Marathon Training

TWELVE WEEKS TO GO

TWELVE WEEKS TO RACE DAY
You have twelve weeks to go until race day if your target marathon is run the last weekend in October. This is the point in an eighteen-week program when you should shift from building strength to developing endurance. Before you began the eighteen-week program, you built your mileage base to 20–25 miles per week. In the last phase of the program leading to race day, you will sharpen and taper.

LAST WEEK
Last week, you ran your last set of hill repeats to strengthen your muscles by increasing their cross-sectional thickness. A suitable hill is about 400 meters long, with a steady slope but not too steep. To do hill repeats you run up the hill—not too fast the first time—walk halfway down, jog the second half to the starting point, turn around, and repeat! During the strengthening phase you worked yourself up to six repeats.

For the next six weeks you will teach yourself to endure the later miles of the race, maintaining pace. The easiest place to do this is at the track, but you can also run the workouts on the roads or trails.

THIS WEEK
This week, try a “ladder.” In the last hill workout you covered 1-1/2 miles at pace. So for your first track workout, you will cover two miles at pace.

Start your workout by running a few strides. Run 100 meters fast enough to make yourself breathe hard and eventually break a sweat. Walk back, turn around, and do it again.

Your ladder might look like this:

Run one lap (400 meters, +/- 1/4-mile).
Walk 1/2-lap, jog to the starting line.
Run two laps (800 meters, +/- 1/2-mile).
Walk 1/2-lap, jog to the starting line.
Run three laps (1200 meters, +/- 3/4-mile).
Walk 1/2-lap, jog to the starting line.
Run two laps (800 meters, +/- 1/2-mile).
Walk 1/2-lap, jog to the starting line.
Run one lap (400 meters, +/- 1/4-mile).

That’s a little more than two miles up and down the ladder. Run 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 every rung of the ladder at the same pace. This is the way to your goal time.

Also this week, you should run a long run of eighteen miles. Give yourself three days’ rest between these quality workouts.

NEXT WEEK
Next week, we’ll go “In-Out” for 2-1/2 miles.