|
|
|
|
Marathon Training
|
ELEVEN WEEKS TO GO
ELEVEN WEEKS TO RACE DAY
You have eleven weeks to go until race day if your target marathon is run the last weekend in October. Last week, you shifted emphasis from building strength to developing endurance. Before you began the eighteen-week program, you built your mileage base to 20–25 miles per week. Your eighteen-week program includes strength, endurance, and sharpening phases. At this point you are gradually increasing your weekly mileage, and are averaging 30–35 miles per week, perhaps more if you are an experienced marathoner.
LAST WEEK
Last week, you ran something called a “ladder,” a series of fast-paced runs starting with one lap of the track, increasing (going up the ladder) to three laps, then declining (going back down the ladder) to one lap. You ran at a speed faster than your marathon pace, but not crazy fast. Your ladder had a little more than two miles of running at your target speed.
Before you started your workout, you did a few “strides,” 100 meters run fast enough to make yourself breathe hard and eventually break a sweat. Walk back, turn around, and do it again. Every workout at the track should begin with a few strides to get your moving parts warmed up and lubricated before you put them through the stress of a workout.
You run these workouts at a pace one minute per mile faster than your predicted marathon pace. So if you plan on a four-hour marathon, your race pace will be close to 9:00/mile. One minute faster is 8:00/mile, or 2:00/lap on the track. The idea is to run your workout at an even pace, the last lap just as fast as the first. This is the way to your goal time.
THIS WEEK
This week, we’ll run “in-outs” for 2-½ miles. The purpose of this workout is to make running at your training pace feel like resting. Start your workout by running a few strides. Begin to get your heart’s stroke rate and stroke volume elevated so it will be capable of responding quickly to move more blood when you start the planned components of the workout. Larger volumes of blood carry larger volumes of oxygen, the fuel for muscles in aerobic exercise. Part of the purpose of the endurance phase of training is to increase the maximum amount of oxygen your body can process and consume.
You are going to run a ten-lap workout, two laps at a time repeated five times. Each of these two-lap units is called a “repeat:”
- Run ½-lap in 50 seconds, which is 10 seconds faster than your normal training pace of ½-lap in one minute, or a full lap in two minutes. The fast ½-lap is the “in.”
- Run 1-½ laps in 3 minutes, which is your normal training pace. This is the “out.”
Walk ½-lap to recover, then jog to the starting line.
- Repeat the “in-out” a total of five times.
That’s 2-½ miles of “quality” running. Again, the idea is to run every “repeat” at the same pace. This is the way to your goal time.
REVIEW OF TERMS
We’re learning a lot of new terms, so let’s review them quickly:
In-Out–Alternating between faster and slower speeds during a repeat.
Ladder–A series of fast-paced runs first increasing in distance (going up the ladder), then declining (going back down the ladder).
Stride–100 meters run fast enough to make yourself breathe hard and eventually break a sweat.
Quality–Long runs, hill repeats, and fast-paced runs are called quality to distinguish them from comfortable training runs.
Repeat–A pattern of running reproduced after an interval of rest.
NEXT WEEK
Next week, we’ll do a grown-up workout: three one-mile repeats.
Archive of Marathon Training
TWELVE WEEKS TO GO
| | | |
