2:30-35 Marathon Indicator Training/Workouts

Tinman wrote:

Ok, to clarify my suggestion with an example:

Jim ran 20 miles in training: the first 10 miles in 64 minutes and the second 10 miles in 54 minutes. If his training has been consistent for several weeks, he'll probably run 2:30 to 2:33 - provided he paces well and has good weather conditions.

I've prescribed this workout on many occassions and marathoners typically run 6-8% slower than their average pace of the second 10 miles of the 20-mile long run. My typical instructions to marathoners: Run the second half of your 20-miler at half-marathon pace/effort - on a course akin to the marathon terrain.

Note: This is a hard workout, and it should be should be done 4 to 6 weeks out from a marathon race, just to ensure recovery is achieved before the marathon race.

Take care,

Tinman

Tinman,

You realize 10 miles in 54 minutes is less than 5:30 pace....preceded by 10 miles under 6:30 pace....

I don't know ANYONE who can run 2:30-32 who would have any HOPE at running that workout without it being basically a race. In fact, 54:00 for 10mile itself would be very race like for a 2:30-32 marathoner.

Better and more realistic:

10 miles in 1:10

10 miles in 58:00

Alan

Francis L wrote:

Another thing along with running as hard as you can is to lift a lot of weights and gain 70 pounds. If I had known this at the time I would have run a lot faster and I'm still planning a comeback. My goal is to bench 500 pounds, weigh 250 pounds, and break 5 hours for the marathon.

Hey now. Someone hijacked my unregistered name. Very clever!

Tin, you usually have a better handle on these sorts of things. 54 minutes for ten miles would darn near MAX for a 2:30 guy. Please check your tin-man calculator on this one. Have to agree with running-art on this one; maybe 57 minutes on the back end of that workout.

That's ridiculous, I would struggle to run a 10 mile as a workout in 54 minutes, and I guarantee you I could easily run within your 2:30-2:33 window. Do you have your athletes taper for this workout or something? You realize that you're suggesting someone run an unevenly paced 1:58 20 mile run, IN PRACTICE, to indicate they could run 2:30-2:33? You realize that that's 20 mile AT 2:34:30 pace?! Hell if you can do that with a massive negative split, you might as well just keep running the last 10k and get your marathon PR out of the way right there!

Not that it's the end all of running predictions, but McMillan's calculator has a SINGLE 10 MILE RACE equivalent to a 2:31 marathon. You are giving out terrible advice, no way around it.

And what were your PRs like at the shorter distances. If you did indeed run a 2:36 off of an 18 and a 16 miler and 35 mpw, then I'm betting you have some legitimate talent (or should I say you most likely squandered some legitimate talent).[/quote]

If you called me talented you would probably be the first person to ever do so. I have actually always been the not very talented but trained my ass off type. My PR's over shorter distances are garbage: 16:10 5K, 4:14 1500m. I for sure squandered some much better times but it was due to overtraining and getting myself injured, sick, or completely fried before I got to race. I think I could've run in the 14:50 range for 5K at my fittest and have definitely been in 2:28-30 shape. When I ran 2:36 I had already "retired" from serious training and was just doing the race because a lot of friends were and we were all thinking about going to go do boston together.

My point for the original poster was that I ran that off exactly the training that I wrote in the 4 months leading up to that race. I couldn't have done the workouts that he has been doing. If that guy has a good amount of lifetime miles on his legs then he should have the fitness to run 2:35 or better.

It's not that hard wrote:

And what were your PRs like at the shorter distances. If you did indeed run a 2:36 off of an 18 and a 16 miler and 35 mpw, then I'm betting you have some legitimate talent (or should I say you most likely squandered some legitimate talent).

If you called me talented you would probably be the first person to ever do so. I have actually always been the not very talented but trained my ass off type. My PR's over shorter distances are garbage: 16:10 5K, 4:14 1500m. I for sure squandered some much better times but it was due to overtraining and getting myself injured, sick, or completely fried before I got to race. I think I could've run in the 14:50 range for 5K at my fittest and have definitely been in 2:28-30 shape. When I ran 2:36 I had already "retired" from serious training and was just doing the race because a lot of friends were and we were all thinking about going to go do boston together.

My point for the original poster was that I ran that off exactly the training that I wrote in the 4 months leading up to that race. I couldn't have done the workouts that he has been doing. If that guy has a good amount of lifetime miles on his legs then he should have the fitness to run 2:35 or better.[/quote]

Food for thought...I know LOTS of 14:50 folks who couldn't break 2:30 on NUMEROUS attempts.

Alan

I'm not the OP, but that is pretty much exactly how my debut has just panned out.

Have missed a bit of time injured/sick in last couple of years, but training was great for 12-14 weeks prior. Went through 79-high shooting for 2.40 blew to 2.57.

ARE we talking about the coach from (the run zone)?

I have no idea. What's the run zone?

Food for thought...I know LOTS of 14:50 folks who couldn't break 2:30 on NUMEROUS attempts.

Alan[/quote]

What exactly is that food for thought for? Because it doesn't make me think of anything other than you want to make your crappy marathon time look better because you know 14:50 guys who apparently kind of suck at the marathon.

The poster speculated that I had some high level of talent and asked for my shorter distance PR's. I gave them and then conceded that I should've had time's faster than my absolutely shitty PR's. I never said that because I thought I was capable of 14:50 at my fittest that I could run under 2:30. I said that at my fittest for each distance, that I thought I could run 1450 and under 230. Two weeks before I ran 2:36 I barely broke 17 minutes in a 5K.

A year after I ran 2:36 I ran a 2:45 marathon of even less training and I went out in 1:18 for the half. I was totally out of shape, decided I only wanted to PR or blow up, blew up and still ran around where some of you guys think you need to run 90 miles a week and do 10 mile tempos in the 5:30-5:40 range. Like I said, it's really not that hard.

Alan, you've had a lot of great/helpful posts on these boards but I'm going to have to side with INTH on this one...it really isn't that hard.

For the marathon the key is easy SS running. Workouts and tempos are totally secondary to just feeling comfortable and RELAXED while running at marathon pace. My 5k PR is 16:05 and I ran a 2:43 off the following schedule:

S-long 16

M-off

T-7 mi

W-off

H-off

F-7 mi

S-7 mi

I am by no means talented. At 6'2'' and 175 lbs, I'm not exactly built like a distance runner. (23 yrs old, didn't run in college)

Granted a 2:43 is a far cry from a 2:30. I am interested to see how the OP fares.

Let me try again. Marathon speed is often 6-8% slower than half-marathon pace. Example: Jim ran 72 flat in a half-marathon. I'd expect him to run 2:32's to 2:35's in the marathon.

Runners with exceptional endurance can achieve a 5% reduction in speed. Thus, someone like Gebreselasie might run 59 flat for the half-marathon and 4-6 weeks later run 2:03:54 in a marathon.

In lieu of a half-marathon race, 4-6 weeks prior to a marathon race, a 20-mile run - the first half at an easy to moderate pace and the second at a fast pace - serves as a good measure of marathon racing ability.

Anyway, thanks for the good conversation on this thread.

'also did two sets of striders the week before'

That will make all the difference

You are extremely talented, then...

there are literally tens of thousands of people who train harder than you and run much slower.

relaxation is key wrote:

Alan, you've had a lot of great/helpful posts on these boards but I'm going to have to side with INTH on this one...it really isn't that hard.

For the marathon the key is easy SS running. Workouts and tempos are totally secondary to just feeling comfortable and RELAXED while running at marathon pace. My 5k PR is 16:05 and I ran a 2:43 off the following schedule:

S-long 16

M-off

T-7 mi

W-off

H-off

F-7 mi

S-7 mi

I am by no means talented. At 6'2'' and 175 lbs, I'm not exactly built like a distance runner. (23 yrs old, didn't run in college)

Granted a 2:43 is a far cry from a 2:30. I am interested to see how the OP fares.

In 2005 only 327 people broke 2:35....only 147 broke 2:30....

Based on that I'd say running 2:30-35 is quite a feat.

Alan

link

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~jsquire/2005menmarathonlists.pdf

I agree with the above.

You are either:

Full of it (troll, delusional, etc)

VERY talented (and have done absolutely nothing with that talent)

squandering talent is key wrote:

I agree with the above.

You are either:

Full of it (troll, delusional, etc)

VERY talented (and have done absolutely nothing with that talent)

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I would argue (c), none of the above...

I couldn't break 17:00 for 5k XC in HS (although I did run a 9:50 2-mile by the end of senior year). I tried to walk on to my (mid-level D1) college team and was denied, so I joined the rowing team. I had a blast and trained HARD for the next 4 years (think 100-150km/week of rowing), progressing to the point where I would be a near-national team candidate.

Unfortunately, upon graduation and with job/career pressures I was more or less forced to give up the rowing dream and started running again, rejuvenated after basically a 4-year break from running. I ran a 3:02 marathon after 6 weeks to get my Boston qualifier. And in April I ran 2:43 thanks to many years of endurance training and proper pacing.

I wish I could run more and break 2:30, 2:25, 2:19...but life (job, friends, girlfriend) gets in the way. We all wish we could be Quenton Cassidy but it just wasn't meant to be. Olympic Trials? Someday I will get there. I'm only 23. And hey, I've got a better chance than Jason Rahm.

See, not everybody on Letsrun is a troll!

But back on point, to the OP: some days you're better off getting an extra hour or two of sleep rather than go for a run and feel exhausted all day. No junk miles. You should feel good with some bounce in your step, not plodding along. Run by feel, not trying to hit a certain number of miles each week because that's what the schedule calls for. Your training plan has to be fluid to some degree (granted, mine is far too fluid to yield high-level results).

"It's better to be 5% undertrained than 1% overtrained."

Really surprised and grateful for the amount of responses and help I've been getting from everyone. Someone even emailed me, not sure how that happened?

I've taken some of these suggestions into consideration this week and worked them into correlating with my mileage from the past several months. While I would love to dive right in head first with all these ideas, mileages, and etc-- I need to keep in mind I'm approaching two weeks from the race and extreme changes in my mileage may counteract their intention.

So to update, I've done two "tempo" runs under better digression this week:

Monday- 14 miles- First 8 miles at about 6:05 pace, finished in 83 minutes. I guess that converts to a little under 5:50 pace on the last 6 miles. I also probably slowed to 6 min pace for the last 1-2 miles to simply keep some control of what I was doing and not run like a madman just because I can.

Wednesday- 10 miles- 58:22 with first two miles as warmup at 6:30 and 6:20 pace. Worked the last mile. Last mile is about 80% uphill, 15% flat, and 5% downhill and struck off a 5:14 last mile while progressively building my speed through the last mile. Truly feel like I could have clipped a low 5 if I started it harder.

Both of these runs were done with the intention of keeping control and feeling relaxed. I ran with a watch but didn't monitor time at all on the run until after it was done. Clicked splits but refused to look down so I could run off what felt comfortable. Given, both of these runs I felt my legs turning over, but beyond the last mile today everything was a very controlled effort with juice left in the tank and no need for a breather seconds after finishing the run.

I feel like I should also mention again that these runs are done on suburban sidewalks with occasionally jumping on or across roadways. I bob up and down between driveway and sidewalk, sometimes have to ease out of pace due to traffic, pedestrians, weaving to avoid sidewalk congestion, etc. Also get stuck having to make several 90 degree and u-turns which just suck the momentum right out of you. Don't really realize how annoying the drops in sidewalk from driveways are until you're trying to move at a good rhythm with an elongated stride. Not trying to make excuses, just pointing it out to those who may be able to compare and take into consideration that racing on an open road allows you to open up speed much more then bobbing through sidewalks and slowing down for tight turns-- and to factor that into the times from this week as well.

Lastly, again, my point of these runs so far is about what was discussed earlier-- feeling comfortable at pace. These runs were done off comfort, not time.

I don't want to make it into one of these bs "predict me" threads. Figure I have one more workout/long run in me before I'm two weeks out from the race. Any suggestions on what I should be doing those final two weeks leading up to the race? I figure I shouldn't really taper mileage given I'm only running 6 times per week and doing about 60-65 miles.