This is an intense session-- 24 miles at 10 seconds per mile slower than marathon pace.
Ritz says he'll "do a lot of things like that."
This has got to be one of the most intense marathon specific sessions that I've seen on an elite schedule. Is that the kind of work it takes to maximize one's potential in the marathon, or is that overkill? This strike me as a back breaking session.
http://www.runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=15507
Here's the full discussion:
Athletes training for a spring marathon right now would be really deep into serious marathon preparations. But recently, you said that you haven’t really started your marathon training and that you will do that after the cross country championships. So it sounds like you have a good base established and that you’ll just have to fine-tune it. Is that the case?
DR: Yes. That’s what it comes down to. I’ve been doing right now what I consider full non-marathon training since the mid part of December. It’s about six weeks or so. It’s been fundamental stuff—doing 100 to 110 miles a week. I’ve been working out two times a week, but it’s been slower threshold things. And then spending three to four days a week doing pure muscular and strength stuff—lifting and drills. I have really been focusing on the whole body and not pinning down workouts that are specific to the marathon.
For me, coming from a track background, I think I can only train for the marathon for 10 to 12 weeks. If I train more than that I get stale. What happens in the marathon prep weeks is that I’ll raise my volume up to 120 to 130 miles per week for most of those weeks—maybe eight or nine of those weeks will be high—and then the workouts just become specific to marathon pace. They will be very long. I’ll run like a 24-mile tempo run that is within ten seconds per mile of my marathon goal pace. I’ll do a lot of things like that. I’ll need a lot of recovery. So I’ll end up doing a huge amount of volume a couple days a week with rest days afterward, and then I’ll do it again. There’s no goal on a specific amount of mileage per week or that I have to run the workouts on a specific day. It’s on a day-to-day fashion. I think you can only train like that for a limited period of time. Otherwise you lose a lot of athleticism. It makes it hard for you to bounce back to run on the track.
You brought up doing a 24-mile tempo run. That sounds pretty difficult. So is this marathon-specific period an intense one?
DR: It’s not so much intense each day, because the efforts are moderate. For me, it’s very easy to do that stuff in training. It doesn’t beat me up like a speed workout does sometimes. I definitely need the days to be very easy afterwards, because the recovery from something like that is so great. But the actual effort doesn’t feel so hard. Everything’s down to a science as far as when you drink and how many calories you take in. We practice all that. We rehearse, even down to wearing the race-day uniform to ensure no chafing.
That’s what gets draining. For the recovery, I’ll take a nap every day; I’ll take an ice bath every day; I’ll get a massage three times a week. It turns into this thing that it’s so focused, if you do it for too long, you just become so obsessed. It turns into a mental drain more than anything else. That’s why I think if you train longer than you need to, it can wear you down mentally. For me, my coach and I try to use the analogy that it’s like a prize fight. You train 12 weeks all for one thing. Whereas in track it’s more like baseball or football where you have seasons. You put in your base in the early months and you then do these races here and there. In the marathon, it’s all specific to one day, and so it’s all or nothing. That’s what is so hard about the marathon.