Sub 2h30 Spring Marathon - The Quest For Amateur Glory Rides Again!

Quick update from me:

Ran 32:53 (16:12/16:41) this weekend for a 10k. Bit slower than I’d hoped, but I’d been having a few sh1te weeks in a row leading up to it so I’m fairly content. I ran a 10,000m on the track last September in 34:19 before I went 2:33 in Valencia so at least it’s a decent improvement too.

Less than 3 months to London.

BigRoundNumbers wrote:

@notasfastasyou The "relaxed speed" idea sounds great. Stretch out, but not feel like I need to throw out a hip in the process! I'll try the hill sprints as well. I did a handful of them a few weeks ago after reading this thread, but I'll try to incorporate them regularly to see if I notice progress. Maybe do something like Tuesday (hills, miles, 1ks, or a tempo), Friday hill sprints, Sunday long? Or would you do them as part of another workout, Tinman style?

When I do the hill sprints, I do them like Brad Hudson suggests. Just on a regular easy day, kind of like strides. Usually the easy day before a workout. Just get 6 to 10 short sprints in, that's it. Enough to practice the hills and wake the legs up. He prescribes them as mostly a hip and lower leg injury prevention tool. And I think as an added bonus they help the stride length and power.

So in your proposed schedule, you could easily do them Friday or Saturday. I think in Hudson's book (Run Faster, it's a solid read if you haven't looked at it) he recommends hitting them twice a week. I generally only manage one.

amandacute wrote:

Targeting sub 2:33 for Fargo this spring because: a) perfectly flat and could be fast and b) I wanted to really race a marathon instead of doing a glorified time trial with a bunch of other people around, and Fargo has an elite field that I might just be competitive in and will definitely have company/targets along the way. Will be upping the volume a little bit to peak at around 110 mpw in a few weeks and then will bring it back down to 100 until taper time. I really want to focus a bit more on faster workouts this time around since speed/turnover have definitely been my weakness in that marathon pace never felt really comfortable the past two cycles (as opposed to endurance - split 1:21:41/1:21:38 and 1:18:00/1:18:50 at Providence and Indy, respectively, so feel like endurance has been a strong point).

Welcome to the thread! I believe we have another targeting Fargo, too!

Hello, guys!

I’ve crept on this thread for 2 years.

I have never seen such a useful and lively thread.

This thread always inspires me.

Finally I decide to jump in here.

I’m 33years old Japanese and have lived in Austria since last year.

I have no running background in school and college days. I started running in my late 20’s.

In February 2018, I run Tokyo marathon at 2:32 and I set next target for breaking 2:30.

Although I thought it was not so high target, rather easy, it was my great mistake.

After Tokyo, my challenges ended up with 2:42, 2:30 and 2:36.

Although I had a lot of excuses during the period, I know the excuses are meaningless for my performance.....

I am getting back to a way to sub 2:30 and I will challenge it in April in Vienna!!

I am going for a long run now.

Arigato!!

Kind of a weird week here. Ice storms kept me on the treadmill for three days, but balanced with lots of hilly running when the roads were better. Holy cow, 90-100 minutes on the treadmill is an exercise in focus.

I did a little hip PT with the bands a couple of evenings. I had forgotten how good it feels after warming everything back up. I'm definitely going to work that back into in the schedule.

Weekly total ~104 mi

M: 13 easy

T: 16 with 8 x ~2:42 hills working up to about 10k HR, jog down (1,300' total)

W: 13 recovery

W: 13 recovery (treadmill)

T: 13.5 easy with 10 x 1:00/1:00 at perceived 5k effort (treadmill)

F: 15 with 8 x 1 mi and 1/4 mi jog a little slower than perceived 10k effort (treadmill)

S: 20 on a 2 mi loop with a big hill, legs are beat (6:32/mi overall, 1,000' total)

That's five 100 mile weeks in a row, 8 weeks without a day off. Probably going to take an easy week and try to come up a bit. Trying to decide how to best use the next phase.

Very nice week, BigRoundNumbers. I recognize these workouts from a Strava account I follow (and have been impressed by). Hope we can talk some more at New Bedford. Will you be racing there? Maybe we'll be able to work together on the course.

I'm seriously impressed by how much mileage you can do in singles on your recovery days. As you can see in my log, I have to really dial back the day after hard sessions. My only hope of getting in 10+ the day after a workout is to double.

Your back-to-back workout + long run at the end of the week shows serious fitness. But make sure you recover. As even Canova argues, there is literally no point to doing a workout that you don't recover from, because it's the supercompensation during the recovery phase, not the workout itself, that brings the physiological adaptations we need. The workout's only purpose is to make you recover from it, so don't shortchange that recovery. Especially when you are already in such good shape this far out from your goal race.

My training last week was okay - not great, not terrible. It was not a good week of mileage; I went a little aggressive on my deadlifts on Tuesday, and I must have used poor form on the last set or two because I woke up Wednesday with my back very stiff, and had to take the day off to let it loosen up. Some work stress also made me need extra sleep last week, so I didn't get in any doubles like I'd planned to. So the mileage number wasn't there, but at least I had two solid quality sessions. I have to remind myself that for most of the last three or four years, 70 was a very good week for me. So now, if my bad mileage weeks are 70, I'm doing pretty well.

Monday: 10 easy (7:01)

Tuesday: 11.2 easy with strides (6:50); deadlifts, core, hip work

Wednesday: Off due to sore back

Thursday: 8M aerobic threshold (in the 5:40s). 13M total (pushed back a day from Wednesday). Treadmill due to icy roads. This went well - it was a mental grind to do it on the mill in the hot, sweaty gym, and I never feel fast on the treadmill. Some people say that a given pace feels easier on the treadmill than outside. For me it's the opposite.

Friday: 8.5 recovery (7:25); core, hip work. Skipped deadlifts to make sure my back was okay; will get back to them next week.

Saturday: Long run - 20.2 miles at 6:40 average. There were several challenging climbs on this route, so the effort was a good bit stronger than the average pace indicates. I was pretty beat up afterward.

Sunday: 7 recovery (7:27)

Total: 70 miles

I'm pretty happy with the quality days and should be able to get back to good mileage in the weeks to come.

The plan for this coming week is a midweek session of 800s or 1000s at VO2 max effort on the track, and over the weekend an 18-20M long run with a good chunk of it uptempo in the second half. Looking for 85-90M total. Three more weeks of general fitness work, trying to address all systems, before I start getting more marathon specific in March.

My week:

Mostly easy running except for:

Wed: 2.5mi warm up + 6x1mi w/ 40s jog (5:24, 5:22, 5:18, 5:16, 5:20, 5:18) + 4.5mi tempo @ 5:38mi finishing w a fast last 400 (72s) + 2.5mi warm down

Sat: 4.7mi XC race

Only had one tough workout this week as I’d raced a 10k the previous Sunday (32:53) and had the XC race on Saturday.

What the...? That post is just a copy of mine (i.e. that is what I posted as part of my intro to this thread). Weird!

@Antonio Gramsci thanks for the thoughts! I hope your back keeps improving. BTW, I totally know what you mean on the treadmill. I have to totally ignore the pace on the screen because I get discouraged by how slow I seem to be going :P

I'm completely OCD about the numbers much to my detriment. It's dumb, I'll grind myself right into the ground because I'm scared that I'll "peak too soon" if I back off the mileage, haha. I'm such an idiot, but I love it.

I'm definitely in for New Bedford! I love that race, it's always treated me well. It would be cool to connect there.

@Antonio Gramsci just thinking more about this. I think you are right about the super compensation. I'm likely missing the boost from recovering properly. You are a lot closer to sub 2:30 than I am, so you are obviously doing something right! I think I need to shift more effort to the workouts and worry less about getting high miles on the off days.

@Kobe Beef - Welcome to the thread! You're A LOT closer than a lot of us with that 2:30 already in there. Have you ever done the Vienna Marathon before?

This week of training was a bit interesting for me. I had shook my IT band issue the past week but was having some slight tightness right on my achilles. I’ve had that issue before so I immediately started rehabbing.

Monday:

Off

Tuesday:

11 miles (7:22 pace), 10 miles easy, 6x 30” on 30” off

Wednesday:

AM: 3 miles on the treadmill (7:27 pace)

PM: 11.66 miles (6:41 pace) 3 E, 6x2min on/90sec E, .5mi jog, 4x1min on/1min E, 3 E. (Paces: 2 min(4:58, 5:00, 5:03, 5:02, 5:15, 5:11) 30 seconds (4:43, 4:53, 5:15, 4:43)) Coming around one of the corners threw off my stride a bit on the later sets.

Thursday:

10 miles easy (7:21 pace)

Friday:

7 miles easy (7:30 pace)

Saturday:

15 miles (6:58 pace): 10 miles easy with 5 miles at marathon pace (Paces: 5:52, 5:48, 5:41, 5:35, 5:32)

Ran on ice for the entirety of this one. Had trouble getting footing on the MP stuff and felt pretty damn hard at 3 miles. Got myself back up and finished strong. It didn’t feel very hard aside from getting proper footing without slipping.

Sunday:

12 miles (6:34 average) Last 3 miles were 6:15 and under.

Total mileage: 69.6

I shook the achilles issue on Friday thankfully and it looks like I should be coming into this week pretty healthy. None of this is particularly hard for me right now so that’s great. Hoping to get better weather soon. Super excited to let loose at Shamrock Shuffle next month. I'm feeling much stronger than I did before Columbus. If I could almost break 2:30 there I'm pumped for what's in store for Boston.

Checking back in after a couple weeks, I've hit 80+ miles the past 4 weeks, which is the most consistent high (relative to me) mileage I've done in probably about 7 years. My last week looks like this:

M: 6 miles easy

T: 10 mile tempo at 5:43 pace (14 total)

W: 7, 7 double

R: 14.2 easy/moderate

F: 10x 3on/3off fartlek (12.3 miles)

Sat: rest

Sun: 21.3 long run, averaged 6:53, hilly route

Total: 82 miles with a rest day

Feeling very strong, ready to hit 90+ miles this week if all goes according to plan. The tempo on Tuesday was obviously at goal marathon pace, which at this point was challenging to manage for even 10 miles. Bonked hard the last 4-5 miles of Sunday's long run, but had no water or carbs or anything during the run - need to start working on hydrating/nutrition and being able to handle 2:30 of running regardless of pace.

Very encouraging hearing from everyone, keep crushing it out there

Copying my week from the Road Racing & Training Thread...

Mon - 7.7 mi EZ @ 7:53/mi

Tues - 2 mi WU, 5 x 5 min @ T w/ 1 min jog, 2 mi CD

Wed - 6.3 mi EZ @ 8:08/mi

Thurs - 11 mi @ 6:55/mi

Fri - 6.2 mi @ 7:02/mi w/ 30 sec on/off in 5th mile

Sat - 5.5 mi EZ @ 7:51/mi

Sun - 2 mi WU, Half Marathon @ 1:09:32, 2.5 mi CD

Tuesday was a great preview workout for Sunday. My 5 minutes segments came in at 5:21/mi, 5:21/mi, 5:21/mi, 5:19/mi & 5:16/mi. Each of those paces felt spot-on & I did the workout in my Rincons, rather than my older VaporFly 4%, like I have done in the past. I prefer to wear heavier shoes than I would in the race in my final workout before one.

I had a few goals on Sunday. My stretch goal was to go sub-1:10:00. My two realistic goals were to ... (1) Go sub-1:11:00 so I don’t have to pay for another damn Rock N Roll Marathon again & get myself into the ADP corral at Chicago in October ... (2) Hold a steady effort throughout the race without going to the well too much.

I am happy to say that I hit all of those goals I stated above. I locked in right away and started clicking off miles - 5:13, 5:21, 5:20, 5:18, 5:18, 5:21, 5:18, 5:16, 5:17, 5:21, 5:16, 5:15, 5:08, 4:48 (0.10). They didn’t have clocks on the course (I don’t know if they ever do) and I didn’t look at my total time until I hit 12.5 miles & saw I had a shot at a sub-1:10:00. I was in No Man’s Land for a good portion of this race, which was a great test of my mental fitness. I also fell into the Pain Cave on Mile 6 (5:21) & Mile 10 (5:21), but rebounded nicely.

From a team standpoint, we finished third overall and got a nice check out of it. Going in, we knew we didn’t have a shot at 1st or 2nd since both of those teams had two OTQ guys on them, so we just had to do what we usually do in local races & hold down the fort.

Looks good everyone. I too am looking to take this week a little easy after 5 hard weeks at around 80 mpw.

This week was 81 miles with the following workouts:

Thurs - 6 easy + 4 x 2 miles (avg 11:10) w/ 2 min jog + 2 easy (17 total)

Sun - 8 easy + 6 x 1k (avg 3:09) w/ 2 min jog + 4 x 400 (avg 72) + 2 easy (17 total)

Great race this weekend bud! Way to finish strong out there!

Looks like we'll be doing the same races this year. I'm waiting on my paycheck to get my American Development entry for Chicago. Teammate is looking to try and run under 2:19 for his debut and I'll see how close I can get to 2:20 low.

@beersandmiles - Thanks, man! I had already registered for Chicago and sent my proof in today and got right in. They didn’t have too many spots left, which is why I wanted to do it right away. Low 2:20s might be too rich for my blood, but who knows. Will be great to share the road with you both places.

@ Tyler_Runs_Lifts

Thanks and congrats on your result of the half marathon!!

I believe you are definitely on the right track.

I have never run Vienna marathon.

I hope there will be some runners at same pace on the race.

Kobe Beef wrote:

@ Tyler_Runs_Lifts

Thanks and congrats on your result of the half marathon!!

I believe you are definitely on the right track.

I have never run Vienna marathon.

I hope there will be some runners at same pace on the race.

Thank you!

And it looks like there were 26 men who went sub 2h30 last year at the Vienna Marathon, so with any luck you'll have someone right there with you!