! Needless to say they didn't stay ahead for long.

If you're still 45, you're not old.