Things are coming together at last. I’m in the final two weeks of the plan and tapering towards a couple of 800m time trials in April to see whether the training has paid off. I already know it has and it’ll be good to see it quantified in my time trial, but that’s for next month’s update!!
Although I began following Jack Daniels’ 800m training plan at the start of December, I actually consider training started back on 21st September when I went back to a steady diet of gentle runs at ten minute mile pace, subsequently introducing strides and a faster session midweek.
So really this has been six months of consistent training. I wanted to write “hard work” but apart from putting in big efforts during the twice weekly workouts, and a difficult spell around the start of February when my body was struggling to adapt, compounded by atrocious weather, I don’t believe it’s been hard work. I’ve looked forward to the training, enjoyed it and it’s not felt like a burden at all.
I realised over this past month my body has begun to feel fit and strong again. I hadn’t appreciated a lack of regular fast running over the past 3-4 years has allowed muscles to weaken. That translated in my day-to-day living as minor aches or pains walking up the stairs, or pushing with my hands to get up off the sofa. Nothing drastic, just minor little things that most people put down to the effects of ageing. In some ways they are the effects of ageing but not irreversibly as those people would have you believe. The takeaway is if you stop using it, you lose it. I actually now feel as strong and fit as I did ten years ago, and would like to believe I’m as fit as I was in my twenties although I know that’s not quantifiably true. My running still isn’t as fast it was when I started parkrunning at forty but I can see it’s getting back there and I believe it’s going to surpass that because of what I’ve learned since then.
March’s training has been focusing on what Jack calls T- and FR- pace running which stand for Tempo and Fast Rep. After adjusting for the expected improvement in fitness, these have been mile repeats at 7:12/mile and short intervals (200-600m) at 5:38/mile respectively. To put this into perspective when I began in December the Fast Reps were 44½ secs per 200m, now they’re at 42secs. Training has been going well enough that I’ve been overcooking these with some coming in at sub-40! I even managed a 37.45s effort (5:01/mile).
One of the problems I faced for T-paced sessions is ideally needing somewhere flat where I could keep pace and effort consistent. In other years, I would have gone to the beach or Poole Park, but with lockdown ongoing, as well as the possibility of sand on the prom or people out for a walk; I decided to look closer to home. The roads right outside my front door are fairly flat and quiet, but I’ve always resisted doing intervals on them for no explicable reason other than I always think of warm-up as taking me away from home. Circumstances led me to conclude this would be the best place for the training. Maximising the area available to me, I created a loop measuring 900m which had no sharp turns and only minor ups and downs. On some sessions, it meant I ended up doing a good 10+ laps of the same roads which, I suspect many people would find boring, but I hardly noticed as I was focused on my breathing, pace and sometimes trying to reach the end without completely falling apart! This ‘track’ worked well apart from, where I run in the road my early morning sessions brought me into conflict with people driving off to work.
Around mid-month, my legs began to feel strong and, the walking up the stairs with ease I talked about, came into my awareness. I could tell a step change in my fitness was about to come through and when it arrived my easy running pace improved by 20 secs/mile. It felt wonderful and that improvement then fed into the next session of T-pace running coming in at sub-7 min/mile rather than 7:10. In turn it made the fastest intervals feel a lot easier although not necessarily faster!
I’m not going to do my usual breakdown of successful / failed repeats until next month’s post but my attention was drawn to a bizarre set of times on last week’s 200s. I run these back and forth along a road which I’ve come to realise, has slight undulations to it, and these result in one direction being marginally faster than the other. The four efforts in the slower direction were 41.66 / 41.66 / 42.20 / 41.66 secs. I’m sure you can see the bizarreness of the fastest three being exactly the same time to one-hundredth of a second, it simply cannot be a coincidence. And if I then tell you the first effort on the previous session was … yes, you’ve guessed it … 41.66secs; there’s some kind of limitation going on somewhere in all of this! I’m not sure what it is, my legs were fatigued that day but in the other direction I ran 41.77 / 40.05 / 39.33 / 37.45 secs so it was possible to go faster under the right conditions. Bizarre numbers aside, it’s been a good month’s training.
I’ve got two more workouts to do in April, then the time trials begin. I’m only intending to do two mid-month but this will be weather dependent. If I feel I’ve underperformed I may slot in a third. Analysing my training times, I’m hopeful I can break 2min40 but I’ll report back whatever the fruits of my harvest are!
My Sundays orienteering were spent with my best friend, Malcolm. On a couple of occasions our friend Steve joined us but it didn’t last, I suspect Malcolm’s parents didn’t want the responsibility of all three of us. I was enough to handle as the add-on and Steve had kind of self-invited himself so he got the boot. One thing I recall is him pointing out how noisily I ran, I think his words were “sounds like a baby elephant” and in fairness he wasn’t wrong about it.
I’ve never been a quiet runner. Sometimes I’m aware of this more than at others. I noticed it on my Sunday long run a few months back as I ran up into Broadstone Broadway and my feet were slapping so loudly on the pavement that an old woman looked round and commented that she’d been expecting a herd of runners to come through!
Another morning, as I was warming up on the way to my 800m speedwork session, I was hammering down the road closing in on a slower runner. She looked round well before I reached her, I assume because she heard the commotion, so as I passed I could only think to comment “Yes. I’m a noisy one, aren’t I?”
The problem with being a noisy runner isn’t so much being embarrassed by other’s opinions (although it can be); it’s that making a loud noise implies there is a big force going straight into the pavement rather than being used to propel you along. It’s said that a group of Kenyan runners will go past with a light tappity-tap sound. Of course it would be useful to be able to see this “noise as ground force” quantified in the lab but that’s the realm of university departments which few of us have access to.
After all these years of running I’d come to the conclusion that perhaps I’m simply a noisy runner, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m doing anything wrong. But then one Sunday morning my legs were relatively fresh and I noticed I wasn’t as noisy as normal. I thought about it for the first mile or so, noticing what happened on the first incline (stayed relatively quiet) before my attention shifted to rising breathing and heart-rates.
Three miles into the run I’d reached Gravel Hill and bumped into Mike and Nigel from Poole AC. Naturally I tried to look relaxed with good posture as we passed each other. But once past, with the road empty at that early hour, I noticed I’d become noisy again. I was on a downward stretch so I wondered if that could account for the difference, Realising I was stretching forward for each step, I experimented by tilting my pelvis back slightly and the noise disappeared. I returned to the lighter tappity-tap which I’d begun the run with. I also noticed that my left glute began to ache as it became more engaged.
I tried to maintain this feeling of pelvic tilt and glute engagement through the rest of the run. By the time I reached mile eight, I started to get a pain in my core muscles to the right of my belly button but it disappeared after a minute or two. I pushed through the rest of the run concentrating on my form.
Now I should point out that what worked for me is not an instruction for others. It may be useful but it depends on what they’re already doing. When I say that I tilted my pelvis back, it may be that it was already tilted too far forward (“posterior pelvic tilt”) and needed to be tilt to get more neutral. For another runner, making an adjustment from neutral would give them an undesirable anterior pelvic tilt.
The important thing to understand is I did two things which both revolve around awareness. Firstly I was listening to how noisy and slappy my feet had become so I played around with my pelvic tilt. Doing that I was then able to find a position which reduced the noise and where I could feel more engagement of my left glute. Using awareness in this way can be a great way to improve your running. It remains to be seen how this affects my running in the longterm but I’m hoping I can get the swiftness and lightness of a gazelle rather than the baby elephant!
I have always said running is about filling in the gaps, by which I mean, there’s usually something missing from your training, stopping you from running faster which needs to be addressed. After I first ran sub-20 at parkrun, I quickly zoomed on down towards nineteen minutes and, while I was flat out on the runs, I always walked away saying “there’s a lot more to come yet”. My legs felt strong and my breathing never felt top-end laborious, so I was super-confident that breaking nineteen minutes would be easy, and yet it took almost a year before it happened.
This came back to me earlier this week during an 800m training session. I did a twenty minute warm up then I ran a 600m as fast as I could. The previous week I’d run 600m in 2:07 in 20mph wind. I’d been gasping for breath after the first minute but managed to push myself on. This week the weather was better and I clocked 2:05. It never felt as difficult as it had been on the windy day yet I ran it as fast as I could. Some kind of limitation had built up. My legs were far from aching so they weren’t tired, my heart-rate was still below 170bpm and I was barely gasping for oxygen but something unknown was limiting me. What it was doesn’t really matter to this story.
I was happy enough with what I’d done as I was on target with that effort and the rest of the session. It was as I jogged to warm down I thought about this idea of how the limitation isn’t necessarily what you expect it to be. It would be easy, and I’m sure many runners do this, to believe that because I wasn’t gasping for breath throughout, the way forward is either to, do more repeats, do them faster, give myself less recovery or some such idea.
But what I began to learn all those years ago in my early days of parkrunning is that you have to find out what is limiting you and then fill in the gap. I didn’t have the understanding then to see where the issue lay. I can spot it quicker these days Sometimes it’s about building a bigger aerobic base, other times you need more lactate clearance, maybe to improve lactate tolerance, or simply to go out and build more speed. There are many things that could be limiting you and obviously if you don’t do much running then there are lots of gaps waiting to be filled in. But once you’re training regularly and frequently, working out exactly where a limitation lies is often the toughest part.
I’m a big believer you can train in all weathers. There’s only one thing that stops me and that’s ice, mainly because it’s too easy to get injured but anything else I’m willing to get out there. My resolve has been tested recently with a bitterly cold wind and driving rain alternating for what seems like the past month. But I suspect my body is trying to convince me to have a little break. I certainly don’t recall it being as tough this time last year.
I remember in the first winter after setting up Poole parkrun, I got in the car and its temperature gauge said -6C, or it may even have been -10. Whatever it was, by the time I arrived at the park it had risen to -2 degrees but with no wind it was a calm, still day. Not even a breeze. Wrapped up warm with thick leggings, long sleeve running top, t-shirt over it, plus obligatory hat and gloves it was a surprisingly pleasant morning run. The lack of wind chill made all the difference.
All layered up for a cold morning
At the other extreme I suffered heatstroke one summer. Or at least that’s my self-diagnosis of what happened. I’d planned a ten mile run at the beach on the prom – five miles out, five miles back. The outward leg went well but what I didn’t realise was the breeze on my back was pushing me along. It was intended as an easy-paced run and I found myself ticking along nicely at 7:45/mile but when I turned around the breeze hit me. I immediately began to find running harder. It was the height of summer so it shouldn’t have been a surprise but I’d done the same run the day before without incident. By seven miles I was slowing to nine minute miles and stopped to stand in the shade of a beach hut. Hands on knees, head down, not feeling great and my heart-rate only recovered to 115bpm – a good thirty or forty beats higher than I’d expect. I tried running the eighth mile and could barely struggle along at ten minute mile pace so eventually decided it would be safest walking the last two miles back to the car.
I’ve run in heat before without issue but the temperature registered as 26C which is higher than I’m used to. Normally I avoid running in the heat of the day, I either go early morning or in the evening. There’s no point running at the beach on a sunny day, I’ve tried it and you encounter walkers, the pushchair mafia three or four abreast, dogs on leads, as well as other exercisers running, cycling or roller-blading. It’s too crowded to have an enjoyable session and impossible to do a workout on target.
Running in snow is fine when you’re the first one out there. Sound is dampened, all is quiet and it feels fantastic. But Poole has its own microclimate so snow is a rare thing. In a lifetime of living here I can remember decent snowfalls in only six or seven winters. Most times it’s melted away within a day. I don’t think I saw a decent snowfall from 1993 to 2008; it’s that rare around here. This year the news outlets warned of the second coming of the Beast from the East hitting large parts of the country – the picture below shows the snowfall that hit us. So my snow running experience is limited and certainly never been tried in knee deep drifts.
Typical Bournemouth snowfall!
We did have two days of snowfall in March 2018 although it was barely a foot deep. The first morning was a Saturday so I ran to Poole parkrun and was highly disappointed to find it was called off even though there’d been no notice on the website when I checked at 8am. The great thing about the first day of snow is everything shuts down and no-one else goes out other than to sled, build snowmen or throw snowballs. The fresh snow is easy to run on and the council is good at getting the main roads gritted and cleared. Without traffic, the roads become the perfect track for running on. But the good times rarely last and by the second evening of our snowfall, everything was melting, turning slushy and the pavements packing down, turning to ice. Unfortunately I came a cropper only a few hundred metres from home after running five miles in the morning and five in the evening. I lost my footing and went straight down spread-eagled. I believe that may have been the cause of a groin injury that came on over the next month but I’m not sure as I was running big mileage during that period.
Rain is never fun to run in unless it’s warm rain on a hot summer’s day but that’s pretty rare. Most rain really isn’t that bad to run in. If you look out the window and it’s absolutely pelting down, just wait and it eases off within ten minutes. When it’s not pelting down, it looks worse than the reality of being out in it. Often I’ve looked out pessimistically at a rainy day before stepping out of the backdoor to find it’s not torrid at all.
A few years ago the big man-up phrase was “Skin is waterproof”, but my logic is slightly different – you’re going to get sweaty and shower when you get home so getting wet first doesn’t make much difference. Some like to wrap up with layers and rain jackets to keep from getting too wet. I take the opposite approach – the less wet kit there is clinging and weighing me down, the more enjoyable it stays. It’s easy for wet kit to become cold, uncomfortable kit. On arriving home a pair of shorts and a t-shirt can be thrown on the radiator, and it doesn’t take long to towel off dry.
I remember getting stoned one lunchtime along Baiter Park. I’d started off in bright sunshine in Poole Park but as I came round onto Whitecliff Park ominous black clouds were forming and then the rain came. My biggest concern was getting caught by lightning as I’d have nowhere to hide. But while it never struck, hail did. It only lasted five minutes but it was painful. Stinging with every hit, the wind blowing me back and the rain soaking me through. I found myself running bent over, head turned down to protect my eyes from getting haildashed. It was an occasion when I considered quitting the run but some part of me wouldn’t quit. Anyway what was I going to do? I’d still have had to get back to the car, so I might as well run back. Then just like that, the hail stopped, the rain ended and the clouds parted so I was back to blue skies and sunshine.
Windy days are my least enjoyable. At 6’2” with equivalent reach I bear the brunt of a headwind in a way smaller people will never understand. There’s too much surface area creating drag which in turn slows the pace to a crawl. But it’s the wind on cold days where the wind chill ramps up that have begun to do for me. Leaving the house with leggings, long sleeve top, gloves, hat, even a buff to try and cover up every piece of skin I’m like an Arctic explorer fearing frostbite if any part is left exposed. Captain Oates springs to mind on these days “I am just going outside and may be some time.”
I suffer with cold hands and feet, always have. I’ve even run with two pairs of gloves in the past and had my hands go numb. Feet going numb is something weird I’ve experienced on a few occasions, it’s very disconcerting not being able to feel how your foot is striking the ground. Generally I warm up once the blood gets pumping but if I forget gloves I’m in trouble. One September, I misjudged an unseasonably cold morning. An hour into my long run I’d lost half the feeling in my right hand. Two fingers, a thumb and most of the palm were numb. Returning home I could barely hold the door key and certainly didn’t have the dexterity to unlock it. I had to employ a two-handed, childlike manoeuvre with my palms pressed either side of the key to create enough pressure to turn it. Having gone through the pain of hands getting cold, I then had to endure the pain of them warming back up, tingling as the blood flowed into the constricted veins.
I recently ran at the beach during the cold spell. The wind was 20+ mph and the chill had it feeling like -4C. Sand was whipping across the prom, a danger of getting it in the eyes, and I only managed a mile before turning round. It was meant to be a recovery run so my legs weren’t at their best as it was. By the time I got back to the car, the tips of my fingers were numb, even in gloves, and the layers of clothing weren’t enough to stop me shivering sat back in the car. It reminded me of the Saturday morning two days before my run streak reached a year when it was a howling storm and pitch dark. So close to the goal I had to run but went out in shorts, t-shirt and no gloves; arriving home I was chilled to the bone. I stripped off my wet clothes, put on my dressing gown and went back to bed where it took over half an hour to warm back up.
I never used to be a big reader of weather forecasts. After all if you’ve planned to do something, you can’t control the weather, just get out there and do it. However in recent times, I’ve begun to look at what the weather will be like during the day to see if there’s a best time to run. Should I get out early at 10am, wait until midday or even the evening? Is the wind picking up or dying down as the day goes on, are the chances of rain increasing or decreasing? What is never in question is whether I’ll do a session. I don’t look at the weather forecast and use it to talk myself out of running. I only look at it to see when the best time to run might be. That’s been more applicable with pandemic lockdowns, but once we return to normal and life regains its own schedule the runs will have to be slotted in wherever the rest of life dictates. It’s just a case of making sure I wear the right kit for the conditions.
What a block of training this has been! You’ll recall from my previous update that I’ve been following an 800m plan written by Jack Daniels and in his notes he said this phase would be the most demanding. He didn’t lie. In the previous update, most of my workouts were short intervals at paces between 5:30 – 6:30/mile to get the legs used to running faster. The rest of my week was easy running to recover. It never felt too bad as my legs have always liked faster running and coped very well with it.
What I hadn’t appreciated about my fitness was … the huge gap in it. Before starting this training I did three months of easy running where the majority of it was 8-10 min/mile. My long runs for example were averaging 8:30/mile in November. Along the way I clocked a few miles close to 7:30 (but only a few) and this is where the gap opened up. I had nothing to connect me between those autumn runs, at 7:30 or slower, to the 800m speedwork at 6:30 or quicker. Bridging the gap is what this phase aimed to do as you’ll see when I explain JackD’s T-pace and I-paced running.
To begin the recap let’s rewind to mid-January and the start of this phase. The first thing was to up the paces to account for (hopefully) improved fitness coming off of the previous block of training. This meant where I’d been running 200s at 48secs they were now expected to be run in 47 secs. Faster 200m repetitions quickened up from 44 to 43s and the other short interval distances were all increased using equivalent paces to these.
The sessions focused on what JackD terms I-pace training which are longer intervals at your predicted 5K pace. These began at three mins (where I managed 700 metres) and incrementally stretched out to five minutes (1,200m). I like what he says on p.108 of his 3rd edition book about how this “adds an aerobic stress but not any faster running speeds, which would be an additional new stress for the body to deal with.” i.e. you only add one stress, not two. My I-pace has been 6:50/mile (4:15/km).
The T-pace (Threshold) running should have been around 7:20/mile but I’ve found myself running them at 7:10-15 fairly comfortably. I think my recent years of endurance training probably made this easier to achieve than expected. There was also one 40-minute run at M-pace (Marathon) which I ran at 7:45/mile but could feel myself flagging in the last 5-10 minutes. Another gap filler.
There were still lots of 200s, 300s, 400s and 600s being run at fast paces but not the 100+ efforts of last time. Once again I’ve summarised it all in a table below and you can see, while the shorter efforts were generally successful, I struggled on the longer 400s and 600s. I think this is because my legs were often still recovering from the I- and T-paced sessions which totalled well over 45km.
Target time
On target
Missed
Efforts
Fastest
200m
47s
10
–
10
(2km)
38.44s
(5:10/mile)
43s
12
2
14
(2.8km)
300m
1min05
9
–
9
(2.7km)
59.77s
(5:21/mile)
400m
1min34
6
4
10
(4km)
1:24.9
(5:42/mile)
1min26
1
4
5
(2km)
500m
1min57
1
–
1
(0.5km)
1:53.54
(6:06/mile)
600m
2min23
4
6
10
(6km)
2:17.2
(6:08/mile)
I-Pace
6min50
33
1
34
(27.7km)
T-Pace
7min20
7
–
7
(11.2km)
M-Pace
7min45
4
1
5
(8km)
Total
87
18
105
(66.9km)
Stats for those who love them!
What’s been most interesting is Sundays have alternated between doing a Long Run one week, and a workout the next. By the time I’d run warm-up, efforts, jogged recoveries and warmed down home; the Sunday workouts were close to ten miles – not far off my standard 11-12 mile Long Run. Some of the midweek workouts have also been in the 8-10 mile range.
The first couple of weeks had their usual slump as the legs got used to the new regime. There were some aches and pains occurring especially in my left knee and right calf but these disappeared about three weeks in. My body began to feel comfortable with the training but I fatigued after a heavy fourth week. I found myself sleeping more and the fifth week of training was the toughest I’ve encountered so far. Thursday of week 5 was the workout where I physically couldn’t run fast enough on a set of fast 400m efforts missing target by 2-3 seconds. Fortunately in week 6, my legs perked up and I reaped the benefits of all the training so far. In the final workout I recorded my three fastest 200m times since I started – hurrah! Arriving home my Garmin promptly corrupted the workout so it wouldn’t upload. Fortunately I’d done a cursory review of the numbers in the kitchen. Frustrating but not the end of the world.
My overall mileage stayed about the same as previously and the six weeks resulted in 45 / 45 / 42 / 45 / 41 / 46 miles. These have been achieved with 6hr10 – 40 mins running each week depending on how my other commitments allow.
Weatherwise the training was a nightmare. As a golfer I’ve always found the end of January / start of February to be the worst conditions and I usually took a month off to stay warm at home. But, as a runner, you need to be getting out as often as possible so it’s a case of wrapping up warm, wearing the right gear. This year’s weather was rather diabolical – a combination of high winds, minus-figures temperatures, almost some snow, and two weeks of heavy rain. It seemed to dominate the forecast for every scheduled workout but there were one or two nice sunny days jumping out from nowhere to give surprise relief. Even so, when you’re struggling with fatigue, it’s not encouraging to go into a session knowing high winds will be suppressing your pace. But it’s already beginning to feel like “Spring is here” with mornings getting brighter and even birds tweeting!
The next six weeks focus on T-paced work which so far I’ve found fairly easy, but it includes fast repeats out to 600m which are going to need to be run in 2:06 – the fastest I’ve run so far is 2:13. I’m not looking forward to those but let’s see what happens ..
The Hansons’ Marathon Method contains an interesting approach to training for the marathon. The idea of the traditional “20-mile run” is abandoned with the longest run being only sixteen miles in their plans. Within the book they explore and compare the recommendations of other coaches and plans.
The idea of the 20-22 mile run comes from the days of Arthur Lydiard in the 1960s when he had his middle-distance runners doing this distance every Sunday! It might sound hard but remember these were runners with the capability of racing four minute miles. They’d begin the season taking 2hr35 and slowly work down to completing the runs in little more than two hours – quicker than 6min/mile, but that’s typically the easy pace of a world class runner. I don’t know if it was deliberate to create a course this long or down to the natural geography of Auckland, running in the Waitakere mountain range where Lydiard lived.
Derek Clayton, the world record holder for the marathon through the 1970s ran 150-160 miles every week. It was his belief, and he put it into practice, that he needed to run a 25-mile run every Saturday to be ready for his marathons. It’s hard to argue with a man whose record stood for so long yet Clayton suffered injuries and needed surgery eight times. Very few, if any, modern elites would do this level of mileage regularly now. Although there’s no record of how long these runs took him, given his toughness and general mileage, it’s hard to believe they would have been run any slower than 6-min/mile therefore being completed in 2½ hours.
In Jack Daniels’ Running Formula book he states a Long Run should never be more than 25% of the weekly mileage. The problem with this statement is it suggests you have to be running eighty miles per week to train for a marathon which is unnecessary for all but the best runners. This 25% limit is better applied to his training plans for shorter race distances but even with the marathon he says don’t go over 2½ hours. He makes the point that for someone only running four times per week, the runs are automatically 25% of the weekly mileage!
The 20-mile run is actually an arbitrary distance, there’s no science to this number. In Europe where they work in kilometres the Long Run is often 30K or 35K which are 18.6 miles and 21.7 respectively. People love round numbers! Of course, it’s true that runners used to say “Twenty miles is the halfway point of the marathon” as a reference to when the body starts to hit the wall and you have to dig deeper, but it’s also because they rarely trained much past it so the body wasn’t used to longer runs.
The most interesting approach to the marathon long run is the one detailed in Steve Magness’ The Science of Running. Magness coached at the Nike Oregon Project under Alberto Salazaar, himself once a world-class marathoner. The training knowledge at NOP was of the highest calibre so this method is one used by some of the best runners in the world. The first two months of a training programme are used to build up the Long Run to the twenty mile mark but then after this, there’s rarely specific Long Runs scheduled. They’re replaced by workouts that typically total the mileage. A world-class marathoner running at 5min/mile might do a Tempo run of 15-miles taking 1hr15 and when you add in a 4-mile warm-up and warmdown the session totals twenty miles. US Marathoner Josh Cox demonstrates this workout in the Training Day video.
The Hansons believe your marathon should be based on good physiological principles. They conclude that running for significantly longer than 2½ – 3 hours doesn’t provide those benefits to runners. Certainly in my own limited marathon training, I used to find that a three hour run left me feeling dehydrated whereas I happily run between 2 – 2hr15 every Sunday without taking food or drinks and arrive home feeling fine.
Hansons may limit the Long Run to sixteen miles but they include a run of eight miles the day before which results in a total of twenty-four miles over the two days. As they describe it, those sixteen miles then become the “last sixteen miles of your marathon” rather than the “first sixteen” which runners who set off fresh legged typically do. This is a method called cumulative fatigue and is used by ultrarunners to train for their races which can be in excess of one hundred miles. On a training weekend they might run for 5-6 hours each day to enable them to compile a total closer to their race distance.
When I was marathon training because I was capable of a 22-min parkrun I could reach twenty miles in three hours, it happily coincided with my 9-minutes per mile easy pace. For a slower runner, I would look for them to improve their pace and to use the principles of cumulative fatigue to help them prepare for a marathon. I’ve met far too many 5-hour marathoners focused on reaching the mythical 20-mile run in training because that’s what the guys who were capable of running four minute miles in the Sixties did. The problem is, as they build up through fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles they start tearing themselves down Sunday after Sunday with demoralising trudges lasting four hours or more, often in unpleasant winter conditions. Motivation sags, they can’t wait for the taper and end up walking large chunks of the marathon anyway. If you must build up to twenty miles get it done early interspersing the progression with less-taxing two hour runs on alternate weeks to give the body a chance to recover.
This far I’ve focused on the marathon distance but I find many runners don’t believe a Long Run is necessary for anything other than half or full marathons. This is a mistake and maintaining a weekly Long Run is an important part of building your aerobic base. By running further once a week you dig out muscle fibres that would otherwise lie dormant. Does it need to be 20-miles? Definitely not unless you’ve reached the capabilities of the Lydiard crowd.
Middle distance runners typically do a run of 10-12 miles and it goes up from there depending on the distance being raced and the runner’s capabilities. But it’s equally important to think in terms of time. I always aim for a minimum duration of 1½ hours for my weekly Long Runs and a maximum of 2½ hours. Of course, this distance needs to be in proportion to my other running, I wouldn’t do that if I were rebuilding after a layoff and only doing thirty minute runs the rest of the week.
Whatever your event, whether it’s parkrun, 10K or longer don’t neglect a weekly long run. It’ll keep you positioned to pick up on a half or full marathon at short notice while helping you get fitter and faster for your chosen distance.
Just before Christmas, I was lent a copy of Ron Hill’s two-part autobiography “The Long Hard Road” which is packed with detail on his life and running up to when he wrote them at the start of the 1980s. I talked briefly about it in my Marathon Speed post. Coincidentally the latest issue of Runner’s World (February 2021) contains a feature on Ron which, of course, goes nowhere into the same level of detail but does give an outsider’s view of what he was like.
The legendary Ron Hill adorns the cover of Runner’s World – Feb 2021 issue
Ron’s famous for his fifty-two year run streak and I’ve read analysis elsewhere suggesting he overtrained prior to big races. But let’s rewind, as I’m two hundred or so pages into part one and still learning about his early training and racing. On page 91 he details a week’s training which was the general schedule he began to follow from August 1961 and on through the next couple of years.
Details of a week’s training from Ron Hill’s book “The Long Hard Road” Pt. 1
About two weeks after formalising the schedule he won his first marathon, Liverpool, in 2:24:22 which gives us an indication of his level of fitness. Up to this point his training had been irregular with weekly mileage varying between 50-80 miles. He even took days off at that stage!
The training week I’m analysing follows the format he used throughout 1962-64, averaging 85-90mpw. His diary begins on a Saturday before Christmas …
The first thing to note is while 91½ miles of training sounds daunting, he’s actually only doing about 1hr – 1hr15 of training each day. The morning sessions are 25-30 mins; and the evening sessions tend to be eight miles of faster training which I’d estimate took 40-45 mins. The Sunday ‘long run’ of 11 miles will be just over the hour. What makes the 91½ miles achievable is being a fast runner – the majority of his running is done between 5-6 min/mile so he’s covering 10-12 miles per hour.
Saturday Dec. 16th
Morning – 4 mile course – 24:27 (6min05/mile)
Evening – 12 miles total.Ten mile race – 1st in 49min59 (5min/mile)
My thoughts – the 10-mile race is 5min/mile. According to Jack Daniels this gives Ron a marathon pace of 5:20/mile – which fits with his first marathon being run at 5:30/mile.
This 5:20/mile gives us a boundary for the 80-20 rule modern elites follow – 80% of their training will be slower than this. This 10-mile race is definitely in the 20% category.
Meanwhile the morning run is in the 80% category. JackD suggests an easy pace of 5:55 – 6:40/mile for someone at Ron’s level of development, so at 6:05/mile it looks about right.
Sunday Dec. 17th
11-mile long run. No time given but run with two others at a “very gentle” pace
My thoughts – at over an hour, it’s slightly longer than an ideal recovery run from yesterday’s race but it certainly falls into the 80% category.
I find it interesting Ron had now been running over four years and his long run was only 11 miles. He managed to win Liverpool marathon without any specific build-up – there was no 20-mile run. It suggests he had natural talent for distance running but, as you’ll see, he ran hard almost every day and in doing so he used the same principle of ‘cumulative fatigue’ that ultra runners use to train for their big races.
Monday Dec. 18th
Morning – 4 ½ mile course – 26:51 (6min/mile). Says he “pushed it a bit”
Evening – 8½ miles – 6 laps of fartlek including fast lap (4:49)
My thoughts – the morning run is slightly longer and faster than on Saturday but Ron’s Sunday was easy by his standards. Falls into an 80% run.
We have few specifics on the how long the fartlek efforts lasted but due to the fast lap, I’d classify this as a 20% run.
Tuesday Dec. 19th
Morning – 4½ mile course – 28:36 (6min20/mile) – “fartlek” “pushed intervals along a bit towards the end”
Evening – 8½ miles – at Firs – 4 laps at race pace (19:35 – 4:54/mile) + 2 laps fartlek
My thoughts – once again, while the average pace suggests it falls within the 80%, by doing a fartlek and pushing along the intervals, this begins to get into the 20% zone.
The evening session is definitely a 20% run, in modern terminology you’d call this a 20-min Threshold or Tempo run.
Wednesday Dec. 20th
Morning – 4½ mile course – 28:08 (6min15/mile) “pushed it where I could”
Evening – 10 miles – 20x440s in 1min10 with 220yd recovery
My thoughts – once again the pace of the morning run is under 80% but Ron isn’t allowing his legs the recovery they need from the race (80% session).
The evening session is the 6th consecutive session where he’s putting in effort rather than simply running easily (20% session).
Thursday Dec. 21st
Morning – 4½ mile course – no time given – “fartlek” “legs tired and leaden at the end”
Evening – 8 miles – “number stride fartlek” up to 60 and back down twice over
My thoughts – finally we see the results of hard racing on Saturday followed by trying to push things on Monday to Wednesday. I’m guessing the legs felt particularly tired because the previous evening was five miles worth of interval work. Yet Ron wanted to do a fartlek that morning. It would probably qualify as an 80% session on average pace but it’s another hard one in my book.
In the evening he did the “number stride fartlek” workout he invented:
“I ran 10 double strides hard effort, counting each time my left leg pushed off then jogged 10 double paces, then 15 double strides with the same number of paces jogged, 20, 25, 30, and so on, up to 55 or 60, then back down again to 10. Half mile jog, then repeat the sequence again. The bursts were relatively short, but it meant a lot of hard work in the acceleration phase each time, and I found it very tiring.”
Ron describes his “number stride fartlek” session (p.73)
I calculate this to be over twelve minutes of all-out hard running. First effort of 10 double strides only takes around 5 seconds, the second effort about 8 seconds. By the time he’s on the 60 double strides it’s taking over 30-seconds for each effort and he’s still got to come back down the ladder again. In total there are 21 efforts ranging from 5 – 30+ seconds. He’s packing in a lot of acceleration and hard running here. When you add it all up he’s totalling over 6-mins of all-out hard running on one of these efforts. That’s a session in itself for sprinters and he did it twice over.
Now compare that to the recommendations of Jack Daniels who would suggest doing eight strides after an easy run and describes them as “light, quick 10- to 20-second runs (not sprints) with 40 to 50 seconds of recovery between” (Daniels’ Running Formula 3rd ed. P.152). That’s around 2-3 minutes worth and not all-out. I begin to wonder how Ron ever survived running all those years – definitely a 20% session.
Evening – 7 miles – ran to Firs and back for six laps of field
My thoughts – at last we see a day of easy running. After the “number stride fartlek” his legs probably weren’t able to do anything else in the morning (80% session).
No time is given for the evening session but it was probably an easier run (80% session).
To summarise, what I’m seeing here is almost constant pushing to run fast. The only days where this doesn’t happen are Friday and Sunday. He raced every Saturday so probably took things easier on Friday to give himself fresher legs and recovered on Sunday.
In terms of the 80-20 rule, it’s hard to know for sure which category sessions fell into I’d estimate he was closer to 50-50. The rule relates to doing training 80% of the training at an intensity where no waste products from anaerobic metabolism are being produced. Their presence upsets the body’s chemistry, uses fuel stores quicker and fatigues muscles thereby leaving the body less able to perform effectively in the next workout.
But beyond the anaerobic metabolites, there’s a question of muscular recovery. When racing or running at high speeds, the muscle fibres get micro tears that have to rebuild stronger. Without adequate recovery this mending doesn’t occur. Ron has it going in his favour that he’s in his early 20s so he’ll still be recovering quickly, but even a young person is only capable of doing three workouts per week – maybe more occasionally. If I’m sounding critical I’m happy to admit when I was Ron’s age, I had no respect for the recovery process either. I used to play sport hard almost every day. It wasn’t unheard of for me to play an hour of competitive basketball then go to volleyball training for another hour. Or play a game of squash at lunchtime and another in the evening.
On p. 108 Ron provides the bare bones of his schedule … (“It was hard training, but as I was seeing improvement and success, I didn’t mind it. Morning sessions rotated on a weekly basis. Evening sessions on a fortnightly basis. I had a card in my training log and I ticked off each session as it was done.“) … it’s a lot easier to see the pattern and intensity of sessions:
MORNING
(4½ mile runs)
EVENING
Mon
Fartlek
Week 1
Mon
Fartlek with bursts
Tues
Fast
Tues
Four laps of the Firs (3½ miles) at racing speed
Weds
Fartlek
Weds
20 x 440 (usually around 68sec)
Thurs
Fast
Thurs
“number stride” fartlek
Fri
Easy
Fri
7 miles easy
Sat
Easy
Week 2
Mon
20 x 440
Tues
4 laps at racing speed
Weds
20 x 440
Thurs
4x repetition laps at the Firs
Fri
7 miles easy
Saturday would have been a race later in the day and Sunday only one longer run
Ron is doing four specific workouts plus a race each week. He ran 64 races in 1962! And he’s pushing it on four mornings. His body is under a huge amount of stress and it’s no wonder that, after a year of it, he was eventually forced to back off and take three easy weeks (30-40 miles) in December 1962. As he recounts his year, he’s usually trying to run through some kind of nagging Achilles, foot or quad injury.
I’m certain if he had simply jogged the morning runs each day he would have been in a much better position (but still not an optimal one). Some people can handle more intensity and training than others and it’s clear Ron could. But it’s also clear from how his body reacted that his training was too much even though it helped him get faster over the next couple of years. More recovery sessions would almost certainly have allowed him to do stronger workouts to make the same gains and possibly even run faster.
But enough of the analysis, Ron says he was seeing improvement and it’s certainly the case. As he started this training he won the Liverpool marathon in 2:24:22 in August 1961. A year later he won the Polytechnic Marathon in 2:21:59. It led to him representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the European Championships in Belgrade. He didn’t finish the race pulling out at 30km five minutes down on the leaders. In 1963, he tried to defend his Polytechnic title and, while running faster (2:18:06), he came 2nd to Buddy Edelen. In 1964, Ron ran his fastest time yet with 2:14:12 at the Polytechnic which would have been a World Record had Basil Heatley not been beaten him. It gave them both a place at the Tokyo Olympics but Ron could only finish 19th in the marathon (2:25:34) and 18th in the 10,000 metres – a distance he’d been ranked at 3rd in the world in 1963. Nonetheless in three years he took ten minutes off his marathon time with his training regime. At other race distances he also saw improvements – his 2-mile time going from 9:12 to 8:50; his 3-mile time from 14:08 to 13:29; and his mile time down to 4min 12.5sec.
This is the question mark against Ron’s training methods. He was capable of winning one week, struggling the next. He won the Boston Marathon and Commonwealth Games in 1970 but then failed to even secure a medal at the Munich Olympics when he was the favourite.
I believe more recovery runs each week and fewer workouts would have allowed him to find the consistency to be a winner more frequently. Maybe I’m being unfair to him and as I get into the later parts of his autobiography, I’ll find he did what I suggest but his hard-working reputation leads me to doubt it. It’s instructive that as he prepared for the AAA Championship 6-mile race, key to selection for the Olympics, he was still running in local races. Modern runners are more selective about when they race. Constantly pushing his body meant it had to give out at some stage, so it often happened when everybody else was rested, at the top of their game and able to push harder.
Regardless of the results, I believe Ron got the best out of his talent and had a career to be proud of. His best marathon time was 2:09:28, only a minute or so behind the world record in place a decade and a half later. As a coach, you love people who are committed to their training and willing to work hard so there’s no complaints there.
Part two of Ron Hill’s “The Long Hard Road” – 400 pages each
The standard approach to marathon training has always been to build up the distance to the “20-mile run” three weeks before race day and then taper. Runners of the 1980s talked about doing the 20-mile run six times before a marathon to get the legs used to the distance but it was always about building up to the distance.
But a few years ago, I came across the idea that the Kenyans start out with running short distances at the pace they want to run their marathon and then extend the distance. I discovered this around the same time I was reading the Hansons Marathon Method which sets out ever-longer “Tempo runs” at marathon pace. These two approaches of the traditional Western build-up vs the Kenyan build-long have names in the sprint world – Long-to-short and Short-to-long respectively.
When I began running, I started out with a sort of Short-to-long approach. I went out the door at high speed and tried to hold onto it for as long as possible. Of course fatigue quickly kicked in and I gradually slowed down. This is the Short-to-long approach at its simplest – start at a particular speed and build up the distance for which you can hold it. I’m currently using this approach with my 800m training – I began with strides of 10-20secs to get my legs used to running at speed. Then it was 200m efforts at a particular pace, subsequently progressing onto 400m then 600m efforts at the same pace.
The alternative approach of Long-to-short is one where you get used to running longer intervals at a slow speed and then gradually quicken them up. As I documented in my post about Roger Bannister, in the six months preceding his iconic moment he began running 440yd intervals at 1min06 then reduced the time by a second per month until he could run them at 56 seconds e.g. 1:06, 1:05, 1:04.
In his “The Science of Running” book, Steve Magness refers to “Top down” and “Bottom up” approaches which are the distance running equivalents of Long-to-short and Short-to-long. Below are his suggested set of workouts for the 5K parkrun distance. On the left you can see the distance is long intervals of a mile or 1km which begin at threshold pace and quicken to 10K and 5K pace as the weeks go by. On the right, everything is run at 5K pace from the beginning but starts with short intervals of 400m and lengthens out.
Top Down (Long-to-short)
Bottom Up (Short-to-long)
6 x 1-mile at threshold with 1-2 min rest
3 sets of (4x400m) at 5K pace with 30sec rest, 5-mins between sets
5 x 1-mile at 10K pace with 2-3 min rest
3 sets of (3x600m) at 5K pace with 40sec rest, 5-mins between sets
3 x 1-mile at 10K pace 2 x 1000m at 5K with 3 min rest
2 sets of (3x800m) at 5K pace with 45sec rest, 5-mins between sets
1 x 1-mile at 10K pace 1 x 1-mile at 5K 2 x 1000m at 5K with 3 min rest
2 sets of (1000, 800, 700m) at 5K pace with 45sec rest, 5-min between sets
3 x 1-mile at 5K pace with 3 min rest
5x1000m at 5K pace with 60-75sec rest
Of course these are general outlines of the approach. The truth is you still do a bit of each as you progress through your running career. Eliud Kipchoge didn’t start out sprinting as a small boy at his marathon pace of 4:40/mile and keeping lengthening it out until he could run a sub-2 marathon. He did some faster running in shorter races (his mile time is 3:50) and he did lots of general runs at slower paces to build support for what he eventually achieved.
The second truth is that neither approach is “The Way” to train. Some runners will adapt better using a Short-to-Long approach, others using a Long-to-Short. I’ve met a number of guys who were natural marathoners and benefitted hugely from the traditional Western approach to marathon training. They went out each week, covered big distances and pushed a little harder. I, myself, on the other hand have always struggled to run big distances but find the shorter stuff easier and so tag on distance when I have a longer race coming up.
Whichever way you currently approach your training, think about your preferred style and then have a think about the alternative and whether applying it might get you better results.
I noticed during the 2020 lockdown my speed and strength have been declining and, as I’m not getting any younger, I thought it would be good to try something different while I’ve still got the opportunity to maximise whatever talent is left.
I’ve been toying over the years with trying my hand at middle distance running – 800m or mile. Having always struggled at 10K and half marathons more than my training suggested I should, it’s been a slow realisation that maybe I’m built more towards middle-distance or even shorter. I met Iwan Thomas, the British 400m record holder at Eastleigh parkrun once, and noticed we’re of similar size and build at 6’2” and 13+ stone. (Obviously this isn’t to begin to suggest I could ever have challenged him). But I have all the hallmarks of being packed with speed-generating fast-twitch muscle – I build muscle easily, I sweat profusely, have high heart-rates when running at easy paces, start off too fast and love doing interval work. The only trouble is I was never fast at sprinting!
While I understand the principles behind training for 800m, I’ve never actually done it so I decided to use one of the plans from Jack Daniels’ Running Formula book. I wanted to get a sense of how he structures workouts and what volumes he uses. I’d been running forty miles per week through the autumn so went with the plan based on that mileage. I ran an 800m time trial on Dec 2nd to baseline where I was at and ran a lung-busting 2min58. Not great but a starting place.
The plan has been to run two workouts each week, on Tuesday and Thursday, and a long run on Sunday. While I’ve trained to the workouts scheduled, I’ve continued with a long run of 1hr30+ that I was doing through the autumn rather than Jack’s recommended one hour. He also recommends doing six to eight strides on two of the recovery days but again I haven’t done these. This is because I’ve found in the past it’s easy to develop my speed but, in doing so, I wipe out my endurance. I wanted to try and keep the aerobic side propped up with the long run. The six weeks of training I’ve done so far have resulted in 45 / 41 / 48 / 47 / 43 / 44 miles.
The first workout began with a total of 1,600m training (8x200m) progressing to 2,400 – 3,000m in most sessions with a peak of 3,200m. It’s been exclusively a mixture of 200m – 600m efforts with equal jog recoveries. I’m surprised at how low volume this is compared to what many runners do when training themselves.
Target time
On target
Missed
Efforts
Fastest
200m
48s
67
9
76
(15.2km)
40.6s
(5:27/mile)
300m
1min13
6
–
6
(1.8km)
1:05.79
(5:53/mile)
400m
1min37
26
1
27
(10.8km)
1:29.01
(5:58/mile)
600m
2min26
4
–
4
(2.4km)
2:13.87
(5:59/mile)
Total
103
10
113
(30.2km)
Some interval stats for those who love them!
The first few weeks created an overload and the pace of my Sunday and other runs went backwards. This was to be expected as it takes 10-14 days to recover from a new stimulus. I found myself sleeping 8-10 hours the night after big workouts and experiencing more muscular tightness than in the past. As my running form has (hopefully) improved, I’ve found myself landing more on the fore and midfoot and my calves have been taking more load. I’ve had a few aches and pains in random muscles – the inside of the right thigh, below the knee, my left glute but none of them lasted long and the slower, paced recovery days allowed them to heal. I’ve been stretching more to keep everything loose.
Once or twice, I looked at the upcoming session with dread – not because of whether it’ll hurt, but whether I can be on-target for some of the bigger efforts. That’s a real ego thing and something that isn’t good to get too judgemental about. Ultimately there was only one interval I missed by a big margin and that was in the first session of the 400s. It started on an uphill section and I took it too casual – so I learned from it. When I was younger, I’d have beaten myself up about it but now I see a missed target as feedback to whether I’m on track for training. If you start missing targets regularly then there you’re trying to do something you’re not ready for. But once I got into the training I rarely missed target and was more likely to run them too fast. The silly thing is while you can feel you’ve failed for running 48.2s and only marginally missing, you think nothing of it when you run 45 or 46s. Certainly that’s how I would have looked at it when I was younger. But with a wiser head on my shoulders, I tried to ensure efforts weren’t too fast either, there’s no use in adding extra stress when the plan is calculated to give you an optimum loading to recover from.
One of the side-effects of training with all these short intervals – especially the 200s – has been that it’s given me a chance to practice my running form, or rather to play around with it. I noticed I run faster with lower knee lift, that my left leg wasn’t straightening ‘out the back’ and my right hip was coming forward and therefore dragging the trail leg. I noticed over the past week that my left knee was tracking from side-to-side but the lower knee lift gave it more power to push down and straight through. All little things I could only figure out and experiment with by training at faster speeds than a jog. Jack Daniels says in his book that Repetition training is good for improving efficiency but I’d never experienced it to be true until this block of training.
Overall I’ve really enjoyed this training. I’ve been lucky with the weather. It was icy around New Year but I ran at lunchtime when it was warmer and lighter. Some of the sessions have been 15-20mph wind but nothing gale force. Getting out and running fast is fun even when it leads to heavy legs and gasping for breath. It leaves you feeling stronger and better able to cope with running on other days. The next phase of the plan is geared towards supporting this with longer intervals but run at a slightly, slower pace.
Recently I’ve been loaned biographies about Bill Adcocks, Derek Clayton and Ron Hill. These are names from a long-forgotten past but, in the late 1960s, they were three of the best, if not the best, marathoners in the world.
Derek Clayton was the marathon world record holder for fourteen years including the whole of the 1970s. Born in Northern Ireland, he emigrated to Australia in his early twenties and set his mind on becoming the world record holder. His training regime consisted of 150-160 miles each week which enabled him to set the record, first in 1967 with a time of 2hr09min36 in Fukuoka (Japan) then improve it two years later to 2hr08min34 in Antwerp (Belgium). There was however controversy over this latter record as the course was thought to be short. Nonetheless it stood until 1981 when it was broken by Rob de Castella.
Derek Clayton looks out from the cover of “Running to the Top”. Part autobiography / part advice
Bill Adcocks was another great marathoner and, the year after Clayton’s recordsetter, he became the sole Briton ever to win Fukuoka marathon in 2hr10min48. He was only a minute slower than Clayton and, while he never held the world record, until 2004 he held the course record for the original Marathon route in Greece with a time of 2hr11min07. Among his other accomplishments were to place 5th in the heat and altitude of the 1968 Mexico Olympic marathon and win silver at the Empire (Commonwealth) Games in 1966.
Bill Adocks running on the left. The cover ofhis autobiography “The Road To Athens”
Ron Hill is better known these days as he’s continued running into the 21st century and is famed for his daily run streak that stretched from 1964 to 2017. Arguably he was slightly better than Bill Adcock at the marathon but it’s a close contest. Ron competed for Great Britain at the 1964, ‘68 and ‘72 Olympics. In 1970, he set a course record in Boston in 2hr10min30 then followed it up by winning the Commonwealth Games gold in 2hr09min28. He claimed this was the world record as it was faster than Clayton’s Fukuoka time and the Antwerp course had never been successfully remeasured.
Part two of Ron Hill’s “The Long Hard Road” – both parts are 400 pages
Having graduated with a PhD in textile chemistry, Ron began his own clothing line. I remember when I was a sixteen year old attendant at Broadstone Sports Centre, the other lads (Warren, Justin, Eddie, Tim) all wore RonHill Tracksters – navy blue leggings with a thin red stripe down the side and stirrup loops at the bottom. While they were tighter than the woollen tracksuits of the day, they were still looser compared to the lycra of today. Of course I had to get a pair to try and fit in with the cooler, older lads!
The legendary RonHill Tracksters. A favourite of the lads at Broadstone Sports Centre in the ’80s
What I found revealing from these books was that each of them began at clubs where they did regular intervals sessions to develop their speed. Mileage was secondary and a big week in their early years was 30-40 miles. Their best times for 400m and the mile were as follows:
400m / 440yd time
Mile time
Derek Clayton
52 secs
4:07
Ron Hill
55 secs
4:10
Bill Adcock
57 secs
4:12
1960s world record
45 secs
3:51
My big takeaway is that even the best marathoners in the world, who are the most naturally talented towards endurance, could run a 400m or 440yds in under sixty seconds. Yet I know few runners entering parkruns, 10Ks or other distance events who can do this. Do you have to be freakishly endowed with speed to achieve this? I don’t believe so – simply committed to a good training programme. Of course there will be some who aren’t capable but I suspect many more could if they tried.
The related takeaway is that in being able to run 2hr10 marathons, Clayton, Hill and Adcocks were running at 5-minutes per mile. It’s an obvious statement yet most people approaching the marathon are more concerned about training for the distance than being able to run a single mile faster. To an extent, you can build decent times off general runs and progressively pushing harder but often this only leads to being a decent runner at the front of local races with times that are far off those of the best club runners.
When you think about it, it’s obvious – “if you want to run a fast distance race, you have to be fast over a shorter distance”. I know lots of people who do speedwork with the intention of getting fast for their current races but no-one who’s taken a dedicated approach to improving their speed at shorter distances before working on the distance of longer races.
Big Red Running 