I have my fair share of experience with marathon training, but I am by no means an expert. I don’t have any certifications or qualifications, other than my own experience to pull from. Despite my lack of real credentials, I figured it was okay for me to share what I know about marathon workouts based on experience. Maybe some of it will be new to you, and hopefully helpful in some way!
Common Marathon Training Workouts
Tempo Workouts: A tempo pace is one that is comfortably hard. You can still talk to your running partner in short sentences, but you won’t be carrying on an in-depth long run conversation. Your tempo pace should be somewhere near your 10k race pace, a pace you could maintain for an hour before being completely spent. We usually start out the training season with tempo intervals of 6 min to 8 minutes. Eventually, we’ll do longer tempo runs of 15, 20, and 25 minutes. The tempo interval pace is perhaps 10 seconds faster than the true tempo pace.
Kelly and I did a tempo workout today: 2 mile warmup, then 3 miles at tempo pace, and about 3 miles of cool down for 8 miles total. Great workout! (Yes, I wore my lucky Lolë hat again)
Kelly and I did a tempo workout today: 2 mile warmup, then 3 miles at tempo pace, and about 3 miles of cool down for 8 miles total. Great workout! (Yes, I wore my lucky Lolë hat again)
Long Run Pace: You should be running your long runs EASY. In fact, you should be running about 1 minute to a 1 minute 30 seconds slower than your goal marathon pace, even if it feels slow.
Goal Marathon Pace: This is pretty straight-forward. If I want to run a 3:45 marathon, my marathon goal pace is 8:35. We often incorporate marathon goal pace into longer weekday runs to get a feel for the pace.
5-4-3-2-1 Workout: This is a common workout that we do with my running club that I also often do on the treadmill. After a short warmup, do 5 minutes at your 5 mile race pace, then half that time to recover (2:30). Then do 4 minutes at your 4 mile race pace, with 2 minutes recovery; 3 minutes at 3 mile race pace, 1:30 recovery, 2 minutes at 2 mile race pace, 1 minute recovery, and then 1 minute at your 1 mile race pace, which should be pretty darn fast! Then cooldown.
Broken Miles: We did this workout as one of our “track” workouts the other day. After a few miles to warmup, you do two sets of 800’s (1/2 mile) with just a short 30 second break between each, and then a longer 2 minute break between each set. Do 4-5 of these. And don’t forget a few miles to cool down!
Track Intervals: Easiest when you have a track but we do them on the trails on occasion, we’ll do something like: 800m-1200m-1600m-1600m-1200m-800m. On the track jog a 400m between the intervals or the usual 2min if on the trails. Ideally on something like this the goal is do the second set faster than the first so no starting out too fast.
Track Intervals: Easiest when you have a track but we do them on the trails on occasion, we’ll do something like: 800m-1200m-1600m-1600m-1200m-800m. On the track jog a 400m between the intervals or the usual 2min if on the trails. Ideally on something like this the goal is do the second set faster than the first so no starting out too fast.
Hill Workouts: Any repeats that you do on a hill will work for this….Try to kill the hill on the up, and then recover on the down. Or, maybe change it up by trying to keep a consistent tempo pace on the “up” as you have on the “down.” My run club usually runs a 1/2 mile hill on Kenwood Parkway. I bet no matter where you live, you can find some sort of hill…now, just run it and repeat!
These are just a few of the different workouts that we do at my running club. I’m sure there are all kinds of variations on these out there, as well as many others.
You should also make sure you’re never doing two workouts in a row- always run easy or not at all after a workout day. At the peak of our training, we never do more than 2 speed workouts a week, with all the othe miles at an easy pace.
Cross Training Another reader asked me what I do for cross training. I always share my fitness in my weekly recaps, so you can read all about it there. But generally, my goal is to have at least one complete rest day, a barre class or Pilates class, yoga, and ideally, one more strength day (either a second barre class or kettlebells or something like that). There’s just not enough time in the day for me to always fit it all in, but that’s my weekly goal.
I hope this helps you out if you’re looking for some new workouts!
What are your go-to running workouts? How often do you cross train?
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