New training system? Fall marathon, maybe early spring marathon, then run track

It might be hard to maintain for several years...but here goes:

The way I see it, you'll be doing year-long training cycles instead of 6-month ones:

You could start your training cycle in the fall, building easy base all winter, then transitioning to aerobic and anaerobic threshold work (and specific marathon training), all leading up to a spring marathon. You'll taper a bit less than usual for it, but still arrive "rested." You run your spring marathon, then take a week or so off (perhaps less if you recover well), then start building up mileage again, but this time, you incorporate aerobic and especially anaerobic threshold work very early on--maybe 4 weeks out from the marathon. This will allow you to rely on your "pure" aerobic base from the marathon training, and focus on building what you might call "aerobic stamina" for several weeks before you transition into track training for the summer track circuit. You'd maintain a fairly long long run during the summer track season, and do a bit of marathon/aerobic threshold work here and there to keep up your fitness in the marathon dept. You could set up your last track race a few weeks out from the marathon, and use those last few weeks to do a few longer runs and marathon-specific workouts, and peak for the fall marathon, running it mostly off your track fitness. You'd take a lot of time off afterwards--probably 3 weeks (to compensate for "time lost" that you didn't take off in the spring)

Probably the two most problematic things are transitioning to track training in the months after the spring marathon, and running the fall marathon off track fitness (which many of the guys in the 70s proved CAN be done, and very well!). You might want to use some of the early track races to 'race yourself into shape' to allow yourself as much recovery after the spring marathon as possible.

I think it could be broken into cycles:

-September - November: getting back into shape, building base

-November - January: train for marathon

-run marathon in late Jan/early Feb

-rest until March(maybe doing some light aerobic work)

-March - May: start the transition into aerobic and anaerobic threshold training for track

-June - Aug: continue training for and running outdoor track

-Early August: lock it up in early august to get a good 3-4 weeks before starting back up in September

The thing here also is that the type of athlete that would be best suited for this kind of training probably wouldn't race anything shorter than 5k; this athlete would mainly be doing 5k's and 10k's outdoors in the summer(not a lot), and maybe a 3k once in a great while, so they would have a set range of training from 5k-marathon over the course of the year.

I would agree that this could be hard on the body if minimal rest is not given at certain times throughout the year, but I was just curious how realistic others thought it might be.

looks like a nice plan for me... I really never race any lower than 5k (except for the occasional 3k indoors/early outdoors) and I plan on running my first marathon maybe next year or so.

will somebody out there actually give some serious feedback about this idea? ritzenhein basically did this and he broke the american record at 5k, and may well do the same at 10k. why doesn't someone try to find a way to incorporate this idealogy of training into some system for success?