My next marathon, the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach on St. Patrick's Day weekend is fast approaching. With under 6 weeks to go until race day, I really only have a little over 3 weeks to really make any noticeable gains in fitness. In these three weeks I will really be hitting the bulk of my longest marathon specific workouts. My marathon specific training block started 8 weeks ago, and I could not be more pleased with how it has gone.
Despite the terrible weather we have had this winter, I have found a way to work around almost everything that Mother Nature has dumped on us. I have not seen a track uncovered since late December, but I have done what I needed to do to get my workouts in, be it on the roads or treadmill. Over the last 8 weeks, I have run over 800 miles, which includes an 85 mile week in which I took a day off. It hasn't been easy keeping my training volume that high with constant snowfall and polar vortexes hammering the Northeast, but hopefully winter will be relinquishing its grasp within a few weeks. It has definitely been a grind keeping my mileage up in the low 100's when the temperature dips into the 0's, but the work has gotten done, and now it is time to really bear down.
When it comes to marathon training, I like to take a very simple approach. There are three key workouts each week - Tuesday intervals, Friday tempo runs, and Sunday long runs. The Tuesday interval workouts touch on a variety of speeds throughout the training block. I like to alternate longer intervals at marathon pace with shorter intervals at half marathon/10k pace on my Tuesday workouts. This allows me to work on different energy systems. When training for a marathon, it is important to remember that you cannot simply do all your workouts at one pace. The body needs variety to really maximize fitness. At the end of a marathon, you are going to need those fast twitch muscles to pitch in, so don't neglect them in your workouts. As I get closer to race day, Tuesday workouts will creep a little closer to 5k pace as I sharpen up. The second workout of the week for me is usually a tempo run or tempo intervals. I will either do a 6-8 mile continuous tempo or 3 reps of 3 or 4 miles. I feel that 3 x 4 mile is one of the best indicators of marathon fitness, and I will be doing that workout coming up shortly. My last big workout of the week is always the Sunday long run, typically 20-24 miles. I always try and incorporate some marathon pace running into my long runs. My personal favorite is a long progression run taking the last 30 minutes of the run at marathon pace. There are several other variations on the long run I like to use, but I hardly ever just run 20 miles at an even pace. To truly get out of the long run what you need as a marathoner, there must be portions of the long run done at marathon pace. The long run really is as close as you can get to simulating the actual race. Woven through all of these workouts are basic training runs. I have made a concerted effort to keep the intensity of these training runs on the higher side. I think it is important not to let the intensity of your daily runs slide as you increase your mileage. If you follow a mileage progression correctly, there is no reason you should not be able to run the same average pace in the middle of a 100 mile week as you were during an 80 mile week. If the 100 mile week is slowing down your daily runs, then it is too much for you. I will typically run at 6:00 to 6:20 pace on my training days. The only day I am really conscious of pace is the day after a hard long run when my legs are really sore. The rest of my workouts, while intense, are for the most part done at my aerobic threshold, and do not leave me feeling very sore or tired.
If my approach to marathon training sounds simple, that's because it is. The marathon is a beast of a race, but it is for the most part, an entirely aerobic race. Unlike the 5k or 10k on the track, you are not pushing your body into the anaerobic state. When you get tired at the end of a marathon, it is not because your muscles are filling with lactic acid, it is simply because 26.2 miles is an extremely long distance to run. Essentially, a marathon is a tempo run from hell. As I train for one, I simply throw as much aerobic strengthening work at my body as I can possibly handle and hope it sticks. It truly is a fine line to navigate, but I feel as if I have gotten a good handle on exactly how much my body can handle. Running the type of marathon I am capable of requires me to get as close to that limit as possible in my training.
My workouts have gone incredibly well the past 8 weeks and I have not walked away from a workout thinking that I had asked too much of my body. My Tuesday workouts have consisted of 1k, 2k, 1 mile, and 2 mile repeats. I like to rotate through the various distances, very rarely doing the same distance two weeks in a row. This gives some variety and keeps the body from getting too comfortable at one pace. Some examples of workouts I have done so far are 8x1k, 5x2k, 8xmile, and 3x2 mile. These workouts have gone very similarly to the ones I was doing on Tuesday as I built up for Vermont last spring, but I have dropped the pace slightly while cutting down on the rest. I believe too many people get caught up in doing their intervals faster and faster when they should be focusing on cutting down the rest. Pushing your workouts closer to continuous is more beneficial in my opinion than running faster intervals but with more rest. There is one workout that I have done that has really stood out to me as an indicator of how far I have come as a runner, and that is the 3x2 mile workout I did 2 weeks ago. I averaged 9:30 for the workout while taking a quarter mile for recovery. To put that in perspective, when I graduated high school, my 2 mile PR was 9:36. I certainly have come a long way as a runner.
My tempo runs have also gone well. The main point of my Tuesday workouts is to improve my running economy and make tempo/marathon pace feel easier, and that has certainly been the case. I have tried to get away from the tempo intervals I did frequently in my last marathon buildup, and do more continuous progressive tempos. Doing 3 x 3 mile is great, but I think that a 6-8 mile tempo run is a better workout for marathon prep as you do not give your body recovery periods. I do these tempo runs starting at marathon pace, and gradually work down at the end towards half marathon or 10k pace depending on how good I am feeling. I think you should always push the limits of your tempo pace because a 6-8 mile tempo run at marathon pace feels a little too easy. It is, after all, the pace you are intending to run for 18-20 more miles. I will typically average anywhere between 5:05 and 5:10 for these runs, but I think the extra stimulus I get from running the last mile or two at 4:50-4:55 pace will really pay off in the marathon.
My long runs have always been my favorite. Everyone who has run with me knows how much I like to hammer my runs, and the long runs I have been doing give me the opportunity to do just that for over 2 hours. I have incorporated several long run workouts into my training from the blog of Ryan Vail, the top American at the NYC marathon this fall. Some examples are the 4-10-4 workout where the 4 mile segments are done at marathon pace with a 10 mile run at steady state pace done in between. I did this workout three weeks ago now and averaged 5:12 pace for my 4's and 6:00 pace for the 10 in between. I did a variation on this workout where the middle 10 was taken at tempo pace and averaged 5:10. My favorite marathon workout will always be the long progression run. Last Sunday, I nailed a 24.5 mile progression run, hitting the last 3.5 miles on rolling hills at 5:20 pace with the last half mile all out at 5:00 pace. It was a great indicator of my level of fitness, and left me very sore, but extremely pumped about the kind of shape I am in.
A lot can happen in 5 weeks of training, but from where I stand now, I feel I am on the right track to run a fast marathon in Virginia Beach. I have my sights set on 2:18 and an Olympic Trials qualifier. If everything comes together on that day, it will be well within my reach. I will try to do a better job of keeping updates on my training coming more frequently as I really get into the final stages.
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