Improve Your Marathon Times

Hello everyone, in the last few weeks I've had several really good guests on my podcast, The Extra Mileage Show, and in today's video I thought it might be helpful to actually summarize a few of the things that I've personally taken away from watching all of these videos. I personally do these interviews so I can learn from it for my own training, but then again, like, I think there's so many different runners out there who can improve in their training and their racing. So for me, this is also a way to help share some of my learnings with, uh, with others out out there. So recently I interviewed 3 different runners, all 3, um, different ages, which is interesting. The first runner was Jonathan Walton. He's 49 years old with a personal best of 2:28 in the marathon. Then the second runner was Josh Sambrook. He's only 23 years old but also with a personal best of 2:28. And then last week, Jason Cheriman. He's He is 38 years old with a personal best of 2:21. And the interesting thing is all 3 runners have several things in common. And I think these things apply not only to really fast runners, but also to runners that are 4-hour marathon runners, 5-hour marathon runners, or runners of all levels really looking to improve. So let's talk through some of these key takeaways that that I've noticed not only from my own training, but I think can apply to, to your training as well if you want to improve in the marathon. The first key takeaway between all 3 runners is that high mileage can absolutely help improve your running times. All these 3 guys run high, high volume, at least 100 miles per week, some weeks even up to 130 or 140 miles per week. They have absolutely made running a massive priority in their life, and I totally understand that that's not the case for, for many other runners out there. That being said though, there are many runners who have significant goals of reaching, for example, a Boston qualifier. They want to run a sub-3-hour marathon, but they only put in 30 or 40 miles a week. If you would increase that to, let's say, 50, 60, 70 miles a week, your chances to succeed are definitely increasing. Josh shared the Tanda Marathon Predictor, and that's a prediction of um, your actual marathon performance times. And they look back at the previous 8 weeks of training volume and also the 8 weeks of average pace. And based on that, the, the formula, um, spits out like a marathon prediction time. And you absolutely see through this formula as well that an increase in training volume really helps with, with marathon training time. So for myself, in my next training block, if I'm considering racing again at the end of this year. And if I truly want to break a PR, I do think increasing the training volume, even for me, would significantly help. That being said, it's a fine balance as well between rest and recovery and getting enough miles in. So with a full-time job that most people have, that's not always easy. But do know that if you truly have that goal of breaking your personal best, and putting your best performances out there, training volume can be an important one in that equation. For my next training blocks, I will be doing more double days. So a morning run and then an early afternoon or an evening run. And that way you— it's easier to actually find that 30-minute or 45-minute block versus having to look for an hour and a half block. And it really helps with the recovery as well. Your recovery will be much faster if you split it up. Especially during the higher training volume weeks. Then the next one: running low heart rate miles in training works well for athletes of all levels. And I hear it every day, people who have slowed down their actual training who significantly improve in their racing. And this, this once again is runners from a 5-hour marathon breaking it down to a 4.5 or a 4-hour marathon, but even from the 4-hour going to sub-3. And, and these guys also, many of the miles that they run are at low heart rate. Josh, with a personal best of 2:28, goes to an extreme here. Only 2 to 3% of his runs are at a high heart rate. The rest is all low heart rate. And he calls it out very clearly: you don't need speed work to become a faster runner. He knows of many quick runners who effectively do no high heart rate workouts. The next one: analyze your fitness and fatigue levels with Elevate for Strava. And this is a web browser plugin that can be used for Chrome, for Firefox, and for Opera. When you go to Google and you punch in Elevate for Strava, or you can also check out the link in the description, you can actually download this plugin and you can install it. It connects straight to your Strava, and the cool thing is you get a much deeper analysis of all of your data. And you see all sorts of different graphs over time, how your fitness levels and, and also your stress levels, your fatigue levels are, are progressing. And I'm absolutely going to be using this for my own training as well, because it's a good way to actually see how you are progressing in the short term and the long term, but also truly be careful that you're not overtraining, and it can help limit your injury risk as well there. It's a free app based on donations for the developer. But yeah, check it out, it's definitely a really good tool. Marathon tapering is very important. Most athletes know that actually reducing the training volume several weeks before training will help improve their race result. But Jason explained it very well. If you taper for, let's say, 2 to 3 weeks, your overall fitness level is going to go down by about 10%. But then what happens with your stress level and overall stress balance is going to have a positive output of 20 to 25%. So your net result of a reduction in overall fitness level but an increase in stress balance is going to significantly help with your performance. Too many athletes focus on the part of keep running and putting in more miles, where it's more short-sighted. I think you got to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and see that the overall output is gonna be much higher. The Elevate app for Strava can help show some of this data for you as well. Measuring aerobic efficiency with heartbeats per mile. Jason mentions that he measures his fitness progress by actually looking how often his heart beats when he runs a mile. And this sounds so easy, but I'd never even thought of looking at it this way. So that was quite eye-opening. He uses a tool on the website FetchEveryone.com. So you can actually create an account there. You can download your running files from Strava and upload this, or from any other running platform, and upload this on the website. And from there on, it analyzes it in much more detail. Just like in Elevate by Strava, this is also a deeper dive into to your actual run. And the cool thing is you can see how often your heart beats. So I did it on one of my recent runs and noticed my heart was beating about 1,100 times per mile. Then I punched in, I uploaded the data from my Boston Marathon and actually saw some of the miles that I was running, especially at the beginning, were at only like 910 beats per mile. That was on the, on the downhills. And then on the uphills, I saw it going higher up, and then as the race was progressing, it was going up a bit as well. But overall, it's very interesting to, to see that. I think a MAF test on a running track is a great way to measure your aerobic progress, but that is often on a flat course on the same route, whereas I like uploading some of the other data as well from some of my races and some of the other different terrains that I'm running, just so I can see how I'm progressing aerobically. So take a look at FetchEveryone.com. Another one I'm very excited to do a lot more of is heat training with many different layers of clothes. It's probably going to look something like this. It's really, really warm. I haven't really decided on the hat yet. Might be more like this. So yeah, there are many different benefits to heat training, and I've personally before heat trained mostly by sitting in a sauna. And Jason called out specifically how he does about 5 to 6 different training sessions with a lot of different layers of clothing on. So even right now I'm wearing gloves, I'm wearing long pants— you can't even see it probably— I have 5 different layers of running jackets, to thermals, to, to other underlayer shirts under here. And all of this will help with actually teaching my body to cool itself down more in training. And so during a race, that will help as well. You'll develop your sweat glands more, helps improve your VO2 max, many additional benefits there as well. So I'm very excited to start training with this. It's very hot, so I'm going to change back. Jonathan Walton brought up another good point, and that is limiting caffeine intake. This helps reduce your, or lower your overall heart rate. And even for my next training cycle, this is something that I'm going to be applying. I'm probably at this point drinking 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day, and before my next race and leading up to it. I absolutely want to cut that all out. I'm just very curious to see what's going to happen with my overall lower resting heart rate and my heart rate on my MAF test and heartbeats per minute and per mile as well. And then last but not least, record keeping is very important. All three runners, Josh, Jonathan, and Jason, called it out that they keep a very clear track of what they're doing in training and, and how things are going during a race. They write down all of the different things and then they analyze it afterwards as well, and that's how they continuously improve. I've been writing down quite a bit myself as well. I track a lot of the runs in Strava, but in my next training cycle, I am going to be focusing more on that, also using some of the tools mentioned in today's video. I'm very curious to hear from you. What was one key takeaway from these recent podcasts that you're going to be applying to your own training and racing? Please let me know in the comments. Also, many more videos are coming up soon, so make sure to subscribe and stay tuned. Have fun out there on your runs. Later.