Just some random thoughts on Marathon training. It takes
discipline and focus. I have seen many 12 to 16 week programs. Several are
online. Previous to the sea of online resources, I had the books from Jack
Daniels, Pete Pfitzinger, Arthur Lydiard, Tim Noakes, et cetera. I never
prescribed or signed onto any specific program but am always curious what the
suggestions are when it goes from week to week within the marathon training
cycle.
After seeing Jack Daniels speak on the topic of long
distance running and training, he warned of the one program fits all scenario
that is customary in the team environment (school programs for instance) with significant
numbers of athletes and abilities. Does it make sense to send all 50 middle
school kids out for the same warm up, workout, et cetera?
In general, if there is one thing I would suggest to anyone
for the marathon prep: get your miles in. I break training down to the two Q’s:
Quality and Quantity. When it comes to the longer distance races such as the
Marathon, I would take the quantity over quality. However, everyone is
different so I can hear Dr. Daniels echoing his issue with the one size fits
all coaching.
My recipe is broken down to weeks. I will have a peak week
of miles in the marathon program, say maybe 3 weeks out from the goal marathon
date. I will also have my longest long run scheduled there as well. But in
general, I try to hold consistent miles per week (50 - 60) no matter if I have
a 5K or marathon coming up. Nothing earth shattering there.
Most of my miles (pace per mile) are pedestrian by design.
With a few bouts of injuries in recent years, I will take the good health over
trashing my legs every day. Thus conversation pace for the most but I do
respect the need mix it up a bit. Introduce something at least one day per week
to get out of your comfort zone. I call this the “quality” aspect of training. This
could include track intervals, hill repeats, fartlek run on any terrain, or a
hard effort in your local fun run.
A race can substitute the quality effort but I will still
have a workout and a race within the week. Lastly, I include a long run. I will
have a long run on a weekly basis unless a race is planned for that weekend or
life circumstances get in the way. As I get older and less motivated by the
marathon distance, I have been letting up on the steady diet of the weekly long
runs and the weekly interval training. If it happens, it happens.
The Baystate Marathon is coming up this month and I wanted
to take a time out to reflect what the last 12 weeks looked like in terms of
the mileage per week. The miles and numbers do not lie. It is what it is. As I
mentioned in paragraph one above, I would sell people on getting in the miles
or quantity when focused on the marathon.
That said, I maintained an average of
51.26 miles per week since late July. My recent race results for a 5K, 10K, and
average mileage per week peg me for a 3:13 marathon or 7:22 per mile pace. I
can’t really argue with that. Of course, one has to consider all other
variables that go into race day so we’ll see. My average weekly miles in the 12
weeks heading into Boston 2017 were 53.08 but my legs still succumbed to the
warmest day that month and I shuffled the last 8 miles to a 3:34 marathon (goal
was 3:04).
Use this calculator and see what it slots you in for. Central
Mass Strider and teammate, Dave Lapierre shared it with me recently.
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