Run Your Best Marathon. Really.

A put-all-your eggs-in-one-basket program that works if you let it

One of da Costa’s workouts includes a 30K time trial in which each 10K segment is 30 seconds faster than the last; the final 10K stretch is done at marathon race pace. Another is 5 x 5K, with the first 5K done at marathon pace and each successive one 10 seconds faster. The basic principle is the same: A significant proportion of training is done at or near race pace for the goal distance. As such, it’s really no different than a mile, 5K or 10K training regimen.

There are variations on the theme. Some of Pfitzinger’s athletes run 12 to 15 miles at the pace of a typical training run, then pick it up to race pace in the last five miles; the idea is to shorten recovery time. Other times, they’ll run eight to 10 miles at goal pace (with a warm-up and cool-down, of course). But Pfitzinger agrees that longer, more intense bouts are effective. 

“There is a mental and physical recovery involved,” he cautions, but says it would it be useful to do such workouts every second or third week.

Foreign athletes have long had a leg up on Americans when it comes to long, hard workouts, according to Mark Conover, a 1988 Olympic marathoner. “The standard stuff we all learn, like six times a mile or five-mile fast continuous runs, seems ingrained in Americans,” Conover says. “That’s all I did for my marathon preparation, while others like [Gelindo] Bordin and the Africans hammered out some quality 40K-plus runs. They run 2:07 to 2:09 and win medals and prestige, while Americans continue to suffer.”

Boring is Better

Where your long, hard runs should be done is a matter of personal taste; I’ve always done mine on the track. This offers the advantage of close pace monitoring, and a pair of others as well: minimal pounding and the ability to set up aid stations for ample carbohydrate intake. These two factors are vital in training runs of this intensity, because recovery from these bouts has been shown to be strongly dependent on both. Many athletes training for marathons tend to fall into chronic states of low-grade glycogen depletion. (Glycogen is the body’s storage form of carbohydrate.) This clearly limits their ability to do the workouts they aspire to, which can erode confidence and throw them into moods that annoy everyone around them.

“The body stores carbohydrates most readily in the first hour after exercise,” Pfitzinger notes. “Part of my personal secret to being able to train more than other people was that I intuitively sensed that it was important to get the carbs in right after the long runs.” A still better option is to consume as much as you can during your long runs. In addition to the physiological benefits, it prepares you for race-day conditions, when you’ll be taking in fluids and carbohydrates while running at high intensity—a valuable skill to master in itself. The choice of fluids, energy gels or other sources is, in my experience, relatively unimportant. Stick to what you find most palatable; as long as you’re taking in enough, your body will find a way to put it to use.