From 2:36 to 2:29, ?? for Spaniel (Read 721 times)

It is hard to say exactly. I ran 2:37 at Boston 2001, and that was a dream race for me (ie, I ran up to my potential given my training). A year later I ran 2:36 at Glass City (Toledo) Marathon 2002, but I was VERY hypothermic into a 15-20 mph headwind the last 10 miles so I'd probably improved to 2:32-2:33 potential by adding 10-20 mpw onto my training. Over the summer of 2002 I consistently ran 60-70 mpw but was not doing any serious marathon training. In early August I ran a decent 10-miler (sub-56 on a very challenging course) and elected to run Chicago with only 2 months to prepare. I elected to do a moderate mileage/high intensity program given the short time frame. I did intervals on Tuesdays, like 8X800 and 6X1000 or 4-5Xmile. At that time I'd split the shorter repeats into 2 sets with a longer recovery double that of the regular recovery between intervals between the sets (I don't believe in that any more). On Thursdays I did a medium-long run of 12-14 miles but did LONG, demanding tempo runs of 6-10.5 miles during them. Additionally, I only averaged in the 70s mpw with a high of 83 during this period, below the 90-100mpw I'd reached training for Toledo. I kept the mileage a little lower because even on most of my easy days I did some form of quality, even if it was 10X200m FAST/1min slow. I actually didn't do well for the long runs, the longest GOOD one was 16 miles though I did a couple of 20-milers on HOT days where I had to walk portions to avoid heat stroke. The result was that when I started my taper 2 weeks out I felt I was at the very limit of what my body could handle before I snapped. I hit the taper perfectly, came into Chicago and had an amazing race to run 2:29. I probably could have gone a little faster but I had an issue at the start and missed getting into my corral up front, so I had to take the sidelines and took 30sec to cross the line. I went out too fast with the adrenaline and didn't slow back down for 6 miles. This cost me over the last 3 miles. If I could go back, I'd obviously take longer to prepare and use a different strategy. While that plan worked it was not optimal. I go with evenly-recovered intervals now, 800s early working up to 3X3K with 5min recovery. I am still a BIG fan of the medium-long run with long tempo work. I'd have figured a way to get the long runs on cooler days. I'd have not done the "quality every day" as I had longer to prepare and would have had easier easy days. I would have run higher weekly mileage. But all this assumes I would have made the decision to run the marathon earlier. In 2006 I did everything right and ran like 8 of 9 weeks 100 mpw or more, Tuesday intervals, Thursday medium-long runs, and weekend long runs with fast finishes better than marathon pace. This led me to an awesome 10K a month prior to my goal marathon that had me thinking 2:21-2:23 was realistic. But I got a hamstring injury from the spikes and went into the marathon VERY flat, giving up my aspirations at only 3 miles, going thru half in 1:12:30, and decided just to run sub-6 from 15 miles on to get a PR and did 2:28. I'd recommend: 1) Mileage. Run more, you should get faster. 2) Get a solid medium-long run in with tempo work. Forget 4-mile tempo runs, too short. Maybe every other one but you need longer efforts. 3) Some effort in every other long run. Alternate long (18-23) with pretty long (16-18) and put some solid effort over the last 25% of the pretty long ones and the last mile of the long ones. 4) keep some intervals for speed. Keep recoveries relatively short and build them up over a mile in length.

I'd recommend: 1) Mileage. Run more, you should get faster. 2) Get a solid medium-long run in with tempo work. Forget 4-mile tempo runs, too short. Maybe every other one but you need longer efforts. 3) Some effort in every other long run. Alternate long (18-23) with pretty long (16-18) and put some solid effort over the last 25% of the pretty long ones and the last mile of the long ones. 4) keep some intervals for speed. Keep recoveries relatively short and build them up over a mile in length.

Thanks. All of this advice sounds reasonable. Right now I'm trying to get healthy, but the hope is that I can get in shape to run 2:35 by this fall and then aim towards something faster than that in spring of 2009. That's when I'm scheduled to finish my Ph.D., and it would be awesome to hit a sub 2:30, too. I'm a former DIII runner with a 3:59 1500m and 15:09 5k PR from college, but just started training seriously again last year. I was able to run 2:38 off of 70-90 mpw of high-end aerobic mileage (6:20-6:40 pace) and a hard med. length (8-10 mile) tempo or mile repeats (~10k pace) once a week. I think that by backing off a bit on my everyday runs (down to 7:30's) I can add some more quality and stay away from the PF problems that emerged this fall. ciauxc1980, I had similar advice from a local runner who I respect. Thanks for your input. I guess I've been at this long enough to know that to a large extent it's a make it as you go sort of endeavor.