Jennifer Heiner has served as the retail director of a running company in New Jersey since 2019. Active within the New York City running community, Jennifer Heiner has helped organize a number of training runs for the New York City Marathon, including the 20-mile Three Bridges Run, where she was also a pace group leader.
Training for a 26.2-mile marathon requires organization, persistence, and discipline. The first training element is base mileage, which requires running three to five times per week and gradually increasing weekly mileage. Over the course of 10 to 20 weeks of training, runners should plan to build their mileage up to around 50 miles per week. Avoid increasing mileage by more than 10 percent per week. Every 7 to 10 days, runners should plan on a long run to help the body adjust to long distances. This distance should increase over time, then drop back down in order to let the body recover. These long runs should be taken at a slower pace in order to help the body adjust and learn to utilize fat for fuel. A peak run, such as the 20-mile Three Bridges Run, ensures the runner is prepared for marathon day. A marathon training schedule should also include rest days, which are essential for muscle recovery and injury prevention
The results back up that logic to a point. Between the two of them, Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers claimed over a dozen major marathon victories. Their mileage was no less impressive: 120, 140, even 160 per week.
Running lots of easy miles is good, but it’s not the most efficient way to improve (especially since most of us don’t have the time or inclination to run 160 miles next week!). Over time, coaches and physiologists came to realize that incorporating greater variety into a base phase led to better results. The body, after all, responds to training that challenges it. Do the same thing every day, and that challenge diminishes, as do the gains. For that reason, a proper base phase should incorporate the following runs:
Long runs:
A weekly staple for many, a long run should introduce the biggest single dose of aerobic running in a given time frame. Long runs enhance general fitness and musculoskeletal strength while giving you a psychological boost from covering so much ground. Runs that get incrementally faster (known as progression runs) or contain surges and pickups further increase the training stimulus.
Easy/regular/aerobic runs:
During the base phase, regular runs are incredibly important. Since workouts are less intense and more spaced out, these runs serve as a great way to reinforce the benefits of a long run in a smaller, more manageable package.
Fartleks and tempos:
Tempo runs and fartlek sessions are generally aerobic in nature, but it’s a higher-level aerobic workout that receives support from an anaerobic energy processes. You’ll feel this shift as labored breathing and tired legs. Whether it’s a steady five-mile tempo at half-marathon pace or a 30-minute session alternating two minutes hard with one minute easy, the goal should be to stay moderately uncomfortable throughout. These workouts also serve as a good bridge toward the shorter, more intense interval sessions that define the next phase of training in the spring.
Sneaking in Speed
Another deviation from old-school training methodology is incorporating a small amount of speed into training year-round. Running fast for short periods of time makes you more efficient at slower speeds, recruits different muscle groups, develops maximal power, and keeps you from feeling stale. Coaches usually incorporate this in one of three ways:
Strides:
Strides can be performed on a track or a flat neighborhood street. They usually last 15 to 25 seconds. Build up to about mile race pace (or a quick but sustainable effort) over the first half of the stride and then hold that pace for the duration. Since these are anaerobic, take sufficient rest to ensure your form doesn’t start to break down. A session of 4 to 8 strides at the end of an easy run should feel invigorating, not difficult.
Hills:
Hills sprints are a great way to work on maintaining posture and knee drive. Although the intensity is high, your body takes less of a pounding because of the incline and slower speeds. Longer hills of 200 to 800 meters can be used to develop aerobic conditioning; hills as short as 8 seconds, when run all-out, can simulate the types of gains found by weight training and plyometrics (jumping exercises). As always, make sure you’re well-recovered before each interval.
Short intervals:
Though these will be found mostly later in the season, there’s nothing wrong with sneaking in a short track workout from time to time. The main difference between early-season and late-season speed sessions is the density. Early-season sessions should be shorter intervals with plenty of rest. A session of 8 x 200 meters @ mile pace with 1:30 recovery after each interval is an example of this type of session.
Making Your Base Count
Now that you understand the fundamentals let’s look at how we can tie all these disparate elements together. The first thing you want to look at is your weekly mileage. Overuse injuries occur when you bump total mileage too high, too quickly. When in doubt aim for no more than a 5- to 10-percent increase each week, with a lower mileage recovery week thrown in every 3 to 4 weeks.
The total volume also shouldn’t jump more than 15 to 25 percent in a given year. (If you averaged 40 miles per week last year, gradually progressing up to 50 miles per week this year might be a reasonable goal.) Once you’ve hit a new mileage plateau, you can slowly layer in more intensity to increase the quality of the training.
Speaking of quality, most runners only need one speed workout and one long run each week with easy mileage making up the other days. Rotating your workouts between tempos, hills, fartleks, and short speed will ensure training variety. It’ll also give you a great chance for some fast racing come the spring.
By Philip Latter. Latter is a former senior writer at Running Times and co-author of Running Flow and Faster Road Racing. His work has also appeared in Runner's World, runnersworld.com, and ESPN.com. He currently coaches athletes at The Running Syndicate, in addition to his day job coaching high school runners at Brevard High School (NC)."
