Sub 3 hour Marathon.

[Borrowdale_Battenberg]

Sub 3 hours is only possible if your nutritional recovery strategy involves a pink and white sponge, surrounded in a marzipan facia.

[Derby Tup]

Sub 3 hours is only possible if your nutritional recovery strategy involves a pink and white sponge, surrounded in a marzipan facia.

One of your better posts BunderscoreB

[cyclops]

Why the obsession with the weight vest? I can understand a rucksack to work for practical purposes, but not the weight vest.

I reckon a weight vest will distribute the additional weight more evenly, thereby working muscles on front and back of the body.

[Tahr]

I don't think thats any good Tahr.

If you do that semi long at 6.35-6.40, and taper properly (losing the miles not the quality) - on the day it feels so easy and you will be actually slowing yourself down, although at London even in the top 1000 you still don't get your own space around till after cutty sark: so the first couple of miles can be hindered by idiots who always want to start at the front, knowing they will finish at the back.

I once had a stand up row (moi?? as if!) with a guy next to me who had a schedule on his arm, we were standing at the 2.50 marker. I looked at his schedule - discovered it said 4 hours, and told him he was ruining the race for at least 10000 runners behind us. (days before chip timing) He Didn't care. You will lose even a minute in the first couple of miles to such idiots.

Thanks Mike for the advice. I know when I ran my 1:23 half I wasn’t at my peak fitness so I should physically be able to do 6:40 MMP, in truth I have never trained with pace or HRM in mind. I have just run with club mates, always looking to run with somebody a bit better than me and tried to keep up.

I know only too well what you mean about the London, I was using a sub 3:30 train schedule for my 2010 race. Towards the end of training it was obvious from my 10k times that a sub 3:15 should have been in my reach without to much trouble and this would have gained me a “good for age” entry. On race day when I got in my pen I looked at the guys around me and I know that they say never judge a book by its cover but a lot of the guys around me were carrying a couple of extra stone in weight and looked like they would struggle to sub 4 hour never mind 3:30. I pushed to the front of the pen and remember looking to my left to see a lad in a full helicopter fancy dress complete with rotor blades on top, it was a great fancy dress and I recall he was running for the RAF benevolent fund, fair play to him but WTF was he doing in a sub 3:30 pen?

Sure enough once it started the whole road was blocked by people just running far to slow, I had my splits for each mile on my armband, I was left with running up and down kerbs, on the outside of every bend trying to get passed so many slow runners. I picked up a lad from NZ and we ran together both cursing a lot of the slow runners. It was only by mile 8 was I able to get on that thin red line, I guess in frustration I tried to pull back the lost time too quick because by 13 miles I was back on schedule then as you say got to around 21 and really started to drop time on each mile. I think I Garmi gave me over 27 miles which must have been due to the zigzag to find gaps early on and the running on the outside of every bend to overtake.

ATB

Tahr

[Deadlegs]

Whilst it's right that quality runs are important you have to be careful. To get the benefit from quality you need to run hard and be fresh for the session. If you do too much you will be tired and will injure yourself and /or not get the full benefit. Most mileage should be at a pace you can recover from. I would say nearer 8 minute miling. Perhaps 10 % quality. As someone said there is a tendency to run slower runs too fast and faster runs too slow.

The best way to do London is to first get a good for age place. You have a different start ( with the celebs!) and can be away quickly.

[IainR]

Whilst it's right that quality runs are important you have to be careful. To get the benefit from quality you need to run hard and be fresh for the session. If you do too much you will be tired and will injure yourself and /or not get the full benefit. Most mileage should be at a pace you can recover from. I would say nearer 8 minute miling. Perhaps 10 % quality. As someone said there is a tendency to run slower runs too fast and faster runs too slow.

The best way to do London is to first get a good for age place. You have a different start ( with the celebs!) and can be away quickly.

I wouldn't say that.. not in your endurance phase. If I have an event in 4 months I'd put in a good 10-12 weeks of endurance, build your aerobic base, 90-100 mile weeks, no breaks, no days off, few rep sessions.. just miles, anything from 6:30-7:30 normally...

Then the final 4 weeks more speed work to sharpen and more work at race pace.

[noel]

I reckon a weight vest will distribute the additional weight more evenly, thereby working muscles on front and back of the body.

Why don't you just eat pies? Then it distributes the weight all over your body. You can then slim down in the weeks leading up to the event.

[Tahr]

Why don't you just eat pies? Then it distributes the weight all over your body. You can then slim down in the weeks leading up to the event.

I do that as well

ATB

Tahr

[alwaysinjured]

I wouldn't say that.. not in your endurance phase. If I have an event in 4 months I'd put in a good 10-12 weeks of endurance, build your aerobic base, 90-100 mile weeks, no breaks, no days off, few rep sessions.. just miles, anything from 6:30-7:30 normally...

Then the final 4 weeks more speed work to sharpen and more work at race pace.

I tried that sort of thing for a couple of years, and for me , at least it didn't work.
80/90 is the realistic limit of training once a day around an intense job.

The high junk mileage left me permanently knackered, I was always fighting some kind of niggle, minor calf tear whatever. I had several attempts of failing to break the 3 barrier by margins of minutes. I found it hard to do the pace needed in long sessions, because I was too tired to go fast enough. I fell victim to every bug going, because I was probably immuno-depleted.

My times improved almost dramatically when I chopped back to the four key sessions, generally running at most 5 times a week, but where each of the sessions mattered. I was less tired, more positive, enjoyed it more, and I got faster quickly.

Within a year of stripping it down I was getting close to breaking 2.45 and my training times on on semi longs improved significantly - to the point of doing 2.05 on the occasions I pushed an SL up close to 20. Breaking 2.45 never happened because of a medial ligament rupture, that heralded a series of serious knee injuries that have plagued the last 15 years.

Those knee injuries could be to do with getting an interest in long things, my idea of a "triathlon" became doing london, three peaks, keswick to barrow 40 in successive weekends, then following that with, old county tops, duddon or the yomp:

but I actually think the seeds of those life injuries were sown by too many junk miles on badly lit, rough pavements. I am built more like a weightlifter ( my son actually is a hammer thrower too), than a cycling "grimpeur" so carrying the bodyweight cannot help with impacton hard ground. I also think the reason paula has been permanently injured is these 150/160 mile weeks.

I heard a talk by Helen Clitheroe the other night. She only does 80 as a pro athlete, and I think that could be why she has lasted so long, but still shared the podium with Haile at GMR in 2011 as an "old lady" of nearly 40, doing 31.x for 10K

[IainR]

I tried that sort of thing for a couple of years, and for me , at least it didn't work.
80/90 is the realistic limit of training once a day around an intense job.

The high junk mileage left me permanently knackered, I was always fighting some kind of niggle, minor calf tear whatever. I had several attempts of failing to break the 3 barrier by margins of minutes. I found it hard to do the pace needed in long sessions, because I was too tired to go fast enough. I fell victim to every bug going, because I was probably immuno-depleted.

My times improved almost dramatically when I chopped back to the four key sessions, generally running at most 5 times a week, but where each of the sessions mattered. I was less tired, more positive, enjoyed it more, and I got faster quickly.

Within a year of stripping it down I was getting close to breaking 2.45 and my training times on on semi longs improved significantly - to the point of doing 2.05 on the occasions I pushed an SL up close to 20. Breaking 2.45 never happened because of a medial ligament rupture, that heralded a series of serious knee injuries that have plagued the last 15 years.

Those knee injuries could be to do with getting an interest in long things, my idea of a "triathlon" became doing london, three peaks, keswick to barrow 40 in successive weekends, then following that with, old county tops, duddon or the yomp:

but I actually think the seeds of those life injuries were sown by too many junk miles on badly lit, rough pavements. I am built more like a weightlifter ( my son actually is a hammer thrower too), than a cycling "grimpeur" so carrying the bodyweight cannot help with impacton hard ground. I also think the reason paula has been permanently injured is these 150/160 mile weeks.

I heard a talk by Helen Clitheroe the other night. She only does 80 as a pro athlete, and I think that could be why she has lasted so long, but still shared the podium with Haile at GMR in 2011 as an "old lady" of nearly 40, doing 31.x for 10K

I'm not sure.. I don't think there is one size fits all.. but too many try to be race fit for 12 months a year..

I think its too many reps which lead to injuries though.

But this year I've stuck to endurance phases followed by sharpening and found it great. But I was out of the UK fell scene so not tempted to race.. I'll probably only race 20 times this year, with 3 goal races.. allowing that sort of structure.

I'm not light, not far off 80 kilos.. 90 a week on roads hurts.

I do think long term it wont be feasible if I had kids, missus etc.. at the moment I work flexibly.. my missus lives away, so I can do 20 milers midweek.. high mileage is easy with such a lifestyle.

160 may be detrimental to long term running but remember Paula was a 2:15 marathoner.. the greatest ever by a distance.. so she certainly got the gains for her efforts, but yes it was probably at a cost. But thats a fact of life..