Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

Another time when you might do 2 hard days in a row is if your weekly schedule is dictated by the Monday-to-Friday workweek. If you’re too busy or fatigued during the week to get in regular high-quality training, then you’ll want to take advantage of the weekend and squeeze in 2 hard days. This situation is detailed in figure 3.3. Hard days on Saturday and Sunday followed by recovery days on Monday and Tuesday provide a strong training stimulus and 2 full days to recover before the next hard effort on Wednesday. Easy days on Thursday and Friday then leave you well rested for another weekend of hard training. Four of the 5 weekdays become recovery days, and you still get in three hard training sessions per week.

This brings us to the time-honored tradition of racing on Saturday and doing your long run on Sunday. If you race 10K or less, you’ll dip into your carbohydrate stores but (assuming that, like most runners, you generally eat a lot of carbohydrate) will most likely not come close to fully depleting your glycogen stores. By eating your normal high-carbohydrate diet, you’ll be reasonably topped up with glycogen and ready to handle your long run on Sunday morning. As discussed in chapters 1 and 7, however, after a tune-up race, your long run should be at a more-relaxed pace. If Saturday’s race is longer than 15K, however, you’ll likely have severely depleted your glycogen stores and may find yourself at less than your best for Sunday’s long run. If you race more than 15K on Saturday, skip the long run on Sunday. In that situation, you’ll be better off by postponing your long run until you’ve recovered from the race.

So far, we’ve considered only the pattern of hard training and recovery within a week. Just as important is the pattern of hard efforts and recovery over the course of your marathon preparation. Week after week of hard training can eventually lead to staleness or overtraining. To adapt optimally, it’s best to have several hard training weeks followed by a recovery week. The training schedules in the second section of this book regularly incorporate recovery weeks.

There are several patterns that you can follow. The correct pattern for you depends on how hard you’re training, your body’s ability to adapt to training, and the sum of other stressors in your life. The most commonly used pattern is 3 hard weeks followed by a recovery week. During the early buildup phase of marathon preparation, some runners can handle 4 high-mileage weeks followed by 1 recovery week. In other cases, 2 hard weeks followed by 1 recovery week is optimal. Again, through trial and error, you’ll have to find the pattern that’s best for you.

As a general rule, your recovery weeks should include about 70 percent as much training volume as your hard training weeks. For example, if your hard weeks consist of 60 miles (97 km) per week, then you would run about 42 miles (68 km) during your recovery week. Be sure to reduce the quantity and the intensity of your hard sessions during your recovery week. For example, cut the distance of your long run as well as the pace per mile, and schedule a session of striders rather than a hard O 2max session during a recovery week.

An old school of thought is to do several hard days in a row “to get used to running on tired legs.” Does this idea make sense?

As we’ve seen, the best way to prepare for marathon conditions is to do high-quality long runs and tempo runs. If you run a 22-miler (35 km) at 40 seconds per mile slower than goal marathon pace, starting relatively fresh, you’ll provide a more-specific stimulus to improve your marathon performance than if you start the run fatigued and struggle to run 2 minutes per mile slower than goal marathon pace. At least once every 3 weeks, give yourself the chance to do your long run fresh. You’ll feel great on these runs, thereby leading not only to a better effort but also to positive psychological reinforcement.

Doing an interval session or tempo run on tired legs makes no sense whatsoever. The objective of interval training (e.g., 6 × 1,000 m at 5K race pace) is to improve your maximal oxygen consumption. The objective of tempo runs (e.g., 5 mi at 10-mi race pace) is to improve your lactate threshold. If you run these workouts while tired, you’ll either do them more slowly than is optimal or you’ll have to cut back the volume of the workout (e.g., do fewer intervals or a shorter tempo run). In either case, you’ll provide less of a stimulus to improve than if you had started the workout relatively fresh.

So far in this chapter, we’ve discussed the necessity of incorporating recovery into your training schedule. Following the hard/easy principle, 1 or more hard days are always followed by 1 or more easy days. Easy training days are more appropriately called recovery days because their purpose is to allow you to recover for your next hard effort.

So what constitutes a recovery day? As with most aspects of running, the answer depends on your physiology. Recovery days should be less difficult than hard sessions in the volume (distance) and intensity of training. In some cases, a recovery day should be a day of rest or a day of cross-training.

The most common training mistake marathon runners make is training too hard on recovery days. If you train too hard on a scheduled recovery day, then you’ll be a bit tired for your next hard day, and that workout won’t go as well as planned. If you’re like most runners, you’ll be ticked off, and you’ll run your next scheduled recovery day a bit harder. So begins a vicious cycle in which your recovery days are done too hard and the quality of your hard days declines. The result is mediocre performances in training and racing. Just as it takes discipline to push through a tempo run when you feel bad, so does it take discipline to train easily when you feel good on a planned recovery day.

The other mistake that marathoners often make is trying to squeeze in too much distance on recovery days. Early in your training program, when the marathon is still more than 8 weeks away, it probably doesn’t hurt to add a couple of extra miles to recovery days because the overall intensity of training tends to be rather low. When you’re into the last 8 weeks of training, however, you have hard sessions with specific purposes. If you go into your hard days tired from too many slow miles on your recovery days, then your overall progress will be compromised.

Your recovery days shouldn’t impose additional training stress on your muscles or your nervous system. You should try, therefore, to minimize the pounding on your legs on those days. Running on soft surfaces on your recovery days will reduce the cumulative impact your legs and back experience over the course of the week. When you consider that your recovery days occur when you’re the most tired and when your muscles are the most fatigued and least resilient, it makes sense to take it easy on your muscles on those days. This also implies avoiding hill running on your recovery days, not only because running uphill is likely to require more effort than is optimal for an easy day but also because downhill running tends to induce muscle damage, and you certainly don’t want to incur additional muscle damage on a recovery day.

Using a heart monitor is a good way to prevent yourself from training too hard on your recovery days. (See chapters 1 and 7 for information about training by heart rate.) If you keep your heart rate below 76 percent of your maximal heart rate or 70 percent of your heart rate reserve plus your resting heart rate, you’ll let your body recover to allow high-quality workouts on your hard training days.