[S]he Conquers Who Endures

Nice work - glad to see you are making progress. Good luck with the proposed changes/ upgrades to your running. I hope they help. I think that you are doing great. January's marathon doesn't stand a chance!

Thank you for the encouragement! I hope your training is going well! Question for you. What paces were you training at for long runs and tempo runs for the marathons you ran a 3:30 and 3:32? I know you are supposed to run your long runs slower than marathon pace, but I don't buy the 60 sec slower per mile. I'm trying to figure out what pace I should be running. I want to target a 8:00 to 8:10 for the marathon should I be training around 8:20ish? What worked best for you?

Short answer - In theory the faster you train the faster you should be able to race. I would ask What your weekly mileage totals are? And then how much of your training are you devoting to speed work and/ or tempo (i.e. VO2 max and/or Threshold pace) running?

Each of those components shouldn't average more than about 8% of your total weekly mileage. I would make sure that your weekly mileage it around 40 - 50 miles on average with some speed work and tempo runs included.

Longer Answer:

Okay - so for a long time I really worried about what I was running my long runs at. I even wrote to Sasha asking about pacing.

His response was that until I hit 60-70 miles a week, that what ever speed work and/or tempo runs I was doing would not have (as profound) an impact on my results.

With that in mind - I have two friends who along with myself purchased the Runner's World 'Run Less, Run Faster,' by Bill Pierce, Scott Murr and Ray Moss. It outlines speed work, tempo runs and paces for your long runs for qualifying for Boston gender specific for all age groups. Hal Higdon has a good marathon book out as well with training tips.

What we found was that the program did help our times improve (2010 and 2011), however we were still lacking in the endurance and longer mileage performance.

So this year we have included one to two runs (at an easy pace) along with the three outlined weekly workouts. This has increased our weekly mileage (from 30-40 miles to 45 - 50 miles) and also seemed to translate to improved performance later in a race (marathon times decreased).

What I discovered this year was if I am consistent with my speed work and tempo runs, and then include a few additional easy runs in between the tougher workouts, that it doesn't matter what our pace is on our long runs as long as we are getting the mileage in.

If you can run your long runs at a faster pace, I would do so once or twice a month. But on the other long run days 60 - 90 seconds slower than MP should be just fine. You want the time on your feet and the overall mileage so you are used to pushing past this.

We have a couple of friends that we include on our long runs (on Saturdays) and the pace is usually around 10 to 11 min a mile - we even take walk breaks to accommodate the beginning marathon runners. I used to be concerned with the slower pace. But this year has shown me that as long as I am including the other elements into my training, the long run pace can't be run too slow. Yes you read that correctly - the long run pace can't be run too slow. And I find that I recover more quickly from the relaxed pace.

Similar to what you did earlier in the year with your 5K race prior to your marathon, we do run other events - i.e. 5K's or half marathons to gauge progress on our pacing. Our regime includes that we try to run another marathon (whether an actual event or just a long run) about a month out from our marathon we run for time. It has all seemed to come together for all three of us. WE all three qualified for Boston 2013 from our events from this year.

I would say your endurance performance will start to show with around 40 - 50 weekly mile averages, and continue to improve through 70 miles/wk.

Finding time and balancing other obligations can start to get tricky at that point.

I have used 50+ weekly miles as my gauge for this year and have been pretty happy at the results thus far. If you have time/ ambition you can do more. Some days I have run two easy runs to get the mileage in. I have noted that the elite runners do this all the time. They typically log in 110 - 140 miles in a given week when they are training.

I am having my best year with three sub 3:35 performances and expect to have one or two more BQ times before the end of October.

Hope this was helpful - apologize for being long winded.

Wow, this is so much great information! I've read both books you mentioned and was actually following some of the speed and tempo run paces of run less before I got injured this summer (that was not the source of my injury). I have been skeptical of Hal's pace on slow runs because I always break down pretty severely near mile 18 to 20 when I try to race a marathon, but that maybe more due to low mileage training (40 miles/week max). I will take your advice on the long runs to run some of them quite slower to accumulate time on my feet. It makes sense and likely prevents injury. I really liked throwing in marathon pace miles on my long run this past weekend and doing that one or two times a month I think will help my confidence since I seem to be lacking that for whatever reason (hey, at least I happily surprise myself).

I can't believe you can run so many marathons in a year and still be so fast!! That is great news!! Last year was my first year running marathons and I ran 6 and got progressively slower. I thought it was overtraining, but may have been more due to such low mileage between marathons to recover. If you are used to that mileage I can see wear you wouldn't have to spend so much time recovering, and can work more on improving. I would rather run more than 1 or 2 a year because, hey, you only live once!

Thanks so much for this response! I run with a group, but am one of the fastest runners and the only runner at my pace. I am basically learning by reading on my own and whatever I come across on the blog. I'm actually moving to Cambridge in a couple weeks for a 2 year job opportunity at MIT (dream come true) and my fiancé is staying in Chicago. The only bright side to this situation is that I should have more time to be able to increase my mileage to 70+ per week. I'm going to try to stick to Pete Pfitzinger's 18 week marathoning schedule that peaks at 55 miles/week (12 of these weeks are above 40 miles) for the Disney Marathon in January. If I pass that test, I'll switch to his schedule that peaks at 70 miles a week for the next marathon.

Good Luck - and thanks for reminding me about the Pfitzinger book- haven't reviewed that one in a while.

See what 50 - 60 miles a week does for you and then continue to step it up. As Hal suggests, do cut back about every three or four weeks on the mileage to recover.

Re: Your Marathons -Pick out a couple that have terrain and conditions that will favor your best performance.

I have been told by my crazy friend that the Disney Marathon in Orlando wasn't a PR course - he was with family and spent a good deal of time getting pictures with the Characters out on the course. He did say it was a lot of fun (He will be with me next April in Boston).

Again Good Luck - I know you'll do great.