Speedwork: More repeats or faster?

Speed work for marathons? You are kidding me right?

Let's see you are planning to jog for about 3 hours and you are worried about putting speed work into your program. Hahaha

How about just jog, jog, jog, jog

Doing slow mile repeats is a waste of time you will not improve

Speedy Gonsales wrote:

Speed work for marathons? You are kidding me right?

Let's see you are planning to jog for about 3 hours and you are worried about putting speed work into your program. Hahaha

How about just jog, jog, jog, jog

Doing slow mile repeats is a waste of time you will not improve

Yes. You need to make jogging your hobby.

For marathon training it's all about volume and specificity.

Volume isn't a problem for me. I'm coming from ultras, so 100+ miles a week is kinda normal. But ultras have made me slow, so I'm doing two speedwork days a week at this point.

Ditch mile repeats. Do 2 mile repeats at goal pace starting with 3 sets and working up 5/6 sets. Then do 3 mile repeats starting with 2 working up to 3 or 4 sets. Keep easy days easy. And do a 45 min tempo run. Over doing speedwork suddenly is a great way to hurt yourself. Keep your long runs under 2 hours imo. Gl. And yeah like others have said it seems kinda counterproductive to an extent. Gl either way

run2death wrote:

Volume isn't a problem for me. I'm coming from ultras, so 100+ miles a week is kinda normal. But ultras have made me slow, so I'm doing two speedwork days a week at this point.

Don't worry about them. Improving your efficiency will let you run your tempos harder. I think I'd be concentrating on something shorter than mile repeats. Like 400 repeats at full recovery. To answer your specific question, I'd do them with full recovery and as fast as you can manage and still be able to finish them at the same pace. You need to improve efficiency, not endurance

I disagree with most of the advice above. If you're coming from the ultra and have been running over 100mpw for a while, and your main upcoming goal is a half in 85:00, you would be greatly helped by running faster.

Even mile repeats might be too long for some workouts. If you're currently doing 5*5:52, you could probably start with a weekly progression of something like this:

7*1200m in 4:18-4:21

8*800m in 2:50-2:52

8*800m in 2:48-2:50

6*800m in 2:46-2:50 + 6*400m in 82-85

8*800m in 2:44-2:50 + 4*400m in 80-85

10*800m in 2:44-2:50

8*1200m in 4:12-4:18

7-8*mile in 5:44-5:48

After this I would probably alternate weekly between 800s, 1200s, and miles on one workout day. You might be taking longer rest but that is fine. You probably haven't worked extensively at these paces in some time.

Throughout the entire cycle I would also have a weekly tempo/cruise intervals day starting with something like 2*2 miles in 13:00 with 2 minutes rest and developing into an 8 mile tempo run in 50:00-51:00.