Marathon training focus. The focus of this post. Making sense with a title - not the focus.


I've fiddled around with a lot of training strategies, and marathon training adds extra variables and considerations.

My original training week looked something like this:

Monday - Aerobic run - 14-16 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Tuesday - Long threshold/repeats - 15-18 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Wednesday - Aerobic run - 15-17 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Thursday - Aerobic run - 14-16 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Friday - Long threshold/repeats - 14-16 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Saturday - Off or Long run - 20-24 miles
Sunday - Off or Long run - 20-24 miles

This plan contained plenty of mileage, and wore me out. Being worn out is a good thing when you are training to run fast for more than two hours. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you don't get tired from your training, good luck around mile 20.

Despite the necessary mileage and fatiguing being central to this plan - as I get closer to racing, it's necessary to up the ante in a different way, while folding in another.

The transition plan:

Monday - Aerobic run - 14-16 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Tuesday - Fartlek/fast repeats - 12-13 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Wednesday - Med Long run - 16-17 miles
Thursday - Aerobic run - 13-15 miles/am easy run 3-5 miles/pm
Friday - Easy run - 10 miles
Saturday - Long threshold run - 20-24 miles
Sunday - Off

This system allows me more rest between extremely fatigue inducing stuff (Tuesday and Saturday) and focuses the most on Saturday's hard long run. The last two Saturday runs have been as follows:

9/4 - 10 miles 6:30 pace then 13 miles 5:28 pace
9/11 - 18 miles 6:20 pace then 6 miles 5:18 pace

Those are very tough workouts, ones that a human body can't handle too frequently. The marathon is a similar ordeal.