Eric Floberg went from running 3:50 marathons with no training to breaking 3 hours in 2022 by finally following a plan. He tried RX bars and Honey Stinger chews before figuring out what his stomach could handle, and learned that 40 miles per week for 12 weeks plus intentional intensity work actually matters.
If you could give your younger version of yourself some advice, what would that be?
I, I'd say there's two versions of my younger self that I'd want to talk to. First was that 3:50 to 4-hour range Eric who didn't prepare at all for the marathon distance. And just, I just assumed that because of my athleticism, I could shock everyone into, you know, believing that I was capable of doing it. And I was. Humbled, probably the most I've ever been humbled in those first two races. Uh, you know, people were gassing me up because, you know, at shorter distances, you know, I could, I could go out and run a 3-mile, you know, just workout on a Tuesday at 6:30 a mile. And so people were like, oh yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna qualify for Boston. No problem. Like having no context of my inability to, to understand volume, intensity, like any of it, fueling. Now me would say to that me, like, hey, read a book. Uh, stop being so casual with this because it's going to eat you alive. And just, just like a little bit more intentionality, like follow a training plan, learn how fueling works, and respect the marathon distance. And then there's version of Eric I'd say is 2019 Eric. Where I did do those things. I had a friend help me out with a training block, started to understand that I needed to fuel even though I didn't master that yet at all, and then ran a 3:10. So there was a huge gap there. So I think there's an asterisk with my progression where I made a video about it and a lot of people rightly kind of criticized like, oh, you were never really a 3:50 marathoner. In that block, I was doing at least 40 miles a week for, you know, 12 weeks and intensity and long runs and all that stuff. But from that That point on, I'd say from that Eric until the 2022 Eric was just failing on understanding how to fuel properly, to understand what glycogen is, to understand that I couldn't really supplement with anything other than a gel or liquid. I would try, I did the craziest things. Like I, I ate RX bars in a race. I ate Honey Stinger chews and like 5 of them, you know, like just not even close to the amount of calories, just because Gels always made me nauseous and I just, as soon as I had that in my head, I was like, okay, gels don't work for me. I have to do something else. And I, I lasted that way for 4 years until finally I was, you know, coached in 2022 when I broke 3 for the first time to just figure it out, like find something that works and find something you can stomach and train with it. So that, that phase, the progression was really slow. It was, you know, 3:10 down to 2:57 over the course of 4 years. It was a slow understanding and humbling experience of realizing you can't last at this distance. You will be depleted by wall zone by mile 20. And I felt like once I figured that out, trained well through it, learned how to fuel— I negative split my first race around a 2:57, and then from there it just kept snowballing super hard.
How do you determine intensity? I think you're running with a heart rate monitor, correct?
Yeah.
How do you go— how do you go about it?
I care more about easy days feeling easy, and this is what I coach for the athletes that are in our coaching group is we prescribe easy days as well, but we never indicate if an easy day is a recovery day or a zone 1 versus zone 2, but rather, uh, what is easy for you that day? Because I think there is so much nuance relative to all the variables that happen in your week. If you had to move your workout day to another day, and then all of a sudden what was supposed to be your recovery easy is supposed to be your zone 2 easy. You have to figure that out as an athlete on your own. And that's a very personal thing. So last spring when I was building for Boston, I was in a phase where my body just felt, it just felt great. Like I was every day, I didn't have any aches and pains. Uh, the weather was great throughout all last winter. It was never, I mean, there's a few times where it was frigid, but not often that it was frigid. So I'm typically running in 30-degree weather, 40-degree weather. And easy for me was 7:15 pace that whole block. I look back and I'm like, maybe I could have benefited from slowing down and even recovering more, but at the intensity that I'm at now with the volume that I'm doing, the strength and conditioning that I'm doing, the paces that I'm doing in my workouts, I'm— and aging up, like all those factors. I know it's perfectly fine to be rolling at 8:30 mile pace on my easy days and just being comfortable with that because there's no extra stimulus happening with going any faster during that time. You know, as I said, that foundational building piece of volume aerobically helping me, uh, in those moments, sure, it takes more time and that can be frustrating, but really that's the only caveat. Yesterday was a perfect example for me. I had 12 easy in the morning and I felt like death. Like, the worst— the worst I have felt. It looks— the worst I have felt this block. It was snowing, it was pitch black. I was— I was in the pain cave. And it's so hard in those moments because you're thinking, how the heck am I gonna go into tomorrow and do a workout if I'm feeling like this on my easy day? And so I just, again, just One mile at a time. Take it easy. Super easy if that means slowing down, which I did. Got through it. Still felt like crap the next few hours, but I got to the evening yesterday and I'm like, what? I've— how do I feel fresh right now? Like, I don't, you know, I intentionally the day before took a salt bath and had the compression boots and was really like Oh, let's really try to recover. And you just go through these cycles where I'm feeling my body adapt then, like I overcame that threshold of cumulative fatigue and my body's ready to go for the workout today. But if I had just given up in the middle of that 12 easy, I wouldn't have got the volume I needed. I may not have felt as fresh as I did last night. We don't, I don't know. It's just that trusting the process, it's like You could, your mind just plays so many games with you on like, oh, that's not gonna be possible in the near future. And if you just trust that you can get there and whatever you have on that given day, you give your best effort. Like trusting that process is ultimately what has allowed me to continue to every single marathon these days PR. Um, so that reinforcement is really special and understanding like no matter what your head is telling you, just keep showing up. And do the work.
