Hi
Thought I get your input on this.
So, today I saw this guy on the news, who claims that when training for a marathon it's more important to train at your goal pace and then just cover fewer mpw. What's your take on this? I think it sounds odd to spend months training only at your goal pace -only to end up covering fewer mpw.
Personally, I'd support covering more mpw at slower pace to train endurance, which is what I'm currently doing (training for marathon early summer).
Most people do what they want and look for reinforcing views and will ignore what they don\'t want to hear.
I'd have to hear exactly what that guy said to know what he meant...did he really mean that he thinks marathon runners should run at their goal pace for the majority of their miles that they run each week? If so, then that is a pretty idiotic statement, in my opinion. You gotta have recovery in there. Yeah marathon pace is important, but you gotta be smart about it.
As for yourself, that is probably the correct approach. I always say that for fast marathoning, one should run as many miles as his body can take without getting injured. I personally follow the Pfitzinger plans, which have usually one and sometimes two "workouts" per week, which will be either a lactate threshold run, a VO2 max workout, or a marathon pace run (within a long run). All other miles are basically just easy running. Some people would say Pfitzinger doesn't give you enough workouts at marathon pace, and for some people that would be true - we all have different bodies, obviously, that respond differently to things. For me, though, I nailed my marathon pace in my last marathon, after only doing 3 marathon pace runs in a 12-week plan.
Order of importance in marathon training:
1. Total weekly mileage
2. Frequency of runs
3. Long tempos at goal pace
4. Other hard workouts - very long runs, intervals faster than race pace, hills
... and so on
Manchester has the right order until you get within about 5 minutes of your potential best time.
Well to take it to extremes, obviously distance.
You can't just do a few 100m repsa day and run a marathon.
Now if you are talking within the context of marathon training, then yeah.. that's more of a debate.Still, you have to put in enough miles to ensure that you get to the finish.
Once you're past that level of training, then yeah, do a lot of MP work.
bobballen_18 wrote:
I'd have to hear exactly what that guy said to know what he meant...did he really mean that he thinks marathon runners should run at their goal pace for the majority of their miles that they run each week?
Yes. He based it on some survey, which had been made on 1.6 mio marathon runners. The survey showed (according to him) that women generally are better at keeping a stable pace during a marathon, and that men would have positive splits, because they would slow down after hitting the "wall". So, in order to avoid this problem of slowing significantly down, he said that all training should be at marathon goal pace, regardless of distance.
Important to say, that I don't think this guy actually did the survey - I think he just conducted the results while wearing a running outfit, which I guess should somehow support his expertise to the camera on how to avoid this decreased pace halfway through the marathon.
Anyway, I think the journalist must have taken a bad advise from a wrong "expert", but now it's in the news and hence people will read it and probably take his advise.
(I'd post the news-video, but it's in a non-English language as I live in a tiny European country, so I don't think you'll get anything out of it).
Here's the survey:
http://runrepeat.com/research-women-are-better-runners-than-men
You can see recommendations under "Final Thoughts on Improving Your Marathon Result". I think he was conducting no. 5.
If your goal is to run 4:30 marathon (roughly 10:00/mile pace) then probably the majority of your runs are going to be at that pace. If I was planning on running a 4 1/2 hour event, I would have a hard time slowing down to a speed that I could maintain that long.
If your marathon time is 3:30 or faster, you should train longer at speeds slower than marathon pace.
The faster the marathon goal time, the further off those regular paces need to be.
There is relativity in training. And there are diminishing returns to running too hard in practice.
That is a terrible survey and will lead to a lot of folks training stupidly I fear.
Bye!
Depends on the runner. End of thread
Lenny Leonard wrote:
If your goal is to run 4:30 marathon (roughly 10:00/mile pace) then probably the majority of your runs are going to be at that pace. If I was planning on running a 4 1/2 hour event, I would have a hard time slowing down to a speed that I could maintain that long.
If your marathon time is 3:30 or faster, you should train longer at speeds slower than marathon pace.
I'm aiming for 3:45 and have my long runs (>10 miles) at slower-than-goal pace and short runs (
Lenny Leonard wrote:
If your goal is to run 4:30 marathon (roughly 10:00/mile pace) then probably the majority of your runs are going to be at that pace. If I was planning on running a 4 1/2 hour event, I would have a hard time slowing down to a speed that I could maintain that long.
If your marathon time is 3:30 or faster, you should train longer at speeds slower than marathon pace.
I'm aiming for 3:45 and have my long runs (>10 miles) at slower-than-goal pace and short runs (
Rookie Runner wrote:
Lenny Leonard wrote:If your goal is to run 4:30 marathon (roughly 10:00/mile pace) then probably the majority of your runs are going to be at that pace. If I was planning on running a 4 1/2 hour event, I would have a hard time slowing down to a speed that I could maintain that long.
If your marathon time is 3:30 or faster, you should train longer at speeds slower than marathon pace.
I'm aiming for 3:45 and have my long runs (>10 miles) at slower-than-goal pace and short runs (
I'm aiming for 3:45 and have my long runs (>10 miles) at slower-than-goal pace and short runs (
Sid Luft wrote:
Most people do what they want and look for reinforcing views and will ignore what they don't want to hear.
spot on. i used to do that and now do my best not to. It is amazing how you can reread some training article you read ten years earlier and see different advice!
Poor advice.
Most first time marathoners will do a lot of MP miles because they run ridiculous mileage, therefore running 20mpw at MP looks easy.
Once you reach 60+mpw that is no longer true, you will have to pick your battles.
And when you thought you had it all covered, your aerobic system reaches its peak. And it is time for you to include more MP miles again. Mostly on tough LRs.
"Most people do what they want and look for reinforcing views and will ignore what they don't want to hear." This is a sad truth of our sport. It is because of this that hacks such as the Furman guys survive.
justsomeoldcoach wrote:
Poor advice.
Yeah, it appears so. And a misleading use of 1.8 million marathon datapoints.