No intros. Let’s get to it.
1. More hill running. Brad Hudson swears by hill runs as an easy form of strength training, as well as a recovery aid after long runs. Jonathan Savage also swears by downhill running as a way to develop quad strength and endurance.
I want to try and do both during training… regular uphill running after long runs, and downhill runs as a harder workout early in the training cycle.
2. Sunday long runs instead of Saturday long runs. Previously I did my long run Saturday to give myself Sunday to recover before the workweek.
But this was during my previous career, which required a lot more walk commuting and where I used a standing desk. While that had many benefits, my new conventional sit-down career and its quicker, easier commute allows me much more physical downtime. Plus, I’ve improved my ability to get sleep after long runs, another factor in why I previously ran long on Saturday.
The hurdles to running Sunday have been eliminated, and since my next marathon will likely fall on a Sunday, it’s best to do the long runs on those days.
3. Greater emphasis on maintaining pace through consistent quick cadence. I’ve already been working on this as I’ve resumed running. But, in prioritizing volume during my last training cycle, I think I ran a low slower than I needed to.
This is hindsight being 20/20, but I realize I have better speed than my 11 minute mile long runs indicate. Plus, as I saw in tapering and the marathon, I have no trouble maintaining a faster cadence (and pace) on long runs.
I need to take a page from the Hanson Brothers and do all my distance running at as quick of a cadence as I can reasonably maintain.
4. Mini-sharpening period for tune up races. My speedwork was either a bit scattered or a bit flat in how I applied it during the last cycle. I didn’t follow a concrete progression for my speedwork, and the workouts I did late in the training cycle were not substantially different from the workouts I did early in training.
I plan to stage it out a bit more this time around, not focusing hard on marathon level effort until the final few weeks. As most recommend, I plan to focus more on maximizing speed during the early training stage, which will allow me to focus on tune-up races.
If I train for specific endurance in the 3-4 weeks leading up to those races, to maximize performance in those races, it could have substantial long term benefits as I move on to more marathon endurance training post race.
5. Tune up races! I didn’t run many tune-up races in my previous cycle, and to be honest I do miss shorter races. I almost decided to take a year off from marathons not because of how tough training is, but so I could run more shorter races instead.
I don’t think I need to go that far, though. It’s entirely reasonable to do several races during an 18 week training cycle as tune-up races. And it’s reasonable to run them with a serious effort, as doing so provides secondary training benefits. Most of them can double as a long, quality tempo training session.
6. More multi-pace workouts, especially during long runs. Time to time I’ve mixed in fast-finish moderate runs, plus I dabbled with Daniels-style multi-pace long runs last year during an extended test run of a marathon training cycle (I didn’t actually plan to run a marathon that fall, but did want to practice stretching out).
The Daniels paced-long-runs are tough, and it may have been a little early in my development to do them. But now, having developed my ability to manage moderate pace in longer runs, I think it may benefit me to incorporate multi-pace long runs.
I probably won’t go full Daniels 2Q and devote two days a week to killer 12-16 mile runs with extended threshold and marathon pace segments, at least not right off the bat. To avoid burnout it’s best to do those closer to the race, as my training peaks.
I may not need to run a 20 miler next time around, but I can definitely benefit from running a 16 miler where, say, 10+ of the miles are at marathon pace.
7. Varying the pace and intensity of regular distance runs. Over the last year I’ve run nearly all of my regular runs at around the same pace. That pace was somewhat faster during the Vancouver cycle than during the recent Chicago cycle. Lately, as I’ve resumed running, all of my regular and long runs have been substantially quicker than either.
As I ramp up to training mileage it would be a good idea to take a standard hard/easy approach to those regular runs. Perhaps one day I can sustain a moderate 8:30-9:15 pace… and the next give myself total permission to take it easy and go as slow as I’d like. This can allow me to add maximum mileage as well as push myself some.
8. Run every single day, even if just a little bit. Running every single day for 2+ months worked very well for me during my last couple months of training.
It happened basically by accident: When I discovered I had run for 10 straight days, I decided to try and keep the run streak going since I still felt good despite no days off. I ran for 70 straight days right up to the Chicago Marathon, and felt great at the end.
My body seems to respond better to quick, easy runs as recovery instead of taking a full rest day. Many good runners run every day. I think it might work out (barring an actual injury) to run 7 days a week, and when feeling particularly tired to just run a couple easy miles that day instead of outright resting.
9. Train to optimize high-moderate pace, for optimal aerobic support. Like many, I’d previously opt to slow down on longer runs to preserve stamina. While this allowed me to run 20-milers and other long runs, it didn’t help translate my speed to longer runs. My speed at shorter distances indicates I can run faster at longer distances.
Again, I want to take a page from the Hansons and do my long runs at more of a moderate pace, rather than the easy pace most recommend. I obviously don’t plan to race these long runs, or even do them at marathon pace just yet. But I want to go out at a fast cadence and try to hold that cadence as long as reasonably possible.
I’m no longer concerned about whether or not I can run long, since I clearly can. Now I want to translate my speed to longer distances by working on the specific endurance of running faster over longer distances.
10. Don’t emphasize marathon-pace until the final six weeks before the next marathon. While it’s important to run at marathon pace periodically throughout the training cycle, I also don’t want to peak too early. It’s not as important to emphasize marathon-pace running until the final few weeks before the race.
As I did before Chicago, I plan to taper the last 14 days by heavily reducing my volume while doing virtually all of the my running at marathon pace. The pace not only feels surprisingly comfortable, but feels ingrained once you get to the start line. However, if I were to run a lot at that pace for six weeks, I would either risk burning out, overdoing easier runs due to prematurely ingraining the pace, or stagnating development in some other way.
I’m no fan of the muscle confusion fallacy, but development is best served by altering elements of your training every few weeks.
Prior to the final few weeks, I won’t run marathon pace for more than 25% of any speedwork in a week. A few miles once a week are fine in the early going, but running at that pace isn’t necessary.
11. Use accordant tune up races as goal pace benchmarks. Pace prediction calculators use results from your other races as estimators of how you can do in other races, including the marathon.
If I have a goal pace in mind, I can review the Daniels or Hanson equivalent pace in a tune up race, like a 5K or 10K, and see if I can run that pace.
Or, if I don’t have a goal pace in mind, I can use the pace I run as a gauge of what I can do, and adjust my workout pacing going forward.
12. Peak early… with training volume. I don’t want to peak early overall, but I do have a lot of things I want to work on: Speed over longer runs, mixed workouts, racing other race distances.
It’s hard to work on all those things and increase your mileage during training. So, my plan is to focus during off-season and base training on building up to running higher mileage and to try and peak mileage before I get to foundational training.
I want my max weekly mileage by the 6th week of training to be my absolute max. As I scale back to lesser training mileage I can easily slide into the other kinds of training and racing I want to do.