2014 Marathon Training

Introduction

I have considered the Marathon (42K) my main event ever since I came back to running two and a half years ago. In reality I think I am built to run the middle distances, like 1500 meters. In the past, when I was in the juniors, I had enough speed to run sub 50 seconds the 400 meters. But at that time I never ended up taking a chance at training for longer distance. I considered the occasional 10 km Sunday runs as stupid waste of time and energy. I only wanted to get faster. I was sprinting, but I

wasn't a sprinter, I admit it.

Figure 1: Grinding it at
Arnet 21K Buenos Aires.

The quarter-milers and marathoners have quite similar somatotype or body structure (read here my writing on body composition and somatotype). The 5K and 10K runners tend to be more lanky and slender than marathoners. While the elite quarter-milers' tend to have a major portion of fast twitch muscle fiber, the elite marathoners have a lot of slow twitch muscle fiber in their muscles. A 400 meter race is mainly anaerobic event and the marathon race is almost exclusively aerobic event. In fact 800 meters race (or 2 minutes of maximal running) is a 50/50 anaerobic/aerobic event. The modern elite marathoners run the 42K distance in almost 2 hours (2:02:57 is the new current World Record). They have more fast twitch muscle fibers than the past marathon champions who ran times like 2:12.

We are all born with a certain ratio of fast and slow twitch muscle fiber and we can't change it. But the fast twitch muscle fibers can be taught running economy and other tendencies of the slow twitch muscle fibers by practice (and vice versa). I don't think I will ever again be as fast at sprinting as I was when I was 20 years old, but I have already more endurance than I have ever had after training continuously for two and a half years. I still have years in me to try to run my best times in the Marathon. Aging certainly makes us slower. But in my opinion and experience so far before we hit about the age of 40 years, aging makes us more prone to endurance. I am now 32 years old so I can't yet say when my marathon times started to deteorirate.

Training Plan

My initial plan was to train specifically for the marathon for 20 weeks. My plan had three training periods: Introductionary, Fundamental, and Sharpening. The Introductionary period was planned to last for the first 6 weeks. Followed by Fundamental training period of 10 weeks training. And finally 4 weeks long Sharpening training period. The Introductionary period prepares the body for the tough practices in the Fundamental period. While Base Training is almost exclusively running at low intensities, the Introductionary period includes moderate pace running and Fartlek. The body is not ready yet to take on the tough Tempo Runs of the Fundamental period, but the Moderate Runs and Fartlek Runs make good work of preparing for them. Progression of the training is important during all the training cycle. In marathon training this usually means that every practice just becomes longer, but the pace stays the same.

During the marathon training cycle all of my key workout practices eventually started to look a like, and simulated more and more the demands of a marathon race. Besides the key workouts I run Recovery Runs and Easy Runs. When I started the training cycle I was in a shape of running 9-10 times per week and planned to run close to 150 km per week. But all that had to be adjusted when I injured my right thigh. That is when I had to change drastically my plans and first try to get me back on the road from rehabilitation. It turned out that I lost 4 weeks of Fundamental training due to injury. The injury bothered for 7 weeks in total, but I tried to run through it at the cost of losing quality in my training. In the end I found out that my body could deal with running 7 times per week and still had the energy to fight through the key workouts.

Table 1: Tempo Intervals on Tuesdays.

Key Workouts

Table 2: Tempo Runs on Thurdays.

The three weekly key workouts are shown in Tables 1-3. The progression is visible in each workout from week to week. All the key workouts progress towards imitating the demands of marathon race. The injury stagnated my development and I think I was actually in better shape when I ran the Helsinki Half Marathon than the Arnet 21K Buenos Aires (see Table 3). My race execution was just better in Buenos Aires and the course was faster.

Table 3: Long Runs on Sundays.

The tables lack the last two weeks of Sharpening because I am writing this blog entry 13 days before the Marathon Race. But my marathon training is now done and the priority is now to heal up blisters and aches, and get rested before taking on the Marathon. That does not mean I will quit running for two weeks. No, I will just ease up the intensity and length of the practices. Only the last few days I will run very little.

Injuries

The main injury that I suffered and that kept me from running was the Nerve Compression Syndrome I had on my right leg and lower back. I think I developed the injury by not giving myself enough rest after Helsinki Half Marathon as I proceeded with the training right on. I was also doing very high mileage per week for me: up to 146 km. I have described this injury here on one of my previous blog entries. Other nuisance that I had were a sore right leg Achilles Tendon. I think both of these injuries were caused by suddenly starting to run downhill as my training environment was changed. After returning to flat Buenos Aires I didn't suffer from injuries, except I strained mildly my right calf and had to quit the current practice and take a rest the next day.

Figure 2: Cycling as a form of cross training.

Cross Training

While I was unable to run I could not just stay in bed and wait to heal up. I looked for replacement exercise forms that would not put the injured part of my body under strain. It is important, but demoralizing to find substitute exercise activities when you are injured. The aerobic condition that you have worked will vanish if you stop exercising. The cross training activities don't necessarily take your conditioning forward, but they have done their job when they don't let the aerobic condition to collapse. I did cycling, swimming and aqua running while I was sidelined from running. The cycling raises the heart rate and it is fun while you can do cycling trips to quite far away. The longest trip I took was 100 km. But the cycling also started to put strain on my right leg so I decided to switch to water sports: swimming and aqua running. Aqua running in particular I found to be pretty boring even though I listened to music. I did it not only in a swimming pool but also in a lake!