When preparing for a marathon, running speed is probably the last thing on your mind when it comes to session planning with most of the focus on running for longer only, but are you missing a trick by not hitting some faster paces? Let’s find out.
The typical advice
“Perform 80% of your runs easy, and 20% at a moderate effort” or something along these lines are the often touted “rules” for marathon running success, but on the whole, more up-to-date research shows that a ratio of 75-80% easy effort, 10-15% moderate effort and 5-10% hard effort is more fruitful.
What’s the benefit of running faster than marathon pace?
Firstly you’re mentally prepared for the discomfort that comes in the final miles of a marathon. Whilst your heart rate might still not be sky-high even by mile 20 of your marathon, the muscles are being subjected to high levels of fatigue nevertheless, and you have to learn to handle that. The better you can manage the emotions that come with physical pain from running, the more equipped you’ll be to keep running hard as you near the end.
We often move better at faster paces. Think of your easy running. I bet it doesn’t resemble the type of technique you’d want to exhibit come marathon day right? Running too slowly too often not only works the muscles and connective tissue differently, but it strengthens the learning of a less efficient or beneficial running style. When we run faster we interact with the ground differently, focusing on a more powerful movement which propels us forward faster. Whilst this might not be the right thing for every runner, it can be helpful as it increases cadence, which will likely shorten our stride and reduce the tendency to overstride that many runners have, reducing load at the hips and knees (common injury areas), whilst maintaining speed during the marathon.
How to implement speed work in a marathon block
As the stats above suggest, a lot of your running should be at a relatively easy effort, but with your long run likely accounting for 30-50% of your weekly mileage, plus 1-2 “recovery” runs, it’s likely you can comfortably add a session of faster work each week by the time you perform some warm-up and cool-down miles, whilst sticking with the right training load.
You could use a progression run or pyramid session if you want continuous running, building to 5k to 10k pace at the fastest points, or sessions such as cruise intervals and aerobic intervals if you prefer to have work efforts and active recoveries. The higher your weekly mileage and fitter you are, the more frequently you’ll be able to use these sessions.
Hill sprints are another good option, hitting hills of 100-200m at close to maximal effort. This can then be adjusted to involve slow recoveries downhill before immediately climbing again, or a moderate effort descent to keep up a technical focus, followed by a brief static recovery before starting the next repetition.
Looking beyond your 12-16 week block
Training for a marathon isn’t just about what you do in the 12-16 weeks of marathon specific work however, it’s the time you spend before then also. A commonly recommended, but not necessarily often implemented strategy is to focus on a 8-12 week training block on your 10k time, directly before your marathon block. Truth be told it’s probably done to some extent by a lot of runners, but in a less focused way, with a lot of races in the mix which interfere with the quality of training.
I tend to look at 8 weeks of this work to see useful improvements, with relatively easy long runs of 13-16 miles still included depending on the individual and their wants and needs. During this period working to improve 10k times, we’ll decide on 1-2 sessions per week of interval training with 5k to 10k pace in the repetitions, and see improvements of 1-2 minutes over 10k in this timeframe, equating to around 5-10 minutes faster projections for their marathon time as we head into their next training block.
Don’t rule out hard efforts and even some sprints during and just before marathon training. You can get a host of benefits that will pay dividends come race day and beyond.
Written by Kyle Brooks, Running Coach based in Norwich, Norfolk