4 x 1 Mile, 10 Miles, 4 x 1 Mile
4 x 1 Mile, 10 Miles, 4 x 1 Mile
Designed for Marathon runners
Intensity
1 Mile at 15K to 10K pace
10 Mile at Half Marathon pace
Recovery
90 seconds after 1 Mile reps
1 Mile easy running before & after 10 Mile
Exertion
8/10
Periodization
Specific Period, Introduction Block
Context & Details
Today there are two main types of marathon runners — those wanting to complete the distance and those wanting to compete over the distance.
And their training is drastically different.
Runners who simply want to “go the distance” are concerned with training to help them endure the stress of covering 26.2 miles. Time to completion matters little to this camp. This runner’s training should focus primarily on conditioning them to last for however many hours they project running a marathon will take. Time on the feet is what matters most as the pace is an afterthought.
For runners wanting to compete over 26.2 miles, either against others or the clock, the “time on the feet” approach to training won’t be of much benefit. What matters to this type is not how much they run, but how fast.
However, this distinction has been blurred somewhat in the past 20 - 30 years, with competitive runners worrying too much about their long-run and weekly mileage and novice marathoners overly concerned about their training paces.
Marathon training was a lot clearer (and perhaps effective) in the past.
Runners of the “Boom Era” (the likes of Frank Shorter, Steve Jones, Bill Rodgers, etc.) all understood the foundation to effective marathon training was frequent steady running. These types all called steady running (15K - Marathon pace range) “slow.” As in 5-minute to 6-minute mile pace was “slow.” “Fast” was considered running speeds quicker than 4:20/mile pace.
The Boom Era runners all did a lot of “slow” steady running, near-daily, year-round — and without super shoes. They did their steady running in 5 - 10 mile bouts, twice to three times a day. Both as morning runs before workouts, as a second afternoon run after an A.M. workout, or as a training run activity.
Super slow recovery runs didn’t really exist for the Boom Era runners. Much of the training diet was what today we’d consider moderate running and faster. It contradicts the Polarized or 80/20 training models popular today — but this method did get results.
Today’s session can be best thought of as a higher quality “Boom Era” long run.
Improvements to running economy, velocity at lactate threshold, fatigue resistance, and marathon specific aerobic capacity and power are all reinforced or realized in this session.
The 1 Mile reps bookending the 10 Miles “steady” is reminiscent of a workout construction from the “Boom Era.”
The first set of mile repeats slightly fatigues the runner. The 10 Mile steady callouses them mentally. And the final set of mile repeats conditions the runner to sustain relatively high force production when highly fatigued, much like the final 10K of a marathon.
It’s best to repeat once or twice in the Specific Period, as the session is fairly taxing due to the combination of the distance and speeds run.
Continue Learning
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Good books on Marathon training
Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger
Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon by Brad Hudson
Running Rewired: Reinvent Your Run for Stability, Strength, and Speed by Jay Dicharry
Hansons Marathon Method: Run Your Fastest Marathon the Hansons Way by Luke Humphrey