Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

Mesocycle 3 – Race Preparation

Mesocycle 4 – Taper and Race

Mesocycle 5 – Recovery

This chapter is for mid- to high-mileage marathoners who train 55 to 70 miles (88 to 113 km) per week. It includes two schedules: an 18-week schedule that starts at 54 miles (87 km) per week and a 12-week schedule that starts at 55 miles (88 km) per week. Each of these schedules increases weekly mileage progressively to a peak of 70 miles (113 km).

As discussed in chapter 1, it’s useful to divide your overall training schedule into phases, called mesocycles. The training schedules consist of four mesocycles that focus on endurance, lactate threshold and endurance, race preparation, and tapering, respectively. A final schedule, which contains a 5-week postmarathon recovery program, can follow either of the training schedules.

Of the two training schedules presented in this chapter, we recommend the 18-week schedule for most situations. Eighteen weeks is plenty of time to stimulate the necessary adaptations to improve your marathon performance. At the same time, 18 weeks is short enough that you can focus your efforts without becoming bored with the process.

At times, however, you simply don’t have 18 weeks to prepare for your marathon. The 12-week schedule includes the same mesocycles as the 18-week schedules, but because of the short time for preparation, each of these mesocycles is abbreviated. If you go into a marathon in a rush, you must realize that your preparation won’t be as thorough as if you had longer to prepare. The 12-week schedule takes into account that sometimes circumstances don’t allow you the optimal length of time for preparation and strives to provide a compact yet effective training program.

These schedules are challenging right from the start and get harder as your marathon approaches. So that you can progress as the training increases in quantity and quality, and to minimize your chances of injury, you should be able to complete the first week of the schedule without too much effort.

Be realistic in assessing whether you’re ready for the first week of the schedule. For example, if you’ve been running 30 miles (48 km) per week and your longest run in the last several weeks is 8 miles (13 km), now isn’t the time to suddenly jump to a 54-mile (86 km) week containing a 15-mile (24 km) run and a 4-mile (6 km) tempo run, as the first week of the 18-week schedule calls for. The idea behind the schedules isn’t to make you as tired as possible as soon as possible but to apply repeated training stress that you absorb and benefit from.

As a rule, you should be running at least 45 miles (72 km) a week before starting these schedules, and in the last month you should have comfortably completed a run close in length to the long run called for in the first week of the schedule.

The schedules are presented in a day-by-day format. This is in response to requests from readers of our first book, Road Racing for Serious Runners , to provide schedules that specify what to do each day of the week.

The main limitation with this approach is that it’s impossible to guess the myriad of outside factors that may influence your day-to-day nonrunning life. Work schedules, family life, relationships, school commitments, and Mother Nature all play a part in determining when you get to do your long runs and other aspects of marathon preparation. You’ll no doubt require some flexibility in your training and will need to juggle days around from time to time. That’s expected, and as long as you don’t try to make up for lost time by doing several hard days in a row, you should be able to avoid injury and overtraining. By following the principles covered in the earlier chapters, you’ll be able to safely fine-tune the training schedules to suit your circumstances.

The schedules express each day’s training in miles and kilometers; use whichever you’re accustomed to. The mile and kilometer figures for each day (and the weekly total) are rough equivalents of each other, not a conversion from one to the other accurate to the third decimal point.

Each column of the schedules represents a week’s training. For example, in the 12-week schedule, the column for 11 weeks to goal indicates that at the end of that week you have 11 weeks until your marathon. The schedules continue week by week until race week.

We have included the specific workout for each day as well as the category of training for that day. For example, in the 18-week schedule, on the Tuesday of the 7-weeks-to-go column, the specific workouts are a 6-mile (10 km) run and a 4-mile (6 km) run, and the category of training for that day is recovery. This aspect of the schedules allows you to quickly see the balance of training during each week and the progression of workouts from week to week. Look again at the 18-week schedule – it’s easy to see that with 7 weeks to go until the marathon, there are four recovery days that week, along with a lactate-threshold session, a long run, and a medium-long run. Looking at the row for Sunday, it’s easy to see how the long runs progress and then taper in the last few weeks before the marathon.

The workouts are divided into the following eight categories: long runs, medium-long runs, marathon-pace runs, general aerobic runs, lactate-threshold runs, recovery runs, O 2max intervals, and speed training. Each of these categories is explained in depth in chapter 7, and the physiology behind the training is explained in chapter 1.

As discussed in chapter 4, sometimes marathoners benefit from running twice a day. This is obviously the case for elites cranking out 130-mile (209 km) weeks, but it isn’t necessary on a regular basis if you’re running 50 to 70 miles (80 to 113 km) per week. In these schedules, doubles are called for only on the occasional recovery day, with a total of 10 miles (16 km) for the day. On these days, your recovery will be enhanced by doing a 6-miler (10 km) and a 4-miler (6 km) rather than putting in one 10-mile (16 km) run. Instead of making you more tired, splitting your mileage like this on easy days will speed your recovery because each run will increase blood flow to your muscles yet take little out of you.

We discussed marathon race strategy at length in chapter 6. Part of that discussion centered on running with a group when possible. If you follow one of the schedules in this chapter, you might well be finishing within the top quarter or third of the field in your marathon. That means you’re likely to have runners around you throughout the marathon, especially in a big-city race, but there won’t be so many people in front of you at the start that you’ll spend the first few miles navigating around crowds. Make use of this probable position within the field; once you feel as if you’re running comfortably at your goal pace, look around for other runners who appear able to sustain the pace until the end. Talk to them, ask what their goals are, and try to find others to run with.