Raise Your Marathon Plateau
Strategies to help you find your breakthrough race
By Kevin Beck
As featured in the July/August 2000 issue of Running Times Magazine
If you're a seasoned marathoner hungry for a breakthrough, by now you've probably seen more training schedules than you can shake an energy bar at. The recipes vary, but the ingredients are the same: long runs, interval workouts, tempo runs, easy days, marathon-pace (MP) runs. Buried somewhere within one of these prescriptions, you believe, is the PR-shattering formula guaranteed to lift you from your current performance plateau. But in evaluating marathon-training plans, you've perhaps lost sight of a critical practice: focusing on general guiding principles and day-to-day strategies, not merely on executing a particular series of workouts.
Fortunately, there's nothing complicated about solidifying your foundation. Whether you're a marathon veteran or a newcomer to the distance, the strategies described here can help you parlay your week-by-week training into that performance leap you've been looking for on race day. You'll see no mention in this article of specific workouts or weekly training plans, because chances are you've found one of those already. Rather, the principles touched on here will help maximize the benefits of whatever sensible, structured pattern of workouts you've settled on.
Hit the dirt
When a runner shifts from a typical training diet into full-scale marathon-training mode, often the most significant change is an increase in mileage, both in per-week totals and the weekly or biweekly long run. Clearly, high mileage is a key determinant of marathon success; however, it is also a common stumbling block, as many athletes can't seem to exceed particular training volumes without incurring injuries or succumbing to staleness or fatigue.
One way to dodge the injury bugaboo and still put plenty of miles in the bank is to run on soft surfaces. Ask yourself how often you really make an effort to avoid asphalt and concrete. When faced with a 15-minute drive to a trailhead or a two-second bop to the end of the driveway-especially after your daily commute -which are you honestly going to choose?
I've always preferred the solace and variety of trails to the unwelcome buzz of urban perambulation. But it wasn't until I got a dog for a running partner and trained on trails almost exclusively out of concern for his legs that I began to really appreciate the benefits of running on grass and dirt. Not only did my legs feel fresher during 100-mile weeks than they had at 60 to 70 per week on macadam, but I was reaping benefits I didn't even know about.