My Marathon Training (Read 1390 times)

I just finished the core of my Fall marathon training plan, and now that I’ve entered my taper, I thought I would take the opportunity to report on some of what I’ve accomplished so far. My apologies in advance because I know this will be a long post, but I saved up quite a few milestones over the last 15 weeks. Before I dive into the numbers, I want to give a little context. At age 41, I am in my third year of being a serious runner. I'm not especially fast or naturally talented. My marathon PR is a 3:29 – decent, but hardly elite. I'm looking to BQ at the St. George Marathon on October 4 (need a 3:20 or better). With that goal in mind, fifteen weeks ago I embarked on an extremely challenging marathon training program, resulting in several training PRs and a couple racing PRs as well. Here are some of the milestones I reached during my high mileage training experiment: Effort PRs 1. Highest Mileage Month: 362 miles. That was in July. August was a close second at 360, and June was a very respectable 324. September should come in around 302, even with my taper. Before this training cycle, my previous best month was around 260 miles. 2. Highest Weekly Mileage: 100.6 miles. The week included a midweek 17 miler and a weekend 24 miler, plus a tempo run of over 50 minutes at HM pace. Before this training cycle, my previous best week was 80.1 miles (I surpassed this old weekly PR in 9 of the 15 weeks during my training). 3. Most 20+ Mile Training Runs: 8. My longest long run was 24 miles, accompanied by three 22 milers and four 20 milers. Previously, I had never run more than four 20+ mile training runs in a training cycle. 4. Most 14+ Mile Training Runs: 26. At my paces, these are runs of around 2 hours or more. I averaged close to two of these per week. Previously, I hadn't done mid-week runs longer than 12 miles, so this volume of running was entirely new to me. Consistency PRs 5. Average Weekly Mileage: 80.7 miles. My weeks were 70, 68, 81, 82, 74, 78, 88, 87, 87, 67, 100, 64, 86, 83 and 93. My prior average weekly mileage best was 51.1 miles during my last marathon training cycle. 6. Consecutive Days Running: 45 days. During that streak, I ran 56 separate workouts (I frequently double) and an average of over 10 miles per day. I had another streak of 44 days. In fact, I only took two "off" days during the entire 15 weeks (one for injury, one for fatigue). My prior long streak was 10 days. Racing PRs 7. Half-Marathon: 1:36:08. Raced in early August, this was 4 minute, 34 second improvement on my prior PR (set at the same race 12 months ago). My half-marathon pace dropped from 7:41/m to 7:20/m. 8. 10K: 43:03. Raced in late August, this was a 1 minute, 10 second improvement on my prior PR (set after the end of my prior marathon training). My 10K pace dropped from 7:07/m to 6:56/m. I finished in the top 2% of this 10K, my best field placement in any large (2000+ finishers) race. So there you have it: 1211 total training miles so far, in 142 separate workouts, aggregating 170 hours, 12 minutes. Whew! Ok, that's way more than enough patting myself on the back when my goal race is still several weeks away. However, I do want to make a few parting observations on my training: Running this level of mileage is very difficult, especially for someone like me who's only moderately talented. Not only do the extra miles themselves take a lot of time, but it takes me longer to run them because my training paces are significantly slower than the typical runner who might tackle this kind of workload. It added up to a lot of time on my feet (an average of 11.5 hours running per week), and frankly I consider myself a bit lucky to have made it through the hard part of my training without injury or burnout. I could not have completed this level of training without the guidance of a well-designed training plan. In my case, it was Pete Pfitzinger's 18 week "70+" marathon training plan from his book Advanced Marathoning. By studying the book, I knew the intended purpose of every workout, as well as how every single workout was related to all the other workouts. This gave me the confidence to attempt a training regimen far beyond my comfort zone, and the commitment to see it through as designed by Pfitzinger. Apropos of the foregoing, I could not have completed this level of mileage without a substantial volume of recovery workouts, run at a sufficiently low intensity to permit true recovery between hard workouts. I credit Pete's plan with dictating a generous quota of recovery runs (his 70+ schedule prescribes an average of about 20 miles of recovery running per week). This allowed me to make the leap to running 80-90 miles per week, 7 days a week, while significantly upping the volume and intensity of my hard days too. I also credit my Garmin's HR monitor for helping me stay honest on recovery days. Having gone through this "experiment" myself, I now firmly believe that higher mileage is the single best way for most runners to improve their performance in general. However, high mileage isn't a miracle cure. My HM and 10K times both came down nicely, but not phenomenally. I basically expect the same for my marathon time: notable improvement, but nothing incredible. My best guess is that my marathon PR will come down by around 15 minutes. That's a heck-of-a-lot of training for a (hopefully) 15 minute improvement. High mileage will almost certainly help an average runner become a better average runner – maybe even a very good average runner – but it isn’t going to amazingly transform them into an elite athlete. I think there's only so much improvement a runner can make in 15 weeks, and no amount of training is going to change those genetic/physiological limitations. I'm learning that substantial improvement takes commitment and hard work over a substantial period of time – several years, let alone several training cycles. Taking on a higher training workload is not a shortcut to greatness; it’s but one step in the progress curve (albeit an important one). I admit that my high mileage "experiment" might have been a case of overkill. It's possible that I could have made the exact same gains while training 20 miles less each week. But, I’ll say this: even if it was overkill, at least I know that I did everything possible to help me get that BQ in St. George. I'll take pride in that, even if I ultimately fall short of my goal. That being said, I have no regrets about tackling this program. No one knows their true limits until they test them. When I started running three years ago, it would have been utterly inconceivable to imagine myself running a 100 mile training week, or a 360 mile month, or a 45 day running streak. I would have sworn that such efforts were simply beyond my innate abilities. I know better now, and I'm a better athlete for it. Thanks for reading. Cheers to everyone finishing or about to finish up their Fall marathon training.

Awesome work, Berner. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the summer of mikey, too, which pales compared to the summer of Berner. We can disagree all day long on the minutae of training but I'll always give respect to anyone who goes out every day and does the work. And you've done the work. Kick ass at St. George.

Berner - Can you speak a little more to what type / frequency of speed work you were doing as part of this plan? I'm nowhere near ready for something like this, but it would be nice to see the other pieces in your experiment, for future reference. Thanks

Very nice recap and congrats on the many accomplishments. Trust in your training and enjoy the race.

Berner, a very well deserved pat on the back. Enjoy the feeling of having done all the hard work which WILL lead to a BQ. Train hard, race easy. Nicely done.

Did you do any downhill running? You live in Chicago. StG marathon falls 1/2 mile over the length of its course, which is a TON. You could roll a marble down it (or a slinky).

Wow, Berner...I'll be thinking about your race as we drive to Milwaukee. I hope you get that BQ...you have certainly worked hard for it and it would be a wonderful reward for your effort!

VEry very impressive Berner