DAVE CAMPBELL: I'm Dave Campbell. I'm going to be talking about speed training for a marathon. All runners for whatever distance should do some kind of, what I call, speed skills every week. And speed skills could be done a couple of days after a real hard run and can enhance recovery, as well as developing economy, efficiency and form. Start with an easy run as a warm up and then move into some active stretches and then drills, things like low skips, high knees, carioca, butt kickers. These emphasize different parts of the running form and improve efficiency, as well as developing technique. You can then do a set of strides, ideally done progressively, a little faster each one, starting with about 3 X 100 meters with either walk backs or very slow jog backs. Strides are just short, fast sprints that emphasize perfect form and technique, and move up to as many as six. Another way to do these, as well as on an easy day for recovery, is to do them as an extensive warm-up for, say, an interval day, a real hard day. Two other key speed training sessions that could be done mid-week are Yasso 800s and 10 X 1 mile repeats. The Yasso 800s are built on this premise that if you want to run say a 3 hour and 25 minute marathon that you need to build up to running 10 X 800 in 3 minutes and 25 seconds. These are very effective at building strength and stamina necessary to complete a marathon at goal pace. So after a comprehensive warm up, you would run an 800 at that prescribed pace and then jog a 400, and you need to start with 4 or 5 and build to the 10. And a lot of research has shown that being able to complete those ten 800s in that time that people can go on to complete that goal pace for their half marathon. Another key speed builder for the marathon are 10 X 1 mile repeats, and these could be done on the track, on the trail, or on the road, and are done at 10 to 20 seconds faster than race pace with a couple miles of jogging in between. Like the Yasso 800s, you need to start with just a few and build up to 10. Both of these speed training sessions with warm-ups and cool-downs become 12 to 15 mile runs; so at some point, when they build up to enough volume, it could even be substituted for the weekly long run. Another way to build speed is to periodically jump into a local 5K or 10K race and run those all out. Those can be effective, especially with long warm-ups and long warm-downs, effective speed builders for the marathon as well. Another strength and speed builder is that at the end of either of these workouts is to do 400 cut-downs. So if you are, say, a 65-minute 400 runner, you could do 3 X 400 cut-downs and you need to build to that, say, 72, 69 and then 66. So running each one 2 to 3 seconds faster but starting at a level that is comfortably hard so that you can go a little faster each one after a couple minutes of easy jogging.
Member Comments