MARATHON TRAINING SUMMARY

On June 3, I posted the following about my marathon training plan:

"Main goal: to finish in less than 3 hours. (A more specific goal time is TBD later)

Main strategies: 1) Run more, progressing toward around 80 miles per week.

                        2) Emphasize tempo runs and long runs incorporating tempo-pace running.

                        3) Race less: only 3 tune-up races in late Summer and Fall.

Phases: 1) 10 weeks increasing mileage to around 80 miles per week (June 3 - August 11).

            2) 8 weeks emphasizing long tempo workouts (August 12 - October 6).

            3) 3 week taper (October 7 - October 27)."

I go on to say that in accordance with strategy 2) I'll follow the key workouts in Jack Daniels' marathon training plan. I have pretty much done exactly what I planned to do, with the main exception being that I only managed to run 80 miles in a single week. Here are my weekly mileage totals for the 20 weeks prior to the marathon, beginning on June 10, with some notes about how much non-easy pace running I did each week:

Week 20: 60 miles (including 4 miles at tempo pace)

Week 19: 63 miles (including a 4 mile race)

Week 18: 65 miles (including 3.25 miles at tempo pace and a 5k race)

Week 17: 45 miles (all easy)

Week 16: 68 miles (including 3 miles at tempo and 2.25 miles at 5k paces, and lots of hills)

Week 15: 63 miles (including 3 miles at 5k pace, and lots of hills)

Week 14: 72 miles (including 3 miles at 5k and 4 miles at tempo paces, and lots of hills)

Week 13: 45 miles (including 1.5 miles at 5k and 5 miles at tempo paces)

Week 12: 70 miles (including 4 miles at tempo pace)

Week 11: 53 miles (including 6 miles at tempo pace)

Week 10: 70 miles (including a 20k race at marathon pace and 3 miles at tempo pace)

Week 9:   75 miles (including 5 miles at tempo pace)

Week 8:   75 miles (including 4 miles at tempo pace)

Week 7:   40 miles (including 4 miles at tempo pace)

Week 6:   60 miles (including a half-marathon race)

Week 5:   80 miles (including 10 miles at tempo pace)

Week 4:   76 miles (including 3 miles at tempo pace)

Week 3:   40 miles (including a 16.3 mile metric-marathon race at marathon pace)

Week 2:   52 miles (including 8 miles at tempo pace)

Week 1:   41 miles (planned, with 3 miles at tempo pace)

Avg. last 20 weeks: 60.65 miles

Avg. last 16 weeks: 61.25 miles

I started shifting my training toward a marathon focus around 20 weeks out but didn't fully get going until 16 weeks out, once I put a couple more short races behind me. So I include averages for both 20 and 16 weeks. For pretty much this entire period, my 5k training pace has been between 5:45-6:00/mi., my tempo pace has been around 6:20/mi., and my marathon training pace has been around 6:45/mi. I've done most of my easy and long runs in the range of 7:30-8:00/mi.

By August 11, which is the end of week 12 and the date by which I hoped to reach 80 miles, I had reached 72 miles instead. That isn't far off, but it took 7 more weeks to get up to 80 miles, since my workouts became more difficult after August 11 (due to the introduction of long tempos) and it's difficult to increase both mileage and intensity at the same time. As I said in my original post, 80 miles was just a number and I didn't want to fixate on it. Despite slightly lower volume than planned, I still averaged about 10 miles per week more than before my last marathon a year ago, which is a substantial increase. More may have been too much anyway.

Another thing that stands out from this summary are the down-weeks I took about every 3 weeks, as planned. Next time around I might not do that and might instead try to reach a more or less stable high mileage before starting in on the long tempo workouts. But this time around I think it was appropriate, since both those workouts and the higher mileage were new to me, and my body probably needed regular recovery weeks. Next time I may also want to throw in a little bit of running faster than tempo pace even after 12 weeks, though perhaps not as often as weekly, for two reasons. First, it'll help with stride mechanics and efficiency. Second, that's the only way to race a half-marathon around tempo pace. As I learned in the Navy Air-Force Half about a month ago, it's just not possible to run very far at that pace unless I've been doing at least some training at a faster pace. So I'll either need to do only M-pace tune-up races in the lead up to my next marathon, or I'll need to add some regular training at 5k pace or faster.

In general, though, I think this has been a fantastic training cycle for me, however the marathon race itself ends up going. Before this past June, I had never done regular tempo runs, and the last few months have begun to remedy that serious deficiency. I'm not much, if any, faster than I was last Spring, since I haven't focussed on speed. But the longer tempo workouts have increased my strength/endurance substantially, as my tune-up races have shown (especially the metric marathon a couple weeks ago). Whether my weekly volume and long runs have been enough to enable me to sustain that pace through 26.2 miles remains to be seen, but I couldn't dream of even attempting that last Spring. As I said, there are a couple things I might tweak next time around, and after the race I might think of a couple more things. But, in general, I think this is the first time that I've managed to do the right kind of training for a marathon (on my fifth attempt). We'll see how it goes.