Saturday, November 17, 2007

Marathon Training Plan

It is 21 weeks until the London marathon and I will be starting my training program next week. The last 14 weeks have been my rebuilding phase as I tried to get back up to my pre-injury mileage and fitness levels. I just beat my 10k PR and this week's mileage will be about 48 miles, so I'm considering phase zero successfully completed

The marathon plan is a hodge-podge created by pulling aspects that worked well from my previous training as well as a number of formal training programs (daniels, pfitzinger, durden). Given my history of speed/hill related injuries it focuses on distance, tempo work and marathon pace running. It is light on speedwork and aggressive hill climbing.

Mileage builds steadily, with an easy cutback week every 4 weeks (Mileage drops and I take 1 day off). Peak mileage is 70, which I'll hit 4 weeks before race day. March is the big month at 283 miles, then it tapers for 3 weeks for the race itself.

A normal week will be...
--Monday: 5 easy miles - recovering from Sunday!
--Tuesday: 5-7 easy miles
--Wednesday: Tempo Runs 2x3miles, 7-9 total
--Thursday: 7-10 easy miles
--Friday: 5-7miles, with 2-3 at race pace
--Saturday: 6-11 easy miles
--Sunday: Long runs 14-22, with fast finishes and lots at marathon pace

Here's the weekly mileage plan.....












I have a 10k and 2 half marathons along the way to assess my (hopefully) improving fitness and will use these to adjust training paces.

I'm basing all my training and racing paces on Daniels' VDOTs. (I wrote about them back in early May).

Currently I'm between 49 and 50 based on my 41:43 10k. I'm hoping to get up to a solid 51 before London. At that level I should be able to run a 1:30:02 half, a 40:39 10k and a 19:36 5k.

Marathon prediction for 51 is 3:07, but although I'm going to train at paces based on a VDOT of 51 (if I can actually get there) I will race the marathon based on a VDOT of 2 lower, which means a 3:14 (7:26 pace) as a goal (althrough 3:20:59 will do too, as that is my Boston Qualifying time).

Given that my current marathon PR is 4:10 I have a lot of improving to do.

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