Interval Training Question

[Sal Gaglio]

I'm hoping someone out there can give me some advice on interval training for a marathon.  I'm training for my first marathon in December using the 4 month to a 4 hour marathon book as a rough guide, and while my primary goal is simply to finish I would like to finish in under 4 hours if at all possible.  The book has me doing 1/4 mile intervals in 2 minutes with 2 minutes rest in between.  I've done 2 of those workouts and they really seemed too easy.  Today I ran a 5K and finished with a 7:44/mile pace, so my question is should I even bother running intervals at a pace that is slower than my 5K pace? 

My thoughts are to speed up the pace and shorten the rest time but I'm not sure how to figure out what pace to run.  I've been running about 35 miles per week for the last 4 months but the pace has been slow (around 9:30 per mile on average).  Since my goal was a 9 min/mile pace for the marathon I've been doing my long runs at just under 10 minutes/mile but shorter runs have been closer to 9 per mile. 

Any suggestions would really be appreciated. 

[Colby]

Sal,

   Here is a little something I have done to get ready. You already have a decent base of 35 mpw for consecutive months, so you aren't starting "green" per se. Ed Eyestone suggested that one day a week you run at you Goal Marathon Pace (GMP). Start it with 3 miles and each week add a mile. If you feel like an injury is coming or you can't quite make it, then take a couple of weeks to reach that goal. I am not sure how your break down of miles is per day, but if you are running 4-6 a day, then warm up for a mile or so, do 3 mile at your GMP, then cool down. Each week add another mile. He then suggests once you get to 10 miles, move that to your Saturday run and continue to add until you hit a 15 miler. He also suggests alternating that run with a long, but slow run every other Saturday. Tailor that little plan to fit you, but that has been a helpful bit of advice from a very accomplished runner/coach. Just make sure the day after your GMP run, that you take it easy and make it a recovery run 60-90 sec per mile slower. That should help you avoid injury too. Good luck!

[Joe Furse]

My opinion is that at this point in your marathon quest, interval training is not going to be effective for the amount of time you'll spend doing it.  At your current level, you stand to gain much more from building your aerobic endurance as much as possible.  Translation:  run as many "slow" miles as you can without getting injured.  Additionally, if you feel you must do intervals, quarters are just not going to cut it in my experience.  They are too short and focus on all the things you don't need to run a 4 hour marathon.  If you do any intervals at all, I would do more along the lines of mile repeats and nothing shorter than 800 M repeats.  However, I think you'll stand a lot more to gain from focusing first on building a good strong mileage base.  Outside of that, you could benefit from some tempo runs to acclimate yourself to the pace you want to run on race day.  Anyway, that's my two cents. 

[Sal Gaglio]

Thanks for the advice.  I have been thinking about dropping the intervals for a few weeks which is why I decided to ask for some advice from more experienced runners.  I think I'll spend more time focusing on building more of a base and trying Ed's suggestion.