Judging from those I spoke to at the London Marathon training event, most of you budding marathoners are managing to fit in at least one ‘quality’ session each week, in which you run faster than your proposed race pace. But what kind of faster training is the most beneficial for marathon running? If you are training 4 times a week or less, I advise sticking to just one quality session, coupled with a long run and 1-2 easy/steady sessions. If you are training 5-6 times a week, you could schedule in two such sessions, with a different focus for each.
For the once-a-weekers: aim to run a set of long intervals at your ‘threshold’ pace. This pace will equate to roughly your 10 mile race pace, or be 10-15 seconds per mile slower than your 10km race pace. ‘Controlled discomfort’ is the description to bear in mind! A good place to start with these sessions is 3-5 x 6-8 minutes with a 90-120 second recovery.
Aim to build up the duration of the effort rather than the pace as you get accustomed to these.
For the twice-a-weekers: Perform your threshold run, as above. For the second session, I recommend doing an above-threshold session in shorter intervals, lasting 2-5 minutes. This will teach your body to transport more oxygen to the muscles without the build-up of waste products which hamper muscular contraction and cause fatigue.
A good starting point is 8 x 2 minutes (90 second recovery) or 6 x 3 minutes (2 minute recovery) and your effort level is HARD! You are close to maximum capacity here…
NEVER do these two sessions on consecutive days. Have an easy or rest day between them – ideally, two. I’ll talk about how you can use hills to perform either of these two quality sessions for variety in a future post.