For the last couple months I’ve been working on speed. I’ve learned that in order to run fast for the marathon, you first have to be able to run fast in the shorter distances. Dedicating a couple of months to 5k’s is great to build this. My speed is horrible… let me explain.. my 200 speed is the exact same as my 5k speed! Pretty bad… of course I’m not gonna change this too much in just a few months. It’s gonna take a while and I have to be patient. Having no patience will only lead to injury which will push my goal out even farther.
The beginning of the year I was hoping to officially break 23 minutes in the 5k. Last years PR officially was 23:30. I used the pfitzinger training plans and got my time down to 22:13. I was hoping to break 22 this last 5k, but had to adjust my goal due to the weather. It was 92% humidity!
The last month I feel like I was finally gaining speed. I asked my uncle for help and he gave me a couple super hard speed workouts. Pyramid workouts; 100-200-300-400-300-200-100, as many sets you can handle with 200 slow jogs in between. Then 200-300-400-500-400-300-200 the next week, also as many as you can handle. Then finally the next week 400-500-600-800-600-500-400 with 200s after all but 400 jog after the 800. Also as many as you can handle. I did 2 sets for all these and they had me tired for days after.
I’m not a fan of speed work in any way, so am excited to start base building and get ready for marathon training in the fall. I’m starting around 40 mpw working up to 60 or higher by September. During this base building block I’m focusing more on strength work, since I’ve been lacking much on that part.
I’ve been reading more and more on how to qualify for Boston. I’ve been nervous about going at it too hard and overtraining. Everywhere it talks about having a good “base” before starting your 12-18 week marathon training cycle, but I had a hard time narrowing down how to actually build a base.
In the past I’ve started every marathon training cycle with running about 15 miles per week, being able to run about 8 miles easily. Yes.. my idea of base building was so off… Most books, websites and podcasts say to have a mileage of at least 35-40 mpw before even starting training. I never even got up to this kind of mileage during my training for any of my marathons.
There has been a lot of conflicting information about building base, some people still incorporate speed and tempo workouts, but from the research I’ve done it mostly says to run in an aerobic zone for 12 weeks or so. This means to not get your heart rate up too high, because this will put you in the anaerobic zone, which you won’t need to train until the marathon training actually starts.
I won’t bore you with more details, long story short for the next few months I’m having to run slow and a lot! I’m gonna try to work up to about 40-50 miles per week.
I read that with the MAF (maximum aerobic function) test you can test your aerobic progress in this cycle. Below is the formula and test explained from the Phill maffetone website.
Basically you run 5 miles at 150 heart rate and with building my aerobic system I should be able to run faster at the same heart rate by the end of this base building phase. This is my first test and I will post the next one in a month to see my progress.
Mile 1: 8:12
Mile 2: 8:31
Mile 3: 8:46
Mile 4: 8:47
Mile 5: 9:08
The 180 Formula To find the maximum aerobic heart rate: