I do it more as a courtesy for you than for myself. I think you generally worry about germs and such more than I do. I can only imagine the awkwardness of sweat started flying off my hand and hitting you after each arm stroke.

DR, I agree that you are probably risking injury by doing too much. But your solution to it boggles me. That's still a really hard workout.

True steady state effort is very close to marathon pace. I'm guessing by your approach to training that you've been dreaming that your steady state pace may translate to your marathon pace, but considering how hard you run your steady states that's going to be hard to guarantee. Having said that, doing significant volume at faster than steady state pace does not strike me as ideal. It does not translate well to racing the actual marathon.

I say this for several reasons. The first reason is that you get 95% of the benefit of the same workout by doing it slower and more controlled. The second reason is that significant volume workouts faster than steady state pace are likely to deceive you into going out too hard in the marathon. It's a scientific fact that for approximately 18-22 miles you can run faster than marathon pace because your fueling stores last about that long. A marathon is longer than this. Think of an easy run. You can do 6 miles at 8:00 pace and be pretty confident that you could do 9 miles at an 8:00 pace, too. That's because your energy supply remains unchanged whether it's 6 aerobic miles or 9 aerobic miles. If you are moving at a brisk pace for 20ish miles your glycogen stores are going to get pretty depleted, but you will have done 20ish miles without reaching that depletion. So you need to realize that those workouts do not translate to the full marathon difference, because the fueling is different.

The marathon is primarily an aerobic effort. Going faster than steady state means you are practically going tempo pace. That's not bad for improving fitness, but I don't see how it's a marathon-specific workout. If you do 5x5k at your marathon pace or even slightly slower you will be getting a specific relevant workout that is simultaneously a better race indicator and less taxing on your system. I think you have more to gain by easing the pace. Jumping in at 5x5k is particularly treacherous, as you don't even know how well you'd handle doing 4x5k. The workouts should never really feel exhausting. You should mostly feel like it's just a really tedious workout because of its duration. Coincidentally this is how your marathon should feel if you don't want to implode by mile 22.

I remember reading a pseudo-scientific article by a coach I respect who argued that there is a metabolic difference between aerobic marathoners versus other distance runners who do a lot of threshold or faster running and try to move up to the marathon. He claims the threshold runners don't do as well in the marathon because they are not as efficient at 26.2 miles as their more aerobic counterparts. I agree with him to an extent. The threshold runners end up training their body mechanics and fueling to run at faster paces than their marathon pace and for a shorter duration. The marathon ends up feeling unnatural and overly long. The threshold runner finishes workouts exhausted and unsure he could have continued; whereas, the aerobic runner finishes workouts feeling like he could have continued further had he wished, which is a better indicator of potential at the distance and also allows his training to resume with less recovery.

I'm going to stop now for fear of losing coherency. I think all of us as fans of your career are concerned that you will tire significantly in the latter portion of your marathon. Your biggest pitfalls in my opinion have historically been 1) lack of overall weekly volume in mileage and 2) over-emphasis on epic workouts that mirror race/exhausting efforts rather than targeted training.

P.S. I'd consider scrapping something like the hills entirely. I don't know what they do for your marathon that two loops of SMRSP wouldn't do. Hills train anaerobic ability and fast-twitch muscle fiber. They're a good workout for overall fitness, but are likely to put your body in a state of acidosis for a day or two just to train two things irrelevant to marathon efficiency. MTA: Much good training advice recommends doing special blocks of training about once every three weeks just to address versatility, so I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'd argue at 70ish miles a week that saving your energy for 10-15 extra miles or so that week would be a better boost to marathon training than exhausting yourself on hills. Two days of easy doubling could give a big boost in red blood cell count that in a marathon is going to pay off more than anaerobic fitness or fast-twitch muscle.

P.P.S. I recommend doing your longest distance 3 weeks out. You can do a reduced workout that's based on effort two weeks out and still be practicing the beneficial pace and effort. If you do a reduced distance run two weeks out, well, the workout misses its whole point of providing good distance.

Here's a copy of a post I just made in some other forum, for you all's amusement. (DW = Crystal)

DW went out for a run and was cold so did a progressive 5K.

I ran later, and as I started, I thought, why don't I try some steady-state, and it turned into a progressive 5K.

Seems like all my unplanned progressions are progressive 5Ks.

This one was extremely similar to one a couple weekends back, with which I was really happy.

Maybe 5K is just my destiny.

It would have to be a progressive 5k.

I'm thinking I'll be doing more skiing than running this morning!

 

Speaking of progressive 5ks, perhaps that might be the remedy to my controversial 5 X 5k plan. That is, a progressive progression of 5ks. Something like ...

 

*5k #1 ... narrowly break 20:00 (you know that I could do that in my sleep!)

*5ks #2-3 ... get more legitimately steady state like and finish narrowly sub-19:00

*5k #4 ... focus on a narrowly sub-6:00/mi pace and target 18:30

*5k #5 ... go all out and try to finish as much below 18:00 as possible

That sounds like a hard workout.  What would be your recovery between?

There's the small fact that four out of five of your repeats would be done faster than goal race pace.

Do you plan to do any running at all at your marathon effort prior to the marathon?