Another Mid-Week Half

I'm going to paraphrase a bit from Advanced Marathoning. If you want to learn more about the physiology of the marathon and how to train for and race a marathon, follow that link and pick up that book.

You may be wondering, "Where are all the speed workouts? I thought marathon training was supposed to be hard. He's not hitting the track for intervals, so he's not training hard."

There are physiological systems that underly marathon success -- endurance, lactate threshold, and VO2 max, in that order. Long runs and tempo runs have the most relavence for marathon performance. I have to remind myself of that when I'm up at or before 5:00 AM for yet another mid-week 13 to 15 miler. Believe me, I would much rather have done a set of half mile repeats at a blistering pace this morning. Oh, intervals would have been a hard workout. But don't think it's easy just because my pace is slower than 5k, 10k, tempo, or even marathon pace. Join me every day for a few weeks and you'll see. This schedule is hard. On an average week, 4 workouts are 10 miles or longer. Intervals come later.

Today Matt came over for "yet another mid-week 13-15 miler". It was a good, fairly evenly paced run with a strong finish. Most miles were between 7:55 and 8:15. It was hot, humid and dark.