Is Marathon Pace actually useful in training?

If you train with mostly marathon pace instead of "easy pace", you can largely cut out tempo runs from your schedule. Tempo runs are too tiring.

Good for tendons and connective tissue conditioning. Perhaps not for the cardiovascular/oxygen delivery systems.

Sham 69 wrote:

If you train with mostly marathon pace instead of "easy pace", you can largely cut out tempo runs from your schedule. Tempo runs are too tiring.

Tempo runs ARE marathon pace, dumbarse.

Soft serve wrote:

Sham 69 wrote:

If you train with mostly marathon pace instead of "easy pace", you can largely cut out tempo runs from your schedule. Tempo runs are too tiring.

Tempo runs ARE marathon pace, dumbarse.

yes. especially as you get up to 5 miles +

of course it should be noted this is based on an ideal M pace derived from a 5k time. if you lack aerobic fitness, your true M pace might very well be easy pace or slower.

Birkoboy wrote:

brunojackson wrote:

Some of these responses are terrible. 20mi at MP? Fast finish LR with 6mi at HMP?

Both of those workouts are leaving your race in training.

The 20@MP doesn't leave it in training if it's far enough from the race itself,4 weeks is plenty of time to recover and absorb the benefit.

Eh but it would mess up your training pretty badly for a week or so

I don’t necessarily think Hanson’s is the best training regimen but they have a n 8-10 mile @ MP run every single week in their “Advanced” program.

The best thread on marathon training on this site is the “5 Key Marathon Workouts” thread and I believe that thread has two of the 5 being at MP.

Birkoboy wrote:

Physiologically there is no benefit,psychologically it makes a big difference,if you can knock a 20m @MP 4-5 weeks out it says you are in a great place.

C'mon, man. This is why LRC has become so useless. "Physiologically...no benefit." OK, genius, please explain how running 10-14 miles at near LT has no benefit. I'm sure you have lots of science behind this amazing opinion.

brunojackson wrote:

Some of these responses are terrible. 20mi at MP? Fast finish LR with 6mi at HMP?

Both of those workouts are leaving your race in training.

20 @ MP is truly head-scratchingly stupid for anyone who is not an elite with an optimum (long) base who is pushing the edge to gain a couple % points in improvement. LR with 6 at HMP I think it actually quite doable for normal people.

From a wider view, most of the books' plans re: MP miles are insane. Hansons and Daniels, I can't see how someone older than 27 can possibly follow these and remain uninjured/not overtrained or psychologically destroyed. The Pfitz plan I think is more reasonable for normal folks; still, 20 with 14 MP in a max-mileage week (the crowning Pfitz wokout) is really, really hard, and I've stopped doing it because I think it's too much and counterproductive.

ATEA4RE wrote:

Birkoboy wrote:

Physiologically there is no benefit,psychologically it makes a big difference,if you can knock a 20m @MP 4-5 weeks out it says you are in a great place.

C'mon, man. This is why LRC has become so useless. "Physiologically...no benefit." OK, genius, please explain how running 10-14 miles at near LT has no benefit. I'm sure you have lots of science behind this amazing opinion.

If you goal is to "become physiologically as fit as possible in the most efficient way," I think an argument can be made that MP is not the theoretical best choice (but not "no benefit").

If you are a real person and your goal is to complete 26.2 miles as fast as possible on a specific race day, work at MP, in my experience, is useful.

Racing a marathon is more than simply translating a Vdot to a result.

Have fun everyone.

highhoppingworm wrote:

I think there is a big difference between Daniels M pace converted from a, for example, 5k based VDOT vs. your actual marathon pace.

My “M” pace is squarely in the sub threshold category and running 8-10 miles at that pace frequently seems to have huge benefits for me. These types of long sub-LT tempos seem pretty common place in most modern training plans. Daniels also includes a bi-weekly 10 @ M pace in his 5k plan which is a change from previous editions.

I'm not sure if you're just referring to the schedules in each edition, but his 2nd edition mentions several times in the 5k-15k plan a recommendation to replace a threshold session with a 1 hour M run every other week.

Running at my marathon pace or a little faster was nearly all I did. I went from a 4:34 marathon to 2:35, 48 plus for six miles to 32:20 ten thousand, etc.

This is a difficult question to answer because it entirely depends on your level of aerobic training. Someone running 100 mpw year round likely needs few miles at marathon pace, whereas a 40 mpw weekend warrior would benefit greatly from it.

Interesting discussion.

I can only do one serious speed workout per week without getting hurt. My easy runs are so slow that my stride is pretty different compared to my speedwork. But I recently started throwing in what is probably MP for 3-4 miles in a second run during the week without it affecting recovery. It's a bridge between slow pace and speed work.

I've seen a slight improvement in my speed workouts since doing this.

Ho Hum wrote:

I don't think it's true to say that there's no benefit to MP work, but maybe it's not the most efficient pace in terms of improvement vs. volume.

Things like 18-20 miles at MP can be a race in themselves, taking time away from more effective training and leaving you flat for the real race. Hence all the times pros have bragged about their epic 20 mile tempo only to sh*t the bed in the race

I've seen people instead recommend a fast finish long run, say 10 miles easy then 10 miles at MP, to simulate running fast with some miles in your legs.

That's not really a fast finish long run, that's a damn hard run. Maybe something like 14-16 easy, then 2-3 at quicker than MP, progressive.

With regards MP being worthwhile, why wouldn't it be? I personally think a lot of people do 'tempos' way too fast anyway and would probably benefit instead doing long intervals or 20-30min tempos at 'MP'. Remember running paces and the bodies metabolic systems are not like digital scales, with definite cut offs. It's flowing and linear.

ATEA4RE wrote:

brunojackson wrote:

Some of these responses are terrible. 20mi at MP? Fast finish LR with 6mi at HMP?

Both of those workouts are leaving your race in training.

20 @ MP is truly head-scratchingly stupid for anyone who is not an elite with an optimum (long) base who is pushing the edge to gain a couple % points in improvement. LR with 6 at HMP I think it actually quite doable for normal people.

From a wider view, most of the books' plans re: MP miles are insane. Hansons and Daniels, I can't see how someone older than 27 can possibly follow these and remain uninjured/not overtrained or psychologically destroyed. The Pfitz plan I think is more reasonable for normal folks; still, 20 with 14 MP in a max-mileage week (the crowning Pfitz wokout) is really, really hard, and I've stopped doing it because I think it's too much and counterproductive.

What do you do instead of that workout?

Jakob Ingebrigtsen runs at calculated marathon pace as part of his 'double threshold' days. So it clearly provides a useful stimulus in 'threshold' area.

As already mentioned, Renato Canova uses a lot of marathon pace and paces rather close to it in marathon training. As far as I understand, he works with runners who 'have already built the aerobic house', so major improvement comes from optimising running economy at goal pace by running a lot of goal pace – also getting psychologically more comfortable at it.

This seems like 'useful' to me, especially if you're training for a marathon. However you have to run a lot of M pace to benefit from it and it can be rather taxing. You might be missing out on some other essential training stimuli. Thus quite a few approaches skip M pace entirely and they can be effective, too. Like Brogan Austin becoming US marathon champ without ever training at goal pace. It's a balancing act I guess.

I think some marathon pace running is essential, but you need to judge how far and how often. Personally, I try to include some MP work in my long run every two weeks. This will start at maybe 4 miles MP in an 18 mile run and work up to a continuous 14-15 miles in a 20 mile run. I'm not stupidly strict about the pace, if it ends up MP+10-15 seconds over those longer MP runs then I'm happy. I'll also do workouts like MP-10 seconds for 6 miles during the midweek medium-long run (13-15 miles). It's mainly about confidence for me, knowing I can sustain those paces for a long time and getting locked into those paces as I don't have a good natural feel for pace.

interstate meet wrote:

ATEA4RE wrote:

20 @ MP is truly head-scratchingly stupid for anyone who is not an elite with an optimum (long) base who is pushing the edge to gain a couple % points in improvement. LR with 6 at HMP I think it actually quite doable for normal people.

From a wider view, most of the books' plans re: MP miles are insane. Hansons and Daniels, I can't see how someone older than 27 can possibly follow these and remain uninjured/not overtrained or psychologically destroyed. The Pfitz plan I think is more reasonable for normal folks; still, 20 with 14 MP in a max-mileage week (the crowning Pfitz wokout) is really, really hard, and I've stopped doing it because I think it's too much and counterproductive.

What do you do instead of that workout?

Most recently instead of 20 with 14 MP I've done 20 with the last 6 at approx tempo/HMP. I've also done 20 milers with 8, 10, and 12 at MP previously in the block.

So it really depends on what % of VO2max we're talking about. An elite runner or someone who is very well trained can run a marathon at 85% of VO2max, or potentially a bit higher. That is a pace that's pretty close to AeT/VT1/LT1, and it's a legit training pace. It's the slowest pace at which you start to see blood lactate climb above baseline and muscle oxygenation drop, which are signals for certain aerobic adaptations. In fact, it's been observed in recent years that blood lactate functions almost like a hormone. In that regard, MP may actually be one of the best bang-for-buck training paces, if your MP is relatively fast. Also, keep in mind that people like Daniels DO NOT KNOW everything that happens in the body in response to training. Nobody does. So just because there isn't a widely accepted model to explain why training works doesn't mean that it's ineffective. In the case of marathon training, there's likely a significant neuromuscular component to this kind of training that isn't well understood yet. We're still stuck with models that focus on oxygen and fuel availability or H+ clearance. On the other hand, for a lot of recreational marathoners, MP may be 75% of VO2max or lower. If that's the case, then MP is unlikely to have much of an effect in training that's distinct from easier paces, and you'd be better off just getting more total volume in at whatever pace is comfortable.

Fernando Vasquez wrote:If you can run 20 miles at MP 4-5 weeks out in a non-race environment then your MP is too slow.

If you CAN'T do 20 miles at MP in a non race environment, then you will never do 26.2 in a race. Whether 20 at MP is a wise workout is another question. I used to do it (and my MP is actually faster than Daniels' chart indicates), and it was fine. Now I go 8-12 seconds/mile slower than MP for the first ten, and MP for the second ten, which feels a little safer.