Marathon Training Thread - Week Ending 12/12

CTA, thing that caught my eye with Frankfurt was the depth there this year. There were as many people under 2:30 As there were at Berlin or London. So it strikes me that it would be a quick course. That said, I reckon the crowd would be somewhat lacking. I'm thinking about it.... but will likely sign up for Berlin if the recovery goes to plan.

Blaznbison - good lord man, you were absolutely on fire at Rocket City. That is an IMMENSE run. Absolutely awesome. I'm seriously impressed and delighted to see all the training paid off. Nice one.

Nole, sorry to hear about the race being messed up. But well done on finishing second.

Brit, do you run with a club in London? I'm with Redhill up here in Notts.

marmite wrote:

Brit, do you run with a club in London? I'm with Redhill up here in Notts.

Yeah, I do! Will you be running National XC in February? If so, maybe meet you then.

On easy/recovery runs: Speaking from a recent 2:39 marathon in November- During marathon training this past summer my recovery runs were Monday and friday usually (after my long hard run and long workout) and for a 6-10 miler I would start somewhere around 9-910 first mile, then 840, 820..some recovery days wouldn't crack 8:00, I just focused on running to the point my legs allowed, and not pushing beyond it.

On normal easy days, for an 8-10miler-it would start the same: 850-900 or so mile 1, 800 mile 2, and 750 down to 720 by the end. Again, those days were Tues,Wed,Sat. I did that every week and had a good showing off of singles and a 80 or 85 mile week as the max mileage.

Echoing past posters, the key to an easy run seems to be in running the first mile or two gently, and pick up the pace until your body is running at the optimal pace for that day.

VF, we have similar goals for a race on the same weekend. But it seems you are really killing (i.e. running fast) your runs right now. 4 runs close to 7mpm seems really fast for someone trying to run a 2:48 (high 6:20 MP)...

I'm still base training and should probably try to lose the 12 lbs I've gained since my last marathon.... My Boston training starts on the 27th.

CTA wrote:

However, now that i am not doing long runs, i find that i don't need to do the slow recovery runs at all and that my easy runs are on the faster end of the range. I am not sure why this is happening. My hypothesis is that my body doesn't like long runs - and now that i am not running long i don't need the slow recovery runs. The alternative explanation is that I am in better shape!

This happens to me as well. Not so much when I don't do long runs, but when my overall mileage is lower than usual and I'm not doing workouts. Of course, this makes sense, lower mileage and no workouts means I'm not tiring myself out...so the easy runs get faster as a result. I don't see any problem with this, because there's nothing you need to "save yourself" for during the week. I see the point of recovery/easy runs is to get in mileage while recovering for the next workout or long run.

For those of us still training faster than you should...i.e, Coked up Brit, it sounds counter-intuitive, but slowing down your runs DOES make you a faster runner. If you want further clarification, here's an article that wejo did a few years back, titled "Why I sucked in college."

Another - I certainly wont argue that point. Since I'm between training cycles and dealing with this heel I'm just kind of all over the place. I am working on going easier on easy days, and in fairness, most of these recent runs have been random courses and loosely timed, so I may be way off on pace guesses.

In the past, it has always felt awkward for me to run slower than 7+ish pace. I just don't feel like I can find a comfortable stride. Couple that with knowing that right now I need to use as smooth a stride as possible to avoid one injury creating others and I'm just kind of lost in trying to find the right pace.

It's also letting out some frustration. Anytime I'm feeling ok/good right now I just want to go. I need a good tortoise mantra to get away from my hare mentality. My true training for Gansett should start in the middle of January so I still have some time to sort it out.

CTA wrote:

Good luck to all! We've got some seriously fast guys posting here now. Where the hell are all my peers?

lol...some of us are still aspiring to be as fast as you, it's all relative.

My training has been pretty good. I've discovered the virtues of treadmill running after all these years. I'm still doing most of my runs outdoors, but I did some nice 800m intervals and a couple of really fast tempo runs on the TM.

Averaging 50-65 km per week the past few weeks. Next goal race is a 10k at the end of February.

And some of us are aspiring to be as fast as dan! It's pretty relative down where I'm at, lol.

Dan the Masters Man wrote:

CTA wrote:

Good luck to all! We've got some seriously fast guys posting here now. Where the hell are all my peers?

lol...some of us are still aspiring to be as fast as you, it's all relative.

My training has been pretty good. I've discovered the virtues of treadmill running after all these years. I'm still doing most of my runs outdoors, but I did some nice 800m intervals and a couple of really fast tempo runs on the TM.

Averaging 50-65 km per week the past few weeks. Next goal race is a 10k at the end of February.

Thanks, Pablo and everyone else who chimed in about the easy runs. It helps a lot. Keep up the good running.