Another "Help a Rookie Marathoner" thread (Read 1070 times)

Question:  I see some comments, questioning the wisdom of doing workouts faster  than your actual race.  I am assuming you are only referring to long runs and not speedwork or tempo runs, correct?

 

Maybe it's just me --- but if I tried to run a half or a full at a faster pace then I had ever trained at ... that would be a recipe for disaster. I dont think it's realistic to expect your legs to go faster all of a sudden when you've never asked them to do that before. 

 

I do my longer runs considerably slower than my Goal Race Pace, but my coach ensures we have several runs each week that incorporates good chunks of time at either Goal Race Pace or Tempo (plus Intervals in speed workouts).    This ensures my body knows what it feels like at that pace.  You have to be train your body to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

 

It sounds like your goal is to simply finish the marathon and enjoy it, right? If that's the case ... if I were you .... i would ignore all the comments about how fast or slow you should be running, and just do it at a nice easy comfortable pace that you are sure you can sustain. If your goal were to finish in a certain time, that's a different story.

 

When I did my first half, I deliberately chose a very conservatvie pace plan ... I wanted to enjoy it, and I did. Since then, I've done another half and am training for my 3rd -- in both of these, I have very specific time goals, so my training is completely different and incorporates both slow long runs and plenty of tempo and speedwork as well. Like you, I am going to attempt my first full marathon in the fall and my only goal will be to finish. My training will then be primarily about getting miles under my belt, and not about my pace.

I guess we digressed quite a bit from the original post/question and I guess I'm sort of responsible.  

I think I've pointed this out here at RA somewhere before (can't remember if I got criticized for saying it) but here's basically what you NEED to do in training;  You go far--far enough or sometimes further than your actual race distance.  You go fast--at the targeted race pace or often, but not always, faster than race pace.  You also go some distance at near race pace CONTINUOUSLY so your body can learn what is expected in the actual race.  You shuffle these 3 things in your training program and fill in with easy recovery running (sometimes known as "junk miles").  That's pretty much all there is to do.

The thing is; you shall never EVER put them all together in training--the only time you do that is in the race.   Otherwise, you'll go down as yet another common example of "leave your best run on your training".  

Things have changed it seems like.  Nowadays, it is more common to see people doing better in workout (go further and/or faster in training) and the race is merely the place for them to pick up a finisher's medal or T-shirts and have a good time; a big party.  That's fine too.  But I personally still, and always, look at a race as the real thing and training is merely a dress rehearsal.  

To answer your question, yes, you DO go faster in training than your actual race pace--you do need to get your body used to that speed.  But how many times have you seen someone doing mile repeats at, say, 6:00 minute pace only to "plod" along the marathon at 9 or slower?  I mean, why?  It's either the person is doing his/her intervals waaaaaaay too fast; faster than necessary.  Or his/her stamina sucks and can't even put it together for a marathon.  You need to be reasonable and know what you need to do.  Speaking of junk miles, and someone else had mentioned this several times throughout; junk miles is not just very slow run; if you do your workout too fast, faster than necessary and you, consequently, hurt yourself unnecessarily, THAT is junk miles.  You want to go just fast enough in training so your targeted race pace would feel easy.

Another thing so many people make a mistake of is the fact that, while you are still training, you should be tired to reproduce your best race pace.  I saw a FloTrack clip of Kara Goucher preparing for Boston.  In it, coach Salazar was saying something to an extent that he would like to see her do, I can't remember the exact pace but, something like 5:30 pace but "she's still training hard so 5:40 is fine..." or something like that.  Taper, if done correctly, can chop vital seconds off your pace.  Like I said before, when my wife ran her first marathon, all she did was distance work.  Granted, she had run a 5-mile race at around 7-minute pace so we knew she could run fast enough.  She did almost all her long runs at about 10~11 pace until the final weeks.  As she started to taper; meaning she stopped doing all the heavy workouts and freshened up and her pace NATURALLY came down.  The week before the marathon, she did an hour "jog" at 9-minute pace without her knowing she was running almost a minute per mile faster.  It just happened naturally.  In other words, we timed it right.  We still see people doing their final long run like 2 weeks before the marathon only "to gain confidence".  To gain confidence that you can do it; but to lose this vital freshening and natural "speeding up" process.  They are the ones toeing the start line, exhausted and having to start out conservatively (slower than your workout pace).  

The race is the real thing.  Dress rehearsal, however important it may be, is still nothing more than a dress rehearsal.  You work on pieces and you only put them all together in "the real thing".

...

 

How do I know this? A long time ago in my first marathon my 20 mile split was 1:58, my finish time was 3:15. After 20 consecutive sub-6:00 miles I couldn't break 75 minutes for the 10K. 

I have a friend who did just about that same "plan" -- very close to those same splits. He reported that it had some flaws; I think they involved disproportionate amounts of pain in that last 10K.