One Mile Closer
A 27-mile week at 8:47 average pace, including a brutally bad 7-miler this morning. Nevertheless, it was a good week because on Tuesday I ran 5 miles at 8:10 pace. That’s faster than my target marathon pace, so I bumped up my tempo runs to 6 miles.
Again, my theory is that it’s hopeless to try to run a marathon at 8:12 pace unless you can do 16-18 miles at that pace in training. And you can’t do 16-18 miles at that pace until you can consistently do 12 miles at that pace. And you can’t do 12 until you can do 8, etc. So all my emphasis is on the tempo runs and the accompanying mileage. My Sunday long runs are simply a few miles longer than the tempo runs and my Wednesday speedwork totals half the tempo mileage. Every third week I step down by a third.
When my tempo runs reach 10 miles, I’ll switch the emphasis to the long runs, which will start as 14 miles with 10 miles at target marathon pace. I’ll then build those the same way while keeping the weekday runs at 10 miles or less.
This is a bit different from my usual approach, but I’m not sure running 6 miles at 7:30 pace during the week and 16 miles at 9:20 pace on Sunday gets me to where I want to go. I’ve probably got one good shot at this, otherwise it’s wait until I’m 55 and my BQ time goes up to 3:45 – assuming my legs hold up.
Interesting new training strategy. Though my training got me a lot closer to my goal last year, I have the urge to switch it up. I’ll be curious to see how your runs unfold.
This is basically the strategy I am using to try to run sub 3hrs this summer. I think it’s a winner but I have the feeling that a lot of the speed gains come from the amount of base pace (9:20 for you, 8:00 for me) you are putting it. The long runs with a lot at pace will build toughness for sure.