My training schedule for the Columbus Marathon - Thoughts? (Read 1465 times)

Honestly, I think your program looks fine except that the 13/13 double is unnecessary, and possibly counter-productive. Better to go 13 one weekend, 19 the next alternately, and include some miles at race pace in those runs. .

I have revised my schedule and was wondering if some of you could take another look at it. I still have a lot of 13/13 for Saturday and Sunday but I thought it was important to get the miles in. Some of those 13's on Saturday will be hill work other's a sort of tempo run later in the schedule if the 8 mile tempo runs on Thursday are being run consistently under 8 min miles. The Sunday 13's will all be easy runs. I am guessing that your suggestion would be to take out a couple of my 13/13 and just do a Saturday run of 19 or 18? That kind of goes agains my whole logic of not running between 15 - 19 miles or are you suggesting just add in one or two let's say 18 mile runs? Updated schedule link below: http://www.editgrid.com/user/ho0mwp/Training_Schedule_Final

I am guessing that your suggestion would be to take out a couple of my 13/13 and just do a Saturday run of 19 or 18?

Exactly. And include a few miles at planned race pace.

Mike, I think JeffOBlue's message summed it up best for me when he quoted Dr. Owen Anderson's book Great Workouts for Popular Races Jeff: I think that is what is nice about this program. See I won't be really running a long run every week. I don't see 13 as long but more of a intermediate run. Not too long but not too short. So the weeks where I have those in it will sort of be like a rest week compared to the 20 - 24 mile weeks. I even drop my mileage down 8 miles and take an extra day off on the weeks after these runs. Did you see my latest update? <link>http://www.editgrid.com/user/ho0mwp/Training_Schedule_Final I can always change my plans as the weeks go on depending on how my body feels but I really like this plan in theory. I never said I was planning on mastering this is 16 weeks. I've been running for 5-6 years now and I have run 2 hard marathons (columbus is supposed to be a lot easier). However, I realize I have a lot to learn from people like you and others on this forum. I changed my schedule already thanks to alot of the advice I have received in this thread. I am just trying to decide if I want to throw in a couple of 15 - 19 mile weekends and only run one day. Do you really think 4 miles of speed work, a 8 mile tempo run every week and a long run >19 miles every other week is too much? The 8 miles this week felt great and I haven't been slacking off before starting the first week of this schedule. I have been averaging over 42 miles a week for the last couple of months up to a high of 56. I think my goals in the training is to get more miles in at race pace then I did in my last race. I wish I could find a good 10K and a good 15K to race in but those are hard to find. Thoughts?

In general I'm not a fan of Owen Anderson. He's long on physiological theory and short on real world experience with real athletes. He tends to extrapolate directly from the lab to conclusions about how athletes should train. But even still, nothing in the excerpt Jeff included supports eschewing all runs of 15 to 19 miles. It talks about gradually building to 20 and 22 mile training runs. You would assume that to build to 20 miles one would need to hit distances in that 15 - 19 range at some point. If you want to know what I would do, look at what I am doing. My goal marathon is one week before yours. In the next 3 months I will do lots of 15-19 mile training runs. And lots of long runs that include some marathon pace running. I'll probably also run a 30K road race and a half marathon in there somehwere. In general what I try to do pretty much year round is two big workouts a week, usually, but not always, on Wednesday and Sunday. Lately my mid-week big workout has been 10 miles and my weekend big workout has been 13-15 miles each with some quality. In terms of average pace these tend to be my two fastest runs of the week. The other days of the week I just run easy mileage, as much as I can handle while still recovering for the big days. In August and September, as I start to gear up for the marathon, the only real change is that I'll make those two big workouts each a bit longer and more marathon specific. So instead of 10 and 13, I might do 13 and 17 and focus the "quality" on marathon pace versus faster stuff. I don't plan things out too specifically but if things go the way I want then a typical week for me by late august or sept might look something like this: mon - 6 easy jog tue - 8 easy with strides wed - 13 with 3 x 2000m @ tempo thu - 6 easy jog fri - 10 easy with strides sat - 8 easy sun - 17 with 10 @ MP

Well I made my first adjustment today. Instead of running 13 I only ran 8.5. I would like to say it was because of all the great advice you guys gave me. However, instead of doing the smart thing and running a flat easy 13 I thought I would do one with a big hill (.25 miles, elev gain of 150 feet) and most of the course being in sunlight including the hill. Not a smart thing to do when you have high temps and high humidty. Anyway, no need to do this course anymore unless it is cloudy outside and cool. Columbus is pretty flat so I don't think I need to worry about hills too much. The good news is that I cut it short when I saw that I couldn't get my heart rate down even though as I was giving the same effort as I was at the begining. My HR was about 152 Avg. After the hill my HR was avg 160+ My pace was good though but I didn't feel I could go any slower. My pace recorded 9:14 but I felt like I was going slow. So much still to learn.

This is off topic, but Jeff, I noticed from the time you posted, that we finished with nearly the same time at CMM this year (aka you beat me by 12 sec). Small world... As far as the topic goes, I would suggest changing the 13/13 weekends to 16 on saturday and 4 in the a.m. 6 in the p.m. on sunday (or vice versa).

Cool--you must have been finishing strong (or at least steady) because I don't remember seeing you out there. I ran pretty much with the lead women from mile 10 or so on... Nice run at Grandma's, too--you definitely finished strong there as well. Smart racing for a young buck! Hey, you should check out the 2000 mile club: http://www.runningahead.com/groups/2000/Forum

Bearcat, I like doubles, but when I double, one of my runs is usually very easy and short (30 min). I think that the reason they work for me is that I have a hard time running easy enough on my primary run of the day, so it's a way for me to get in more volume without running myself into the ground. I know the purpose of the extra run--recovery and a little more time on the legs to build aerobic strength. It's easier for me psychologically to run slow if I know I've already run--or will still. Yes, I have a problem. So, if you're the type of runner who likes to push, then doubles might work for you, but I would recommend that you don't look at both runs as serious training runs (like the 13/13 double you mention). If you feel like you're not ready to run 26 miles at once and breaking it into two runs for that reason, then in my opinion you'd be better off running a distance that you feel more comfortable with in one run.