Marathon Training and BIG workouts

[James Moore]

So I'm currently trying to decide how to structure my future training and I realized that I know very little about half or full marathon workouts despite "training for them" for several years.

To prep for a half I would basically do the following workouts every week
3*2 miles at half marathon pace (on grass)
7-15 miles with a long sustained effort

For a marathon, I would add in 15-23 milers that were at either a "fast" pace (MP +5 to 20 secs) for the whole time or only the end.

This has worked fairly well, but I'm curious as to what others do. Specifically, I often read about people doing very long workouts with a variety of paces (BIG workouts)

[Jeff Linger]

Generally the following plan for most runners who are not nearing the elite level works fairly well.

Minimum of 63 miles per week (suggestions have been made that you can calculate your bonk spot in a marathon by taking your average daily mileage and multiplying it by 3 [63/7=9*3=27])

Long run once per 7 days. Alternate every other Long run between the entire run done at an Easy pace and a portion of the run done at MGP (marathon goal pace). Maybe start around 6 miles of the long run at MGP and build towards the end of training to 13-15 miles @ MGP.

Some form of speed work (intervals, cruise intervals, hill repeats) once every 10 days. Ex: 3x2 miles @ 10k pace with .75 miles jogging recovery between; or 10 x 800 meters @ 5k pace with inactive recovery for 1/2 the interval time.

Tempo run once every 10 days. This is a Lactate Threshold run, generally its done at a pace you can sustain for 45 minutes to 1 hour going around 95% effort. Its not race pace, but nearly there.

The rest of your runs should probably be done at a pace you can carry a conversation and in the 60-85 minute range.

Don't forget to throw in recovery runs (very light and very easy) after some of the more difficult workouts (the next day).

This is a very general outline and probably requires tweaking depending on response. Obviously there are more specific workouts one could do depending on how they're responding to training, but examples of such would require a good deal of space and time to lay out. The final 3-5 weeks of your training would see tempo runs replaced by sharpening workouts (3 x 5k @ 10k pace, etc).

[Jon Allen]

Here's the info on BW:
http://fastrunningblog.com/forum/index.php/topic,1076.0.html