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marathon training

hollernhollern
in General Training Discussions

I just finished louisville Ironman and my next Im will be louisville in 2011, my question is that i am considering doing a marathon 1st week of november but have never trained for a marathon, i have 7 weeks to get ready, any suggestions on how to train or what my longest run should be prior to race day?

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  • William JenksWilliam Jenks

     "I just finished louisville Ironman and my next Im will be louisville in 2011, my question is that i am considering doing a marathon 1st week of november but have never trained for a marathon, i have 7 weeks to get ready, any suggestions on how to train or what my longest run should be prior to race day?"

    For what it's worth, here are my thoughts:

    1. You're a little nuts.  :-)
    2. Make sure you are actually recovered from IMLV.  Follow the guidance in the transition book about that.  You will want to start easing into some run frequency pretty quickly though.  Frequency will have to be your friend, rather than (a lot of) intensity or duration.  
    3. It will be important for you to realize that you're running this marathon rather than racing it.  At least that's so for the first ~23 miles.  :-)  Just like the the "Mile 18", there's a "line" in the marathon, and you're going to be (relatively speaking) underprepared for a fast marathon.  You will have the base to complete it pretty easily, though.  
      A fast marathon can be comparable damage to the body as a full IM, but 10 minutes slower and it's that much easier to get through and recover from.  You have a recent IM on top of that.  But maybe you're 25 and still recover like a spring chicken.  :-)
    4. You need to get a good guess pace.  This is the tricky part, given your recent IM.  If you had NOT run an IM, i would give you the following two gauges: (a) take your current 5K VDOT and add ~2.5 to it.  Then use THAT VDOT to get a marathon pace from the usual calculators.  This is a much better estimate of what you can REALLY hold for a marathon than the MP that comes from a 5K VDOT.  (b) If you are not a hard core VDOT person, you need to pick a pace at which you can run the first 2/3 of the race without feeling like it's a lot of work.  In other words, you need to be able to run almost to the 18 mile mark and feel like you could run tomorrow without it being some epic recovery effort to do so.  Those would be your "fast marathon" paces and you'll need to judge how much slower than that you want to try and still feel safe.
    5. In the meantime, build your run frequency up to ~ 5 times per week.  Build up your longest run to 2.5 hours, just like for your IM, but include in that 2.5 hours some real MP time.  You can do a simple race rehearsal type run as first half at LRP and second half as MP 3-4 weeks out.  If you can manage 2-3 2.5 hour runs, then instead of increasing the mileage, consider increasing the time at the fast pace (from less than 50% up to maybe 2/3 tops?).
    6. Consider having a second moderately long run (~1.5 hr?) mid week with a fast/tempo segment in the middle of it.  Either 2-3 individual miles at HMP or a continuous 20-30 min at MP.
    7. If you can handle it, a third quality run would have 2-3 mile segments at threshold pace.  The rest would be "easy" runs with some strides.
    8. Make sure, especially in the last 2-3 weeks that you spend some time running at your actual planned marathon pace (as opposed to the VDOT MP).  You need to know what that feels like.

    For your race execution, Patrick recommends a strategy very much like what we do for IMs - something along the lines of Pace+15 sec for the first 5 miles, then Pace-5 sec for the next 15, and that gets you to mile 20 even with your projected pace.

    Again, I've only run 5 marathons, but three have been in the last few years...and of those I was definitely underprepared for what I tried to do in the race twice....once in a scenario much like yours, only it was after my first HIM, not an IM.  Be conservative.  If this was really your A race, you wouldn't still be "considering" whether to do it this close to it!

    Cheers,

    William

     

     

     

  • mgraffeomgraffeo
    Lots of good stuff from William. Just for clarification, are you suggesting to add or to subtract that 2.5 from a 5k vdot? I'd have thought subtract...
  • William JenksWilliam Jenks
    Yes, sorry... subtract! i.e., the normal VDOT tables give you a pace that almost no one can hold for an open marathon. They are too fast, not too slow. :-)

    Wm
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