Eliud Kipchoge's workout this morning, 9 weeks before London Marathon. Stronger than prior to Berlin?

AM Track: 3km warm-up(15min) + 12x(1km fast,1km float) - fast km's averaging 2'50, float km's averaging 3'20, 3km cool down(15min). Total : 30km in 1h34min

PM : 12km easy(50min)

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Day's total 42km, altitude AM 2100m, PM 2400m. Weather : AM +12C, cloudy , PM +19C, cloudy

I'd predict he's in shape to run a PB.

Dam . . . wrote:

I'd predict he's in shape to run a PB.

*PR

Without knowing how hard he was pushing, it's difficult to know. Perhaps only he and Sang can answer the question you pose. However, assuming he did not surpass his 80% rule, it seems to be a spectacular session; and think it bodes well for another outstanding performance in London for the great one. I find the altitude that the sessions were done in especially impressive.

Presumably this should be "30KM in 1hr44" not 1hr 34, given the paces provided. Great session.

And thank you for the info!

Yes, it was a typo, total time is 1h44min indeed.

It's puzzling because they said they will enter the final training phase for the London Marathon next week. Perhaps he pushed more than usually in other training sessions to see where his level is at the moment? Instead of a tune-up race to gauge his actual fitness and see where he can improve. I'd say it was up to 90% effort, otherwise it would be scary.

Impressive, but not necessarily scary given the level of his performance, in my view. Obviously it's at 2km altitude. But even so, the 'fast' kms are a shade faster than marathon pace (work out to about a 1:59:30 marathon) but slower than half-marathon pace. And the overall pace of 'fast+float' is considerably slower than marathon pace. So he was probably well within himself.

Also, it's hard to say what these % effort indications really mean for Kipchoge. He ran something like a 59:32 HM on the sub 2 course in the runup to the attempt, and described it as being 60-70%. I would have expected that a 13.1M run at faster than marathon pace would be well over 70% effort for a marathoner at that level, but what do I know!

Edit: 59:17, and "60%" effort according to the man himself.

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a20849569/sub-2-marathon-test-run-yields-fast-times-lingering-questions/

Sair wrote:

And thank you for the info!

Yes, thank you for the session details. It's very much appreciated.

I guess those 60-70% meants that he could have held that pace for another 30-40%, basically maybe he wanted to say he could have kept 59:17 HM pace for another 8-10km if he pushed to his maximum.

I wish we could get insight into all Bekele's training. If he wasn't injured he would easily do this session.

Below's a workout he ran last year prior to his 2:01:39 WR, presumably at the same elevation. According to the annotations he ran the bulk of 15x1k in ~2:45 and the last two in 2:42 and 2:37. The rests were 1:45-2:00 of what look like walks/jogs.

This morning's was more of a fartlek, so I suppose it's hard to say which workout is more impressive: 12x1k @ 2:50 with 3:20 floats vs. 15x1k @ 2:45 with 2:00 jogs/walks. I'd give the edge to today's workout because of its higher volume. So perhaps we'll see a new WR set in London?

Assuming these figures are close to accurate, it's interesting to see that his afternoon 12km easy run was at ~6:42 pace. Anyone who claims elite marathoners (and here we have the most elite of all time) never run slower than, say, 6:00 pace, take note!

Who's the Asian guy?

Nice look for the VF4%!

Can you imagine seeing 20 guys down at your local track reeling off 15 kilos in 2:45?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHb2tbKoZR8

percentagess wrote:

I guess those 60-70% meants that he could have held that pace for another 30-40%, basically maybe he wanted to say he could have kept 59:17 HM pace for another 8-10km if he pushed to his maximum.

I've never discerned any quantitative basis for those percentages, which I've seen from at least as far back as Lydiard. I'm not sure that they mean much more than "on a scale from one to ten . . . ." Probably some value for assessing a runner's own, very subjective sense of how it felt -- which would undoubtedly mean something coming from a guy who seems so attuned to his own effort as Kipchoge.

Marathons & road races are Pb bc of course differences.

Track races are pr.

hawkins overall average would be marginally faster, suggests how controlled EK effort is, or how crazy hard CH is working

These 2 workouts are very comparable, it depends how hard he pushed in each of them to assess his fitness properly, which we won't know, so we can only speculate.

Let's say it was the same effort in and he will be in similar shape to Berlin last year. We have to take into account that London's course is slower than Berlin and usually gets worse weather. Also, every year, the pacing wrecks the whole race.

In my opinion to see a new WR in London, a lot of variables will have to come together, Eliud to be in the same shape as Berlin, ideal weather, and very good pacing with a slight negative split race ( without an opening 5k in 13:50 and a first 4:22 mile lol ).

Wow, as if they talked beforehand to do such similar workouts. Given the 2000m difference in altitude between their workouts, i guess it's pretty much where they should stand at. It means Hawkins is in for a big PR if this was a session without going in the red. I hope he's not overtraining himself and leaving his race efforts in training to only blow up in the actual race...