In February of 1987 my brother in law said he was going to run Boston and asked me to run it with him. This left me ten weeks to train. I figured the BAA would waive the qualification for me since I had qualified easily in previous years. I called Ron Daws and asked for his help and he said he would put something together for me if I would write him with some details about my current training etc. I had read his book "The Self-Made Olympian" many times and told him so. I was then and am now a huge Ron Daws fan. Well, true to his word, he replied to my letter with quite a long letter of his own, single-spaced and typed and with a handwritten set of tables including the ten week training program he thought best. Before I go back to work next week, I am taking this week to do some small tasks, one of which was to transcribe his letter and notes so that I could share them with others. His letter and recommendations were a reminder to me that people don't prepare for a marathon today the way we did back then. I was 41 years old when I got Daws' response and I thought it perfectly reasonable. Today most people would think he was trying to kill them. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy it: 2 Feb 1987 Dear __________ Thanks for your flattering, enthusiastic and fun to read letter. It’s always good to bounce ideas, so I’ll do what I can here, but I’ll also keep it relatively short in order to get this posted before you’re half way to Boston. The best approach would be to target Boston only and then write out one sustained build-up. If you can get the BAA to waive your qualification time, you wouldn’t have to take so many short-cuts in order to run a late March marathon and then recover. The marathon, unlike most other races, presents an extra racing dimension—namely, you must be able to make the distance. Then you go for time. So, as you know, for marathoners, the initial mileage base has added importance. But to race, you also need stamina and speed, so you’ll have to take the remaining weeks available before Boston (about 10 weeks) and carefully parcel out the best combination of workout types. They essentially are 1) long endurance runs (20+ miles), 2) faster, shorter distance runs (6-15 miles), 3) faster interval-type work like fartlek, hills and fast reps, and finally, 4) recovery runs. Unique to Boston is that you have to race up and down hills when tired (up Heartbreak and down the other side). Therefore, it’s essential that you retain at least one hill W.O. per week right through. The basic strategy I’d recommend, realizing that you’ve got to make the best of the time remaining, would be: 1) Get your mileage up to about 80/week, going slow and being ready to back off if you need to. 2) Get used to hills using the hill W.O. The beauty of this training is that it serves as a distance run (make it last 12 miles total), it’s an interval workout, and you learn to run up and down hills. 3) Don’t neglect fast interval-type work. You won’t run that fast during the marathon, but you’ll need the mechanical efficiency, increased anaerobic threshold, and tolerance to anaerobic fatigue that these workouts provide. If you can run fast, you can tolerate the slower marathon pace much longer. 4) During the last 5 or so weeks race up to roughly 15 miles roughly every other week (but not the week before the marathon. Races put the finishing touches on training. I’ve mapped out two approaches to Boston, the preferred one without any detour to qualify. Given the week’s main training objective I think you should pursue each week, I’ve blocked out a typical week’s work. It’s just a suggestion, and there are many ways you could customize it. But try to retain the main ingredients and pattern of hard work and recoveries (e.g., you wouldn’t schedule consecutive interval days). Lastly, although your preparations won’t be ideal, enthusiasm and smarts count for a lot, and you seem to have an abundance of those. Plan to run Boston as well as you can given your somewhat abbreviated preparations and then take it from there. Cheers, and all the best to you. Keep in touch. Ron" [Note: the letter was followed by a handwritten table for ten weeks of training, with two columns, one headed “Have to Qualify” and the other headed “Don’t Qualify.” Here they are:] "Ten weeks for Have to Qualify: 1. Base training 2. Base training 3. Hills and Intervals 4. Hills and intervals 5. Hills and intervals 6. Easy hills and intervals 7. Qualify for the marathon, easy week 8. Hills and marathon training 9. Hills and marathon training 10. Easy week, then Boston Ten weeks for Don’t Qualify: 1. Base training 2. Base training 3. Hill training 4. Hill training 5. Hills and intervals training 6. Hills and intervals training 7. Hills and marathon training 8. Hills and marathon training 9. Hills and marathon training 10. Easy week, then Boston Base Hill Training Hills and Intervals Hill and Marathon Sunday Longest run Longest run Longest run Longest run Monday Recovery run Recovery Recovery Recovery Tuesday Harder medium long Hill workout (10-12 miles) Hill workout Hill workout Wednesday Recovery Recovery Recovery Recovery Thursday Harder medium long Medium long Hill workout Hard run 6-15 miles Friday Recovery Recovery Recovery Recovery Saturday Aerobic fartlek Hill workout Intervals Race, TT, or Intervals Long run—Up to 24-26 miles Recovery run—Easy distance (as much as still allows a recovery) Aerobic fartlek—Warmup, then alternate marathon pace with short recoveries Easy week before marathon—See the book for this." Spareribs

Me, too. Interesting that you do pretty tough-looking workouts on Saturday, the day before your longest run (24-26 miles), and it looks like you do these 24-26 mile long runs every week.

I am glad you said that Spareribs. I run 20 milers almost every weekend in a marathon training cycle, but try never to go over the 3 hour limit. This time limit becomes even more important as we get older too. This was written for an even younger Ribs---his eternal youth non-withstanding. Coach once told me that anything over 3 hours won't do much as far as performance and will likely add to injury. Pace is as important as cumulative miles after you have built a base. This is a great plan and matches some of workouts I use. Thanks for sharing this! Karin

I have no argument with that at all. One of the things we get confused about here is: What is best to do to train optimally for (insert any distance race) and, What is best to do if you are over 40, 50, 60? I have learned the hard way to be more conservative because I would like to keep running. And yet we see the same people get hurt all the time because they use a 30 year-old's training program. Use these Lydiard and Daws programs with this in mind. I run best at 60/week. I get hurt there however and have to settle on 40-50. Who knows what I will be able to do now? I should include Tammy in here and I almost wrote to her privately, but I was tempted to advise her about her track workout tonight. So much of the advice focused on track distances, level of effort, and recovery times. I would have advised her, and I regret I didn't, "why not just do a few, no more than 4, 200 meter runs at slightly faster pace than you normally do on an easy run?" I thought MS' advice to her was the best, but it missed this point. The idea here is that speed, even a slight increase in speed, has a huge slamming and jarring effect on the muscles, joints and bones that you don't get from running easily. For your first track workout, why not run the shorter distances and evaluate the next day how it affected your legs? Running is a tough sport. Spareribs

Yes, Ks, you are exactly right. I didn't phrase this correctly. What I had intended to point out is that she should do shorter repeats but not at the fast repeat speed. In other words, let's suppose she runs a 9:00 minute mile in the ten K. Now she's headed to the track to do her very first workout. I'd rather she do just a few 200's to get used to the faster speed, but not run any faster than 8:15-8:30 speed. This is not a traditional track workout, but just a way of getting her feet wet and experiencing running at slightly faster speeds. Two days after that track workout, she will have a good idea of how her legs feel and then she should move those distances up as you suggest. Spareribs