Why not just do every run at Marathon Pace?

poor

0/10

Because it wouldn't give much more of an aerobic benefit than just doing them at an easy pace (running mostly easy and throwing in some threshold work with a long run that has some miles at MP is a much more effective training system than just doing all runs at MP and neglecting other energy systems), and chances of injury/not recovering properly would be significantly higher. You also would't be able to do speed work as effectively (legs not as fresh) which even for marathon training is important.

I didn't realise it at the time but I pretty much did this last year. My average pace over the entire year was just a few seconds slower than my marathon pace.

Posted about it here:-

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9123348

A few interesting replies re were average pace lay in relation to PRs for a few runners.

Because I race the 400m hurdles.

RusselW wrote:

Is M pace is a pace you race at for 2.5-3 hours, why not just run every run at M pace? Has anyone ever tried this? If I’m going for a daily run of 10-15K, why not just do this at M pace?

Legitimate question and a good question. You're saying, if you can hold say 3:50/km pace in a marathon, why not do your easy 30-60 minute runs at 3:50/km pace since that shouldn't feel hard.

Ultimately, though you technically COULD run every run (under 2 hours for sure, but more like under 1.5 hours as 2 hours would be getting tough) at marathon pace, but you won't improve as much. Look up what lactate threshold is.

It is best to train below lactate threshold almost all the time aka easy runs at least a minute per km slower than MP, and then also train faster than lactate threshold sometimes in intervals, such as 5k pace.

You want to train faster than MP and slower than MP, not at MP all the time. Better gains this way. And you can do more mileage when running MP+1 min/km

Derek Clayton basically did this, his career was very short. Than there was British runner from the 50s who basically did this too.

RusselW wrote:

Is M pace is a pace you race at for 2.5-3 hours, why not just run every run at M pace? Has anyone ever tried this? If I’m going for a daily run of 10-15K, why not just do this at M pace?

-Your body will never recover from day to day which will either result in injury or a spiral of ongoing fatigue...before long you won't be able to do event 10 or 15 minutes at MP

-MP does not develop aerobic fitness well. That is developed on easy paces for longer periods of time. You would be extremely underdeveloped aerobically which will devastate your performance on race day.

-MP does not develop elements of fitness gained from faster paces that contribute to marathon performance. Every good training plan will have faster paces to develop the elements critical to optimal marathon performance.

-You will be so tried that you'll never get the total volume of mileage needed to be fit enough/have the endurance to do well in a marathon.

-It would absolutely suck. It would be miserable every single run after about a week.

Short career wrote:

Derek Clayton basically did this, his career was very short. Than there was British runner from the 50s who basically did this too.

You're probably thinking of Jim Peters. Bill Adcocks did something similar. From what I've read, John Farrington did the same and it's what I did. I always reckoned that if I was going to hold a pace for 26 miles it should be no problem to hold it for 10-15 miles. And it wasn't. Clayton may have overdone the distance at that pace. But Ron Clarke, who also did most of his running at faster than his marathon pace, told me that Clayton just didn't do enough to develop his other muscles. Clarke was a big fan of doing exercises and Clayton was not. The thing about this is that running at or near marathon pace was ALL any of that group did aside from racing. There was essentially no interval work.

sgsadfda wrote:

Because it wouldn't give much more of an aerobic benefit than just doing them at an easy pace (running mostly easy and throwing in some threshold work with a long run that has some miles at MP is a much more effective training system than just doing all runs at MP and neglecting other energy systems), and chances of injury/not recovering properly would be significantly higher. You also would't be able to do speed work as effectively (legs not as fresh) which even for marathon training is important.

Don't use the term "speedwork" please. Do you mean all-out 30m fly sprints? 60m accelerations? A set of 150s with short rest? Speed endurance session with a combination of mile/800-reps? Or an anaerobic capacity session? Hill sprints?

If you mean threshold work (longer, extensive intervals) which out of all "speedwork" is probably the most important for marathon, then please also specify that.

Agree with the rest tho. It needs to be trained below and above race-pace to target different energy systems and optimize them.

Yeah, Jim Peters is who I was thinking of. On Derek Clayton, didn't he something along the lines of, if you have enough energy to lift you aren't running enough?

Marathon pace is hard for me for a single mile let alone a daily run. Any day besides race day, I think - no way in hell I can hold this pace for 2.4 hrs. I’d imagine this is the case for a lot of high mileage guys

If your marathon pace is 8:00 min/mile, it's easy. If your marathon pace is 5:15 min/mile, not so easy.

There was this women on Instagram that ran every run at 6:52 pace in Vaporfly's. She eventually got injured, but managed to run a marathon at 6:53 min/mile.

When I broke 3:00, 6:52 was very very hard to do. I struggled to run MP in training, but I easily broke 3:00 on race day.

It's bad training to run everything at MP.

GBohannon wrote:

Marathon pace is hard for me for a single mile let alone a daily run. Any day besides race day, I think - no way in hell I can hold this pace for 2.4 hrs. I’d imagine this is the case for a lot of high mileage guys

That's what it's like for me. I did a long run today with 1 mile at 6-flat MP at the end. Heart rate was in the aerobic zone, but I really struggled. It felt like I was sprinting.

I have heard that quote but I don't know whose it is. Certainly would fit for Clayton.

If you are in good shape, marathon pace is pretty hard. If you aren't in that good of shape, marathon pace may be slower than your normal running pace.

Because you will burn out early in your career.

Yea if you take a 2:20 runner, I would bet the pace he could hold for 4 hours wouldn't be that far off easy run pace, so slower runners doing most at MP makes sense

Seems like the better-trained you are aerobically, the worse an idea this is. Also the more interval work you do. I basically did close to this training for a HM last year. That being said I wasn’t doing workouts or running every day. I would not do this if doing either because on days after workouts/long runs you’re going to not get proper recovery and probably end up hurt/sick.

Basically every runner that doesn’t know how to train properly already does this. They run a few times per week at a pace between M pace and tempo.