Sean's Running Blog

Sean - once in a while my mind drifts into thinking about how a certain runner could improve his times. This morning that runner happened to be you, and I thought of something, so I figured I'd share it with you.

You've have decent 5 K speed, and have run a couple of good marathons, but had many blowups as well. You could run under 2:19, but it would need to be a perfect marathon. I was thinking about why so many of yours have not been perfect. My suspicion was fuel. I started thinking about how you could perfect your fuel capacity and economy.

So maybe something like this. A week that consists of 3 base recovery runs and 3 harder runs. The base recovery runs are something 10 miles or longer at whatever pace you feel is necessary to recover from the harder runs. Nothing wrong with going 8:00, but it needs to be sufficiently long to maintain aerobic fitness. The three hard runs are the speed/economy session, the medium long run, and the long run. The medium long should be 15 miles, the long should be 20. The important part is that the later miles of both of those should be fast. But not too much. So no more than 5 of the 15, or 10 of 20. The fast part can come in segments, or be done altogether, probably some varying of it will help avoid the monotony and the temptation to race against your last weeks time. The pace can vary anywhere between 5:05 and 5:30. The important part is that you do it once you've jogged at least 10 miles. I am not aware of any research in the area, but my intuition tells me that getting to 10 miles in 70 perhaps puts you in a state that is closer to how you will feel at mile 20 of the marathon than if you get there in 55 in some ways. At least, metabolically you will be better trainable for the last 6 miles of the marathon if the first 10 miles are jogged rather than tempoed. And, of course, if you jog the first 10 rather than tempo you recover a whole lot faster and can repeat the workout more frequently.

The purpose of the speed/economy session is to keep your legs from forgetting how to run at paces 4:40 or faster. Those paces are important because the neuromuscular practices are easier to perfect at those speeds (if something is done really wrong you just plain cannot do the pace), and many of those habits carry over to the marathon. It does not need to be too hard, in fact you want to do no more than 50% of the volume that you could have done if you had to. But it needs to be fast. So something like 6x400 in 65-68 range, or 3x800 in 2:20. Long recoveries are OK if you need it. 2x1200 in 3:30-3:35 would be OK, but I would stay away from the mile repeats because we are not really training for a 5 K, we just want to refresh the muscle memory, practice higher muscle recruitment, and practice running relaxed at fast speeds, while still being fresh enough for the medium and the long runs with a tempo.