There are benefits to both contiguous running and broken intervals. Running without stopping wears you down, so it builds capillary beds and prepares you better for energy depletion. Running with stops wears you down less, so practices more ideal biomechanics and should allow you to run faster or with less strain. I think both are important during a marathon training cycle. A long, slow run is one extreme. Doing 8xmile is another extreme. Doing 5x5k or 15 miles steady state are kind of meeting in the middle, so definitely similar workouts, but with slightly different emphases.

I think you should ignore time goals for the most part when doing your workouts, except to keep you at least a little bit on track to meeting your ultimate goal. Consider running at marathon effort rather than marathon pace during some of those workouts. The problem then solves itself. Theoretically you will run slower during the workout than the race, because you do not have the benefit of the entire season's workouts. It's understandable that sometimes you feel better during a workout than you might a few weeks later during the actual race, but this should be more of a fluke than a way of doing business. If you run by effort then it's perfectly understandable to do something like train at a 7:00 pace, rest up, and a couple of weeks later run 6:50. If you target a 6:40 pace in training and that's slightly more grueling than what you can keep up for a marathon, then it's very likely a couple of weeks later you won't be able to run that fast in the marathon for the full distance. There are certainly benefits to running faster than marathon effort would allow you, but just make sure you allow for the mixture of it all in your training.

Running a steady state in the 6:40s is perfectly acceptable. You're probably uncertain whether it was harder than marathon effort or not. Good, I say! If you neither did too much, nor too little, then it was a good workout.

Looking at your specific workout, it was probably faster than marathon effort. You picked it up a bit during your last couple of miles, which is a luxury of it being an 8 mile run as opposed to a 26.2 mile run. You likely exceeded marathon effort both at the start and finish of the workout. It's a good workout, but you need to do more workouts in the next couple of months if you want that to be a comfortable pace for 26.2 miles.

No, I've never run on base before. Yet though I've had the TNT South in mind for my crucial workout, a 10-mile loop would certainly make the route less redundant. Except I should need to get started no later than 7 a.m. if I hope to have everything wrapped up by 9:30 a.m. Would there be convenient bathroom amenities available for those running on base?

 

Here's my e-mail exchange with Tami Graf:

DR is planning to come to the breakfast, but is scheduled to do a 17 mile run beforehand.  I told him to do it on the base loop and then come to the breakfast.  He would have to get on base before 7am to make this work.  Do you know if that is a possibility?

Thanks,
-Crystal

As long as someone is on the list it doesn't matter what time. Even if I am not there to open the Beach House before he gets there I'm pretty sure there is a porta john somewhere and there are also locker rooms at the golf course which is a bit further down the same road.

I did a hard 13 miler for me.  My legs are just dead.  This is my fifth straight day running and I did a hard tempo yesterday morning.  It was a DR type run, fairly fast past (it was on the Noland trail which runs probably 30 seconds slower than a flat paved trail like the three notch trials.

I would not recommend running a tempo the day before a long run, nor the day after. In fact, every tempo, interval workout, long run, and race you do should be bordered on both side by easy day buffers. And while your pace today was mostly sub-8:30/mi, I see that you had one mile over 11:00 and another over 12:00. What happened during those two miles?  Car break, not so much me, but the three guys I was running with took gu and water.  Today I ran my longest run ever that did not include and pauses and/or breaks.  I find that surprising because 21 miles is not that long.  Didn't you do a 24 miler in your last marathon cycle at Point Lookout.

 

Going back to the discussion about long tempos, I think that Joe would disagree with that final point --- about it being his style to stay aerobic/steady. Joe has always been a proponent of fast finishes/progressions. Just refer to this run, which was one of his most prominent exercises leading up to the New York Marathon.

 

Decent point on Joe.  I am sure he has gone anaerobic on his long tempos before, but he has done some without going anaerobic.  Even me, who generally doesn't like to go anaerobic on long tempos probably ends up going anaerobic on maybe a fourth of my long runs (defined as runs over ten miles). 

 

Thank you for all the info, Crystal. The base does sound conducive to running. Except, however, I have no idea how the 10-mile loop goes. I'll have to keep considering whether or not to I should try to run there on Saturday. It'd be no problem if I were just going for a typical long run --- it'd be fun to explore in that case --- but my workout in store will require great precision, and the TNT South may be mandatory. But I think I should still have a solid chance of making the breakfast if I get started at first light of day.

 

 

See bolded comments above

Not quite the same, but after consulting with my running log, the 13.2 miler I did yesterday was my 25th longest run since I got my Garmin Forerunner in June 2009.

Phil, I think that would be a rather brash move. You've got months to buildup for the Endless Summer 6, so why rush to 8 now? Granted, running the Holiday Lake 50k last year did seem to benefit your subsequent marathon (though you may be one of the first people ever to prepare for their first marathon by running an ultra-marathon). But 8 hours is a lot longer than 5 and a half (it would be akin to adding another significant long run on top of what you already did at Holiday Lake). That could be a whole lot of wear and tear to put on yourself, and it could take some time to fully recover --- which is something serious to consider in light of the marathon taking place barely a month later. As far as my training is concerned, I'm wary of any run that would much exceed 3 hours, which is why the longest slated long run on my schedule is to be 24 miles.

I think your training would be better served if you ran the half-marathon on Jan. 27th and gave yourself the goal of running it at a pace significantly faster than your desired marathon pace (e.g., if 7:15/mi is your hoped for MP, try to run the half at a narrowly sub-7:00/mi pace).

I estimate that Perry made over 250 left turns during his run yesterday evening.