Floris Gierman breaks down his sub-3-hour marathon training: build for three weeks, cut volume 30% the fourth week, increase mileage only 10% per week. Start at 20 miles weekly, peak around 70-75. Run four to seven days a week with low-heart-rate aerobic work first, speed work later, and get 7-9 hours of sleep.
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I receive quite a few questions about training schedules, in particular for the sub-3-hour marathon. Hello, my name is Floris Gierman and we're here in Seattle, Washington today, actually in a little town called Kenmore outside of it. And we're going to be talking about several of the fundamentals of sub-3-hour marathon running that I use. And this actually applies quite a bit to ultra running, anywhere from the 50K, 50-mile, up to the 100-mile, that I've used these fundamentals for as well. So let's dive right in. As some of you may know, I'm a huge fan of heart rate monitor training, and I really align in the way of thinking of Dr. Phil Maffetone. And when you analyze athletes, a lot of them are built completely different, and everyone has different schedules of their personal work and family life as well. So there's not really a one-size-fits-all when it comes to training schedules. That being said, there are several fundamentals that I use to maximize maximize my work-life-training schedule and to limit my risk of injuries and overtraining. The first one is the actual building of your weekly mileage and training volume. So I do 3 weeks of building at a maximum of 10% per week, and then I have one step-back week. And the step-back week is about 30% less training volume. So if we look at an example here, We start off with 20 miles per week. Then the first week would increase that with 10%, so that would be 22 miles. We bump that up again the following week to 24.5 miles, and after that we would be at 27 miles. Then we would take one step back week of 30% less volume, and then we would bring it down to about 19 miles in total. After your step-back week of 19 miles, you're going to pick it up from the 27 again and increase with 10% over there. So the 27 is going to become 30, the following week 33, and so on. Your training volume really depends on how much your body can handle and how much available time you have per week to train. Strava did an interesting report where they looked at the sub-3-hour marathon finishers, and on average they ran 55 miles, so 88 kilometers in that peak weeks to train. For a sub-3-hour marathon, I think you should train at least 4 days a week. Some people train 5 or 6 days a week, even 7. I prefer to have every Monday a rest day. Typically the training volume that I do on the weekends is higher, so on Saturday and Sunday I'll be running higher miles. Then on Monday I always take off so I can recover and give my body like a full break. If I train 4 days a week, I try to space it out, so I typically run Tuesdays, Thursdays, and then longer on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. If I train 5 days a week, I will add a Wednesday to that, and if I train 6 days a week, I'll add Saturday to the mix as well. So I think you have to experiment to see what works best for you. For me, training volume-wise, I've tried it all. I've tried anywhere from 40 miles a week to get ready for a race all the way up to 80, 90 miles to get ready for a race. At some point I noticed that my training increase is not doing much to my body, that I just start feeling very fatigued, very tired. So for me, if I'm in top shape, I'm peaking at about 70, 75 miles at this point. Also because I do have a full-time job, I do have two kids, And that all requires quite a bit of time and energy as well. So see what works best for you, but slowly build into it. Don't go absolutely bonkers and crazy. Stick to the 10% increases a week. Sometimes during my training weeks when I feel fatigued and I have a long run planned for the day, I break it up into smaller runs. So I do a 5-mile run in the morning followed by a 10-mile run at night instead of doing a 15-mile run at once. And that has definitely helped with energy levels to keep it high. I cannot stress enough the importance of aerobic training, low heart rate training. Too many people out there think that in order to become a fast runner, they need to run a lot of fast miles, and they think either once, twice, or even more often a week they have to hammer out fast miles. This is absolutely not true. You can really become a much faster runner by putting in a lot of aerobic miles. And then once the time is right, you start adding some interval training and some speed work. But slowing down is, for a lot of people, the key to success. A lot of runners fail in running a sub-3-hour marathon because they get injured in their training cycle purely from overtraining or by putting in too much speed work. So be very much aware of this. Another very important component of training is sleep, and uninterrupted sleep to properly recover. An average person should sleep 7 to 8 hours uninterrupted a day. However, athletes who are actively training sometimes will need up to 9 hours of sleep to fully recover their bodies. Rest and recovery is absolutely key to train and to get your body in the best possible shape. However, one thing to keep in mind is sometimes you feel very tired and fatigued And if that is the case, it is sometimes okay to skip a training day. You might do more damage by going out there on a very tired fatigue run, um, than actually taking a rest day. You have to listen to your body. That's more important than sticking to a training schedule. I really don't believe in the mentality of no pain, no gain, hammering out a lot of fast miles. However, I don't want you to be soft either. If you want to run a sub-3-hour marathon, you have to put in the time and effort train. And too many people are saying, I want to run a sub-3-hour marathon. However, they don't want to really put in the time and effort and give up things in their life in order to make it work. Winners win because they show up and they put in dedicated time, what is needed to train. Whether it's raining, whether it's sunshine, whether it's snowing, they go for it. So whenever you have any doubts or you feel like you don't really want to go out running, really think about your goal and think of why you want to accomplish it. Visualize it, and then it becomes much easier to get out of the door when you need that extra little kick under your butt. These are some of the training fundamentals that have worked very well for me, and I'm actually curious to hear what are some of the fundamentals in training that have worked well for you. Please let me know in the comments below. I'm gonna be back with another video next week again, so check out my website and also check back on my YouTube channel, and I'll see you next week again. Have a good one!
