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http://predawnrunner.com/2011/11/threehour-marathon-plan/
rested primarily on aerobic capacity. The recovery phase is much the same, focused strictly on easy miles to ramp back up to a base mileage level, with some strides included to maintain a focus on running economy. With a flat marathon targeted for the fall, there was no real need for hill work, and the program doesnt call for any. Should you be running a hillier marathon like San Francisco, Akron, or Boston (among many others), one approach would be to change some of the stride sessions to hill intervals of maybe 20 seconds each. Alternatively, running the 600m interval sets as a hill sessions can also provide some solid workouts, though there are only two such sessions in the program to work with, and jumping right to 6x600m on hills is a tough way to start. To help set pacing goals, the early 10 mile race in week two (1:03:08) helped set a VDOT, as defined by Jack Daniels and determined using the Runbayou calculator, of 54, giving the following target paces: Easy runs (general aerobic, medium-long and long runs recovery could be even slower) 7:54 note that Pfitzinger does recommend running long runs a bit faster, starting at easy pace but picking up to just 10% above marathon pace by a few miles into the run (~7:23 pace) Marathon pace 6:49 (consistent with a 2:59 marathon) Lactate threshold pace 6:26 (this was generally reduced to 6:20, as prescribed by the McMillan calculator) Interval pace 800m 2:55, 1200m 4:25, 1600m 5:55 The execution of the plan was not flawless the high summer humidity drove two each of the lactate threshold and marathon pace workouts to come up short, though the total mileage of each workout was made up as easy miles. Most of week 10 was missed (converted to cross-training) due to family commitments. And food poisoning drove a mileage shortfall over the weekend of week 13, though the 18 mile long run (without marathon pace miles) was made up the following Monday. It didnt matter the result was a personal best by over eight minutes, and a 2:55:41 final result with a surprising victory at the 2011 Towpath Marathon. This result demonstrated the value of high mileage above the weekly pattern of intervals + tempo + long runs employed previously. And the key to being able to maintain the high mileage was to keep much of the miles sufficiently easy.