Is 40x200 a good Marathon Training Session?

Outside of the volume, it isn't very specific to the event.

If you're taking 30 sec rest between each rep, I'd say that you'd be able to hit 10k pace fairly comfortably, maybe even 5k pace without too much stress.

You'll also spend the first 10 sec of each rep utilising your ATP system, which is utterly useless in a marathon.

Someone should pull your hobby jogger card. You have never seen this done a few times since it's never been done.

You are wrong of course. 😉Has been done by several elite marathoners during history e.g a very good USA marathoner with 2:11 best who use to do 50 x 200m in two sets . 🧙‍♂️🇸🇪

8k worth of work a lot faster than marathon pace isn't too specific of a workout. It really depends on what your training looks like & what your goals are. I see a lot of runners do a weekly "speed" workout every week in their build up for a marathon. They're doing a weekly 5k workout, not running a ton of mileage, hit 20 miles once, & wonder why they're bonking.

I would suggest a weekly tempo/threshold workout with at least 10k worth of volume. The more the better. Short rest on reps. The workout you outlined probably has its place one or twice in a 12 week build as a supplementary leg speed workout. I wouldn't do it in the last 4-5 weeks before a race.

Keira D'Amato did it as well. Or is she a Hobby Jogger too?

Is is a decent workout for marathon training but an even better one is 5 x 18 miles.

A leg speed workout is sort of what I think this would do as I am doing alot of mileage for me: around 140k/week. Training or atleast hoping for a sub 2:49.

I' ve been doing a track session a week with 1k, 1mile, 2k reps, something like that.

No dedicated Tempo Run per se but a hard Longrun around 35k once a week with long intervals at Marathon Pace or quicker, or a progressive finish.

it sounds boring and not specific to the event, but go ahead go crazy with the 200s

I'm not a marathon guy but I wouldn't see why it wouldn't. Don't think of it like an interval session, think of it like a 40+ minute fartlek. You're doing what everybody does which is getting caught up in interval distance and speeds and not paying attention to aerobic effort. The breaks in between reps takes away from the aerobic benefits a little bit, but allows you to run slightly faster.

I guess it's up to decide what you need to work on the most. If you want to purely work on endurance, then do the rests short or just run straight through like a tempo. If you want to work on speed a little bit, then increase the rests to like 30-90 seconds.

What's your goal for this workout? At what pace? More importantly, what's the point?

If you just want to say, "I did 40x 200," so that people will be impressed ... then go for it, I guess. You can probably get the same training effect doing something different. I would probably lose track of the lap count.

Good workout to peak for 800 or mile, not for marathon

I don't think so.

Curious what pace were you thinking tho?

One way i can think of to structure a marathon workout based off 200's would be to just go at ~10k pace then float the rest at ~marathon pace. Goal being to have an overall tempo effect while including some mild speed work. Maybe a few longish sets broken up with 800m rest. Not saying this would be ideal, Just an idea, and id prob rather do it with 400's

200s are a bit short and having to accelerate from jogging to 10k-HM pace 40 times might be pretty hard on your body. The training stimulus itself would be pretty good as long as your recovery isn’t too slow. Like 45 seconds for the 200 and then 100m recovery in 30seconds. Like someone else said, it’s just a fartlek.

I personally prefer doing 400s with the same approach. At my level I would do a 400 in 75 with a 100m recovery in 28 seconds. Ends up being 3:25min/km but I feel a lot better than when I do a steady tempo at that pace. More pop in the legs.

I was coming here to say the same thing. It's not a bad workout if you don't run the 200s too hard (keep them in the 5k-10k pace range) and do the recovery around marathon pace. 40 is excessive though, IMO. 20-30 would be fine.

Agreed. Lydiard had sessions of 220s in the late phase of his marathon schedules. I don't know who the US 2:11 guy who did 50 of them was but in the 60s there was a Scotsman called Alastair Wood who had a best of 2:13 and did sessions of 60 x 220.

They were also doing a lot of other sessions.

Dk why I caught some initial hate. I have no idea how OP would structure it. If it's more of a continuous fartlek then maybe that works. 30s rest makes it sound like it's standing rest with a faster target. Nothing about that is marathon specific. A lot of people do a weekly workout like this for marathon training. That is not my recommendation.

Stupid workout. Waste of time do something else like a progression tempo or 5x1600

No.