Summary



In this conversation, Luke discusses the essential components of successful marathon training, emphasizing the importance of endurance, stamina, consistency, understanding fatigue, and maintaining a healthy relationship with nutrition. He outlines how to build endurance and stamina, the significance of consistent training, and the need to differentiate between general fatigue and overtraining. Additionally, he highlights the importance of proper fueling for performance, encouraging runners to view food as a source of energy rather than a restriction.



Takeaways




* Endurance is the ability to cover a distance without regard to pace.



* Focus on building volume before intensity in training.



* Stamina is crucial for maintaining a desired pace during a marathon.



* Consistency in training is key to long-term success.



* Understanding the difference between tiredness and overtraining is essential.



* A healthy relationship with food can enhance performance.



* Nutrition should be viewed as fuel for training, not a restriction.



* Runners need to adjust their caloric intake based on training demands.



* Losing weight should not be the primary goal of training.



* Focusing on five key areas can lead to successful marathon training.




Chapters



00:00 Introduction to Marathon Training Essentials02:12 Building Endurance and Stamina05:20 The Importance of Consistency in Training07:30 Understanding Fatigue vs. Overtraining10:09 Nutrition and Fueling for Performance



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Summary



In this conversation, I discuss strategies for training for the Boston Marathon, emphasizing the importance of planning, recovery, and hill preparation. He outlines a timeline for training, the significance of a structured approach, and the benefits of joining a supportive running community. I share insights on how to effectively transition between races and the unique challenges posed by the Boston course, providing you with actionable advice to enhance your marathon experience.



Takeaways




* Running your best Boston requires careful planning and preparation.



* Start training with the end goal in mind to avoid burnout.



* 14 weeks of dedicated training is often sufficient for experienced runners.



* Hill preparation is crucial for success in the Boston Marathon.



* Recovery is essential after races to prevent injury and fatigue.



* Hills can serve as effective speed work in disguise.



* It's important to allow time for mental recovery after intense training cycles.



* Racing before the Boston Marathon can be beneficial if approached correctly.



* Joining a training group can provide valuable support and accountability.



* A structured training plan can help runners navigate the unique challenges of the Boston course.




Chapters



00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Boston Marathon Training01:43 Planning Your Training Timeline10:17 Importance of Hill Preparation14:56 Recovery and Base Building Strategies21:31 Racing Before Boston: Considerations28:48 Final Thoughts on Training and Recovery



Links for Boston



6 Week Prep: https://bit.ly/4myndqj 



Boston Plans: https://bit.ly/3IDlC4B 



Training Group: https://www.finalsurge.com/coach/LukeHumphreyRunning/training/programs/bostonmarathontraining 

Summary



In this episode of the Luke Humphrey Running Podcast, Luke discusses the transition from fall marathon training to preparing for spring marathons. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining training consistency during the off-season and provides insights into effective training strategies, including volume building and speed work. Luke outlines two scenarios for runners looking to improve their marathon times and offers practical advice for winter training considerations.



Takeaways



-Fall marathons are ending, and spring training begins in January.-Focus on maintaining training consistency during the off-season.-Consider joining a training group for structured support.-Volume is crucial for improving marathon speed.-Assess your weekly mileage to align with your marathon goals.-Incorporate speed work to improve race times.-Winter training requires adaptation to weather conditions.-Stay engaged with the running community for motivation.-Small, consistent progress is key to long-term improvement.-Avoid neglecting training to prevent setbacks.



Chapters



00:00 Introduction and Overview of Marathon Training01:07 Spring Marathon Training Plans03:03 Assessing Fall Race Performance03:42 Scenario 1: Increasing Marathon Speed through Volume08:36 Scenario 2: Improving Speed for Marathon Success12:40 Training Strategies for Winter Conditions15:31 Consistency and Health in Training



Important Links



Please support our work: buymeacoffee.com/LHRunning



Boston Training Group: https://www.finalsurge.com/coach/LukeHumphreyRunning/training/programs/bostonmarathontraining



FREE LHR Community: https://lukehumphreyrunning.com/community/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lukehumphreyhmm/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LukeHumphreyRunning



Training Plans: https://lukehumphreyrunning.com/training-plans/Team LHR: https://lukehumphreyrunning.com/team-lhr/Personal Coaching: https://lukehumphreyrunning.com/coaching/ Books: https://lukehumphreyrunning.com/books/

Transcript:



Hey guys, this is Luke Humphrey. Welcome back to the Luke Humphrey running podcast. I appreciate all the great feedback from the last one. Yes, the audio is much better, right? And so I think that will be a much better listening experience. And a lot of you reconfirmed what I was kind of aware of. A lot of you listen to the podcast while you’re running or doing whatever. It’s nice to have that instead of just a YouTube video, which I would tend to agree with.



In today’s episode, I’d like to discuss the prerequisites for the HMM beginner plan, as they seem to be a fairly common source of confusion. And part of that is, when I wrote the book and talked to Kevin and Keith, we were aware of some things, but other things we were not aware of, and so some of it was just, we didn’t know it was an issue until more people read the book and then it became apparent that it was an issue. And I think some of it is just because of how the beginner plan is set up and all that good stuff. So today, that’s what I want to talk to you about because it really is our goal to make people as successful as possible. And so two, that means we have to make sure that they are in the right training plan, right? If they’re not in the training plan, the training plan itself could be great, but if it’s not the right one for you, then it’s not going to do any good. So we want to make sure that you make the right choice in training plan and that it fits you where you’re at no matter you know, one of things I’m going to talk about is just the fact that like sometimes you have to throw out the whole, you know, title of beginner intermediate advanced because a lot of times it’s really just based on what you’re trying to accomplish and what you can fit in during a week, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or not. cause I think a lot of people will tell you that the beginner plan of Hansons Marathon Method is much more like an intermediate plan compared with other programs.



So, with that being said, who is the beginner plan for? And I think that’s the first place we should probably start. And so, you know, it’s not necessarily recommended for those who are brand new to running, know, meaning that you signed up for a marathon because it was something that you wanted to do before you turned a certain age and you’ve never really run before and now you’re gonna run a marathon in 18 weeks. This probably is not the best plan for you.



I would recommend other things. So if that’s you and you’re listening to this, I encourage you to listen through this the whole way, but recognize that you’re going to be better served taking another avenue. And it can still include this plan, but it might require more time between the time you’re deciding to start this now.



and when you really should be starting for your next, for your first marathon. cause I think there’s, there’s things you need to do to get ready to be able to handle what this schedule is going to be asking you to do. And so from my experience, a lot of people, put themselves in a situation. It’s probably going to be a little over their head, maybe not right away, but what it’s one of those things where you get six, eight, 10 weeks down the road and it just is all added up over time. It just becomes too much to be able to for your body to to keep up with and that’s when things get bad pretty quick and then we’re scrambling to try to even get you to the starting line and I think if we approach it the right way we don’t have to we can take a lot of that worry out right and so so if this is you just talking about being a first-time marathoner what I would encourage you to do is t...

Transcript:Hey everyone, welcome back to the LHR podcast. It’s been a while. We’ve been revamping a lot of stuff behind the scenes on our website and things like that. fortunately the podcast took a little bit of a backseat, but I think we’re back now. I think we’re going to be in a position where we can do things much more regularly. when I was going back and looking at some stuff, you know, we got some pretty old, it’s a pretty old content that probably needs to be updated. So,



Be on lookout for that, just some new updates on some old topics, maybe more just really improving the quality of the content. I know some of the audio and the older stuff that we have out there is pretty rough at points. So trust me, I know. I’m aware. That was a long time ago. And things have definitely improved since then. So.



Be on the lookout for that, but we’re going to start off today with kicking some things off with spelling some myths of Hanson’s Marathon Method, which if you don’t know, my name is Luke Humphrey. I am the owner of Luke Humphrey Running. I’ve been coaching since 2006 and myself and alongside a lot of the assistant coaches that work for me, we’re members of the Hanson’s Distance Project for a number of years. have a couple.



current athletes still there. And then I am the author of the Hanson’s Marathon Method book series. you know, we’ve been not the sometimes we get confused with being the authors of the program, but that is definitely not me. That is for sure, Kevin and Keith Hanson, which I guess I’ve just kind of become a spokesperson for over the years. But, you know, our a lot of our coaching is based off of what Kevin and Keith have taught us. And



And as the author of the Hansen’s Marathon Method, I get to field a lot of those questions. So what I want to do today is just kind of discuss really the three biggest things I get with people who are kind of on the fence with Hansen’s Marathon Method. Maybe they have some friends putting some things in their ears. Definitely some people, some influencers and bloggers and YouTubers with their own take on things, which I would.



agree with some of it not necessarily all of it. think there’s some things that need to be clarified. think when you see when I see people say or write certain things it’s kind of clear to me that they didn’t necessarily look at the whole program they just looked at a PDF file of the plan and didn’t really look at what we explain in the book. So hopefully this will help you.



make a decision, whether it’s not to be with us, we just want you to be in the best program for you, but we do feel that this will help this program, the Hanson’s Marathon Method will help a lot of people reach their goals, whether it’s to run, you know, sub three hours or just complete their first one, you know, as best that they possibly can. And, you know, whether that’s, you know, three, thirty, four or five hours, we definitely feel like we can we can get you there.



So let’s jump right into it. The first one that I get a lot is that it’s a low mileage or less is more type of program. And I can attest to you that that is not the case. Even VeloPress, who published Hanson’s Marathon Method books, they were kind of on that train at the start as well. They wanted a title to kind of reflect that. I know that when Kevin and Keith



gave me the opportunity to write the book, we saw it and we’re like, I don’t really know if that’s the best route to go. And we kind of explained to them, you really have to look beyond certain aspects of the program and you’ll realize that it’...

As a coach or an athlete, we look for guides as to how much work is an appropriate amount for a given athlete. I have mentioned this before, but again, often we discuss the 80/20 rule in training- 80% of our work should be easy and 20% hard. The question then becomes what is hard and what is easy, and in terms of hard, how should that look? So, I’d like to break down some general guidelines. In terms of the 20%, for most of my athletes, that’s going to be anything faster than half marathon pace. However, when talking about true definitions of hard, researchers will argue that 20% is anything harder than the lactate threshold, or the pace that you can hold for about an hour. Race pace, that’s anything from 10k pace to just under 20k race pace for my fastest athletes. 



Right now, let’s look at threshold work. Now to be clear as mud, the term threshold has a lot of names. The most current is LT2, which stands for 2nd lactate threshold. In practical matters, it’s the point where blood lactate starts to accumulate exponentially. You have probably also heard the terms anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold, the onset of blood lactate accumulation, or maximal lactate steady state. These are the same thing. 



Ok, got it? Good! Now, what you want to know- how much can I include in my weekly volume? Well, the rule of thumb appears to be that I can include about 10% of my weekly mileage in the form of threshold work. 



Now, I must caveat this with the point that, when reading this, don’t think that every week should include 10% threshold work. No, we are just saying that when including threshold work, these should be your guidelines. 



What kind of workouts should I be doing?



At the basis of theory, you have two options. The first is the traditional tempo. The second would be repeated at your LT. Is either of them better than the other? I wouldn’t say that, as both have a place in training and they both have different features. So, any type of runner would benefit from incorporating both. 



Tempos:



Most coaches agree that a 20-minute tempo at LT is the staple of building stamina in the endurance runner. Now, coaches will extend those out based on ability. For example, coach Joe Vigil talks about extending these out to 6-8+ miles for his elite runners. On the other hand, Jack Daniel’s talks about doing longer tempo runs, but slowing the pace down, the further you go so that by the time you get to about 60 minutes, the pace is much closer to the marathon pace than the original threshold pace. 



As a lower mileage runner, a 20-30 minute tempo run might essentially be your 2-3 miles allotted for a threshold allowance for the week. It might also be a pretty tough run. If you are a higher mileage runner a 20-minute tempo might be 4 miles, but you are under that 10% allotment. We then have an issue- do we get that extra few miles in another workout, make the current workout longer, or just let it go? That’s where LT repeats can come in for both groups. 



LT Repeats



LT repeats would be like any other repeat you did for speed, just a little slower (maybe) and less recovery. You might end up with a little overall volume. Overall, we are looking at repeats that are maybe 3+ minutes in length with a pretty short recovery. For most athletes repeats of 800’s to km’s are the Goldilocks distance. 



6-10 x 800



5-10 x 1k



4-8 x 1200 



These would all be staple workouts. 



I like the repeat for a few different avenues. One, when just building up. These make a lot of sense for all groups.

In the third part of this series, I want to discuss the race itself. In particular, the challenge of the potential weather. This comes in two parts. The first is the time of year the race is and the second is the different start and finish locations. 



Today, let’s discuss the potential weather. In a dream year (2011), you get solid temps and a 30 mph tailwind. What’s interesting is that was the world’s “best” time that was not allowed to be a record, but now 2:03 for the men’s isn’t anything and you can just strap a pair of special shoes on your feet for instant fitness. Eh, I digress. In any case, the weather in Boston can be a crapshoot mainly because of its location off the water and that it’s in mid-April. So, you can expect anything from a Noreaster to a taste of July heat and anything in between. 



How the weather is, will affect people differently. For my southern friends, you tend to do better in the warmer years, because the temps are usually a lot closer to what you have been training in. When it’s cooler, it feels cooler, but you are still okay because it’s like us in the summer. The heat provides certain adaptations that carry over to colder weather. Regardless of where we are at, we get those benefits during the summer and it makes the 50-degree day on race day that much more productive. 



However, if you are used to training through the snow and cold all winter and then all of a sudden you get even a 65-degree day, then it’s a big shock to the system. It feels even warmer than it really is. What’s that saying, 60 degrees in the spring is shorts weather. 60 degrees in the fall is sweater weather. This potential for a warm day feeling like a hot day is real and it’s difficult for those who train in the colder climate to be ready for it. It’s just one more challenge that we have to account for in training. 



So how can we?




* The treadmill. You instantly put yourself in a warmer environment and surround yourself with higher humidity. We have discussed this in previous Boston blogs. 



* Sauna or a hot tub after a cold run. This can be of benefit, but BE CAREFUL. If you have blood pressure issues, this probably isn’t the best option. 



* Hot shower immediately following a run. Same issues as above. 



* Overdressing during the day. Make yourself hot, but not during exercise. 




We will discuss these options in depth during our Boston Marathon Training Group, starting December 4th, 2023. Join us: https://bit.ly/459jiYk

In part one, we talked a little bit about timing, but more specifically how training starts at maybe the worst timing of the year- the holiday season. Today, I want to expand once into what will really affect a lot of people- the winter months!



Where I am at, in metro Detroit, winters aren’t too bad through the end of December. We might get some snow, but there’s been plenty of times when we don’t have any snow on the ground. The problem is, once January rolls around, the average high is below freezing and whatever snow we get is usually stuck until March! We might not get a ton of snow, but it’s usually very cold and the wind chill is brutal. The interesting thing is that, if you just go over to the other side of the state, in the Grand Rapids area, they get a ton of snow due to the lake effect off of Lake Michigan. The bottom line is that it is cold, dark, and windy. We tend to have poor footing and are wearing a bunch of layers. The cold affects performance in a number of ways. Training in it can seem like we are going backwards and knowing our true fitness level is often difficult. 



If you are in a warmer climate, you are probably at an advantage and you don’t necessarily need to take this post in any further. By the way, if that is you, we are so jealous! For those who deal with this kind of weather, I probably don’t really need to explain the challenges it provides us. The biggest thing I can do is offer some guidance on how to approach and navigate. 



When it comes to winter running and how to navigate, you know exactly what is going to be said and I can hear the collective “Ewww! No way!” or the macho acting tough and trying to tell me it’s not real running. Okay, sure whatever. Honestly, if a person is doing a base plan, or they are running 30-60 minutes a few times a week, then yeah I love the ability to get outside and embrace the cold. However, there’s a big difference between getting your daily exercise and training for a marathon.  I want to run outside, I am definitely in the camp of “if I can, I’ll run outside.” However, over the years, I have seen so many athletes (and myself) develop issues in their feet, achilles, hips, knees, and calves from trying to just do everything on poor footing. I am 100% convinced of that. With that…









Balance time outside with time on the treadmill. 



Invest $10/month and join Planet Fitness and commit to doing at least your easy runs on poor footing days to hitting the treadmill. While you’re at it do 20 minutes of strength training afterwards! Even if you only need it for January and February, you’ve spent $20 and kept yourself healthy. Say you use it once a week for two months, that’s $2.50 a run to just give your body a break. I feel like the ROI on that is pretty good.  



The biggest thing I want to do by encouraging you to be open minded about a treadmill is more about just giving your body a break from the constant poor footing on sidewalks and streets. Secondly, every once in a while it’s not a bad idea to use it as a checkpoint with something like a harder long run or a tempo run just so that confidence is not all lost. We can adjust based on temperatures and recognize that if I am wearing five pounds of clothes, my performance will probably be affected. But, every once in a while it’s nice to not have to worry about all of that stuff. 



The biggest complaint I get with doing runs on the treadmill is that I can’t run fast on a treadmill, I get bored, or I just get dizzy or vertigo. I want to discuss running fast in a second but quickly address the last two. Getting bored does suck. Podcasts and music will only do so much. I see it as an opportunity to get attentive to yourself- focused on what you are doing.

I read an interesting article from Steve Magness the other day, “How the need to prove yourself in practice can ruin your race day.” In the beginning, he listed some crazy fast workouts he did before a race but then faltered on race day. He came to two conclusions which I thought were great: 




* Getting fit is easy



* If you are sufficiently motivated, it is easy to train yourself into the ground. 




Over the rest of the article, he discussed how it was a coach’s job to make sure you expressed the fitness you had gained in training in the form of quality race results. He also discussed how it was his own security that probably pushed him into training so hard, but not seeing the results that he wanted. In the end, he quickly touches on how as coaches, we can’t just say it’s mental (on the part of the athlete) and really work through the physical to dial in why the races aren’t producing results that the fitness is indicating. I have thought about this a fair amount and I think back to an inside joke we had at Hanon’s where we would experience an incredible training segment and then end with a disappointing result. We’d call it, “Leaving our race at Stoney.” Stoney Creek Metropark is where we did the vast majority of our workouts, particularly for marathon segments. 



It was a quick post, probably by design, but I finished wishing there was a little more. What I wanted to see was more of a tie-in from the two fantastic bullet points to the title of the article which is something I experienced myself and what I see many of my athletes struggle with. So, how does leaving your races in training relate to the idea of getting fit and how easy it can be to train yourself into the ground? Let’s take a crack at it. 



The link between getting fit is easy, and ruining my race day… what is the link? That’s what I sat down and really thought about. I had a conversation recently about this idea. We were talking about how some people are surprised when they sign up for coaching or buy a plan and they are expecting these top-secret workouts and there really aren’t any. Personally, I have a saying that if I can just get a healthy person to run 40 miles a week for a few months, I can make them a pretty darn successful marathoner. So, it really is fairly “easy.” I guess that maybe easy isn’t the right word because you have to do work and that is not necessarily easy. The right word is probably simple. The process of getting fit is relatively simple. If you can be consistent and do a little bit of work across the spectrum of paces, you can get pretty fit after a few months. Where this relates to ruining your race day is when we try to take it simple and make it complicated by focusing too much on data and metrics or doing fancy workouts that don’t have any bearing on what you are trying to accomplish. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have simply taken what an athlete usually does and moved it a day over for more rest, or went from 6 workouts every two weeks to 4-to 5 and see how much they improved in a single segment. I mean going from thinking that they will never hit a goal they’ve spent years attempting, to having to set a new faster goal at the end of this segment. 



This ties into the second part of this, which was that if you are motivated, it’s quite possible to just run yourself into the ground. There’s a lot to this. For one, I would say that the vast majority of people I work with, regardless of ability,

We have talked a lot about adjusting workouts due to heat and humidity for quite some length, but what about strategies to cool ourselves before or during workouts so that we don’t have to adjust our paces? I wanted to explore this a little bit more as I thought about people attempting last-chance qualifiers in early September and even those racing into the middle of October. I mean, I have run the Chicago Marathon wearing gloves and a beanie in 34 degrees and I’ve slogged through it at 80 degrees. That early fall weather can be hit or miss. 



I had thought about the ice vest, and even own one, but never really considered it. However, recently I came across an article from the Sports Performance Bulletin that looked at head cooling. This article mentions different methods like an ice vest, along with cold fluid ingestion, mouth rinse, palm cooling, and neck cooling, which you can probably deduce really is focusing on tricking the brain that you are cooler. After a brief mention of these, the article shifted focus to head cooling, which I found to be really interesting. 



Head cooling has been looked at using a spray bottle, with some decent results. However, it’s not really practical. Low and behold, there are actually running caps that hold about 300 grams of ice. The study in here looked at a company called “Iced Cap” and I know from an Amazon search that Nathan also makes one. The thought in looking at this is that having the cooling effect right next to the brain would have a greater impact on the central nervous system. 



The gist of what was done was those triathletes were tested doing a sub max run of 10 minutes and a 5k time trial afterward. They did this with a cooling cap and without, as well as, did the tests on two different days. Their forehead temperature was measured, times, and then thermal discomfort was measured. They did these tests on a treadmill with an ambient temperature of 90 degrees. 



What they found was probably not a big surprise. Forehead temperatures were lower throughout the tests. Also, times were, overall, faster when wearing the cap. Lastly, thermal discomfort was lower throughout. However, by the 5th kilometer, the difference was negligible. This makes me wonder if it was simply because the runners were nearing the end of a 5k and putting themselves in a hurt locker. Or, was it because they really were losing the effects of the cooling hat? That got me searching for some other info available and came across an article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. It looked at wearing a cooling vest for 30 minutes during a warmup and then performing a 10 km time trial. Statistically, there was no significant difference in performance between groups. What also stood out to me was that heart rate responses were similar and while core temperature was definitely lower in the vest group before the start of the time trial, there was minimal, if any difference by the end of the 10k time trial. 



Looking at these two different articles, it becomes clear to me that from a practical standpoint, there’s not a lot of benefit to these cooling mechanisms for the marathon. The longer the race, the less effect you will see. So, for a 5k, there’s a good chance you can see some performance improvement, but by the time you get to the 10k, the benefits are pretty much lost. Extrapolate that out to the marathon and it’s probably a washout scenario. 



 I was really hoping to have better news, but it just doesn’t seem like there’s a strong benefit with anything with pre-cooling and attempts at cooling through cold fluids that will help with anything past 25 minutes, or so. It would be interesting to see if you could take one of the caps and test the theo...

Alright, as summer gets ready to peak, some of you are questioning why you decided to train for a September or October marathon! Many of you are not hitting your paces and question not only your sanity but your fitness levels too! Well, I can assure you that if you can trust that your training is still working, that good things can happen this fall. Now, that is not the big idea here, but rather, what I feel are your best options for adjusting your workouts so that you don’t dig a hole too deep to get out of. Before we go into this though, I have to preface with some tough love. The only way you’ll get anything out of this is if you are open-minded and trust me that if you adjust your workouts in some capacity you will be fine. 



You all know the basics- run early or late, and adjust your paces, so I won’t rehash all of that. Instead, let’s blend some adjustments we can make, but still feel like we are getting in what we need to. 



First things first, we need to acclimate to the weather. Even if we aren’t racing in it in the fall, we have to acclimate. If done right, it can make you a much stronger performer. So, with that, your easy runs should just be outside soaking in all that heat adaptation. On the other hand, we have to balance that out. We really can’t push it in even moderately extreme conditions six days a week without consequence. And, what I am going to share doesn’t have to be done all the time, but if you really need a break from the heat and humidity, then these ideas can pull you back from the edge on occasion. 



Speed Workouts




* The most obvious way we can adjust (beyond adjusting our paces), is to bring workouts inside to the treadmill. I know, it’s a dirty word for a lot of you. And the “hardcore” is going to explain to me how you’re not a real runner, or whatever. That’s cool. Having heat stroke doesn’t make you a runner at all for a while, maybe worse. For speed workouts, I am probably less likely to do this. Personally, I have a fear of blowing off the back end. So for speed, I might just turn into a hill workout on the treadmill. 



* Do hills instead. Any shorter speed workout with repeats that are in the 1-5 minute range can be turned into a hill workout instead. Hill work is speed in disguise. 



* Turn into a fartlek. Fartlek is really more about effort over time instead of pace over distance. So, if we are running in the heat, we can say, go do 8×2 minutes at a hard effort instead of forcing yourself into 8×600 meters at 8:00 pace. It takes the pressure off the goal of the workout to be at a certain pace. 




Strength Workouts




* Strength is an oddball intensity for a lot of people. For the 4-hour and above crew, it’s not much different than the marathon pace, so you might be fine just doing these as they are written. For the 3:30 and faster crew, you do start creeping closer to lactate threshold territory, so you do need to be careful as to not go over that here and then have to cut the workout short because the intensity with the duration put you in the danger zone. 



*  If running a fall marathon, strength workouts wouldn’t really be hitting until late August and into September for October marathons, so adjusting these will probably not be a point of action for most of you. I would say that for many of you, strength pace is probably the earliest you’d feel comfortable doing on the treadmill. You can always use our treadmill calculator and create that perfect combo of speed and grade to get the job done. 




Tempo Runs




* To be honest, from Mid-June through the end of August, I rarely give my athletes big continuous tempos ...

You might find yourself in a situation where you plug in a goal marathon time and the training paces for speed, which represent 5k to 10k race pace, don’t line up with what you have actually raced. What should you do?



If your actual race pace is slower than what is suggested based on your goal time, then I would usually have the athlete do the slower pace. Why? Well, we aren’t necessarily trying to improve top 5k speed during the marathon as it’s just not the priority of the segment. Of course, there are exceptions to this. If you are attempting to race some 5k’s over a summer period, then jump into a marathon plan of 12-14 weeks, then yes, you might want to do some work at the faster paces. Even then, I wouldn’t do all of it at that faster pace. I’d work into it over the course of the training. That could be gradually running faster during the workout individually or ratcheting down the pace a little bit every week. However, for the most part, I err on the side of caution and use the slower paces, especially if the runner doesn’t race shorter distances and considers speed work a necessary evil. 



If your race pace is faster than then the suggested pace, then you have a choice. If you have raced those paces recently, say within 6 months, then sure, I think stick with those paces. If you don’t race often or are new to the marathon, you need to be careful. Personally, I’d test it out. Start out at the slower, suggested pace and see how that feels. Once you get into the 600’s and 800’s if it’s still pretty comfy, ratchet the pace down a little. For example, if there was a 10 second per mile difference between the suggested and actual pace, cut that in half and see how you feel. The same exceptions would apply as already stated. 



As you can tell, for the marathon segment, I am fairly conservative with the speed paces overall. For the marathon, the risk isn’t really worth a minimal reward. What I would do after the marathon segment, is work on the race distance you need to in order to get those paces a little more in line with each other. 

As I write this, we are in the build up for the fall marathon season. For the early October races, we are into about 6 weeks. More advanced runners are cranking into workouts while beginners are just starting more intensity. Regardless of the level of the runner, it is far too early to be complaining of the dreaded “cumulative fatigue.” Yet, so often I will see people saying that they are just completely out of it and not sure if they are going to make it. That is a tough spot to be with that long left to go. Like anything in life, it’s usually not just one thing that is causing the issue, but a combination of things. However, if we do fix one thing, a lot of times it leads to improvements in other areas. In this case, the usual culprits are training too hard, not adjusting for the heat, and underfueling. Over the years, we have addressed training too hard and not adjusting for the heat early on enough. I’ll list some references to key blogs below on those topics. For now, lets focus on underfueling and the consequences of not fueling for work. 



Individualizing heat and humidity calculations



Heat Acclimatization 



It is easy to overlook underfueling because a lot of times, the symptoms are the same as overtraining. The conundrum is that a person rarely wants to take time off, so they push through and ultimately it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They were underfueled, masked as overtraining, but never fixed the underfueling so their body eventually just broke down. Given that, what are we looking at with symptoms of underfuleing? 



Symptoms. 



While there are many more you can add to the list, I included what is most common with the athletes I work with. These seem to be the most common. 




* Lack of energy. This is definitely the most common, but also the most likely to get confused with overtraining. If you are just dragging and you are only a few weeks into your training or even 2 months, then there is a good chance that being underfueled may be playing a part. 





* Insatiable hunger OR No appetite. Many times, you’ll see people who are training for a marathon for the first time and they are eating everything in sight and at any point during the day. To me, these are usually newer runners who have never been in this position and don’t necessarily quite get how hard they are working. People who chronically eat less than what they really should be at seem to be able to suppress the feeling of hunger. 





* Nagging injuries (slow to heal injuries too). I’ll see this a lot. As soon as we ramp up training, things go great for a few weeks, then it’s a gradual spiral to downtime from injury. The athlete seems to develop something regardless of the type of training, how slow they build up, or how long they have done recovery exercises. The first thing I’d look at is the amount and types of calories the person is eating. 





* Frequent illness. Along the same lines, the athlete might be very susceptible to developing an illness like colds, flu, etc. Whether it’s injury, illness, or both- if they can’t stay healthy we have to look at why. 





* Gradual loss in performance- As I mentioned people will assume they are in cumulative fatigue way before they really should be. Things will start out fine, or they might just be hard to begin with (depending on what the person is doing), and then just seemingly gets worse. The bottom line is, feeling like crap and getting slower is not cumulative fatigue.

It seems like all easy running is the same, and I was in the camp of indifference for a long time, I grew to realize that as we advance in ability, how we approach our easy runs will change with the circumstance.



I’ll be honest, I know what I want to convey in this post, but I am struggling with how to present it, or at least get the conversation started. So, let’s start with a common scenario that I see. 




* The runner finishes a training segment and takes some down time. They come back and the first several runs are really easy. This typically lasts a week or two. 



* The runner gets into a groove and as mileage builds, so does the pace of their runs. During this time, there are either no workouts or very light workouts. 



* Runner builds into full training and easy run paces stay the same as workouts increase in frequency and volume. 



* Training gets real. Cumulative fatigue begins to take hold, but runner gets frustrated because they are really forcing themselves to maintain a moderate run pace, despite being in the heaviest amount of training. 




Does that sound familiar to anyone? It sure does me! What happens is we start off with our easy runs being the primary basis of our fitness, but we don’t allow our change in priorities to dictate how hard we run on our easy runs. In other words, we are saying our east runs are there for the same reason during weeks 12-17 as they are for weeks 1-11. They aren’t, and that’s what I want to explain. 



When easy runs are discussed, there are a lot of terms thrown around about defining a truly easy run. You may see it defined as 2.0 mmol of blood lactate, 60% of heart rate max, Zone 1-2, or an increase in lactic acid. In short, these are all centered around the idea of a person running around their aerobic threshold. 



When a person is just starting out running, these all occur at pretty low levels of running. Just getting out and jogging will probably cause you to reach these levels. The theory surrounding this is nice- that as you become fitter, you will naturally run faster at the same markers. For example, when you started, your pace at 60% HRmax was 9:30 per mile, maybe at the same percentage it is now 9:00. This is all pretty true, however, there are a couple of things I see with this camp that I don’t necessarily agree with. The first, is that do we continue to get the benefits from those runs all the time? Is that the staple of how our fitness is gained months and years later? I don’t think it is. I think this type of running is great for general fitness or endurance, but from a performance standpoint, I think doing this type of running all the time for my easy days will limit my aerobic growth. Secondly, I think that this type of running would shift from being my aerobic development driver to my recovery during hard training. This is probably where I would differ from other coaches who work with recreational type runners. We tend to run a lot more miles than those other plans, so we have enough maneuverability to have different types of easy runs that serve different purposes. 



When a person follows one of my plans, they will see easy to moderate, moderate to long run pace, and to a lesser extent, recovery paces when talking about runs normally referred to as the easy runs. If you are a zone person that’s going to include runs anywhere from what you would say zone 1 and zone 2. However, from my experience these aren’t necessarily cut and dry and I feel like there is some overlap between these zones. As much as they say that these eliminate “grey zone” training, I say that these create their own grey zones, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Every coach I had, from high school to professional was a stickler for pace. That’s not to say that we weren’t monitoring other variables, but the pace was what we focused on. It’s safe to say that over the years, I became pretty good at judging effort and correlating that closely to paces. To say it’s a skill is an understatement, and from the feedback I get from athletes, is that it’s not a skill that can be learned quickly enough. So, hopefully, we can get you on the right path if you find yourself struggling. 



The biggest issues I see with runners are: 




* Looking at their watch all the time!  



* Overcorrect



* Rely on all the data except how it feels




What you will see, is a runner takes off, looks at their watch and it’s too fast (or too slow) and overcorrected. They then look after another 20-30 seconds and it becomes a game of too fast and too slow, but never settling into the rhythm of the night. Oops, I mean the rhythm of the pace. What else I will see is a runner has to be exact on the pace. So, if their tempo says 6 miles at 8:00 pace, then dangit, they are going to hit 8:00 pace! The problem ultimately goes back to whether they have a hard time finding the rhythm or just finding themselves aiming for perfection in an unperfect world. The third thing I will see is that the runner tries to absorb and react to all the data at once. I don’t see it a lot with power. I feel like those who run with power, just look at that. However, if they are using heart rate and pace, it can create issues.  Ultimately, what happens in some capacity is that the runner can’t find the right rhythm, over-corrects, and something hidden in what we are saying, they forget to correlate how they are feeling into the equation.  Does any of this sound like you? I don’t want to make it sound like it’s not a big deal to fix this, but there are things we can do that, over time, will make you a much better pacer at all speeds.  



There are a lot of things we can put into practice, but there are two things that you have to accept before we discuss. The first is that it takes time! And despite the age of having everything now, this will take time to develop. Definitely more than a month. More than likely, more than one training segment. It’s a skill that takes practice, so don’t get frustrated if after two workouts you don’t see any improvement. Give yourself some grace. It’s like I tell my kid in softball, I don’t care if you strike out every time as long as you get the bat off your shoulders! The second thing is something from my days at Hanson’s where we really dug down on nailing pace. That is, don’t overcorrect. If you overcorrect, you aren’t accomplishing anything! For example, if your prescribed tempo pace is 8:00/mile, but you come ripping through in 7:45, the goal isn’t then to still come through the second mile in 16:00, it’s now 15:45. But, Luke, that’s fast! You said to get on pace!? That’s right, but the pace is 8:00, so if you come through at 16:00, then that means that you ran the second mile at 8:15, too slow! So now you have two miles that aren’t on pace and nothing has really been accomplished. Again, it just goes to experience and learning how that feels, so give it time and take comfort in knowing that even if you aren’t perfect, you are improving! With that said, let’s jump into some things you can do to accelerate the rate of learning pace through feel. 



Things I do and teach: 



The first is having setpoints. This could be laps on the tracks, or a mailbox on a loop you run, or a mile marker on the bike path. This goes to what we discussed at the beginning of the post today. A person looks at their watch within the first few seconds of the repeat,

When we talk about long runs, the long run for the marathon is always the primary debate. For shorter races, even up to the half marathon, the long run is further than the race distance or at least up to a big percentage of what you’ll be racing. Yet, for the marathon, unless you go 20+ miles, the long run is going to not going to approach those same percentages. With that, when I prescribe a 16-mile long run, they are hesitant, if not downright defiant about not doing 16 miles. 



I don’t want to rehash some of the things I have discussed at length some of the attributes of the marathon length, but there are certain “rules” that need to be laid out before we dive into some of the new topics I want to discuss. It’s not about 16 or 20, it’s about keeping the long run within certain guidelines that will allow for other aspects of training to occur. In other words, we aren’t putting all of our eggs in the long run basket. We want to share, fairly equally, the importance of marathon-paced running, and running faster than marathon pace. For our athletes, we want to keep long runs at less than 30% of total weekly volume and really under three and a half hours. This allows us to take part in all the other workouts during the week. I would argue that the 16 mile long run (which fits into the guidelines I just stated for the vast majority of our runners) allows us to do much harder training and accumulate more weekly volume for longer stretches of time than if we just killed ourselves to get in a bunch of 20 milers on Sundays. 



Ok, with that out of the way, I want to hit on something that I didn’t discuss too much in blogs or in the book. So, you can pick up here if you are just here for the good stuff. This all goes back to the idea of super-compensation (If you are in the Run Club, watch out for a team talk about this), and how it relates to training. I have done blog posts on super-compensation in the past. You can see them here: 




* How am I going to make it 26.2 at this pace?





* Stress/Recovery Principles




In terms of super compensation specifically for the long run, I want to first go back to the tempo on Thursday. A tempo run is going to take anywhere from about 24-30 hours to go through the immediate decline in performance ability to recover, to super-compensation. So, if you do your runs in the morning, that means by Friday morning to Friday afternoon, you have reached that full “recovery” phase and by Saturday morning you have reached super compensation. However, on a week you have a 16 mile long run you will usually have an 8-10 mile run before that. A run like that is probably going to take in the 12-24 hour range to recover from. 







When I say recovery in this case, it’s referring mostly to glycogen replenishment. You are probably going to be at baseline, slightly below baseline, or slightly above baseline. Then you go and do the 16 mile long run. You put that all together, and you have put together 24-26 miles within a 24-26 hour period. That’s pretty good, right? I think so. So when Kevin says that the 16 miler you are doing is more like the last 16 miles of the marathon and not the first, this is a big part of why. You haven’t had so much recovery from your last SOS that you are in full super compensation mode. The key here though is that you have to be recovered enough from your previous SOS, which is why your easy runs have to be slow enough to allow that regeneration and recovery. 



What I will see is runners wanting to take Saturday off completely and then run long on Sunday,

In my Boston Marathon training plans, I have a lot of specific hill-based workouts. Some straight uphill repeats, some workouts I call “Tired Hills”, some downhill repeats towards the end of the long run, and maybe a few other things. However, I don’t specifically say when a person should get on hills for the marathon tempos. I do this on purpose, but I also recognize that this should be addressed. 



First, let’s look at what we are trying to accomplish with the marathon tempo. 



1) learn pace. Some will argue that you aren’t in the right “zone” but to purposely skip out on learning what your race pace feels like to be in a certain zone, I feel like you are flirting with disaster come race day. 



2) Learn how to take fueling and fluids in at a race pace. This is a skill that doesn’t seem important at the surface level but will pay dividends on race day.



3) Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. 



4) Learn patience



In essence, from a nonphysiological standpoint, we are learning how to navigate the marathon. We are learning how to be patient early on and how to keep pace when we are tired. 



From a physiological standpoint, I have a big argument that the marathon pace creates physiological gains. 



1) running economy. You become the most economical at the pace you train for. So if you want to be economical at a marathon pace, do some training at a marathon pace. You also learn to be more efficient metabolically. 



2) Specific Endurance. Daniels states that there aren’t a lot of benefits physiologically that differ from what you would gain from easy running. I would argue that the more fit you become, the less benefit you will get from really easy runs and that stimulus has to change. For marathoners, you are looking at both general endurance (easy days) and pace endurance (mp tempos). A number of coaches echo this sentiment. Easy runs are viewed more as regeneration runs and don’t necessarily aid in physiological gains to performance. Keep in mind that we are referring to athletes with years of moderate to the high volume under their belts. Anyway, the point here is that marathon pace is doing a great service for your specific endurance in the event while staying below your lactate threshold. 



Ok, so I realize I went on a tangent there, but I think if we understand what we are trying to accomplish, then we can make better workouts. What I really wanted to get to was the idea of getting on a course similar to what you are going to be racing on. So, a course like Boston is a good example. It has a lot of rolling hills, some big uphills late in the race, and t is sandwiched between two sections of fairly big downhills. The overall result is a net downhill. Yet, whereas a race like Berlin or Chicago will see scorching fast times, a course like Boston will always be on the slower side (next to NYC) as the fastest major marathon course- despite being a net downhill! 



Continuing with the Boston theme, the emphasis is always on getting on hills by doing hill workouts and hilly long runs, which we prescribe as well, but what about marathon-pace runs? Let’s say in Boston you want to run 8:00 miles. I would bet you that you would have 0-5 of those miles at a range of 7:57-8:03 per mile, but still might very well average an 8:00 pace for the race! In 2006, I ran a PR of 2:15:22 about a 5:10 pace. Ironically, the only mile split that was 5:10 (or close to it) was miles 20-21 up Heartbreak Hill! Given that, you should put some tempos in that are going to simulate what you are going to be doing in the race. 



For a race like Boston or something like a Revel race where they...

So I got done a bit of a rabbit hole the other day. I follow the accounts of My Sport Science and the feed is great if you want to learn anything about nutrition and supplementation for endurance performance. Well, a new blog entitled, “Do ketone esters boost EPO?” And I thought, well wouldn’t that be nice? I knew a little bit about ketones, but more about ketones as a product of high-fat low-carb diets, and not supplementation. Ketone Esters, now that’s another story. 



Ketones themselves are byproducts of fat metabolism and can be used as fuel, which is why they have gotten so much attention lately. In fact, ketones are known as the starvation fuel because they can fuel the brain in starvation conditions when carbohydrate is low. Glucose is what the brain would really like to be using. I don’t want to get into a nutrition debate on High Fat Low Carb diets, this is purely a performance post. With that said, the idea with performance was that ketones could be an alternate source of fuel for endurance performance. 



It was thought that ketones could create a glycogen-sparing effect. If so, this would be ideal, because, as we know, carbohydrate ingestion has been shown to increase performance. The problem is, to achieve ketosis, you would have to eat a lot of fat and drastically reduce carbohydrate. And, instead of sparing glycogen, ketones had been shown to simply inhibit glycogen from being utlitzed. The result was the inability to achieve a high level of performance. 



Here I would argue, as well, that if a person didn’t practice fueling and drastically decreased carbohydrate intake during training, it would be awfully hard to then give yourself a lot of carbohydrates on race day and not experience GI issues. So you are left in the same boat- not enough fuel to sustain the exercise at the desired pace. 



So that, it would seem, would be the end of the ketones idea as a supplemental fuel. However, what if there were a way to take the ketones without hanging the carbohydrate intake in your diet? That’s where ketone esters are. Ketone esters are essentially ketone supplements that would help mimic the effects of ketosis. Now, unfortunately, the jury is still out with these for fuel. The results were what we already mentioned- nonproductive and performance-limiting. Now, to be fair, the studies I looked at were based on 30 and 60 minute time trials. But, extrapolating that out to a 3-4 hour marathon, a person still is running at a fairly high level and using a lot of carbohydrates. Where does that cross over? A multi day race? An Ironman? A bike tour? A 100-mile run? I honestly don’t know. Besides, it seems like it’s pretty bitter and when taken during exercise, GI issues seem to be fairly common. 



So now ketone and esters are done, right? Well, not exactly. People on specific diabetic drugs have been shown to have increased ketone bodies. On top of that, they had increased red blood cell mass- hematocrit and hemoglobin. People on low carb diets also show these characteristics. Pretty interesting, huh? Not yet? Well, understand that the main hormone for increasing RBC production is called EPO. Now, if you went out and shot yourself up with the drug, that’s definitely illegal. However, that’s also why people go to altitude. Altitude training stimulates EPO naturally. So that became the question- will ketone esters promote EPO production? So, the study looked at 9 healthy males doing 1 hour of cycling intervals. This is the type of workout that would naturally stimulate EPO production, as well. Afterward, some drank a carb and protein recovery drink while others drank the same drink with ketone esters. What they found was the EPO levels were about 20% higher in the group that ingested the ketone esters in their recovery drink.

From my experience, you have a deep division in the running world when you mention the word “treadmill.” For some, it’s a necessary part of being able to train during winter, dark mornings, and not leaving children alone in the home. For others, they’d rather fall and break a hip on black ice than submit themselves to “lesser” training on a treadmill. For me, it’s an available tool and as a younger man, I was probably in the latter camp. However, with each passing year, I have less to prove to anyone, and would rather stay healthy than force an unnecessary training error. If you are still in the camp of “outside is the only way to train” that’s fine, this just isn’t an article for you. It doesn’t particularly matter to me if that’s your stance. I know a few people who simply just can’t do it. They get dizzy. Their balance gets wonky. It’s just not going to happen for some. If you do use a treadmill and use one regularly, then please keep reading. 



Alright, with that out of the way, let’s get to the tho pic of the day- what’s the difference between running on a treadmill and over the ground? I know it’s been debated a lot, with some conflicting results. Data says nothing, and then data says there are differences. So what is it? 



Well, from a 30,000-foot view, not much. Running is running, right? And when you look at physiological metrics, they are pretty similar. But if you have run on the treadmill, especially on an irregular basis, I bet a lot of you will say, “it sure doesn’t seem like it!” I can definitely attest to that. It feels so much harder to run slower! That’s the first thing we notice when zooming in on the data- our self-prescribed pace is lower on a treadmill than it is over the ground. As I alluded to, some of this does depend on familiarity with the treadmill. People who are not familiar or used to running on the treadmill are more nervous about footing and balance. Personally, I have a great fear of doing speed on a treadmill because I a most certain I will be flying off the back end! 



So, some of it depends more on how we react to treadmill running than the treadmill itself. Is there anything physical that is different? Yes, there are two big items we can look at. 



The first, most are familiar with and is the lack of air resistance. When you run down the road, you create your own headwind. This slows you down because you fight that resistance, but it also cools you down. On a treadmill, you are stationary, so this effect is non-existent! At east paces, this is not as big of a problem, but unfortunately, the faster you run, the bigger the advantage. How is that an advantage? What I mean by that is say your speed work is at 6 minutes per mile pace. On a treadmill, that 6 min pace you are running, might use 4% less energy to run than it would on a track. However, the advantage you might have in not fighting the air resistance may not feel like it. It’s also been shown that the faster you are running, the more likely your heart rate and perceived exertion will be higher than if doing the same pace on a road or track. So physiologically it’s easier, but it feels harder! Bummer!







To play devil’s advocate, I believe it was a piece by Daniels, that indicated that it might be a wash on adjustment. This is because of the fact that if you are on a treadmill, it’s probably a warmer room- 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus, since you aren’t moving anywhere, the humidity that surrounds you, which would normally be pushed away as you ran forward, makes the effort harder. In fact, although having more of an advantage, it has been shown that even though you may have some advantage at faster speeds, both heart rate and RPE are higher on the treadmill than over the ground (at faster speeds). In any case,

Recently, I had a new athlete sign up for coaching and we have them complete a training profile. One of the questions is “what are some of your training weaknesses?” The point of this question is obvious, what do you think you need to work on? However, we are also looking to see if you really think about what those needs are and then really establish a starting point for a conversation about those perceived weaknesses. 



Her main weakness was that she said she needed more speed work. However, I took a look at her other personal bests and questioned that conclusion. When I looked at her 5k, 10k, and half marathon best, these all suggested that she could run a marathon in anywhere from 4:37 to 4:45, significantly faster than the 5+ hour marathon she just finished. So, the reality is she is already fast enough to run a better marathon time. The issue lies somewhere else and we’ll go over potential reasons as we move forward. 



To be clear, I am not picking on this young lady at all. This is just a recent interaction regarding something I come across as a coach pretty often. Honestly, I think when she said speedwork, it was really in reference to structured work. If that is the case, then what she is saying is true in principle. Looking through her training history, she could add structured work and it would probably do amazing things. 



The moral of this story though is that running a certain time requires you to be “fast” enough first. This is where your own racing history in combination with the use of a race equivalency chart can come in really handy. What do I mean by that? I’ll use myself as an example. My fastest marathon is 2:14:38. If I plug that into a calculator is shows that I should be able to run 1:04:10 for a half marathon, a 10k in 29:08, and a 5k in 14:00. Comparing that to my actual PR’s, I ran 1:03:52, 29:02, and 14:10, respectively. 



There are two ways to look at this. One is that I pretty much maxed out what I could do, across the board. Based on my half PR, I probably could have eeked out a high 2:13 marathon. What’s interesting is I ran that 1:03:52 in February of 2011, then turned around and ran my marathon PR in June of the same year. Second, as my race distance decreases, the further away I got from what I was expected to run. This is why it’s important to know what your strengths and weaknesses are as a racer. This allows you to take generalities and turn them into specifics. 



Going back to my history, I was pretty much maxed out. For me to really make another step forward, I needed to improve my shorter distances. I probably needed to recover from my marathon and then move down and do some sport of speed segment. I didn’t necessarily need to improve my 5k and 10k times, but I definitely needed to at least get back to that level and maybe tolerate some workouts that would be in line with faster times. Then maybe use that speed work to run a faster half. Finally, come back and attempt a faster marathon. 



Going back to our young lady her quest to break 5. We already established that she was “fast enough” to run under 5 hours. What else could be the issue? To me, there are two big issues that need to be looked at. The first is you have to look at your training throughout the months and years previously. I’d really take a look a consistency over long periods of time. Many recreational athletes train for a specific race once a year, or a couple of times a year. Then they take summers or winters off. I am not knocking this at all, but when it comes to improvement, consistency is king. Even if it’s not hard training, being fairly consistent with staying healthy, and putting blocks of solid running can move your fitness up a couple of levels on its own! Secondly, within a training segment, does the training match what you are training f...