Training at Marathon Pace all the time

great question. bump.

horse trainer wrote:

Would hitting 80% VO2 Max (85% Max HR) offer one a chance to actually improve, or would it be counterproductive? El G and his crew train at approximately 80-85% VO2 Max on their "easy" days.

What is your source for this? I do not believe that El G NEVER runs slower than marathon pace.

The obvious problem with always running at marathon pace or better is that you will get pretty tired pretty quick. I can only see a benefit in this approach if your training time is so limited that you can only get in about 20-30 miles a week.

No it isn't

GoHoos wrote:

great question. bump.

A well trained athelete's marathon pace is quite intense and not too far off from their 10K pace. A penguin's marathon pace is actually slower than their easy pace.

Therefore the formula for relating your everyday training pace to your marathon pace would be inversely proportional to your similarity to the penguin.

Assuming you are a penguin I'd say you would benefit from actually training faster than your marathon pace.

good question. the new Daniel's Formula talks about running at MP pace on E run days, rather than at E pace. Dr. Daniels says that it's ok to do this when things are just all clicking on an easy day. he also says that you can alternate some tempo days with a MP run that lasts roughly between 45min-60min. i know a senior in high school, who won an individual state title this year, who does pretty much all of his easy runs at MP pace. but he also only runs 45mpw tops; sometimes 50mpw. i don't think it's a bad idea to do this, but i don't think EVERY easy day should be run this hard. you need some recovery. i typically try and run about 1-2 E runs per week at this pace and i'll usually run the last half or so of my long run at M pace.

There was something from a BMC magazine a few years ago that siad El Guerrouj's group were all training at 3 mins per km pace for their steady runs in between sessions.

I'm not sure how true this is but it was definitely written down.

Ah that's amusing. I am the BMC webmaster and was a former BMC News editor so I had better go and check my back issues!

Actually I might need to bother

See

http://www.mariusbakken.com/tr_marroccan.htm

There is certainly talk of this 3:00/km work but equally I see there is talk of 30 minute easy runs

""Warming-up" (the original word is "échauffement").

Consists of 30 min easy running and 30 min of several general exercises. The aim is to get an active rest."

Thus the statement that El G always runs marathon pace or faster is clearly not true.

"the statement that El G always runs marathon pace or faster is clearly not true."

maybe so Tim, but he does run an awful lot of mileage at Marathon pace or faster each week, maybe as much as 45-50 miles at 5 min miling or faster.

Some of the S.African guys have run 2:06-2:08 off doing Marathon pace every day. I don't know how many weeks they hold the phaze, but they have periods where they are running 5:00 per mile for all their runs. They cut down their volume at this time but they are still at like 85-90 mpw.

"A well trained athlete's marathon pace is quite intense and not too far off from their 10K pace."

That's just not true-- unless you have such an expansive definition of "not too far off" that the phrase becomes meaningless. Just as an example: If you can run 4:48 mile pace for a marathon (2:06), you're one of the best runners in the world. If you run 4:48 pace for 10k (30:00), you won't even hit a *provisional* qualifier for NCAA's. I doubt that a 2:06 marathoner would be working hard to break 30 minutes for a 10k. In fact, I bet all of them could break 28.

I Know wrote:

A well trained athelete's marathon pace is quite intense and not too far off from their 10K pace. A penguin's marathon pace is actually slower than their easy pace.

Therefore the formula for relating your everyday training pace to your marathon pace would be inversely proportional to your similarity to the penguin.

Assuming you are a penguin I'd say you would benefit from actually training faster than your marathon pace.

Very well said. Everyone should read the above again and understand it. When you can comprehend this you will understand the difference between novice and experienced runners and why you can't just pare down an elite training program and have it work for a novice.

I think it really is dependent upon the length of time you are training. It is certainly not hard to believe that Hicham El G would run at marathon pace on his easy days for 30-40 minutes. In high school I used to only run 25-30 miles a week and ran almost all of my runs at 6 minutes or under pace. Which for an 1:56 800 guy would probably coorelate to close to marathon pace. Then in college I thought I could do the same thing for 70-80 miles a week. It simply didn't work. I was running myself into the ground in college.

You know guys, back in the day runners used to pick it up all the time toward the end of a run. They might not have called it a "tempo" run or a "marathon pace" run but it was just a "hard" run. Sometimes I think people over analyze their training. Quit being so anal about everything. You don't need a reason to run fast. Just go out and do it. Some days, especially during times of few speed workouts, are great for these unplanned pick-ups. You'll be cruising along, feel good, and pick it up for 30 minutes or so maybe even finishing really hard in the last 5-10 minutes. Think in terms of stressing the body and adaptation. If you always run your easy base miles at 6:30 pace wouldn't it make sense to stress your body at a faster pace every now and then. What did Lydiard do? He didn't train his athletes with long slow miles all the time. Marathon pace or half-marathon pace is nothing more than a hard aerobic effort and if you are trying to develop your aerobic system to its fullest it would make sense to run some miles at these hard aerobic efforts. An hour at marathon pace is a stressful workout, not so hard that you're clinging on, but not easy. Closing out the last 30-45 minutes of a run going from marathon pace to half-marathon pace or faster is also not a very hard run, but still a good aerobic workout. Stop thinking too hard.

MVrunner wrote:

"A well trained athlete's marathon pace is quite intense and not too far off from their 10K pace."

That's just not true-- unless you have such an expansive definition of "not too far off" that the phrase becomes meaningless. Just as an example: If you can run 4:48 mile pace for a marathon (2:06), you're one of the best runners in the world. If you run 4:48 pace for 10k (30:00), you won't even hit a *provisional* qualifier for NCAA's. I doubt that a 2:06 marathoner would be working hard to break 30 minutes for a 10k. In fact, I bet all of them could break 28.

I think what that poster who wrote "A well trained athlete's marathon pace is quite intense and not too far off from their 10K pace." is saying is that the top runners male and female run Marathons at only 20 seconds per mile slower than a road 10k.

I was talking to a guy yesterday that was a 2:15 marathoner back in the early 90s. We were talking with a CU team member that said when Ritz was at CU no one would run with him because he did all of his runs at 5:30 pace or faster. The 2:15 guy then said he used to all of his 100+ mile weeks when training for a marathon at 5:20 pace. I asked him if he would have done it differently today. He said no, 5:20 pace was easy. This kind of sounds like the training approach of the Carlos Lopez. I think it all comes down to how it relates to your workouts. I say give it a try and run those easy fast. If your workouts are starting to suffer then slow down on your easy days.

I assume you are talking about Gert Thys and his group? If so your info is a little muddled.

In brief Gert works a 6 day week, on a 4 week rotation: 1st week at 55 mpw stair-stepping up to 130 mpw. The average of the 4 weeks is ~85-90 mpw, but averages don't tell the story. He adds extra runs to increase the volume and these runs are not at marathon pace. He adds 31-32 min 10k runs to build the mileage. Not slow, but bear in mind that Gert's marathon pace is sub-30 for 10k.

He does progressively faster long runs some weeks and MP long runs at other times. He also does a medium length marathon pace run, a 5k pace workout and a 10k pace workout. His work week looks like this: hard/hard/easy/hard/medium/hard/rest.

Gert had some problems with hypoglycaemia and now follows the Zone Diet (Dr. Barry Sears) pretty strictly, which seems to have worked well for him.

Thanks for the info Nobby. I don't think a bit of it is true.

I don't think its smart to train at marathon pace all the time. Sometimes faster sometimes slower.