Marathon training update (Chicago 2014)

I'm about 10 weeks out now from The Big Race this fall. The summer training has overall gone fairly well. I have been in dedicated training since June, so about 10 weeks so far. 

I started with a basic Canova plan for the marathon, in which I would balance workouts targeting speed, stamina and long endurance. These workouts included shorter fartleks such as hills and timed reps, medium and long intervals, medium and long tempo runs, and long runs that changed between straight paced, fast, or varied paces. I did not have any idea going into the program how I would react to some of the sessions, especially the long fast runs. I had some experience with long fartleks before, and have done long intervals and tempo runs for years, so stepping up the distances was a fairly natural progression there.

As it stands now, I feel like I have some handle on how my body is accepting and reacting to the training. I have really surprised myself; it seems like my strength is actually better than my speed (note that these terms are all contextual to the marathon and a goal pace of approx. 5:20). I am actually ahead of schedule in the long runs, but am not able to run the intervals and tempos quite as fast as I would be happy with. 

This is very surprising for me. I come from a much more speed oriented background, having focused entirely on paces substantially faster than marathon pace. I assumed that this background would allow me to train more easily for the "speed" workouts and that I would have a much easier time with those. False: My long runs have gone surprisingly well, but speed workouts (marathon pace and under) have been a bit lacking. I can confidently attribute some of this to the summer weather - in years past training for fall races, especially the years in which I trained for Philly RnR half, the workouts in the summer predicted slower times than I was able to achieve in the race, which was typically held in great weather. I try not to use that as an excuse, but it is always in the back of my mind when I struggle to hit the paces I think I should be running. 

It is interesting to me that the heat seems affects the shorter faster workouts more than the longer runs. This is sort of the argument against why I might be in better long distance shape. I don't have a good explanation why this might be the case for me. It's probably different for different people, but it something that annoys me. 

I am discussing this issue of not being able to run faster workouts how I want to because it is an interesting departure in my thinking about the importance of training to race. In the past, once I had realized that working in warmer weather meant slower times in workouts but didn't negatively affect race performance, I was always OK with it and accepted it as part of training hard in the summer. I figured that as long as I got the adaptations from the work, it was fine and those adaptations would be reflected in the races. Higher stress due to summer heat and humidity = better workout = better races, right? I believe that this is true up to a point. That point is when the race is long enough that muscular adaptations to a specific pace become an important factor to consider. 

In training for the half marathon and below, muscular endurance and ability to contract and hold up against fatigue was never really a big deal. Training volume in workouts and overall mileage can prepare the responsible propulsive muscle groups in excess of the race distance when you're training for track races. The limiting factor is always the speed endurance. This holds true, for me at least, about up to the half marathon.

Right around the half is where things start to change. I noticed that last year when I ran 1:05, the last few miles were hard not only because I was pushing my cardiovascular system so hard, but because muscularly my legs were starting to fall apart. It was getting to the point where my posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, calves) was running out of power and those muscle groups were fatigued to the point where they were failing. This is what I see as the major roadblock to a good marathon for me. 

I don't believe that what is traditionally viewed as The Wall will be a big problem for me. As far as pure caloric consumption goes, I think I can avoid true depletion by loading up beforehand and maybe a couple of gels or gatorade or something like that during the race. What I see as the real issue is the muscular fatigue. It gets very hard to simulate this in training because getting the fatigue of a marathon is not easy compared to shorter events. For the 1500, it's so easy to go beyond fatigue that it's not even an issue. Every workout at 1500 pace consists of well over 1500 meters of work. Not so with the marathon.

What I need to do in the next 10 weeks is 

1. Emphasize speed work such that I can speed up my comfort zone about 10 seconds per mile across all distances in workouts. By that I mean get mile repeats 10 seconds faster, get tempos 10 seconds/mile faster, get the fast long runs 10 seconds/mile faster (or more, as these are pretty uncharted territory for me). The exception is overdistance long runs, and these may get faster anyway as I get fitter. I say comfort zone because relaxation is key for the marathon and I need to be comfortable running marathon pace, especially early on. 
2. Continue to build long, specific endurance, especially muscular endurance, using fast long runs and overdistance long runs. On the Sunday workout I plan to alternate fast long runs (long runs approacing MP) with overdistance long runs (long runs of 26 miles or more). In this way I can directly extend speed and distance in both ways. 
3. Remember to taper effectively. I believe that a moderate taper (7-10 days) is probably the most effective for me, however I have not had much experience trying to race at a high level off of lower than 100 mpw. This will probably take some experimentation, but it is still 9 weeks away so a pretty lower priority.