Want to go qualify for Boston

[Laura]

Hi, can anyone give me ideas about the training schedule I need to get into the Boston Marathon? I ran my last Marathon in Oct.  I ran that race in 4;57, but I want to run my next marathon in Nov at 3;40. I have been working hard all winter and have gotten my 4.5 miles to about an 8 min mile pace. I am not sure what to do next. I do speed workouts once a week, spin class twice a week, do the 8 min mile pace once a week and do a pretty mellow 6 mile run on Sat. This has been my winter training schedule. Please let me know what the next step is for me in trying to qualify. I know it is hard work, and I am willing to do it. I am just stuck on what to do next, when it comes to training for the next 10 months. Thanks LW

[Eric Day]

Laura, can't see how many miles you are putting in per week, but you need to work at distance. But do take it easy, not trying to push to far to fast in order to avoid injuries. The rule of thumb is increments of 10% per week.

[Jeff Linger]

Taking what Eric said further. You need to start by moving from 2 days/week running to 4 days a week running. Hold that for a month, then move to 5 days. There have been plenty of people who have qualified for Boston by cross training and running 3-4 days a week and only 35 miles/week, but certainly the best activity to improve running is running. Forget the speed workouts. Work on your aerobic base. Run at a pace at which you can carry on a conversation to just slightly faster than this. This should constitute almost all of your workouts. This is a good pace to be running your long runs in the beginning as well. As you get within 3 months of your marathon I'd start working on some Tempo/Threshold runs. But in all honesty, you'd benefit more from the aerobic base running in place of the tempo runs for the first 6-7 months. Just slowly increase your mileage. Go with the 10%/week thing, but if you find yourself getting up into the 40 miles/week range, then I'd transit to 10% every 2-3 weeks.

[Sasha Pachev]

As Jeff said, aerobic base is the key.

I would move straight to running 6 days a week. Start with a fairly short distance and a very comfortable pace - do not push it at all. Pick the distance and the pace to be such that you are able to do it again 24 hours later without feeling sore or tired. Overtime you'll be able to increase both the distance and the pace.

Some people are able to BQ running only 3 days a week, but again, some people are able to BQ without quitting smoking. Marathon race speed = aerobic fitness times fuel capacity times Quality X. Somebody with a near world-class Quality X can still run a BQ with a mediocre aerobic fitness and fuel capacity. However, do not look up to them - the reason they have their Quality X is not in their training. It is a combination of genetics, mother's lifestyle during pregnancy, and physical activity and nutrition during childhood. Improving Quality X through training is not something that is easy to do. However, fuel capacity and aerobic fitness are much easier to improve with training.

The good news is that BQ is possible with a very mediocre, we are talking bottom 15%, Quality X if the aerobic fitness and fuel storage are OK.

[Eric Day]

Jeff always take my comments further ! (What would I do without you Jeff?) 

And, of course, he is right; as so is Sasha, with a different strategy. I guess it all depends on how bad you want to run, and I mean really run.