To Run or Rest

[Nate]

I'm 4 weeks until Grandma's Marathon and have a goal of a sub 3:15.  My legs are not recovering as quickly as they have in the past at this time.  I am wondering if it is more beneficial to take another day off to allow legs to recover so that I can more comfortably hit my mileage in my last long run of this marathon's training or run my scheduled 10 miles of regular running so that my weekly mileage total does not take a 10 mile set-back?  I will tell you that last Saturday I ran a challenging 19 miles with no mile slower than 7:30 w/hills (my GP is 7:15)and a Yasso WO on Monday -->10 x 800 @ 3min. 10sec. or less on each, 400 m jog in between 800 intervals, (supposedly this can predict that you are capable of running a marathon at 3:10, I gave it a try and was able to do it, so we will see)  These were 2 pretty tough workouts for me.
Anyway...any thoughts out there?  Thanks in advance.

[Jon Allen]

Nothing in your running log to review to help us.

Do whatever you think will make you faster in the long run.  Doing a run simply to hit weekly mileage goal does not make sense to me.  And your long run is very important for the marathon.  On the other hand, good training sometimes requires running through/with tired legs, and having your marathon still 4 weeks away is enough time to recover from hard training.

The bottom line for me is make your big workouts count- get a good long run and good speed workouts.  All other miles are easy/recovery.  Don't wear yourself out getting junk miles such that your real workouts suffer.  And if you start a long run or speed workout and absolutely have nothing in you (i.e. much, much slower than expected), see if you start feeling better after a few miles, but, if not, don't be afraid to cancel the workout and do it another day.

[Sasha Pachev]

Jon:

It is not quite that simple. Big workouts/long tempos are important but every workout counts. Otherwise you would see guys running 80 miles a week at high intensity winning major marathons. They don't.

Nate:

I am of the opinion that Yasso 800s are completely useless for a healthy young man (younger than 50) that has not yet broken 3:00 in the marathon. I say this because a healthy young man has the speed to break 3:00, otherwise I do not consider him healthy. So 800s develop the speed while he is not realizing the speed he has, and predict nothing because, well he has the speed to blast through those 800s like there is no tomorrow if we compare it to his marathon goal. Your 19 mile run already predicts a whole lot better what is going to happen in your marathon. At least up to mile 19, after that hopefully not a surprise.

I would make sure you get lots of sleep, eat plenty of healthy food, take naps, and still run your mileage, but at an easier pace. Still do the long run, if you are not hitting the target pace, just plod along through it a bit slower, get the oxygen into your lungs and some glycogen out of your legs so you can replenish when you rest. Make sure to eat well afterwards on a consistent basis.

 

[Jeff Linger]

Nate, as we can't see what you've been doing consistantly I'm not quite sure where you're at to determine where you should go. You say your legs are not recovering as they did before. This begs the questions: What were you doing before that your legs were able to recover from? And what have you done now that has created this decreased capacity to recover? Are you running 50 mile weeks? 60 mile weeks? 70 mile weeks? On your 19 miler did you do the whole thing right around 7:30 each mile? Did you do a 5 mile warm-up, drop the pace down to 7:00s for 10 miles and then a 4 mile cool down? Are you hitting workouts such as the Yasso WO every week? How frequently are you doing tempo runs? Generally speaking most people are able to adapt and recover from a long aerobic base workout about every 7 days. Marathon based speedwork (Tempos, LT/AT, repeats, etc) we usually see a recovery and adaptation in most people about every 10 days. Each person is different though and adaptation and recovery truly depends upon an individuals training base. Inside 4 weeks I would suggest that you forget about doing anymore marathon-paced long runs. I would recommend that you get an aerobic based (probably something in the 7:45-8:00/mile pace) long run in each weekend, but begin to decrease the distance. 4 weeks out you could still easily do a 20 miler, then I'd drop down to 17-18 three weeks out, 15-16 two weeks out. And I wouldn't do anything more than 13 the weekend before. All these should be easy aerobic based. Maintain your normal daily aerobic based runs. 4 weeks out is 28 days. I would recommend some sharpening oriented tempo work. Instead of hitting a 10 mile tempo run, do something like 2 mile warm-up, 2x5k @ 10k pace with 2 mile recovery in between. Or 2 mile warm-up, 3x5k @ 15k pace with 1 mile recovery between each, 2 mile cool down. One workout I found quite helpful was the first of these, but instead of the 2 mile recovery in between I had my first 5k end at a track. Took 5 minutes inactive recovery, did 3 x 1 mile @ marathon-pace with 5 minutes inactive recovery after each, then 5k @ 10k pace again with 2 mile cool down. You probably can get 2 of these in (once about every 10 days or so) and then in the final week before the marathon just do 1 5k @ 10k pace. These type of runs will generally give you anywhere from 12-15 miles, will get some solid mid-week miles in, provide the same sort of AT/LT work that a tempo run would, but will not take the same toll on your body that a 10 mile tempo run would. Additionally, they will sharpen your speed going into the marathon. Given that you are indicating that your legs are feeling fatigued, I think it is especially important that you regularly throw in days that are perhaps only 5 miles or so at recovery pace. Of course, anything that any of us might recommend would be entirely dependent upon what you've been doing, which we can't see.