marathon training questions

In article said:

My question is what's the best training program for reducing my marathon time? I'm a 37y.o guy
preparing for my second marathon in late April and want to finish in 3:20-3:30. My first marathon
was 4:10 a few years ago, I've been running for 15 years 3-5 days a week.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Quoted message said:

I realize that speed and hill workouts will help me. But knowing that I'll be sore once I increase
my weekend mileage to 12+ miles,

That depends on what you're doing throughout the rest of the week. 5 days a week should be a
*minimum*, not a maximum, if you're serious about this. You shouldn't rely on the weekends to bring
home all the miles though. If you're doing 50 miles per week, 12 miles on the weekend will feel
like a break.

Quoted message said:

should I discontinue the track workouts, start them later in the program? I

Don't know what your program looks like.

How many miles did you run last week ? How many days ? ' ' 4 weeks ? ' ' ' ?

Quoted message said:

did 5 800's with 3 minute rests yesterday, averaging 3:08. Should I continue building the 800's to
10 or 12 repeats or vary them with 1000's and 1600's?

Depends on where you are in your training and when the marathon is. If you have more than 16
weeks, it may be better to focus on base-building. If you have much longer (more than 30 weeks,
for example), you may be able to get in another training cycle (base building, speed, and some
half marathon or 10k races) to improve your level of fitness before you start the marathon
training program.

Quoted message said:

Any marathon references you'd recommend?

Since I run shorter races, I can't really endorse any marathon specific refs. Some general running
books I'd recommend:

Noakes: Lore of Running Glover: Competitive Runners Handbook Daniels: Daniels' Running Formula (a
book you may want to consider that has a similar philosophy that is more marathon specific is
Pfitzinger and Douglas, "Advanced Marathoning" which is addressed to runners who are trying to
improve their marathon times)

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

"Donovan Rebbechi" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Noakes: Lore of Running Glover: Competitive Runners Handbook

These two books are really outstanding. Donovan recommended them to me and I hinted at the
appropriate time and got them both as gifts. If you go with only one, I would suggest that Glover
might be of more immediate help to you.

Brian Jones

Brian Jones said:

"Donovan Rebbechi" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Noakes: Lore of Running Glover: Competitive Runners Handbook

These two books are really outstanding. Donovan recommended them to me and I hinted at the
appropriate time and got them both as gifts. If you go with only one, I would suggest that Glover
might be of more immediate help to you.

I agree. Glover is an excellent book and you could become a good runner with just this book. For
those that want to understand why and not just how, Noakes is the book. In college terms I'd
consider Glover a solid 200 level book with Noakes a grad level text.

For those that don't have the book it's 700+(I have the third addition so this number may be more)
and not the easiest reading. It's like reading an encyclopedia or knowing that the area of a
triangle can be calculated from a simple formula Area = (b*h)/2 vs proving it. For instance the
first two chapters are "muscle structure and function(10 pages)" and "The physiology of oxygen
transport(37 pages)." If you like charts, graphs, and lots of formulas it's for you. There are other
books out there that will help you run further or faster without such excruciating detail.

--
Doug Freese "Caveat Lector" [email hidden]

High base mileage. At least 100 km a week.

[email hidden] (John) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

My question is what's the best training program for reducing my marathon time? I'm a 37y.o guy
preparing for my second marathon in late April and want to finish in 3:20-3:30. My first marathon
was 4:10 a few years ago, I've been running for 15 years 3-5 days a week.

I realize that speed and hill workouts will help me. But knowing that I'll be sore once I increase
my weekend mileage to 12+ miles, should I discontinue the track workouts, start them later in the
program? I did 5 800's with 3 minute rests yesterday, averaging 3:08. Should I continue building
the 800's to 10 or 12 repeats or vary them with 1000's and 1600's? Any marathon references you'd
recommend?

Thanks all, John

John,

Start with the basics and don't worry about speed workouts too much.

First off is you are planning on running a marathon in April you should have your base mileage
just about finished by now. Meaning you should have run a long run of 10-13 miles two or three
times a month for the past 3 or so months. Running a 10-13 miler now should be easy for you. When
you write "increase my weekend mileage to 12+" do you mean a long run or the mileage of Saturday
and Sunday combined?

The Yasso 800 workouts don't predict [censored] unless you have a solid base and training program. Keep
with the speed work as it is now. When you are running longer do the increased number of 800's. Then
see what you can maintain and you'll get a more realistic picture of your ability.

If you are concerned about which is more important I'd favor of the long runs. I like what I've seen
Andy Haas and others do with long runs where the last half of a long run is run at marathon pace.
This sort of does both jobs. If you are getting too sore or tired to run long and do a track workout
then you are going to have to work on building endurance. Endurance will always take precidence over
speed work in a marathon training program.

Let us know how you progress.

my $0.02 Andy

"John" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

My question is what's the best training program for reducing my marathon time?

The best I've found is don't train at all and drop all those excruciating long runs. It'll drop your
time right down to 0, as in no time wasted on week after week of training that will verily suck the
life out of you.

--
eNo "Why am I here?"

John said:

My question is what's the best training program for reducing my marathon time? I'm a 37y.o guy
preparing for my second marathon in late April and want to finish in 3:20-3:30. My first marathon
was 4:10 a few years ago, I've been running for 15 years 3-5 days a week.

Quoted message said:

I realize that speed and hill workouts will help me. But knowing that I'll be sore once I increase
my weekend mileage to 12+ miles, should I discontinue the track workouts, start them later in the
program? I did 5 800's with 3 minute rests yesterday, averaging 3:08. Should I continue building
the 800's to 10 or 12 repeats or vary them with 1000's and 1600's? Any marathon references you'd
recommend?

Quoted message said:

Thanks all, John

1) Focus on mileage at first. Spend a couple months building up how much mileage you can handle and
how long of runs you can handle. This is much more important than track work.
2) When you add in track work for the last 2-3 months before the marathon, concentrate on repeats 1k
and longer. Miles are good. Keep the rests short. I rest 90 sec between 800s, 2 min between 1ks,
and 3 min between miles.
3) Get in a good long tempo every week. Work it up to around 6-8 miles at faster than marathon pace.
4) On your last couple long runs, accelerate from the halfway point until you do the last 6 miles at
about marathon pace. Andy Hass