What was the main thing you did differently that improved your marathon PR?

As others have said year round high mileage and then a midweek longish run were my main two staples that got me to the next level. I was at a 2:50 plateau for a few years, then changed my training and got down to 2:35. Typical week looked like this (I did long run on Friday's for convenience)

M : Track workout & 6 recovery

T : 15-17 Easy

W : 8 Recovery

Th: 6-10 mile tempo

Fr : 20 Miler

Sa: 8 Easy

Sun : 8 & 6 recovery

Had Some Myself wrote:

and some faster long rep workouts (e.g. 4x5k) at about 5-10 seconds per mile faster than MP.

And when I did do "intervals", it was building up to a workout like the above.

Art Eriole wrote:

Have you done a max HR test? What did you find?

not a true one but I've pushed myself hard enough in work outs and races where I think I'm close. During intervals on hot days I can hit 186, and I've hit 186 sprinting at the end of some 5ks and a 10ks, again on hot days only. Temp makes a big difference for me; though I'm faster on cooler days it's rare for me to get a HR over 180. My resting is low 40's, depending on the day.

this is a spreadsheet using Pftiz's formula:

times too wrote:

Healthier diet (drank less, tried to eat out less)

More diligence in core work (pushups and situps)

Got away from intervals and focused on a long fartlek during the week and a good long run with a lot of MP miles on the weekend

Can you talk more about your long fartlek runs? Length, paces, etc.? These sound interesting to me. I did a 10 miler the other weekend with a bunch of pickups and hard hills thrown in, and it was a lot of fun, and I could see the benefit of doing this kind of stuff regularly.

Note, I'm not currently training for a marathon, just training more or less.

I'll second that emotion ... 13-15 midweek and 20+ on weekend made a difference for me.

Forcerunner wrote:

Adding in a medium long run in the middle of the week is a thing I think a lot of people are missing. Maybe 75% total of your Long Run volume done on Wednesday if you do the standard Monday to Sunday schedule. If you can recover from that and still hit key sessions and good Long Runs you're fit.

consistency wrote:

times too wrote:

Healthier diet (drank less, tried to eat out less)

More diligence in core work (pushups and situps)

Got away from intervals and focused on a long fartlek during the week and a good long run with a lot of MP miles on the weekend

Can you talk more about your long fartlek runs? Length, paces, etc.? These sound interesting to me. I did a 10 miler the other weekend with a bunch of pickups and hard hills thrown in, and it was a lot of fun, and I could see the benefit of doing this kind of stuff regularly.

Note, I'm not currently training for a marathon, just training more or less.

Sure. It'd usually be between 40-60 minutes of a fartlek with 2-3 mile warmup and a mile or two cooldown. A typical one for me would have 2 minutes as the "easy" length, but depending on the week my "hard" was either 2, 3, or 4 minutes. So some weeks it'd be 8 x 4 hard/2 easy and others it may be 12 x 3 hard/2 easy.

Since the marathon was my main goal, I erred on the side of a little slower on the hard and a little quicker on the easy than what I do when I'm training for shorter events. Maybe 5:40ish and 6:40ish or a little faster. I'd usually end up averaging 6:0x per mile for the workout. I ran 2:40 based on that kind of workout fitness.

That's awesome. So it looks like your hard in those fartleks was a bit faster than MP. But that is also some solid 'easy' pace you're doing. I might try to play around with this while I'm building more miles this winter. Thanks.

gregmacd wrote:

Lost weight? Increased mileage? More speed work? Negative splitting? Hear rate training?

For me the combination of losing weight and increasing mileage seems to have the most effect.

-more realistic pacing

-better focus/maturity

-easier course

Got divorced. 7 min PR, which is good when you start in the 2:30s.

gregmacd wrote:

Lost weight? Increased mileage? More speed work? Negative splitting? Hear rate training?

For me the combination of losing weight and increasing mileage seems to have the most effect.

#1- changed my diet to vegan, with great volumes of carrot & celery juice;

#2- greatly increased my mileage to an average of 98 miles a week;

#3- ran a slower base pace, but for longer & longer distances;

#4- ran longer sessions of repetitions, less often, i.e. twice a week;

#5- ran easy base base for recovery & endurance between sessions;

#6- ran 10 to 11 times a week, always once in the mornings;

#7- made sure to get good sleep every night;

#8- planned my schedule well in advance;

#9- raced every week or every two weeks;

#10- ran 21 miles at marathon pace every 3 weeks;

#11- ran 2 long base pace runs every week, usually 17 miles in 2 hours;

#12- often ran 4 miles of 300/100 in afternoons after 13 miles of reps in morning (example).

Pulled a Rosie Ruiz. Did wonders for my time.

Thanks! I thought all the vegan cooments were a joke, but items #2-#12 make sense. I like meat too much to be vegan or even vegetarian.

Number 1 main thing is that I improved my 10k and half marathon race times before racing another marathon.

Everything else is secondary, but doing these things help with PRs for all distance races.

2. Overall more miles.

3. Faster training pace for normal runs, like 6:45 instead of 7:00.

4. Ran a race that had a flat course and other runners around my pace.

5. Luck. I had a good day.

6. Didn't get injured.

Higher mileage (going from about 55 to 70 MPW helped me trim about 8 minutes off my PR)

Getting faster at shorter stuff (ran 5K and 10K PRs the year before my marathon PR)

miles and miles of texas wrote:

Art Eriole wrote:

Have you done a max HR test? What did you find?

not a true one but I've pushed myself hard enough in work outs and races where I think I'm close. During intervals on hot days I can hit 186, and I've hit 186 sprinting at the end of some 5ks and a 10ks, again on hot days only. Temp makes a big difference for me; though I'm faster on cooler days it's rare for me to get a HR over 180. My resting is low 40's, depending on the day.

this is a spreadsheet using Pftiz's formula:

http://markrice.com/running/running_heart_rate_reserve_category_calculator.xls

Looks like you've achieved Hadd's peak of marathon fitness by being able to maintain 90% of maximum heart rate at marathon pace for the entire marathon.

Did your weight remain the same even with the decrease in mileage?

I like this thread lots.

There seem to be some consistencies in everyones improvement in the marathon.

1. Knowing your sustainable effort/pace when racing. Running consistently at that pace for the entire distance.

2. More running in general.

3. More training at the specific efforts for your race.

4. Less focus on running fast on your recover days.

5. More focus on recovery (eating well, sleeping well).

6. Avoiding injury.

IMO this is pretty much what you always hear elites say helped them improve. There really aren't any secrets in training these days...

The problem with using HR in longer runs and races is that it will naturally creep up. You have to be determine what HR range you can hold for a specified period of time.

For example, If you say you can run 170 HR for the 1/2, does this mean you hit 170 within the first mile and you max out at 190?

For the marathon, if you start at 170, that HR is going to creep up. You have to know at what point is the "creep" to high to maintain. If it creeps up to 190 by mile 18, can you hold that?

I agree with a lot of the advice being offered here, but there's one particular training modality that hasn't been mentioned once, and that was crucial for me in lowering my marathon PR from 3:06 to 3:00 to 2:53: hill repeats.

When I tried to qualify for Boston in 1983, I needed a sub-2:50. I was living in NYC at the time, running a lot of races in Central Park and Van Cortlandt Park, averaging about 36 flat for 10Ks and just under an hour for 10-milers. I was averaging 55-65 mpw, with a regular long run of 16-20 and with the latter portion of that run pretty hard--right at threshold.

What got me over, I'm convinced, is hill repeats up the hill at the NW corner of the park. I can't remember how many I did, just that I did them. These days I run 60 second repeats up a shorter, steeper hill; back then, I suspect that I ran 90 seconds or so, harder and faster, since the hill isn't quite as steep. I remember running (I was 25 y.o.) hard enough that by the end my fingertips were numb.

Many years later I came across an essay by Tom "Tinman" Schwartz in which he argued that hill repeats were the missing element of proper marathon training. He claimed that after 16 miles or so, runners tended to lose elastic strength in their quads from the pounding, which led to a shortening of their stride, a falloff in pace, and a failure to achieve their hoped-for time.

I took this as confirmation of my gut sense that the hill were giving me strong, almost tireless quads. 55-65 mpw is decent mileage for the marathon, but not when you're pushing the limits--which, calculators now tell me, is what I was trying to do by shooting for 2:50 with those other race times. In the end, I ran about a minute faster than the calculators say I should have been able to run on that mileage, even though I didn't achieve my goal.

Hills are one key. Strong quads for the later stages. The great Kenyan marathoners all do them.