You be the coach. Mold me. (Read 1313 times)

“I much prefer specific anecdotal evidence of what's worked for you or a running partner” Keeping easy days really easy. I routinely went slower than 8:30 pace on those days last year and almost never faster than 8:00. Doing most of my harder running on longer days. Some of it would be steady and some would be sandwiching an inteval session or tempo run around long warm ups and cool downs. Sometimes it would include hill reps tacked on the end of a tempo run or mile reps at HM pace. Long warm ups and cool downs are a really simply addition to routine that can make a big difference. Long, easy run the day after a short race (usually <= 10k),="" but="" seldom="" the="" day=""></=> This general approach lead to a string of PR’s for me last year, including a 38:35 10k and a couple half marathons in 1:24’s. A guy who often trained with me, and used the same general approach, wrapped up the year with an all-time PR in the marathon of 2:55 at age 47. He had run something like 24 marathons prior to that.

What's worked for me is similar to what's worked for other folks. 1. Think of training as developing a habit or skill instead of as a linear process of improvement. What I mean by this is tune out the day-to-day fluctuations in mood, effort, and pace and focus more on things you can control: things like running every day or twice a day, running harder once a week or twice a week. 2. Work the effort of training from the inside out. So, in workouts I try not to "chase" a pace, but let the pace come to me. I make a firm distinction between training and racing, never approaching race effort in training, erring on the side of comfortable. 3. Be patient. Don't be greedy. Let the body develop and grow at its own pace. You cannot force your body to develop at a faster rate than it is capable of developing. Train according to your current level of fitness, not according to the idea of the runner you want to be. 4. Think about the purpose of each workout in terms of the specific demands of the event you are training for. Ask yourself what the point of the session is. "Making myself mentally tough" is not a good enough answer. 5. Experiment with a variety of workouts. Find what you thrive on, and repeat it. If you have a long time before your goal race, work on your weaknesses. As you approach your goal race, work on your strengths. 6. Run a variety of paces and at a variety of efforts. Teach yourself to be familiar with race effort, with tempo effort, with a steady effort, with an easy effort, with a recovery effort, with a long effort, with the feeling of being low on glycogen, with the feeling of "going anaerobic," with the feeling of high-end aerobic running, with long intervalsm short intervals, strides, and hills. Work on hitting an maintaining a pace without checking your watch. 7. Think of your training in terms of "ands" instead of "ors." Stimulate the body, then let it react. Once it has reacted and adjusted, we maintain that stimulus while adding another. So, what are the current stimuli that your training is providing? How can these stimuli be maintained while adding another? 8. Think about what you training is doing to your brain. What neural habits is it developing? Are you training the brain to let up at a certain effort? Are you training the brain to send signals of distress at another effort? Are you training the brain to be always ready to run? Are you training the brain to run hard when tired? To be able to make the decision to speed up after a long effort? To dread running fast? This is probably way too much, but these are some of the principles and questions that guide my training.

This is probably way too much, but these are some of the principles and questions that guide my training.

Thanks, I enjoyed it. Gives me a lot to think about. I'm glad to see that I do some of those things already. I don't chase paces and I added the tempo back in 4 weeks ago. Now I'm ready for another. Lately adding the mileage has just become ho-hum in terms of training. I still enjoy the runs, but.....(if you know what I mean) I have no doubt that I will be in 50-60 range for most of the marathon training, I'm trying to find ways of making it less ho-hum. I like fast finish runs, which helps. Strides are OK, but generally they seem to just push me out of my easy pace (not necessarily a bad thing) instead of just short bursts of "faster", which defeats the purpose of them I think. Maybe a weakness to work on. Definitely need to train the brain some more. The last 5K, first mile 6:45 and felt comfortably hard, then I lost sight of those in front of me and nobody was pushing me from behind, pace almost immediately dropped to 7:15 the rest of the way.

What's worked for me is similar to what's worked for other folks.

Jeff - your post above was some really good advice........good reading