Coaching a Coach: Brendan Gregg CIM 2021

   This past fall I had the pleasure to start working with Brendan Gregg. Already very accomplished, Brendan was going through a transition and didn't want to be fully coaching himself but also wanted a lot more autonony than in his previous set up. My personal style is very hands off just by the nature of my life, I work full time and have a one year old and a three year old in addition to coaching. However I think the real reason Brendan contacted me was that he had done some experimenting with, and really wanted to explore, the Canova style of training more and he knew that was the school that I came from. 

  Coming into the cycle Brendan was quite fit. He had run a near PB 13:48 5000m on the track in the late spring, early summer and he finished his summer cycle with a solid 48:14 10 mile at Cherry Blossom. Prior to this cycle Brendan had already had a terrific career with a 2:11:38 marathon best from the 2019 Chicago marathon, a 28:03 10000m best from 2015. In addition he had a long line of national class performances going back to high school. This resume made Brendan far and away the most accomplished runner I had ever been asked to write a schedule for. I'm generally careful not to ask for too much info about why a runner is looking for a change. The assumption I made was that Brendan wasn't too happy with how his last two marathons had turned out. They were both solid, a 2:13:27 14th place finish at the Olympic trials and a 2:13:49 20th place at the marathon project, but my guess is that coming off a 2:11 he was probably expecting more. 

  Brendan was targeting a run at CIM on December 4. This was very much a hometown race for him and he had run there twice before. A 2:18:33 8th place in 2016 and a 2:13:28 5th place in 2018. Given that he was a local, his resume and that he already had a solid finish there before the goal for the race had to be to go for a win. Additionally I personally very much wanted him to get a personal best. I knew this might not be possible simply because the lead pack at CIM doesn't always run at a pace that gives you a real shot at sub 2:11:30 but given that the winning time does fairly regularly dip under 2:12 I was very hopeful. 

 Brendan had been following a fairly traditional Aussie system for most of 2021 up to Cherry Blossom and he had added in a couple of workout variations at my request when we first decided that I would do a training plan for him for CIM. These were an early marathon alternation session and a 30km fundamental tempo (aka easy tempo) at around 5:30 pace. 

  As I mention in the title Brendan is a coach. I used it as the title not because he does online coaching but because he thinks like a coach, talks like a coach and approaches his running like a coach. In fact he comes from a family of coaches as I believe his father was his coach in high school and perhaps it is this linage or perhaps it is just his way of approaching things but whatever the reason when I was talking to him it was sometimes hard to remember that I was talking to someone looking for help as an athlete not as a coach looking for support with his coaching. As such I ended up approaching working with him very much as I would with a coach. 

  We emailed back and forth a handful of times and then had a very good zoom conversation where we discussed exactly what he was looking for. Based on what he told me I wrote him a schedule that was very much a traditional Canova specific phase  adjusted to fit what Brendan had already found to be true for him. Namely that he was most comfortable running around 100 to 120 miles a week and that he did best with 2 days of lower intensity after each workout. 

  The only complicating factor in the schedule was the 25km Riverbank run which we agreed we would under focus on in favor of the marathon. In the end I think I over hedged the training away from speed and because of it Brendan underperformed here. That said I would much rather that outcome then missing in the other direction and have him run a burner at the 25km and then run out of glycogen at 22 when he got to CIM and have him crawl into another 2:13/14 type run. 

  Summary of Training by Week

(Sunday to Saturday)

Week September 12 to 18

Recovery week - 71 miles

Race- Sunday the 12th Cherry Blossom 10 mile 48:13

Workout- Thursday the 16th 1 hour moderate progression run average pace 5:19, starting around 5:45 and working down to sub 4:50 for the last mile plus.

Week of September 19 to 25

Back training- 102 miles

workouts

Sunday the 19th- 30km easy tempo (around 90% mp) 5:30 pace- quads still sore on downhills but controlled

Wednesday the 22nd- Deek's quarters(8x400 with eight 200m float recoveries for a total of 3 miles) 14:11 for the three miles. Recovery 200's ranged from 36 to 40 with most in the 38/39 range, "on" 400's ranged from 66 to 68 with most of them at 67. 

Saturday the 25th- Marathon alternations- scheduled as half mile on, half mile recovery but Brendan had a great 0.55 loop so he did 24 laps of that. The fast loops were at 4:35 to 4:45 pace. The "recovery" laps were at 5:15 to 5:25 pace. He averaged 4:58 for 13 and 1/4 miles.

Comments- This was the first real taste I got of what a workout monster Brendan is. Particularly the Saturday session. I would have been fine with that for the last workout before the marathon so to see that on the first go was startling. I knew he had been doing alternations via the Aussie system for his last cycle but it was still a crazy impressive session. 

September 26 to October 2

Tuesday the 28th- Moderate tempo run scheduled for 5:25 to 5:15 pace. Brendan started at 5:20 to 5:25 and worked down to the 5:05 range averaging 5:14 per mile for the whole run. He reported feeling heavy but not overly so. 

Friday the 30th- 10x1k at critical velocity, 2:50 to 2:55, Brendan reported that he felt like he could have kept doing this for quite a few more but that trying to run one in 2:45 would have been very hard. Which pretty much defines how you should feel during marathon training. 

October 3 to 9

Monday the 4th- 33km Canova marathon fartlek. 10km at 3:25 per km, 5km of 1min hard, 1min moderate averaged 3:05 (2:51/3:23), 5km moderate avg. 3:26, 5km marathon pace- avg. 3:02, 5km moderate, avg. 3:30, 3.2km(2 miles) marathon pace or max effort- 3:11 avg. You can see how Brendan was pretty cooked at the end of this. Now it was a warm day and he was very aggressive through the workout but I think this also highlights the problem with a lot marathon programs. You need a good number of these long hard marathon specific workouts to get the adaptations that you need to be able to really run a great marathon. This session shows Brendan was in great shape but not quite ready to rip a marathon, yet.

Thursday the 7th- 70min progression run starting out around 5:20 pace and working down to just under 4:50 per mile. 5:01 average for 13.95 miles.

A small thing of note. Brendan ended up with 119.94 mies this week. A big week for him. What I think is worth thinking about is that he didn't try to stretch a run or add a little jog someplace to get 120. When you are training really well the miles are just a number that happens not something that you chase or put much thought at all into. 

October 10 to 16

Sunday the 10th- 5x5k at marathon pace with 1km recoveries at around 90% marathon pace. This was scheduled as 4 to 5x5k and Brendan said after a couple of reps he was feeling like it would take all he had just to do 4 but that he felt stronger as he went on and ended up not ony doing 5 but finishing very well. This happens quite often when you start getting into marathon specific shape. splits- 15:22(3:25), 15:09(3:20), 15:12(3:22),15:15(3:21)15:08.  What matters in this session is the recoveries. If you can't hit the fast recoveries then you are not getting the specific impetus you need for the marathon work and by extension you won't be in shape to run the marathon you expect down the line. Brendan did this one perfectly!  This was the point at which I started to get very excited about this cycle. There is no where to hide in this session and he just nailed it. 

Wednesday the 13th Aussie Quarters- 8x400m with eight 200m recoveries run quickly as well so that the whole run is 3 miles. Brendan ran 14:06 which is a crazy monster session. This was very much done marathon style as he was "only" running 65 to 66 on the reps with recoveries at 37 to 40. To be clear that means he was recovering at 5:00 to 5:20 per mile. 

Saturday the 16th- marathon alternations- scheduled as 12 miles of 1/2 mile at 4:40, 1/2 mile recovery at 5:20 to 5:30. Brendan was very tired and considered dropping the workout but decided to give it a go and was able to do 10 1/2 miles, which is nearly the whole session. This is a spot where Brendan's coach like mindset really made a huge difference. Rather than feeling deflated because he didn't hit exactly what was on the schedule he was actually pretty pumped after this session because he did so much after feeling so tired on the warm up. Our point of view has a snowball effect on our emotions and that can make all the difference in getting through a heavy marathon training cycle. 

October 17 to 23

This week we took a down week to rest up for the USATF 25km championships. Brendan did a light 2 mile at race pace, 9:40, on Tuesday and then the race was Saturday. It was a disappointment. Brendan ran 1:17, 4:58 pace, at or just a bit slower than our goal marathon pace. I knew that he was unlikely to challenge for the win or run much under 1:15 because we were in deep marathon training so he wasn't going to handle lactic acid well and he was going to be fatigued going in but when I first saw this result I was really concerned. After we talked I felt much better. After an easy first 3 miles in 15:00 the pack surged and ran 14:00 for the next 3 which off normal training would be no big deal for a guy like Brendan but with little anaerobic capacity it shot his legs, and stomach. He actually ended up having to stop in a porto-potty. This made sense given how we had trained. I had hoped the Aussie quarter sessions would be enough to get him through this, and if the pace had been steady 4:50's give or take 5 seconds they may have been, but they weren't but given how it had unfolded I wasn't worried about his marathon fitness. 

October 24 to 30

The only workout this week was a light 10x1k at critical velocity, 2:50 to 2:55 per km, on Thursday which was a good indication that lactic acid was the problem at the 25km as Brendan nailed these running 2:50 for basically all of them and feeling easy. It was time to get back to work. 

October 31 to November 6

Sunday the 31st- 2 hours and 10 mins (projected race time give or take- I prescribe 2:10 for anyone looking to run 2:15 or under, 2:20 for those looking for 2:15 to 2:20) at 90 to 95% marathon pace. I prescribed 5:20's per mile which was a bit conservative and Brendan was more agressive averaging 5:14 for 24.9 miles. This is not the hardest session to do in the cycle but it is the most taxing on the body and recovery off of this one takes a while.

Wednesday the 3rd- 12 mile run with the last two miles at marathon pace. Normally this would be a super easy session but coming off Sunday I thought it might be surprisingly tough but Brendan reported it was easier than he expected which made me very happy because I worry a lot about not recovering well enough from that Sunday session. 

Saturday the 6th- Bill Squires' Tiger in the Cat long run- as you can tell from the name this session doesn't come from Canova but it is very much the same type of session as his long specific fartleks. This was a cornerstone session of many of Squires' great marathoners and also Charlie Spedding credited it with giving him the ability to race a marathon. You start with 2 miles at marathon pace then do a long fartlek of 1,2,3,4,5,5,4,3,2,1 mins hard with 5mins at a good steady pace between each for recovery and finally 2 more miles at marathon pace. This is VERY tough.  Brendan ran 20 miles in the 1:45 that this took, so 5:14 pace again. That means his fastest 46 miles for the week averaged at least 5:14 per mile. He was ready. We just needed to stay healthy.

November 7 to 13

A much lighter week coming off the two HUGE long runs last week.

Tuesday the 9th, 15 mile moderate tempo run at 5:16 pace. This looks impressive at Brendan's paces but in terms of % of race pace many people run this hard every day. It holds back their progression but it does give you an idea of the effort level on this. Really just an uptempo regular run. 

Friday the 12th- We had the Aussie Quarters session schedule but Brendan flipped it out for a Monaghetti fartlek which he covered 4.17 miles in the 20 mins. They are very similar sessions and can be interchanged almost anytime. 

November 14 to 20

Monday the 15th- Scheduled for 5 to 6 x 5k at marathon pace but slick roads and heavy legs ended the workout after only 13 miles. Dissapointing for the last marathon interval session but you can't get through a cycle like this without bombing one. It is important to remember you are in the condition indicated by your best workout in a cycle. If conditions, or fatigue knocks you down that doesn't impact your actual fitness. 

Thursday the 18th- 80min progression run 15.5 miles, 5:09 pace- Started out in the 5:30's and worked down to 4:45ish by the end. It sounds like it was a wet rainy fall day that saps your will to start the workout but actually is enjoyable as you get going and I think this effort did a good job of washing away the memory of Monday's poor session. 

November 21 to 27

Sunday the 21st- the last real workout- 13.5 miles of 1/2 mile, on/off marathon alternations. Brendan's on's ranged from 2:16 to 2:23 and his recoveries ranged from 2:31 to 2:37 and he averaged 4:53 per mile for the 13.5 miles. This is just a savage session. It gave me great confidence that he would be very tough to beat.

Thursday the 25th- AM workout was a 7 mile progression run going from about 5:25 pace down to 4:40 pace and averaging 5:03. PM workout was 5 miles steady 5:40 to 6:00 pace then 3 miles at marathon pace- 4:50's per mile. These are both pretty light but combined you get 10 miles or so of marathon paced running without killing yourself which is nice.

November 28 to December 4

Wednesday the 1st- 5k marathon dress rehearsal - 15:13 nice and easy. Just a reminder of the rhythm as we close in on race day

December 5 RACE DAY!!!

2:11:21 Run away victory, 2nd place ran 2:12:52. There was a small group through the half in 1:04:58. Based on the official splits and the video clips I have seen Brendan was either in the lead or within a step or two of it from the start. He was the official leader at every split from the half marathon on. He reported that he felt very good but that his legs did feel heavy enough in the closing miles that he wondered if he could respond if someone came up on him. My guess is that if the pack had kept rolling he could have gone 1 to 2 mins quicker before reaching his real physical limit on the day but that is just a guess. It is possible this really was right about as fast as he could go on the day. My feelings are that this was a perfect outcome. When you can't win your focus on a time goal, when winning is possible then time doesn't matter. I was glad he got a PB but obviously given the pace of many of his workouts I think in a time focused race he could have run faster.

Lessons

Every cycle has lessons, good and bad. They also set you up with questions for further consideration. I think this cycle left me with a number of questions. For the bad we underperformed at the 25km. We knew it was a risk and though I would certainly have preferred a 1:14 there if getting it had meant a 2:13 at CIM that would have been a very poor choice.  The question is did we err too much on the side of marathon prep could we have done things slightly differently and have run better at the 25km without hurting the marathon. OR was it sort of the luck of the draw with how the race unfolded and we just needed a steady pace. 

Similarly the time. It was a PB but only by 17 seconds. Based on the workouts and the fact that CIM is a very fast course I would have really liked a faster time. Knowing this was his first cycle through on the system I wouldn't have necessarily expected that he could hold the exact pace of his workouts to the tape, which would have put him in the 2:08 to 2:09 range but I really would have liked a 2:10. That said this wasn't that kind of race. Show me a guy who runs 2:10 from the front and I'll show you a 2:07 marathoner. So though I can't ask anything more from Brendan's race it does leave me wondering a bit about his real fitness. This is unusual for me because I don't get to work with too many guys like Brendan. Generally my athletes are running in the pack and there might be reasons that they run a bit slower than they are capable, course, conditions etc.. but they are easier to quantify. 

In the end I think this seems most similar in my mind to the first cycle from another athlete I coached, Dan Harper. Dan also targeted CIM and he was also coming in with a decent PB, 2:22. He also hit nearly every workout and really over achieved my expectations. Then ran really well on race day, 2:19, but not quite what I thought he could do. With Dan the next cycle really allowed the gains to be locked into his system and even though he didn't really workout much faster than he had in the first cycle he ended up running a 2:17 at Grandma's. I hope that we can see the same type of progression in Brendan's second cycle. 

If you are interested in Dan Harpers training  he wrote a book about the two cycles that I referenced and you can get on amazon, https://www.amazon.com/My-Road-Olympic-Trials-Training/dp/B08YJ2VLVL 

Canova Marathon Training VS. Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning

 I thought I would take some time to get very specific about how Canova's marathon training varies from the traditional American system.  The best example of that system for the marathon to my mind is Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas.  This book to my mind represents the american marathon training system done about as well as it can be done.  To be clear I think that the best individual group/system from the USA for the marathon was that of Bill Squires in the late 70's and early 80's but sadly his system is not what has inspired the training of most Americans in the last 30 years.

  Sources

  My understanding of Pfitzinger's system comes entirely from my copy of his Advanced Marathon book, the first edition.  I  have not yet bought the Second Edition so if they made any updates to the system in that edition they are not reflected here. 

  For the Canova side of things I am mostly using Marathon Training: A Scientific Approach by Renato Canova and Enrico Arcelli which they originally wrote for the Itilian Athletic Federation and which the IAAF published  in a bunch of languages.  I am also using the PDF Marathon Training Methods by Renato Canova which can be found here: Marathon Training Methods by Renato Canova  Additionally I reference a schedule Canova published in a german running magazine which I have used google translate for and you can view here: Canova 2:09 Training for the European Athlete

 It is not my intention to do a detailed analysis of both systems.  Instead I want to highlight how they are the same and how they are different.  My basic thesis is that Canova's system is a natural progression from Pfitzinger and by extension the training most serious american marathoners are doing.  Both men are scientists and approach the training from a scientific perspective.  I would say that Pfitzinger seems to me more influenced by the traditonal Lydiard model, which would make sense given his connections with New Zealand and Canova tended to take from a much wider array of sources. 

  Similarities

  The first and most striking similarity comes in the physilogy of marathon performance.  They both essentially dedicate a chapter to this, which makes sense given their shared science background.  What is striking is how similar they are.  Honestly you could swap these chapters from the two books and not have any change in either book.  Really the only difference is the quality of the writing which is much better in Advanced Marathoning.  They both say that in order to excel in the marathon you need to build on five basic areas.

1. Aerobic fitness- broken down into improved mitochondrial activity and quantity in the cells, improved blood profile, improved heart performance, improved capillarization in the running muscles. 

2. Improved use of lactate as fuel in the muscles. 

3. Improved lactate threshold speed.  

4. Improved glycogen storage and lipid consumption

5. Improved VO2 max

  The key thing I take from this agreement is that Canova has not found a new area of fitness to develop. Nor does he view the physiological needs of the event differently.  So the difference must be in either the types of workouts that he uses to improve these physiological areas or in how he combines the workouts for them in his training system and in fact we see that he has made, sometimes subtle but always important, adjustments in both areas. 

  The next similarity that I was drawn to is how they both approach mileage.  Which is that athletes should be running high mileage but to not be particularly committed to a number that represents high mileage.  Instead putting the focus on specifics elsewhere.  Essentially they are both saying you should be doing high mileage for you but that mileage is different for different people and that it should not be the major focus of your training. 

  Another similarity is the pace of long runs.   Both Pfitzinger and Canova believe that in order to get the physical adaptations you are looking for in your long runs your ideal pace range is genenrally from 80% to 90% of your marathon pace.  However they differ greatly in exactly how this is accomplished.  Pfitzinger likes to view all long runs as a very light progression where the early running is done around 80% marathon pace and the latter stages are done around 90% marathon pace.   Canova is much more structured.  In the base phase he generally starts with shorter, 10 to 12 miles, long runs at 80% of marathon pace building them up in distance over the early part ot the training cycle to being very long, 22 to 25 miles, then reducing the volume and increasing the pace to the 90% range.  To be clear both these systems are using these long runs as a means of improving fitness but Canova does not see them as or use them as specific prep for marathon racing and here we find a large difference.  Canova moves his long runs in the specific phase to being much more specific workouts involving a huge amount of running between 95% and 105% of marathon pace and additionally incorperates a lot of running in the 90 to 95% of marathon pace as recovery portions in long run workouts.   Pfitzinger does incorporate some marathon paced running in his specific phase long runs but not nearly with the same frequency as Canova and there is essentially no running in his prescribed training where the athlete runs between 91% and 99% of marathon pace.  That is a KEY difference that we'll get to in a bit. 

  The final similarity I would like to highlight is the use of periodization.  Though both use different names and have some differences in how exactly they break down the training phases they both use distinct and in the end very similar periods of training with specific physiological goals in mind as stepping stones to their final phase of training which is focused on maximizing marathon race performance. 

Key Differences 

  Often times when discussing differences in training I think people have a tendency to focus on minutia or differences that are unimportant and miss the really big differences.  I.E. Looking at two workouts of quarter mile repeats I often see a lot of focus on the quantity of the reps.  "Well group b did 10x400 at 5k pace and group B did 12x400 at 5k pace."  When in reality the number of reps is generally a flexible and somewhat inconsequential peice of information.  More importantly changing the number of reps does not change the physiological goal or effect of the workout.  However changes in the pace of the reps, or the type, pace or length of the recovery, and the difficulty training in the days leading into and following the workout can make huge differences in the physiological effect of the workout.   It is with this perspective that I am approaching these two programs.  I am not looking for differences in style, vocabulary (a tempo run by any other name is still a tempo run) or technique.  I am looking for differences in the physiological adaptation that is being targeted, the amount of focus that is put on each physiological adaptation and how each system attempts to induce those physiological adaptations. 

  Key difference number one we already talked about.  Workouts that involve running at paces ranging from 91% to 99% of marathon pace.  There is exactly none of this prescribed in Pfitzingers training which is not to say that an athlete following this program would not ever run this pace but it certainly would be limited.  In Canova's system running in this pace range shows up in a number of different ways.  It is used in long specific runs of goal race time to goal race distance, it is used as recovery between blocks of running at marathon pace during specific marathon workouts and sometimes as recovery during either VO2 max or lactate threshold paced running.  This pace range is seen by Canova as one of the key marathon training paces with two goals of physiological adaptation first and foremost this pace range increases aerobic lipidic power, the amount of fat that can be burned for energy in a minute.  If you are buring more fat then you are burning less glycogen and since in terms of marathon performance glycogen stores are a key limiting factor and fat stores are essentially inexhaustible, a 100lb runner with 4% body fat would have enough calories stored in fat to run at least 10 marathons, that is an awesome trade to make.  The second goal is increase aerobic fitness.  This pace offers no special benifits in this departement that running at 90% of marathon pace or 100% of marathon pace can't offer so this is not an advantage I see over Pfitzinger's model except that it increases the total volume of running that works on this very important adaptation. 

  The second key differences is quantity of running at marathon goal pace.  Pfitzinger's more than 70 mile a week 12 week training schedule only calls for a total of 14 miles of running at marathon pace in the whole program.  A 12 mile run at marathon pace fit in a 20 mile long run, a great specific marathon workout by anyones standards, and a 2 mile dress rehersal run at marathon pace as part of the taper.  In comparision, though Canova doesn't get into specific detail in his book about how much of this to do in the specific phase, though it is literally the ONLY workout pace he specificly references in his section ton training during the specific phase, in a schedule for athletes attempting to run a 2:09 marathon that he wrote for a German running magazine he included a 9 week training cycle that called for 174 kilometers, which is about 109 miles, of marathon paced running.  This is almost an order of magnitude greater than what Pfitzinger is calling for. 

  In fact during the Canova specific phase essentially every workout that an athlete is doing includes either marathon paced running or some running at 90% of marathon pace or faster.  This comes in many forms.  An athlete could be doing repeats that are faster than marathon pace but with recoveries that cause him or her to average marathon pace.  They may be doing a fartlek that involves many different paces including marathon pace.  They may be doing repeats at marathon pace or they may be doing a long run at 90 to 95% of marathon pace.  Other paces, lactate threshold and VO2 max most often, do show up during the specific phase but always as part of a workout that includes marathon paced running or running at 90 to 95% of marthon pace. 

  It is my personal belief that in these two differences we can boil down why athletes training this way have been able to take world class marathoning from the 2:07 to 2:10 range that it was essentially stuck in from the late 1960's until the early 2000's and suddenly blast into a realm where the new world class is the 2:04 to 2:06 range. 

  However it does leave us with an important question.  If Pfitzinger is not doing all that marathon specific work in his specific phase what is he doing?  Certianly if Canova was just having his athletes add a hundred plus miles of marathon paced running on top of what Pfitzinger was suggesting all he would be getting them would be injured.  So what is the trade off?

  First athletes attempting Canova do get hurt much more than those on a Pfitzinger plan.  Canova calls for a lot of very hard workouts and this increases the risk of injury.  To reduce this risk Canova puts much greater modulation of effort into his schedules.  So yes the hard days are much harder but the easy days and easy runs are much easier and much shorter. 

   Second Pfitzinger calls for a lot of workouts in the specific phase that are VO2 max or lactate threshold workouts, five and six respectively, in the 12 week schedule.  Many of these are in the last 8 weeks which would be the specific phase in a Canova schedule.  To my mind this almost makes the training schedule more of a 5k schedule than a marathon schedule.  I mean if you have done one real marathon workout and five 5k workouts which event do you think you'll be more adapted for?

  This is not to say that no running is done at VO2max or lactic threshold pace in during the specific phase in the Canova system but it is instead mixed into marathon focused workouts.  An example of this would be a session of 10km easy, 5km of 1min hard 1min easy (that is your VO2max pace), 5km easy, 5km marathon pace, 5km max effort.  A slightly more attainable workout from a different program would be 12 miles easy, 5km marathon pace, 6x400m at 5k pace with 100m jog recovery.

  Conclusion

 So if I have convinced you that Canova is the way to go or you were already convinced of that before you read this but you just don't know how to go about it or you have already injuried yourself in attempting Canova in the past.  Or perhaps you have had good success with Pfitzinger and you're wondering if a switch to Canova could lead to even more. What the heck are you supposed to do?  Canova schedules are not easy to find and they are almost always designed for athletes at the absolutly highest level who are training full time.  Frankly the average or even well above average athlete has no prayer of completing them even if they correctly adjust them to their own pace.   The great advantage of Pfitzinger is his schedules.  They are so well written, so balanced, so accessible.

  My suggestion would be to use the Pfitzinger schedule that fits your mileage needs and input Canova style workouts on the workout and long run days, in the specific phase, from 8 weeks until 2 weeks to go, of the schedule to change the balance of your training from 5k focused to marathon focused.  Now these marathon workouts are much longer than the lactate threshold and vo2 max workouts in the Pfitzinger schedule so you can take miles off the days after your workouts and long runs to balance this out.  I'll do an example week below to show you exactly what I mean.

Pfitzinger week 

Monday AM 6 miles PM 4 miles

Tuesday AM 6 miles PM 4 miles

Wendsday VO2 max 11 miles with 6x1k at 5k pace with 2minute jog recoveries.

Thursday Medium long run 15 miles

Friday AM 9 miles PM 4 miles

Saturday 8 miles and 6x100m strides

Sunday 20 mile long run 

87 miles for the week, zero miles at marathon pace, one VO2 max workout, runs at easy, moderate, vo2max, alactic paces

Pfitzinger adapted to Canova week

Monday AM 3 miles easy PM 3 miles easy

Tuesday AM 6 miles PM 4 miles

Wednesday 2 mile warm up, 12 miles of 800m at 105% marathon pace, 800m "recovery" at 95% marathon pace

Thursday AM 3 miles easy PM 3 miles easy

Friday medium long run 12 miles progression from 80% maratho pace to 90% marathon pace

Saturday 8 miles and 6x100m strides

Sunday 3 mile warm up, 5x3 miles at marathon pace with 1 mile recovery at 90% marathon pace (22miles)

 80 miles for the week. 27 miles at marathon pace, kept the easy, moderate, and alactic running, added some running at lactate threshold, lost the VO2 max running.  Lower volume.  Probabaly a harder week. I would be careful to make the midweek workout a bit easier the following week. 

Postscript 

Finally I was obviously very lax in my sourcing of this with no footnotes or use of AMA formatting as such I figure the least I can do is provide links to where you can buy these great books for your own use.  Advanced Marathoning

I have no idea if you can buy the Canova book anywhere.  I got mine by sending a check to the IAAF in Switzerland and it came in the mail which kinda shocked me apparently as late as December of last year you could email the IAAF your credit card info and get one see the 9th post in this letsrun thread.

Canova book thread

Canova, Sondre Moen and the lack of marathon progress in the USA

  My training is still very much the same jogging 4 miles once or twice a day so it hardly seems worthwhile to post it here so instead I figured I would talk about something else.

   At Fukuoka last weekend Sondre Moen of Norway ran a European record of 2:05:48.  This followed up a sparkling 59:48 half marathon in October.   Sondre has been a successful runner for a few years having run in the 62 minute range for the half marathons each of the last few years and he had run 2:11 before he started working with Renato Canova last fall.  I want to talk about him because of two factors.  First the jump from 62/2:11 to 59/2:05 is shocking and almost unheard of outside of the rift valley.   When I see a jump like this mid career my first thought is sadly drugs.  In this case it is certainly possible.  Despite my personal admiration for Canova I do not know him well enough to say for sure that he and his athletes are totally clean.  I am also aware that some of the released schedules from his athletes have recovery intervals are shockingly short.   That said my personal experiences of breakthroughs with his methods tell me that huge breaks are possible without chemical enhancement.

  It is also not that I think Canova has a corner on great running training, I don't.  In fact I think an argument could be made that the best training for the 1500 to 10k is currently available from coaches in the US.  When you consider the success that USA athletes have had at the Olympics and world championships in those events over the last couple of years and that many of the coaches in charge of those athletes are working with very small stables of athletes thanks to are inability to find a financially viable way of creating large well funded training groups, in comparison to Ethiopia, Kenya and Japan where literally a thousand or more post collegiate age athletes are able to give professional training a go and training groups of 30 or more are fairly common. 

  What I do think is that as a country we have massively underachieved in the marathon. Rupp and Flanagan's wins this fall notwithstanding.   There are a number of factors that I feel have a play in this.  The first is that most americans run marathons in the US and there are very few fast courses with consistently favorable conditions.  According to ARRS Houston is the fastest marathon in US based on race time bias and it is only the 16th fastest in the world and it is one of only 3 USA races considered faster than the average or break even time point.   So often we have great American marathoners who is not viewed as being as successful and fast as they would be if they were running races like Berlin, Dubai, Tokyo or Fukuoka instead of New York, Boston, Twin Cities or, with the dropping of pace setters, Chicago.  Also when Boston gets a tailwind we are quick to dismiss a fast time by an american, IE Halls 2:04:58, while we don't tend to put non-american times under the same scrutiny.  I actually read an article once that made a point in saying that Hall's real PB was 2:06:17 from London and then went on to refer to Gebre Gebremariam as a 2:04:53 man.  This is funny because that time for Gebre was run at Boston the same year as Hall ran his 2:04.
 
  This judging of americans by time when they generally run on much slower courses means that often very good americans are judged as being less than they are.  To think that calling Meb a 2:08 guy or  Rupp a 2:09 runner, or Jason Hartmann a 2:11 man is a fair assessment of their success as a marathoner is ridiculous.  These men could easily have PB's 3 to 5 minutes faster if they had focused their energies on the very fast pace set races that the africans dominate.

   That said there is little doubt that we are underachieving in the marathon as compared with the track.  I think that a parallel can be drawn between current american running and the level that the Kenyans were at in the 1990's.  At that time many, many kenyans were running under 27:30 and 13:20.  A good number were under 61, 27 and 13.   Yet almost none were running inside 2:08 for the marathon.  In fact only a fraction of the number of Kenyans were under 2:10 as are today.

   What happened.  Well to listen to many in the sports media tell it the Kenyans stopped fearing the distance and started attacking the marathon.  This is to my mind the stupidest assertion I have ever heard.  The kenyans always attacked.  They had been roaring out at fast paces at marathons from the moment they turned to the roads in the mid 1980s.  The question is why did they stop blowing up?

  My arguement is that Renato Canova, and a couple other coaches, started to do professional development with coaches in kenya.  Traveling the country working with athletes and sharing infomation like this, http://mymarathonpace.com/uploads/Renato_Canova_Marathon_Training_Methods.pdf, with coaches.  This lead to a seed change in how the Kenyans prepared for the marathon.  I think the general fitness that came with this kind of work also lead to greater performance in the half marathon but there the difference was far less.  A 61 man was now becomeing a 60 man.  In the marathon however it was stunning.

  In 1998 the 10th fastest Kenyan marathoner ran 2:08:52, this was a great year for the kenyans in the marathon at that time.  By 2008 the 10th best was 2:07:21.  A solid improvement but the bigger difference at that point was up front as the world lead had gone from high 2:06's to 2:03's.  This meant that big improvements were needed to win and so more and more athletes and coaches adjusted their training accordingly.  In 2015 the 10th fastest Kenyan ran 2:06:19.  A startling time that is under 3:00 per kilometer pace and that no man had ever run faster than prior to 1998.

  My personal experience is what makes me believe so fully in this system.  In the fall of 2005 I had never run under 24:30 for 8k.  I had a 1:07:28 half marathon best.  I began training in the most rudimentary way with Canova workouts and systems and by the end of spring in 2006 I had run 23:26, 1:03:44 and 2:15:28.   Later on after the Olympic trials I was able to get Canova to send me a training schedule.  You should be able to view the schedule here, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m0aEpBDKhfjEmKKzGvWPBkxVZKx1qfYyxPqRLFiT0mw/edit?usp=sharing

  I was already struggling with my coordination issues and as such I never ended up racing off of this training.  I did however find myself in the best shape of my life by far at the end of a month of this training.  I cannot say for sure how fast I would have run I can say I felt confident I would be able to run under 1:03 for the half and in the 2:10 range for a marathon in reasonable conditions, not tailwind, at Boston. 

  So what are the Africans, and a guy like Moen doing that I believe that we Americans are not.  I think the four major things are, one, truly specific marathon workouts in numbers.  So not doing one 16 mile long run at marathon pace and otherwise training like you are getting ready for a half marathon or 10k.   In this type of marathon training the athlete runs a lot of marathon paced work every week, sometimes in multiple workouts per week throughout the training cycle with 15 to 30 miles of marathon paced work run each week during the specific phase.
  Second long hard runs of around marathon distance run at 90 to 95% of marathon pace.  These workouts start much shorter, around 20k, in the base phase but build up to around 40 to 45k during the specific phase.
  Third alternation style workouts where the athlete averages marathon pace for 10 to 15 miles but does so by alternating between running slightly faster than and recovering slightly slower than marathon pace.
  Fourth moderate medium length, 10 to 18 mile, light tempo runs at an effort slower than marathon pace but faster than a reasonable training pace.

  Many top american groups are implementing some of these strategies.  The fourth one is very much like Schumachers' rhythm runs for example.  Meb did a marathon paced tempo run pretty much every week during his marathon build ups.  I think in the marathon the big one most americans tend to fall short on is the specific work.

  Finally I think that one area that the Africans excel at and that much of the rest of the distance running world fails at, myself very much included, is the balance between training very hard generally but not fearing to take complete rest or to half ass workouts. 

  I read an article where a 2:05 Kenyan marathoner was asked why he felt the Japanese could not compete in the marathon with the Kenyans.  He said he thought that if the Japanese trained like the Africans  they would be the best in the world.  When asked what he thought the Japanese were doing wrong he said they were training too hard.

  Similarly when I followed the linked Canova plan, which was the first time I didn't have to figure out my own paces for the workouts, I was shocked how EASY most of the workouts were.  In a two week block there were 6 or 7 "workouts" but 5 of them would be barely harder to do than a basic training run.  Then one or two of them would be savagely hard.

  This is not to say that I think we should make a return to the under training that plagued the 1990's.  I think the tricky key is that the athlete needs to train extraordinarily hard in the macro sense but that they need to be able and willing to reduce the effort in the micro sense.  Doing more workouts, and very high volume, but realizing that those workouts might be quite easy and that is ok.

  I watched a documentary following an athlete who eventually finished 4th at the NYC marathon and the thing I found most different about him compared with myself was that when faced with hardship he opted to half ass his training for a while as a sort of compromise.  He skipped the harder workouts, mixed in days off and then when his body came around he got serious again.  My coordination issue has defied all my attempts to solve it so I doubt that a similar attitude would have saved me from it but I do wonder if I had been a bit more like this if I could have run more consistently well both during my short time of being on the national level and fully healthy, 2006/2007 and in the shorter distances over the years that followed.

  Finally I think that the very top americans are making some changes.  Schumacher's ladies have run better in the marathon this year, though sometimes what is effective training for women in the marathon does not carry over to men because we are less efficient with glycogen, and Salazar has obviously had more success with the marathon of late, seen both in Rupp's very effective running but also in Suguru Osako's 2:07:19.   However I think that there is still an opportunity for one of the second tier groups to stun the US distance world and dominate the top of the USA marathon rankings and perhaps take the majority of the spots on the U.S. Olympic team.

  I think that if you are running more than 5% slower than your half marathon best on similar terrain in the marathon you are under achieving and if you have shown a predilection towards the longer events than that conversion should be closer to 3%.  So for a mid 1:01 half marathon athlete, of which there are now a fair number in the USA that means running in the 2:06 mid to 2:08 mid range.  Obviously in good conditions this would likely fall short of what it would take to beat a guy like Rupp but certainly you could take a spot on the team.  Furthermore a group that was slowing like this would expect mid 1:02 half marathoners to run in the 2:09 to just under 2:11 range.  Think of the impact on american marathoning if one of these groups with 3 to 5 sub 1:03 guys got each of them to run in the 2:09 to 2:10 range in the next year.  I also believe that Moen shows that if they make these changes it is likely that athletes will not only race the marathon closer to the equivalent of their existing pb's in the other events but it is quite likely that they will see a jump in general fitness as well.   In which case perhaps some of our consistent 62 minute half men could find themselves running 59:42 and 2:05:48 in a year or two like Moen has.

Training blog August 21 to 27, 2017 moving forward

Monday Off- drove back from Cincinnati.  Left about 4am actually made great time and could have snuck in a run on the home end in the late evening but I had made the decision to  take an off day already and just went for a 2 mile walk to try and uncurl the body.

Tuesday AM road 10+ with Pat Rich around Topsfield, nice loop, hot day,1:07:28, did some light strides after.

Wednesday AM At Phillips, 3 mile warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 31, 600 jog.  Then 4x800 meters run HARD and stupid, ie out very fast and rig up and die.  This is to drive the latic acid as high as possible with each rep rather than run them as fast as you can.  Basically I ran each of them like I would have in high school.  Out in 30/31 for 200, there was a decent wind in the 2nd 200 so I'd be 64/65 at the 400 and then just a war from there to the finish.  After each 800 I would take 2 minutes recovery and then do 4x10 hill sprints.  My hill was at best 30m so I added on a bit of flat at the bottom and top, jog down recoveries after each hill repeat.  After the last rep I would take 2 minutes before the next 800.  This obviously included the jog back down the hill and over to the start on the track.  I ran the 800's in 2:13.6, 2:14.0, 2:14.7, 2:15.0.  After the last 2minute recovery I did 4x500m where I would run the first 200m in 33 then go straight into bounding the next 100m then I would TRY to run the last 200 meters in 33- I think the closest I came was low 34 on the last one.  The bounding 100 took me about 25 seconds each time. I would take 4 minutes recovery with about 200 meters of walking after each. I did them in 1:34, 1:31, 1:29, 1:28.  I was then completely running late so I did a 1k cool down.  This is a base phase mas lass workout from Canova's stuff for 3k to 10k running.  This is the first time I have done it and it was VERY intense.  I was almost afraid to start the last 800 because it was getting so painful...
PM road 5 with Uta, too hot for her so we were slow, 36:47

Thursday AM road 10, 1:08:16, very sore and tired
PM road 5 with Uta, very sore still, 36:15

Friday AM road 10, 1:06:40, tired but not sore.
PM road 5 with Uta, 34:46, tired.

Saturday AM road 5 with Uta, 34:39
PM At Chelmsford rail trail, 3 warm up, drills, strides, 5x2miles- with 3 minutes of drills for recovery.  The rail trail is very flat but it is sort of false flat uphill one way and false flat down hill on the other.  Not enough so most people would notice but if you put a tennis ball down it would roll.  Reps 1,3,5 were 'down'.  Reps 2 and 4 were 'up'.   I ran 10:11, 10:19, 10:04, 10:18, 10:00.   This actually felt really good. 4.5 mile cool down- was doing 2 miles but toward the end I ran into Kara Haas and really wanted to see how she was progressing on a recent injury and so I ran with her.  Now I had breakfast after the first run but because this was an early PM workout I hadn't had lunch.  By the end of the extended cool down I was pretty well tuckered out as the whole thing was over 18 miles and drills burn a lot more energy than their mileage indicates.  Plus that was 10 miles of work in 50:52.

Sunday AM road 10.1, 1:07:57.
PM road 5 with Uta, 35:13

Summary   95 or so miles for the week.  Two very good workouts.  After Rye harbor I couldn't help but be worried.  I didn't have very high expectations but I thought my training had been moving in the right direction and I was very disappointed to run that poorly.  As I have pointed out a number of times base work should improve your workouts much more than your racing but to be over 32 minutes was still pretty crushing.  That starts to look like a poor tempo run rather than a race.  If I had gone out hard and died I would have paid little or no mind to that as when you go out too hard it is impossible to gauge what you could have accomplished with smarter running other than to know you are not fit enough to go out at the pace you went out in.  However I had run quite sensibly and still really struggled.  I mentioned in last weeks blog that it sort of hit me on my tired warm up for the hill repeats that I felt anemic and that anemia could be a real good explanation for why a 32 minute 10k hurt that bad.  I don't want to disparage a 32 minute 10k too much it is just that after college I have only run that slow a handful of times. Once in 2008 on super tough course with Anemia.  Maybe once in '05 or '06 on the same very tough course with very tough heat as well.  After that I ran like 40 minutes for a trail/mountain race in Vermont during mud season and I ran 32 mid at Lone Gull last fall off of some light jogging and yoga coming back from that stress fracture.  All this is to say that since about 2004 even when I have run bad over 10k I have generally been able to salvage a 31.  Anyway warming up for Saturday's workout I felt quite tired and it seemed like either I hadn't eaten enough or I was feeling anemic.  I have been taking iron since Monday and been eating a good bit of red meat as well. As soon as I hit the first split on the rail trail at 1/5 of a mile in 5:00 pace and feeling good I knew I had been right about the iron being low.  I felt great.  In fact in the last quarter mile of the first 2 mile rep I was feeling so good I couldn't resist checking my heart rate, 118.  Now I'm assuming it was up higher than that for much of the rep but even to settle down like that late in a rep I must have been pretty relaxed.  I was still worried about the full workout.  Often with longer aerobic workouts when my iron has been low and is just starting to come back I'll start the session feeling normal again and then somewhere midway the wheels just come off but today was great all the way through.  I never really pushed, though I will admit my legs were tired on the last rep.   This is really good news as I really want to slip under 31 at Cow Harbor in a 3 or 4 weeks and 32, even though it was solo, did not make that look to likely.  This weeks workouts and the 15:10 solo a couple weeks ago line up with being ready to do that by the middle of next month so I'm happy that the poor time at Rye seems to have been a blip.
  This week school starts up again so I have a weird schedule.  I think I have an open house Tuesday night and I'm not going to be ready to workout again until Tuesday so I'm going to have to try and sneak in workout from school and try and track down a shower there before parents start arriving. I have also become quite inefficient with my time as summer went on and with the start of the school year I won't have anytime to waste if I'm going to get everything done so the first week is always a rough transition.

My Current Spin on Complex Training

 I had been meaning to do a blog on this but Rich gave me a push and so here it is…

  I am a huge believer that the devil of racing fast is that you need a training system and not to just be running a lot and tossing in some random workouts.

  It is like cooking. Making a meal we can all pretty much figure out the ingredients and you can do pretty well as long as you put in good quality ingredients.  But the key to really making a great dish is to balance the ingredients properly and to mix them in at the right times.

  There are a number of great training programs out there and it is no secret that I had my greatest success using Renato Canova's program.  Although I actually set my 10k best off Joe Vigil's system and honestly if I had the time on weeknights I would love to use that again.   However time is a serious issue for me particularly on weekdays.

  My next issue is that I like simple repetitive training.  I am a creature of habit and I like to keep to a routine.  With all that in mind I settled on the idea of using Australian complex training.  This system was started by Pat Clohessy who coached 2:07:50 man Rob de Castella as well as 2:11 and sub 28' 10k man Chris Wardlaw.  Wardlaw in turn would use the system to coach Steve Moneghetti who would run 1:00:07 and 2:08:10.   A number of other of great runners came out of this system.

  The basic system is workouts on Tuesday and Thursday tempo or race on Saturday a medium long run on Wednesday and a long run on Sunday.  The key is in the details of this system.  The track and fartlek work is almost all alternation or 'bounce' threshold style- which means the recoveries are fast enough that you get a huge improvement in your threshold when using them.  The long run involves either hard climbs or a fast finish and should be run at the quicker end of your training pace.  Also some form of sprinting and hills would be mixed in.

  The way you adjust this program from season to season or event to event is to make twists in the sessions themselves.  So when getting ready for a marathon you would do a set of Aussie quarters with slower reps but faster rest then you would when getting ready for a 5k.

  Anyway I used this as my jumping off point.  I love that the standard weekday workouts tend to work multiple systems and don't take too long so I can get them done and still get to bed in time to be ok to get up for the morning run the next day.

  My two week cycle

Week 1
Monday- AM 6 PM 10 to 12 miles

Tuesday AM 6 PM Mona Fartlek http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/monaghetti-fartlek.html

Wednesday PM medium long run 15 to 18 miles

Thursday AM 6 PM 3 miles of sprint float sprint

Friday AM 6 PM 10 to 12 miles

Saturday - Fundamental paced tempo(5:50 down to 5:20 pace depending on conditions and fitness) run of 15 to 25 miles

Sunday 6 and 6 double

Week 2
Monday AM 6 PM 10 to 12 miles

Tuesday AM 6 PM Mona Fartlek

Wednesday PM medium long run 15 to 18 miles

Thursday AM 6 PM 3 mile tempo 4x400 hills- After the winter is over I'll do Aussie Quarters http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2014/12/workout-wednesday-australian-quarters.html

Friday AM 6 PM 10 to 12 miles

Saturday AM Tempo run or race PM 6

Sunday AM 22 miles with last two miles fast- goal 5:00 pace.


So obviously the fundamental paced run is a Canova session. It is a session I love to do and I have finally got my coordination to the point where I can do them again.  Also it is a session I get huge fitness from.

  Also if I start to do marathon training I'll do marathon workouts for the long runs.  I have always felt that the Aussie system was good for the marathon but not perfect.  For example if you look at Steve Moneghetti's PR's he slows at just about 5 seconds per K as the distance doubles from 3k to the half marathon.  If he continued this to the marathon he would have a best of 2:04:11.  I think with specific work he could have run the marathon in that range off his fitness.  To be clear I don't think he could have actually run that time in the early to mid 90's when he was racing at his best.  He would have needed pace setters and competitors willing to chase that sort of time and that didn't exist at that time but he certainly could have been closer to it.   I could and should write a whole blog on the basic idea but the short story is look at the top times in the 5k, 10k, half marathon from the 1990's and early 2000's and the times in the marathon.  Look at the times today.   The change in the marathon is stunning. The other events are close to the same, actually on the track a they are weaker with the drop in epo use and decrease of money in those events.  Road race times are roughly the same.  What happened?  The kenyans and Ethiopians embraced the Italian style marathon program and began to run within 3 to 5% of their half marathon performance in the marathon.

  That is my basic cycle. I can do it cover all my bases and stay healthy and almost get enough sleep to keep myself together.

Tempo Tuesday; Moderate Progression Runs

  This week Tempo Tuesday is about moderate progression runs.  I have been using these more this cycle but historically I haven't done a ton of these.  I tend to like to hammer my progression runs but that said these sessions are a awesome way to build great relaxation at a quick pace and great aerobic strength.

  These are not a killer session, it is right in the name, moderate.  You might even do this session the day before or after a harder track session if you are a very quick recover and have a long history of heavy training.

  I think for most people however it is a great stand alone workout.  I see a lot of folks who go hard once or twice a week because they are trying to build their miles and they can't go more than that.  This is fine but why just do all regular pace runs?  If you do and run 10 times a week with 2 hard efforts that means 80% of your runs are the same. That simply doesn't bode well for a well balanced training cycle.  Instead mix in some moderate efforts that don't take much more out of you than a regular training run but do target systems a bit differently.  The two big things I would suggest are a session for speed, i.e. diagonals, 100's session or short hill reps and second a session for aerobic endurance.

  The moderate progression is a perfect run for aerobic endurance.  Basically this should be a run that is as long or slightly longer than your normal training run, should start at about the fast end of your normal training pace and should progress steadily over the run to about 20 to 30 seconds per mile faster than you started.  For me this means a 10 to 15 mile run starting at 5:50 to 6:00 per mile.  I generally average 6:00 to 6:20 per mile for a regular training run and finish with my last few miles in the 5:50 to 6:00 range.   In order to start my run at this pace I need to do a mile or two warm up and some drills but I have a lot of miles under my belt so you may not need that warm up.   Over the course of the run I work down to about 5:20 pace.  In a marathon phase I will often run the last mile at goal marathon pace which is a bit faster but this is pushing the envelope on keeping the session moderate and I wouldn't suggest doing it most of the time as you really don't want this session to get to hard and have them take away from more important sessions.

  What it does.  This will build your aerobic endurance and your muscular endurance.  The first few times you do this you may be pretty sore or heavy the day after and your stomach may be upset in the hours after the session but with time you will soon find that you feel fine the next day and your going to find yourself running along on this session feeling VERY easy and you will find your other endurance workouts improving greatly and when you fall apart in races and workouts you will find you can salvage better and stay much closer to pace.

  Where in your training to do it?  This is a session that can be fit in throughout your training cycles.  As a complimentary session it works great in the earliest training to start dipping your toes into faster running.  Then in the early base it is a great workout to supplement the heavier tempo work you are doing in the special and specific phase it is a great light session that can be used to maintain aerobic fitness while not taking too much out of you.

  Hope you enjoy it!

Fartlek Friday: Recovery Fartlek

  This weeks fartlek friday is a little something different.  Instead of focusing on a hard session we will look at a session for recovery.  Most of us just go out and slog around at a slow pace on our easy days.  At best we may do some strides after an easy or moderate jog.  However if you look at the programs of some of the most successful runners in the world you will see things like easy fartlek and 20 kilometers with short variations for speed.  These sessions fall in places where a workout wouldn't be possible or advisable, the day before or after very hard sessions or races.  So what do they know that you are missing?

  Running well is a game of speed.  It has long been known that in running speed kills all those who don't have it. Yet still so many of us, particularly those who fall into the weekend warrior or regionally competitive groups do very little fast running.  In a normal week we do maybe two workouts, a race and a few strides and that is a great week.  Many times we may go days or even weeks with all or nearly all our running at paces ranging from 1 to 3 minutes per mile slower than our race pace.

  Then we watch with awe the best in the world and wonder what they have we don't.  The answer is strength with speed.  Most who chase the best possess one or the other or only some of each.  Now some of the difference between you and the lads and lasses in the Golden league has to do with Momma and Poppa.  Lets be honest not every guy has the genetics to run 13:00 and not every gal can be a 15:00 monster.  Still much less of the gap between you and them is genetic, or illicit chemical use, than you think. The two biggest differences I see are one the huge efforts expended to build aerobic power through fast steady running, IE various types of tempo and progression runs, and two huge amounts of relaxed FAST running, SPEED.

  So often we use fast and hard as interchangeable terms.  The thing is they are not at all interchangeable.  The biggest lesson I learned in my years is fast is not hard and hard is not fast.  Sometimes they happen together but they should largely be trained separately.  If you want to be a speed demon you need to be able to run very fast while you are relaxed.  If you want that you need to PRACTICE running fast while you are RELAXED.

  One of the ways of doing this is to run fast on your recovery days.  Note fast not hard.  A great way of doing this is to slow your recovery run pace down a little bit and mix in some short quick burst of speed.  Not at a max sprint, not killer drives but pleasantly fast accelerations run only long enough to feel quick and not long enough to get tired.  Between these flashes of speed you should have long breaks.  More than recovery you should be really stretching it out.  This is a run with some quick spurts not a workout with long rests.
 
  This session should be as long as your normal recovery run and done on as pleasant a route as you can find.  I imagine it in a cool forest on soft pine needle trails or running around rolling fields in the english country side.  I actually run it in 15 degree weather on a heavily trafficked loop dodging cars and fearing for my life around every 12 foot snow bank covered corner.  But not everything is ideal and in my mind I drift to that pine forest and I'm just killing it!

  After a few times of doing this you will discover you can often recover better with a session like this than with a regular run and over the long haul this extra relaxed speed will go a long way to improving your muscular endurance and efficiency making you one who kills with speed rather than one who is killed by it.  Ok full discloser this workout alone is not going to change your world but it can be one piece to the larger puzzle of finding the path to unlocking your full running potential.

Trials of Miles. Guest Blog by Melissa

Today's blog is by Nate's wife, Melissa Donais. She is a nurse practitioner and runner, who prefers 5ks to marathons.

"The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals." -Hal Higdon

He came stumbling through the door like Rocky Balboa at the end of a prizefight. I had expected something like this, but I still wasn’t prepared for it. “Melissa!” He yelled in a garbled, distraught, exhausted voice. I ran downstairs to him, concerned that something was wrong, beyond the expected exhaustion.

“Where’s Ruben?” I asked.

“You gotta go get him. He didn’t make it back. I can’t drive.” He collapsed onto the couch.

“What? Where is he Nate?”

“Up by the church.”

The church was about a half mile from our house. Ruben couldn’t make it back from the church? I grabbed some juice, anticipating that poor Ruben’s blood sugar was likely even lower than Nate’s right now, and hopped in the car. At the same time I dialed my mom’s cell phone.

My brother was up visiting from Saratoga this weekend and my parents, Nate, and I were planning on having dinner after Nate’s workout. I had called my mom earlier in the afternoon and warned her that Nate’s workout was unlike any workout our running family had ever heard of, but she didn’t seem to understand. “That’s okay, honey, we’ll pick you guys up so Nate won’t have to drive.” Now my parents and brother were on their way to our house. My mom answered the phone, and in a rushed voice I said “Ruben didn’t make it back. You gotta help me find him. Nate left him by the church.” My mom said they were right by there and would start looking.

Meanwhile, I circled the rotary by the church, scanning the sidewalks and peering over snowbanks looking for Ruben. I didn’t see a soul. I drove up the street a bit, still no Ruben. It was dark, and about 18 degrees out. I knew it wouldn’t take long before hypothermia set in for Ruben. I called the home phone.

“Is Ruben back yet? I can’t find him.”

“No. He’s not at the church?” Nate’s words were slurred from hypoglycemia and exhaustion.

“No, Nate, he’s not at the church. You let your friend die on the side of the road and just ran home yourself? Where the hell is he? You left him at the church?” I demanded in frustration, as I feared we might be making a trip to the hospital, all because these two geniuses decided to attempt a “special block” and run two insanely hard workouts, totaling 36 miles, in a twelve hour span. It was stupid. It was just stupid. And this stupidity could lead to some serious health consequences.

I drove down Great Pond Road, thinking maybe Ruben tried to make it back to our house but missed the final left turn onto our street. No Ruben. Then my cell phone rang. My mom, “We’ve got Ruben.” Thank God.

I arrived home to a shaky and cold Ruben. Nate wasn’t much better. They took showers, my brother and dad checking in periodically because we were afraid they would faint. Then they both collapsed on the couch, huddled under blankets. We ordered food and they slowly, over a couple of hours, improved mentally and physically.

Later my parents and brother would tell me they drove past the church, and my brother noticed something on the steps of the church. He jumped out of the car, ran up the steps, and sure enough, saw a man curled up on the steps.

“Ruben?” he asked.

No answer.

“Ruben? Ruben? Nate sent me. I’m taking you back to Nate. You must come with me.”

Ruben, mumbling, reluctantly got up off the steps. In his cold exhaustion he had somehow convinced himself that curling up on the church stairs would be warmer than waiting on the side of the road.

This is the life of marathoners striving for greatness, following the Canova system of training, where specificity is king. If you want to run a marathon in 2:11 (I mean, who doesn’t?) then you better run an ungodly amount of miles at 5 minute mile pace, and you better not take much recovery between those miles, because you’re going to have to string 26 of them together on race day. Sounds simple enough. It’s the doing that’s hard.

There’s a lot of glory that comes with greatness, and a lot of respect and admiration for the journey towards it, but what most people don’t understand is the day after day fatigue and pain experienced by the journeyman, and what no one even considers is the worry and frustration experienced by the caregivers. It’s very easy to say that you’ll support your spouse no matter what, and it’s an entirely different experience when you’re living with someone who is trying to run 140 miles a week around a full time job (you don’t want to see our house; it will be a mess until the end of April).

You never know what to expect. A run goes well and you breathe a sigh of relief. He will likely be cranky, hungry, and tired, but the run went well. Phew. The run goes bad and you get a call on your way to the gym, you’re turning your car around and finishing the dinner that’s in the middle of cooking on the stove while your spouse heads to a 90 minute Bikram yoga class because his foot feels tight.

Yoga ends as you’re ready to head to bed and your spouse finally arrives home. You haven’t seen him all day. But you can tell by the look on his face that things are not good. “Boston’s over. I’m not doing it. If I miss a workout now it’s all over.”

“What?”

All because his foot is tight. I sat him down, massaged his foot, used a guasha tool to break up fascial restrictions, and sent him to bed (he refused the “hell bucket” of ice treatment). In the morning I kinesio taped his foot before he left for work.

You end up walking on eggshells, praying for good runs, and doing your best to provide reassurance when the runs don’t go well. I mean really, I sought out every possible fix for his right leg/loss of coordination injury, do you think I’m going to let a tight plantar fascia prevent a successful Boston run? No way.

It’s been hard for me and I’m not putting in the miles. The cult classic novel, Once a Runner, referred to “trial of miles, miles of trials.” All runners think they understand what that means but I think few truly do. The trial of miles is a man, injured for seven years, who has undergone multiple extremely painful nerve tests,  a (very risky) spine surgery, and countless hours of physical therapy to crawl his way back to a sport he loves above all else, to get just a chance to run his heart out and be healthy on the day. It’s a man who is dedicated to his full time job, and consistently running over 100 miles a week around it. A man who still finds some time to cuddle with the dog and kiss me goodnight, despite trying to make the impossible possible.

It is nothing short of amazing, and it is the culmination of years of work and hope. We have days when we feel we are losing the fight, but on the good days the dream lives. It’s so easy for others to look in and criticize, but only the few who have tried to live this life will understand the day to day drudgery and the tiny hope for glory.

I never comprehended what went into making a great marathoner. Now that I know and I have lived it I have so much awe and respect for my husband and for those great marathoners who came before him. They are part of an elite group of people who have more will and guts than most of us. No matter what happens in April, the dedication to his dream, the solving of his longtime injury puzzle, and the insane training (that he loves and missed during his injury) that he accomplished are real victories. I am so proud of Nate for fighting the good fight.

Tempo Tuesday: Making improvements and breakthroughs in all tempo training

  Generally I talk about specific workouts in this space but today I'll talk about some more general tactics that you can use across all your tempo runs to make improvements in those workouts and by extension your general fitness and racing.  For me I put all steady running faster than regular training and longer than a  mile or two into the category of tempo training.  This could be something as short and fast as 2 miles at 5k pace or as long and slow as 27 miles at 80% of your goal marathon pace.  All are designed to improve your aerobic fitness, though in many different ways, and all can be improved using some of the same tactics.

  To me the most important thing about a tempo run in training, really any workout in training, is not how you run it the first time but how you run it better each successive time.  Good running is after all in its simplest state all about getting better.

  I have done a ton of work over the years and one thing I have seen in my running and others again and again is if you take your tempo run and just try and run it faster each time out at first you are able to do so but in general you are not running it better you are just running it harder and soon enough you are running as hard as you can and your not going much faster.  In short you stagnate.

  The key is to instead increase distance at the SAME PACE.  So you go out and do a 3 mile tempo run at 5:30 per mile.  The next time out you should aim for 4 miles on the same course at the same pace.  You will find that you are able to fairly quickly find yourself running twice the distance at the same pace and your effort when going by the original distance is much lower than when you started.

  After you have increased the distance a good bit say 50% to 100% longer than the original distance than you go back to the original distance and run it faster.  You will find the effort is not increased.  In fact often it is less.  Through cycles like this you can make very big gains and make them very consistently.

  However sometimes you will still stagnate.  In these cases there is one more trick to try.  In this case you run a fast finish.  So at one point I was trying to build up to an 8k to 10k tempo run on the track at 3:00 per K.  Thing was I was stuck at 5k to 6k.  I built up to that well. I was doing some other work but I was stuck.  So what to do?  I ran an 8k tempo run where I ran slower than I had been for the first 5k, in my case 16:00 so 3:12 per k. That is about 5 to 10% slower than goal pace and then I finished at or faster than my goal tempo pace, in this case I ran the last 3k in around 8:50.  So 2% or 3% faster than pace.  Even if it is dead on pace that is ok.

  The results?  Next time out I ran 8k in 23:56.  It isn't a sure fire thing but sometimes the reason you are stuck is you really lack the endurance to run the later part of the run at that past and this can specifically target that weakness.

  Finally sometimes the answer lies outside the specific workout.  If these two tricks don't work and you are still stuck it is time to work on other types of workouts to build up your abilities around your tempo run.  Most often either intervals at your tempo pace or 5% faster for the volume you wish to run for your tempo or as much as 50% more volume this can improve the muscular endurance and efficiency.  Second is to run a longer tempo at a slower pace to build the aerobic endurance and efficiency.

  Hopefully you can use this to get the most out of your tempo runs and reap the improvements you deserve for your hard work!

Weekly Training Blog February 16 to 22, 2015 Vacation!

I was on vacation this week which meant I had a lot more time which basically meant I slept a lot more which was wonderful!  This week off also saved my first specific workout as we had a blizzard last Sunday when the workout was scheduled and I was able to move it to Monday because I didn't have to work.  Now I also did some vacationy things like eating out and a few trips up to Maine.  Melissa, my wife, has to schedule her time off from work about a year in advance and we have been going to Hawaii each winter during February vacation but I put a kibosh on that this year because the two long flights in a 9 day period tend to undo any recovery you could get during that time and I wanted to be able to get as many hard workouts in as possible during my time off.  Given the winter we are having Melissa giving up a trip to Hawaii to escape from the 2nd coldest and soon to be snowiest winter in Massachusetts history is a pretty huge sacrifice, all because I basically was being very picky and specific about my training plans.  She is super supportive so the least I could do was go along for a few day trips.  The eating out is about my favorite thing so no sacrifice on my part there.

Monday

PM COLD! 16 degrees but windchill well under 0.  With Ruben. 3 mile warm up to Merrimack College 5k loop.  Loop was in real bad shape in terms of footing.  Only the 4th K was pavement.  The rest was a mix of packed ice, loose snow, ice and a bit of slush.  There are 12 turns on each loop and they were all very challenging.   The plan was 30k specific workout.  10k at 80 to 85% of mp, 5k of 1min fast 1 min moderate, 5k back at 80 to 85%mp, 5k at mp and 5k max effort.  In the end we only did 25k as footing really beat up on the legs and it meant that though we were on pace in the first 10k our effort was greatly in excess of the proper effort which you can see by how fast the 4th K was on each loop.  The full run was continuous but I'll break it down below by section

10k at  80 to 85% of mp- 35:56.5 (4th k was 3:20 and the 4th k on the second loop was 3:20 again) This means that we were probably running 33:20 effort or faster as really the 4th k felt easier than the other k's)  

5k of 1min fast/1min moderate- 16:39.19 (4th k was a 3:05) 

5k back at 80 to 85% mp- 18:09.51( 4th k was 3:23)

5k at mp- we just went about as hard as we could we knew with the footing there was no way we were going to get down around 16:00 we ran 16:45.34 (3:10 for the 4th K)

Total this was 1:27:30 for 25k, 5:37 per mile pace, though I have no trouble believing the footing alone cost us 60 to 80 seconds per 5k loop.  So 5 to 7 minutes overall.  Never mind the cold and all the extra cloths we were wearing.  No cool down on this one as Melissa and Uta were nice enough to pick Ruben and I up at the finish. Total 18.5 miles 

XT whartons, rubberbands

Tuesday

AM road 7, shitty footing, cold 10 degrees real feel 2. 47:26 total 7

PM road 7, same loop, same conditions except temp all the way up to 20 and real feel up to 8, balmy! total 7

XT whartons, rubberbands

Wednesday

AM 3 mile warm up, 19:45, skipping warm up, light drills, 4 strides, 20k of 1k/1k alternations on Merrimack College 5k loop. In bit better shape than Monday, 1st and 4th k were clear footing, 2nd and 5th were about the same and the 3rd was a bit better but the turns were still real bad.  Temps were about the same as Monday. Which means wearing a LOT of cloths which adds to the effort.  In an ideal world my goal would be the fast k's between 3:00 and 3:05 and the recovery K's around 3:20.  This was not ideal.

1k-2:59.8

2k-3:33.8(6:33.6)

3k-3:07.5(9:41.2)

4k-3:21.0 (13:02.2)

5k-3:15.5- yes that was an 'on' k (16:17.7)

6k-3:26.7(19:44.5)

7k- 3:05.9(22:50.5)

8k-3:33.3(26:23.8)

9k-3:01.2(29:25.1)

10k-3:37.7(33:02)

11k-3:04.4(36:07.2)

12k-3:32.2(39:39.4)

13k-3:08.3(42:47.7)

14k-3:24.5(46:12.3)

15k-3:17.0(49:29.5)

16k-3:26.7(52:56.2)

17k-3:08.1(56:04.3)

18k-3:34.1(59:38.4)

19k-3:04.1(1:02:42)

20k-3:41.2(1:06:23)

 Those splits look all over the place but really if you compare the same K's on each loop to each other they are much closer than you think.  IE the 4th k hard reps were 3:01 and 3:04 and the recoveries on that K were 3:21 and 3:24.  On the 5th k, the slowest you see the same relationship 3:15.5 and 3:17.0 for the fasts and 3:37.7 and 3:41.2 for the recoveries.

 3 mile cool down total of 19+ miles

XT skipping warm up, light drills, whartons, rubber bands

Thursday

AM road 10k, first 4.2 with Uta, then 2 miles solo, objectively speaking this was one of the most beautiful runs I have ever been on. We were running just at Sunrise and the orange glow of that through the freshly coated snow on the trees and reflecting off the fresh few inches on the ground.  However I'm pretty much finished with winter and it was very cold and I was slipping all over the place.  On the plus side Uta was able to enjoy it for its beauty and seemed to have a great time. total 6.2 miles

PM road 7, 46:15, not as snowy but still a couple of icy snowy miles road out front of the house was clear enough for me to do some strides which was very nice total 7.5 miles

XT whartons, shoveling, rubber bands, YTI

Friday

AM Super cold wind chill 15 to 20 below zero, wind was very heavy and very steady. 2 mile warm up and strides then did a 10 mile moderate progression run on my regular 10 loop(rolling)

 Footing in 5th and 7th and 8th miles was very bad.  The last 2 and 1/4 miles were pretty much into the wind the whole way and it made them VERY hard.  I had hoped to run them at 5:20 pace for 8 and 9 and about 5:00 for the last mile.  I'm sure the effort was there but the pace was not!  

1-5:49(into wind)

2-5:46(into wind)

3-5:32

4-5:29

5-5:35(footing and uphill)

6-5:34 (uphill)

7-5:27(Footing!)

8- 5:43(footing, hill, wind!)

9-5:42(wind)

10-5:23(wind)

 After this run Melissa asked if I was alright.  I basically threw a fit in response.  This is not normal for me. In my defense it was REALLY cold and REALLY windy.  Still Melissa had a pretty good laugh about my little fit later. total 12.5 miles

PM on curve treadmill- I had had enough of the outdoors for one day. 15 minute warm up, 10x20 seconds hard with 1minute jog breaks. Sort of simulating short hill reps giving how the curve works. total 4.5 miles

XT whartons, rubberband, 

Saturday

AM regular 10, cold 12 degrees, -6 degrees windchill, footing a bit better than yesterday and sadly this was a good bit warmer than yesterday too. 66:47, did strides after total 10.5 miles

XT rubberbands, whartons

Sunday

AM 3 miles warm up on treadmill, with 4 strides at 12mph mixed in.  I also jacked up the mill to 2% instead of 1% because it seemed a bit easy like perhaps the grade was off a bit or the floor not flat. 7 miles at 11.8mph- 35:35, losing coordination so I hoped off and did whartons, got back on 45 seconds later and did a half mile in 3:30 felt ok so I did 3 miles at 12mph, 15:00.  I had the shoulders back on and Melissa was on the Mill next to me and said my shoulders looked good.  I really have been struggling to hold coordination on the mill.  I think it may have something to do with how I don't really use my glutes and hamstrings much on it.  But I'm not 100% sure. total of about 14 miles

XT rubberbands, whartons, shoveling

Summary

 107 miles for the week but the real story is that with the strides and workouts more than 100 kilometers of that was at a workout effort.  Just a huge amount of quality work.  Really a great week of work.

  I was scheduled to race the USATF-NE 10 mile champs but really didn't want to deal with the snowy roads getting out there, though I have since heard they weren't that bad.  Anyway I played it safe. If I had raced this next week would be much lighter but with just the moderate workout today I'll keep it rolling through next week.

  Hope you are doing well and for those of you who are as sick of winter as me I hope the weather treats us a bit better in the coming weeks.