Fall Marathon - General Training Outline (Read 861 times)

I am no expert - so pinch of salt needed. It seems as if you are preparing to race, ie to challenge for a decent time/place. A lot of people on here will say that you don't need to go over 20m as a long run. Some will say that they have raced well off a max long run of 14. Still others will say that 30m is way over the top. The best advice I have heard is that your max long run should be close to the time it will take you to race a marathon, but much slower. IE if you plan to race in 3hrs 30 then take 3hrs 30 to run a 20m long run. This is the rub: everyone is different. We are all an experiment of one. Yadda yadda yadda. Do what feels right for you and you won't go far wrong. (I think your plan is fine - in fact if it goes well you will be very well prepared - but as I said, I'm very far from being an expert)

"With 6 months to go I'd keep my long run about 2 hours." Why is that? Is it just a concern for an injury or is there something else? I am, too, planning for my first marathon in the fall but I regularly run more than 2 hours now on my long runs.. It is a simple function to my tortoise like speed.. But is this more harmful then perhaps running doubles at max 2 hours at a time?

Get "Advanced Marathoning" by Pete Pfitzinger...it'll tell you how to do it right! Steve

It only takes about 8 weeks to really train to race a marathon, once you've got the base. Really big long runs are your most race-specific workouts when you're marathon training so leave them until that last 8 weeks.

Good Info Mike. Concerning your comment, I also am eyeballing Bay State this year (Oct). Additionally, I'm getting pretty close to 40MPW (an new and record high for me) and am thinking I will level off for a while at 40 MPW and then consider doing a build approx 10 or 12 weeks prior to Bay State, which would include some increase mileage for my long runs and one longish run during the week (maybe 13 or something like that).... Also I did some speed work with the CMS this past year on Wed and plan on doing that again starting around May or so..... Not shooting for specific time, but secretly would like to break 4:00 -- and a 3:45 is BQ for me (I'm getting old) --- What additional advice would you have for me at this point - looking towards a decent BayState. One more thing --- Are you coming to STU's???

"With 6 months to go I'd keep my long run about 2 hours." Why is that? Is it just a concern for an injury or is there something else? I am, too, planning for my first marathon in the fall but I regularly run more than 2 hours now on my long runs.. It is a simple function to my tortoise like speed.. But is this more harmful then perhaps running doubles at max 2 hours at a time?

Running longer than two hours offers negligible benefit (when compared to running the balance of the time on different runs during the week), and offers dramatically increasing training stress, which means potential to reduce mileage or quality training during the week. Even two hours is really only appropriate for high volume runners. If your long run is longer than 25% of your total weekly volume, chances are you could train much more effectively by reducing it and adding those miles back in other places. Doing this, you could also run more mpw for the same amount of training stress. The only reason that you see elites running 20 mile long runs so frequently is because guess what, a 20 mile long run takes them 2 hours. Even in a race preparation setting, epic long runs are greatly overrated. The truth is that long runs are the third most important part of marathon training, behind 2)Miles Per Week, and 1) Consistency. Too many newbie or casual marathoners allow their long runs to take precedent over #1 and 2. It is not uncommon to see a runner who takes a day off before and after his long run. He is dedicating almost half of his week to one workout! These kind of runners may run a midweek medium-long run or workout, and then an insignificant amount of mileage in recovery runs. This kind of training is very unbalanced. The big misunderstanding about marathon training is that the long run offers conditioning that will allow you to run 26 miles 385 yards, and that without a (or several) long run of 20 miles, you will be hurting or may not even be able to complete the marathon. This is completely backwards. Long runs improve aerobic efficiency, and they do so when they are run at a quality aerobic effort. The vast majority of their benefit (above the benefit of any general aerobic run) happens in the 90 min to 2 hour range, after 2 hours it kind of tapers off, and many runners who run longer than 2 hours are not running at an optimal aerobic effort. The conditioning that will allow you to run 26 miles 385 yards comes primarily from miles per week, and consistency. Yes long runs can be part of that, but they offer nothing in terms of conditioning that daily aerobic runs do not. If you want to go run 20 miles every week, and it does not effect your miles per week or consistency, then by all means do so. But I'd be hard pressed to believe that, unless you are running 80 miles per week. Here is an article about the two coaches who understand the marathon better than anyone else in America (at least, better than anyone who publishes training advice for sub-elite runners): http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=4447

We're talking about general weekly long runs six months out from a marathon, not key workouts during a race preparation phase. That being said, I never ran longer than 2 hours for my last marathon (which was a PR by a long shot), and will not be running longer than 2 hours for my next marathon. I think that 16 miles is plenty, and when I run only 2 hour long runs, it allows me to run more total weekly mileage, more quality workouts, and more consistency. I can understand someone wanting to run for 2:30 in training, but beyond that it gets really questionable.