General Training Question

[Joshua Verdin]

Just a brief overview of where I am at... Within the last year I have a PR of 1:28 in the 1/2 and 3:40 in the Marathon. Before the last race (Goofy's Race & a Half) I did I was at 85 miles per week. My times were less than desirable. Since then I'm running about 30-40 mi / week  I'm building up to 50. I cut soda and began dropping the extra 20lbs I've been carrying around.

My first question is base miles. Sometimes, I can do a quick 30 minute run in the morning, a 8miler at lunch, or a 10 miler at night. I have a 3yo so it depends on various things. Say I fit in a 30 minute run and a 8 miler can I count both as base miles for that day? I generally keep them at a min pace of 8.2mph.

I am at a point where I need to either run faster or keep the miles to 50-60 per week I just don't have the time to add more hours. My question here is where do endurance and speed meet? If I can run 10mi in an hour how much endurance equal? does that mean I should be able to keep a 8.2mph pace for 2hrs?

Speed... How to I build it and avoid the track...? I have successfully run a 5k at a steady 10mph should I just focus on keeping that pace and increasing the time I hold it?

I'm very frustrated with my training right now and I feel stuck  Any advice is very much appreciated.

Joshua

[Jeff Linger]

Josh, I'm confused by a number of points in your post. First, you say that you've run a 5k @ 10mph (which equates to 6 minutes/mile or a 18:36) yet your blog indicates your PR for the 5k is 22 minutes. You say you can run a 10 mile run at the same pace as your best 5k or 60 minutes for 10 miles. You said you were up to 85 miles/week, but you feel you need to lose 20 lbs. How can you be capable of this sort of time carrying 20 extra pounds? And despite the additional 20 lbs you're able to run 6 minute miles for 10 miles yet your last 3.2 miles of a 1/2 marathon takes you 28 minutes (roughly 9 minute miles finishing up)? If we assume your 10 mile race pace to be 6:00/mile it should be safe to easily say you can run a 1:20 1/2 marathon, which is about 8 minutes faster than your best time. Also, we'd expect you to be somewhere in the 2:50 range (if you can run 10 miles in 60 minutes) for a full marathon if trained properly. Even a 1:28 1/2 marathon should easily equate to a sub 3:10 marathon. My first guess would be that the 30 minute bonk in your marathon time would be based on having virtually no training runs at longer distances, but this simply can't be true if you were running 85 miles/week. Or that you have done none of your training runs in the fat burning zone and thus your body is only accustomed to burning glycogen and that your fat burning capacity is nearly non-existant.

Lets ignore all your times for a moment and talk about a marathon training program that encorporates speed work, AT/LT work and Aerobic Base work (AB work). For the sake of argument lets use an easily convertable 3:16:40 marathon time (7:15/mile) Lets also base your weekly mileage on 65 miles/week (some have built a case that you can multiply your daily mileage average by 3 to find the bonk point in a marathon -- if this is truly the case then the magic minimum weekly mileage would be 63 miles/week for no marathon bonk). Although many theories certainly exist on how to train for a marathon, I think the best program for a runner putting a cap on their weekly mileage at 65 miles would look something like this:

1. Run 6 days/week

2. Incorporate 1 weekly long run of 14-22 (increeasing distance over time) miles alternating between strictly easy AB/Fat burning work and AB/marathon goal pace work (MGP) every other weekend. So 1 week do all your miles at a pace of about 8:15s and the next weekend run a portion of your miles at MGP (7:15s) flanked by warm-up and cool down miles in the 8:15 range. Every other weekend build up the distance you run @ MGP closing on maybe 16 or so miles about 4 weeks out from your marathon race date. I generally run the MGP weekend about 2 miles less than the previous AB/fat burn run. So weekend long runs would look something like 15, 13, 17, 15, 19, 17 etc.

3.  During the beginning 1/3 of your marathon training schedule incorporate some shorter distance interval work. This does not have to be done on a track and can be thrown into any run. It could be based on a distance duration (once every 1 mile go HARD for .5 miles – in an 8 mile run this would give you 6 pick-ups of .5 miles) Or based on a time duration, something like 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy, 2 hard 2 easy, etc building up to 5 hard, 5 easy. Or as simple as hitting every hill in a base run hard. As you start to come to the close of your 1st quarter of the training schedule and enter into the beginning of your 2nd quarter replace such workouts with cruise interval training day. This would be something like 2-4 pick-ups of anywhere from 2-4 miles run at a pace that is a touch faster than your lactate threshold pace with a recovery mile in between. For a runner hitting 7:15s on the marathon this would probably be about 6:30/mile or so.  In the beginning of the 2nd quarter you would do more pick-ups of shorter distances building to less pick-ups of longer distances. During the 3rd quarter of training these cruise intervals will be replaced by lactate threshold runs (5-10 miles done slightly slower than the cruise interval pace) Generally speaking a lactate threshold run is run at a pace that you can hold if you went all out for an hour. Simply start at shorter distances and over time increase the distance you can go maintaining that pace. When you enter the 4th quarter of your training you’ll want to start to decrease the distance of these lactate threshold runs and increase the speed.  (Something like 2-3 5k repeats run at 10k pace with a recovery mile in between). All of the sorts of runs listed under #3 should be done about once every 7-10 days and flank them with warm-up and cool-down miles. The basic theory here is to create a bell-curve of sorts for speed. Throughout the duration of the training schedule pace is quicker in the beginning and end and slower in the middle, with an inverse bell curve created in terms of distance, shorter in the beginning and end and longer in the middle.

4. All other runs should be either recovery runs or general shorter AB runs to fill in the necessary mileage to get you to 65 mpw. Again you will want a modification on the bell curve for weekly mileage. Less in the beginning building as you go along up through the first 2 quarters and slightly decreasing as you move through your 3rd quarter of LT runs and into your taper.


If at any point you get up and feel you simply can’t run that day it should be an indication that you went too hard the day before.
Monitor this closely as it is a sure fire sign of overtraining.  Examples of all these sorts of runs can be found with a quick google search.

[Sasha Pachev]

Josh, I am observing the same thing as Jeff. Something is not quite right. Your training in 2009 according to your blog does not show 85 miles even for the whole year. This year it shows that you did not run at all in January but did a whole lot better in February so far (38 miles already). I realize, of course, that not all of your workouts are entered. But if betting was not against my religion and I had to bet money, I would feel comfortable betting a large amount that a 1:28 half runner that could only do 3:40 in the full marathon was not running 85 miles a week consistently.

At this point my advice is to do everything Jeff told you to do. Particular focus on running 6 days a week consistently through the year. This is very important. Mathematically expressed, the effectiveness of your training is something like this: (1+s)*c where s is the quality of the structure, while c is the quality of consistency.  If your structure tends to zero, but the consistency stays around a non-zero value, your effectiveness tends to some non-zero value. However, if consistency tends to zero it does not matter what kind of structure you have, the effectiveness will tend to zero. Thus I find no point of discussing structure until consistency has been established.

[Joshua Verdin]

Jeff & Sasha,

I think before I ask for advice I should fill out my blog on a regular basis.. i.e. not one entry per year. Yes, your right Sasha I only peaked at 85 miles and that was just for one week then I began my decline for the marathon. I will fill out my blog here more consistently before I start posing a bunch of questions. I have been consistently running just not logging it in the system here.

I use loseit for my diet on my iphone and the Nike+ iPod system. Il'll add links to my profile for both of those just incase I miss one. On the Nike+ I know it is inacurate but I always double check and calibrate the distance before submitting.

I do still have this question though if I do a 30 minute run in the morning and a 1hr run at night are all those miles considered base miles?

[Sasha Pachev]

Josh:

It does not matter when you do it or for how long, but rather how fast. If you go at a comfortable effort, it counts towards building aerobic base. Of course, if you do not go very long or very frequently, you contribute very little to your aerobic base over a period of time.