The key to training for a long distance race like the marathon is the long run, that once a week slow run where you care more about distance than how long it takes you to run. The long run starts as just one of your normal weekly runs but grows by about 10% of your weekly mileage each week. After a few months of running, I had worked up to 3 miles per run and was running about 3 times a week (about 10 miles). So, when I started my marathon training program, I began by taking one of those 3 mile runs and making it a 4 mile run. I took my time and took walking breaks at regular intervals. The next week the long run was 5, then 6, then 7, etc. I kept this up till I got to 10 miles for my long run. About that time, the SAS marathon program started and I switched to their schedule but it continued in much the same manner.
Another important element is rest. The body is damaged in a run and only grows stronger in the rest period after the run. Therefore, you must give you body enough time to heal/grow before you stress it again. However, you don’t want to wait too long or the body will weaken from lack of use. A good middle ground is 3 – 4 times a week (depending on your age). Even though I was resting between long runs and using the shorter 3 mile runs to maintain my fitness between the long runs, once you get to about 10-12 miles, you have to begin taking a different kind of rest. Stressing the body with very long runs does damage that take longer than a few days to repair so you need to start doing ‘easy’ long runs after every 2 ‘hard’ long runs. Once you get to about 18-20, you have to do ‘easy’ long runs between every ‘hard’ long run.
I’m glad I did not have to figure all this out — here is another time where being a geek about a subject helps. There are tons of books and web sites that talk about all the research into running and training methods. Like other subjects, you can find people that will argue the exact opposite view but taken as a whole, much of the advice is good common sense and seems to work. Check out some of the running links if you want more details.
BTW, this is an ‘easy’ week so we are only a 14 mile long run. Next week is the killer 20 mile hard week that is the peak of the SAS training plan. From them on, we taper. That will be a topic for a future rambling.
