Marathon Training - Squires or Kenyan.

I'll steal a line from the concurrently running thread about George Sheehan and say "It's the one that you'll do."

Fair point HRE. I'd imagine I'd do both. I think the decision I'm trying to make is whether a Squires surge long run, plus generally slightly quicker paces are better than a steady long run and an extra session, with generally much slower running...…….

Lee Troop once told me that he'd run in three Olympics, knew many people who'd done well at them and they mostly all trained differently, there's not just one way. If you're trying to make this kind of decision based on what's most effective you can only hypothesize, if you do one thing you can't know what would have happened if you'd done the other. But here are some considerations.

Obviously many Africans have run faster than Squires' guys did. But they're products of their times. Bill's guys were about as fast as anyone from their era. They had lives that were probably much more like your own than any of the Africans have. And I don't think you can truly evaluate current times relative to those from the years before EPO. That's not saying that all of the African times are dirty but clearly some are.

Personally, while I always found that comfortably paced steady runs were the most useful things for me, I kind of think that a lot of people today are over doing the "slow pace on easy days" thing. When I tried going that route it did not make me faster. But some people have had a lot of success that way. I really think knowing yourself and what works for you is the most important thing here.

HRE wrote:

Personally, while I always found that comfortably paced steady runs were the most useful things for me, I kind of think that a lot of people today are over doing the "slow pace on easy days" thing. When I tried going that route it did not make me faster. But some people have had a lot of success that way. I really think knowing yourself and what works for you is the most important thing here.

Great discussion guys. And HRE, thanks for your responses, I always appreciate them.

I'm curious about your easy days comment. When you tried the slow pace on easy days thing, how slow were you going? Relative to your MP, say. And when you were not training that way, what kind of paces (again relative to MP) were you doing on non-workout days?

I usually train by feel, but after reading this I train in a Squires manner. Any other info on his training philosophy?

You know, back then we hadn't enshrined the hard/easy idea quite yet. We knew Bowerman was doing it and we knew if you really hammered one day you might need to go easier for the next day or two but if you really didn't feel that need you just did what you'd normally do. I think Benji Durden and Ian Thompson were the first non Oregon guys I heard of who really used the principle

When I got interested in running marathons I was just awful as a runner. But the idea of running under 4:00 and qualifying for Boston seemed, at that stage, like a decent accomplishment for someone as bad at running as I was. I knew that was around 9:00 per mile which was way slower than anything anyone back then did. I got Joe Henderson's LSD book and saw that some guys there were doing 7:30-8:00 miles in training and set off to do that. At the time I started doing this those were my six mile paces. Soon those became my marathon paces. I had this idea that because the marathon was such a long way I'd need to run it slower than my normal training pace.

And that's pretty much what I did, ran nearly everything at my marathon pace or faster. The two things got faster over time more or less mutually. So when I got my 2:35 I was doing mostly everything at maybe 10-15 seconds either side of 6:00 pace. When my best was 3:05 I was doing mostly everything a few seconds on either side of 7:00. If I had to do intervals in the midst of it all, the runs on the day's before and after were all at marathon pace give or take a few seconds. I think I thrived on that, got from 4:34:30 to 2:35:21 that way. I kind of modelled myself on Ron Clarke and Clayton.

So there were not really many easy days or really hard days. I also liked a Jack Bacheler comment where he said he did medium/medium/medium/medium rather than hard/easy/hard/easy. Maybe every couple weeks I'd have a day when I was just dead tired and didn't get any better as the run went on. On those days I wouldn't be able to run anything close to my normal paces so I'd crawl through as best I could. Sometimes the next day would be nearly as bad. I think that was my body's way of forcing some rest. I'd also get this awful stomach thing every 2-4 months where I'd get exhausted just going to the toilet and back. That also may have been enforced rest.

After a few years like this I did get semi convinced that I needed to go easier most days to allow for rest. I probably eased the pace by a minute or so per mile at that time. It didn't seem to make any difference.

Thanks again for the awesome and detailed response, HRE. I had no idea you progressed from 4 hours down to 2:35. Really cool. I always like hearing about the greats and the training philosophies from various generations and seeing how it all fits with my own inclinations.

I think personally I like to run most of my days around 40-70 seconds slower than marathon pace, and then I like to throw in at least one and often two workouts between MP and maybe 20-30 seconds faster than MP. I don't love the crazy fast stuff (my body doesn't either). I just like getting out and cruising for a while or getting out and grinding at that moderately hard pace that falls in the middle of feeling good and burning. I guess that would put me a little bit closer to the Squires style than the Kenyans. Or maybe it's a blurring of both and leaving out some rather key elements.

One thing that's different today from when I was at my best is the absence of races at distances between the half marathon an the marathon. A race in the 12-20 mile range is really good marathon prep, it's not "crazy fast" running, and it's nearly impossible to do now whereas we could do it more weeks than not. Lots of stuff will work. It's a matter of finding what meshes best with your schedule and preferences.

Thanks for your insights HRE. Some valuable stuff there. I've tried the super slow slow stuff and find it a bit too far departed from race pace, though it seemed to be allowing me to get the workouts in right, but I guess Squires' emphasis on less workout volume probably balances that out. I don't think I could manage to train at or near to MP the whole time for very long without breaking though.

I guess another consideration is the weather as I'm not sure how well I'd manage running super slow in super cold weather - there's only so much clothing can do to prevent strained muscles from the cold.

The lack of longer races is a good point. Springtime over here we get a good number of races between HM and 20m, but over the summer it's a lot harder to find anything of that ilk.

This is a weird-ass thread

Just stopping by to say... wrote:

This is a weird-ass thread

I know! Who'd have thunk it. A thread about running training on letsrun!

I don't think the slower paces would be that tough during the winter. Slow running makes for a lot less strains. It's the sprinting type workouts I wouldn't do in the winter. But slow, easy running, I do it all winter long. Most of the time this means runs in the Teens or so, but each winter I get some runs in the negatives. So long as the face and hands are warm, you're probably good to go.

Anyways, if you stick with a program for a while, it would be cool to hear your take on it.

Part of the reasons Kenyan's run so slow on easy days probably has to do with altitude. I moved to a higher elevation and my easy run times got more slower than my workouts got.

Troll alert wrote:

Just stopping by to say... wrote:

This is a weird-ass thread

I know! Who'd have thunk it. A thread about running training on letsrun!

That´s really wild!

Kenya

This is a great discussion...personally, I have become more objective to understand the role of training paces in producing the most effective training effect for race preparation. I concluded that the best marathon training for me blends the two methods outlined. I am not offering anything new, just what worked for me especially for the time crunched family, working individuals (which is many of us). I am not a high mileage guy, typically only peaking around 60 miles in a week, but the majority of the weeks are 50-55mile range. I value harder days/easy recovery days in general when training, but the harder days need to make sense in terms of what training stimulus you need for a goal race. If you train for a 5k, VO2 max is more important, but for marathons, running tempos and longer fartleks with HMP-10k efforts and faster recovery rest periods make more sense, which I would run on Tuesdays. For most Wednesdays I usually value a medium long run for marathons (1-1.5hrs) and ran at the very easiest pace to recover from Tuesdays workout and to be ready for Thursday's pace day. I have come to value running at goal paces on Thursday, especially for marathons....these days are focused on running at goal pace and somewhat progressive starting above MP at the beginning finishing a bit faster than MP. The closer to race day Thursday becomes even paced at MP for 8-10 miles. Fridays are always easy 30-40min. For Long Runs, I aim to run at a comfortable easy pace for 1.5-2hours, 60-90 sec slower than MP. I try to alternate the training stimulus with either time increases at long run pace for the remaining minutes 30-50 minutes above 2 hours, or with MP work for 20-40min or 3-6 miles at the end, or as a faster finish progression, or broken up into 2-3x2 miles at pace and sometimes running as fast as I can for the final mile or 5 minutes at the end to run hard on tired legs. The overall training program in a week features more aerobic "time" versus tracking miles, 1min-2min slower than MP, turnover work but continuous running in the form of fartleks, and most importantly, pace work to know my goal pace like the back of my hand. In a given week, my workout paces go from faster than MP, MP, to Long Run pace with MP at the end of a long run on tired legs from the week. Below I go into more detail about my experience and background of what I did most recently that led me to the general pace structure of my runs for marathons.

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I have run 5 marathons so far in my lifetime and the most recent marathon I ran was the best in terms of my execution. It wasn't my PR, however, the goal for me that day was to run a negative split half marathon, or at the very least even split and not bonk the final 10k. To outline what I did, my goal marathon pace was sub 3 hours, and I ended up with great conditions come race day and ran a 1:28:30 first half, and 1:27:30 second half. My PR is 2:47 and ran a couple mid-2:50 races, but each of those races I blew up around mile 18. The year I PR'd in my marathon I ran a 1:14:50 half marathon though much earlier in the year. My basic takeaway from my previous marathon experiences where I bonked was that I was going out too fast the first 30-45 minutes of my race...I decided to adjust my training schedule that featured more miles at an aerobic effort and to focus on marathon pace work. From a metabolic, though well substantiated physiological view, I wanted to make sure that the first 1/3 of the race wasn't too fast so that I could save my glycogen stores for the last 2/3s or 2 hours of the race. Many studies point to the fact that we only have about 2 hours of glycogen which is a quicker source of energy versus fat for the faster marathon paces (Sub 3 hours, and more so for 2:30). However, since my fitness pointed to the fact I was in the 2:50 range for my marathons, I needed to figure out what to do for the first 30-50 minutes of a marathon.

To tackle this, I took some guidance using HR rate training to dictate many of my aerobic miles, aiming to keep my HR in the "fat burning, 1/2 zone" for most of my easy runs and long runs. I am 30 yrs old, and have tested out with a high max HR around 195, and based on some HR zone tables of around 140-150 for my Z2 I found my avg aerobic paces were in the 8:30-8 early in my program and as aerobic threshold improved, the pace improved to about 8-7:30. I also valued progression running as well. Overall, a focused 12 week plan was suitable with 3x3 weeks of [2 weeks of mileage increases and 1 recovery week of about 20% less volume/moderate intensity]. For the 2 week builds, I did one week allowing increased long run time to be my training stimulus, and would run these starting out slow (like a Kenyan shuffle), and then run the next week with Marathon Pace. Tuesdays were fartleks (I decided to not do intervals of 800-2ks, but do a variation of fartlek ladders going down, like 3x 3/2/1, with moderate equal recovery paces during the rest). Thursdays were "aerobic threshold pace days" targeting my time goal at MP 6:40 , and keeping an eye on my HR was around zone 3-4 in the first few weeks, but with fitness gains became predominantly Z3. What this meant, was that I was able to run Z2/Z3 at a faster pace and not burn too much glycogen, and with a solid nutrition plan be able to run the last 10k without my body shutting down.

Overall, keeping an eye on my HR helped me slow down on easy days. But, I also evaluated my marathon pace by feel, and fartleks helped me to feel more comfortable at MP. Objectively, it was encouraging to see that at a given HR my pace was faster which gave me confidence that my body was more adept to burning fat early on in a marathon race to reserve the majority of glycogen stores to push the pace on the back half of the marathon. In terms of Squier versus Kenyan, I think my experience with training falls in the middle, maybe leaning towards Kenyans for some aspects of my Tuesday Fartleks and Thursday Progression/Tempo/pace days, and towards Squier for my Long Runs with surges and faster efforts, but for the most part slower than MP. I enjoy the discussion on this topic!