Week 1 - Eugene Marathon Training

In twenty-five weeks, I’ll be running a marathon, and I couldn’t be feeling more confident. 

Granted, I’m at the easiest stage of my training—feeling fresh, fast, light, recovered.  My training volume is less than half of what it will be when I reach my peak in twenty-two weeks.  So of course I’m feeling confident. I’m not being taxed. 

Compare this to what I was suffering six months ago.  I had difficulty recovering from a marathon in April.  My blood pressure and resting heart rate spiked in the weeks following it.  (I have since read in Runner’s World that this is a common occurrence.)  I grew anxious from lack of sleep.  I went to the doctor (twice!) for an EKG because I was convinced I had damaged my heart.  (I hadn’t.) My doc prescribed sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds.  I felt better in two days.  In a week I was running again.  By September, I was ready to race. 

(Side note: I don’t train well in the summer.  The heat exacerbates my level of comfort when I run, and I get frustrated when I am forced to reduce my pace and effort.  In comparison, the coolness of winter is the training season for me.) 

Week 1 - Training Record
Monday - 6.21 mi Easy
Tuesday - 6.00 mi Progression Run
Wednesday - 6.12 mi Recovery Run
Thursday - 7.63 mi w/ 4 x Mile Tempo Reps
Friday - 5.15 mi Easy
Saturday - 6.60 mi Easy
Total - 37.7 miles

I’ve spent the last couple months maintaining a small base by running with the cross country athletes that I coach.  They are entertained, I think, by a 51-year-old man who has no misgivings when it comes to running workouts with them, despite being three times their age.  For sure, my fastest days are well behind me, but during the last two weeks of the cross country season, as the varsity runners prepared for their sectional and state meets, I ran two time trials with the kids who were non-qualifiers—a 3200m run (in which I ran 12:41) and a 1600m run (5:52)—all on a volume of about 20 miles per week.  And this contributes to my confidence, even though I know my current speed development is well ahead of my aerobic strength. 

I consider this when I make my marathon plan.  For the first three weeks, I’m conscious of the need to build my aerobic base with “easy” run workouts, but I allow myself to run one or two faster workouts in this opening week.  I do this to keep myself from getting impatient during the base-building phase and also to maintain the speed I developed through the cross country season.

Right now, a base-effort workout for me is a 40- to 50-minute run—or five to six miles of easy effort.  Any less than 40 minutes (or five miles) and I feel anxious that I have not run; any more than 50 minutes (or 6.2 miles) feels like work.  So that’s where I’m starting.  Six days of running.  Thirty-five miles this week.  Give or take. 

My interest is piqued by a diversity of training sessions.  There are runners who rely on the classic tempo run or the weekly long run, and I hammer those workouts too, but in a training plan that spans twenty-five weeks, I prefer to keep my interest level high and my motivation sustained with workouts that cover a range of speeds and efforts that also include a few 5k, 10k, and half-marathon races—perhaps even a mile or two-mile time trial.

For this first week, I granted myself two moderate-effort workouts.  The first was a gentle progression run by feel, and the second was 4 x mile at tempo pace (what McMillan Running and Jack Daniels call “cruise intervals”). 

Week 2 - Preview
Monday - Long Run
Tuesday - Steady State Run
Wednesday - Recovery Run
Thursday - Short Hill Repeats
Friday - Off
Saturday - Easy Run
Sunday - Easy Run

A progression run by feel is my favorite unstructured workout.  I dial this up when I need to re-establish confidence or give myself a little reprieve from the structured workouts that I rely on late in my training schedule.  I try not to look at my splits on my GPS watch, or sometimes (if I remember) I’ll turn off the auto-split feature.  I want to feel myself getting stronger, faster, quicker, but always under control.  Only in the last mile or six to eight minutes to I allow myself to “let it rip.”  Not only does this feel good—it’s almost impossible not to generate negative splits—but it’s good rehearsal for how I want to race.  And not just a marathon, but any distance over a mile—3k, 5k, 10k, halfie. 

For this first progression, I started at a pace that was on the fast side of easy (7:58) and felt myself progress too fast in the second mile (7:44). I backed off for a mile (7:55) and progressed again (7:44 / 7:41).  I let it rip in the second half of the final mile (7:18) and found myself running at sub-seven pace.  Confidence was high.  This felt like a great place to start. 

My favorite structured workout is tempo repeats.  While there are many different words used to define an easy run, there seem even more definitions of a tempo effort.  I use the term as defined by McMillan Running—anywhere from 85 to 92% of max heart rate, or roughly twenty to thirty seconds slower than my 5k pace (a race distance I haven’t run in almost a year), or what I could sustain in a competitive race for sixty minutes (something I have never done). All of this feels very figurative to me.  Based on my 3200m time trial that I ran two weeks ago (12:41), the McMillan Running Calculator indicates that my suggested tempo repeat pace is 6:53-7:06. 

Very well then.  To me, that sounds fast.  I gave myself the target of 4 x Mile with 90 seconds jogging recovery, but I always allow myself an escape route—especially early in a training period.  If after three repeats I was suffering oxygen debt or going backwards in my splits, I would grant myself permission to end the workout and use the results as a benchmark for later training sessions. 

Rep 1: 7:00.3 – Right on target, despite the fact my shoe came untied 30 seconds into the rep. 

Rep 2: 6:58.3 – Still feeling good.  No strain.  But the next two reps would go back into the wind. 

Rep 3: 6:58.1 – “Dude,” I thought.  “You got this.”  You have never run this kind of workout so fast. 

Rep 4: 6:49.2 – No straining necessary.  Could I have done a fifth repeat at this pace? Doubtful.  But I will find out for sure in two or three weeks when I try this workout again. 

Final point: I need to be mindful of how good it feels to have a good training session.  I know that will not be the case throughout these next 25 weeks.  Indeed, I will no doubt fardles bear to grunt and sweat under many weary workouts and suffer pangs of disprized love for this sport.  But in the end I will have accomplished this: I will come to know what I am capable of doing only by having pushed myself beyond what I would expect.