How Lauren Went From 4:12 to 3:29 in the Marathon [CASE STUDY]

When Lauren first came to us, her PB for the marathon was 4 hours 12 minutes. And just recently she completed the Gold coast marathon in 3 hours 29 minutes. An absolutely whopping PB. For reference, that is 5,58 minutes per km pace for her old PP of 4:12. And at the Gold Coast Marathon with the time of 3, 29, that's 4:58 pace. So 5, 58 down to 4, 58, that's a minute quicker per kilometer, an incredible improvement. And we want to go through this as a case study to see what we change with her, to see how we helped her get this improvement. So dad, when she came to us, she was running and she was running semi consistently, but she was doing a few things wrong. So we want to highlight some of the things she was doing wrong and then some of the key changes we made. And to start with, I think if we look at the main factors of frequency, volume and intensity, all three of those things needed addressing. And frequency. She was probably only running three times per week. In terms of volume, it was very low volume, especially if you're training for a marathon, it was probably averaging between 25 and 45 kilometers a week. And in terms of intensity there was no variation in the session. So talk to me about what your mindset when she came through, what you saw in her programming and then what we needed to change.

Yeah, it's a great story, Jordan. She presented originally as a triathlete who really was keen on improving her running. And so instantly we went about trying to protect her swimming and riding so she'd keep that going in case she wanted to go back to that. But her focus was primarily on improving her running. That was really easy to see what she'd been doing and to implement some changes that was just obvious. You talk about frequency, duration and intensity and they're the things we fixed right away.

Yeah. So basically she came to us and it was probably a journey of 14 months of training. And she definitely started with a pretty good triathlon program for the first 12 weeks, which is always, we just think is great for cross training. And then after that first kind of 12ish week block, she really started to. She decided she wanted to focus more on running it and the swimming and riding became sort of just a bonus way to get some training in outside the running days because you can't really run seven days a week unless you build that up over years. So we built her up to running four to five times per week and in those off days she was able to swim and ride to still get some aerobic training in and to that we find that really helps that cross training, but without risking injury or anything. So yeah, talk to us. Over this 40 month journey of her building up to the Gold Coast Marathon, what are the key changes that we.

Made just on that point you just made there? Look, the, the cross training, you know, the other aspect that people forget is that it's a really good recovery day if you want to still do some aerobic training and get the body moving. We did, you know, swimming to keep her off her legs, but she was still getting some cardiovascular improvement from, from the swims. And her rides were always really easy recovery rides where she was not trying to get any more probably probable conditioning from it that was more to recover for her next running session. So, so we really, we really tried to change up the runs that she was doing and straight away we tried to make her as strong as possible. And as everybody would have understood from listening to years of our podcasting, the strength is the key to the back end of any event. And if you want to hold the pace from start to finish, which is really the key to, to getting that result, you want, you need to be, and you don't necessarily need to be fast in a marathon, you just need to be able to be strong to hold that pace and not fade. So the heels are the things that we really pushed and we pushed that early on the endurance run had lots of heels in it and specifically we had some heel repeats on another day. So that's how we started building the strength into her body and allowing her to absorb the load. And that is really critical. You don't push that too hard too early because you could end up injured. So we had to really be careful with that and progress, progress slowly with that. And at the same time, still doing some aerobic running where you know, we're building that up from 30 minutes to 40 to 60 minutes over a period of four to six weeks. And, and really just getting her body used to running four to five times with variations in intensity, whereas before she was running three times, maybe four, but with the same intensity every run. And that's the glaring difference that, that we tried to implement is it's that variety of whether you're running marathon pace, whether you're run running some tempo that's maybe close to half marathon pace, or whether you're running some intervals that are close to your threshold, they're three different runs that you can do that could really give you that variety so that when it comes to race day, you've actually experienced what training at race pace is. You've experienced the training faster than race pace is, you've experienced hills, you've experienced strength training. And so by the time the actual event comes, you've, you've moved on from the strength training and you're doing some, some faster work, whether it's fartlek work or some, some 1K rep intervals and, and these are all based around just getting you fine tuned towards race day. So, so it was a, wasn't really a long journey but, but change making those changes created such improvements which we expected. And so, but you know, when you look at it and get perspective, it is a fast improvement. And seeing you know, 10k times come down by six or seven minutes and seeing half marathon times coming down by, you know, over a six month period by seven minutes and then, and then over a two year period of actual marathon coming down by 50 something minutes. So they're things that you would expect if you've got the right program, you've got the right structure, you've got the frequency, you've got the consistency and then they're all things that we're really pushing and it's, you know, it's expected but it is always not going to happen for every athlete. So in that sense we're really pleased that she actually managed to execute. And that's one of the things we need to talk about too is the execution.

Yeah. So I want to finish off with some core sessions because that's what everyone wants to know. What did she do exactly? And then also intertwine that with some of the key changes we made. And just to lay out some of the stats, the three main factors like we said, so frequency over the 14 month period we built that from averaging three runs a week to more likely four or five. Volume again that went from 25 to 45k a week average up to 60 or 80. And that was a very, very steady progression. And what something we're really proud of is if you look at her training peaks graph of volume of running volume from when she started with us to the end. It is such if you drew a straight line from the week she started to the Gold Coast Marathon week, it is such a perfect linear progression. Obviously it's not every week isn't just going up the same amount of volume each time. It's kind of two or three weeks on, one week off, two or three weeks up, one week down. It's that kind of step process. But when you draw a lot straight line, it is really Such an ideal linear progression, which is a really safe way to do it. And in terms of tensity, like you said, we change up some variation in sessions which we want to touch on. But before we get to the core sessions to finish off with just some more of the key changes we made. And this is really part of our training principles, is testing regularly, getting some variety in the sessions, getting her into some races. And like you said, she, she went from a 1049 minute 10k runner down to 43. She run a 1:36 half marathon PB in April this year, which she was absolutely buzzing about. And that was seven minutes down, I think, from her previous 143, 144 half marathon PB. And so this all sets her up to be able to run really strong and really well for the marathon. So talk to me about this last, last thing you want to teach, which was execution. And then we'll finish off with some core sessions, which is what everyone wants to know.

Yeah. And arriving at race day understanding what your ability is. And that's what execution is about. And execution should be practiced from day one and every session you're doing, I'm asking you to do marathon pace, or I'm asking you to do threshold pace, or I'm asking you to do tempo pace. That's where you should be practicing the execution of that day in training. So when it comes to race day, you are so well acquainted with how to execute from start to finish that you will get it right. And if you don't do that in training, you're expected to do that on race day without actually practicing that. That's one of those definitions of insanity that, you know, you're thinking something's going to happen, you haven't actually done it before. So the execution, if we, if we lined up the same person with the same level of fitness, and one had a race plan that was based around accurate training numbers and the other one had a race plan that I'm going to just have a crack here and go for it with the same fitness, you will get two completely different outcomes. And that's how important execution is. If you don't actually understand what your level and ability is, you can't actually have the right race plan. So we knew that from her training and we do test regularly with some 10k runs or some half marathons, what her ability was from her training. So setting her for a 4:58 pace seemed alarmingly hard for her. But because she'd actually done some 25k progressive runs, some half marathon progressive runs, some 30k and even a 35k. Her confidence was sky high that she could actually do it on race day. And it was just a matter of her holding back and being patient on race day and not getting carried away with everybody around her rushing off at the start and running a pace that's unsustainable. And so she did have that patience and she did basically execute brilliantly from start to finish. And it's quite remarkable because her watch wasn't really working that well. She was having to mathematically work out time. She only had start time and finish time. So she was every 5k, she was actually making it, trying to work backwards. She knew she started at I don't know what the time was, 6:05 or 6:35. And when she got to the 5K mark, she had to be there at a certain time and she was trying to work out whether she was too fast or too slow. And that, you know, that in itself is a. Is a great example of someone who's really understanding what pacing is all about and searching for the answer even though it's a roadblock put straight in front of her.

That's great clarification. I did want to clarify that when we say the word testing regularly, we actually don't mean lab testing, testing, we do mean field testing. So, you know, 5k park runs, 10k time trials, like you said, half marathons or progressive runs, which is our term for these runs, where you start off very conservative, at a conservative pace, which might be below your ideal race pace, but you finish above it. And just to practice that execution, which is the key to a marathon, which we've said so many times, so to give the people what they want, some of the core sessions, everyone's always saying, what did they actually do? Like you said at the start, that one of the key sessions was hill repeats. So, you know, this builds up from four by two minute hill repeats, up to six, up to eight at a pretty steady pace. They're not sprints. Some other key sessions, tempo intervals. So that's at half marathon pace and doing some longer kind of interval work. Zone 2 runs, really important, you know, that aerobic, easy endurance, the endurance runs in the hills, like you said, trying to get that strength, really. Key point, the longest run that she built up to for her specifically, this is different for each athlete, but for her, the max one she did was about 2 hours 42 hours 45. Is that correct?

Yeah, the 35K run. And she ran the race pace pretty much for that. And that was a huge, huge confidence booster to her just out from the marathon. And you know, it's okay to go into a marathon without doing that, but you, if you haven't got the endurance and the load in your legs, even though you've got the speed and the pace, all of a sudden at 30k, if that's the longest run you've done, or 25k if that's the longest run before you go to a full on marathon, you actually will start to stiffen up because your body hasn't experienced that load before and those have, you know, you've experienced this yourself. Jordan as, as a, as a cyclist, you know you're good for two hours because the longest endurance ride you might have done is, is, is an hour 30 or an hour 50. And, and so when it gets to two hours, 22 hours 53 hours, your body starts to revolt on you and stiffen up and it won't function like it's supposed to. And this is what, this is what the long run is, is all about, is getting your body used to that. And you know, we don't expect people to do a 42 kilometer long TR pace. That's not what we're saying. But that was one of the key sessions was to build that up from a half marathon to 25k 30 and even for 35k for some people who really need that confidence booster.

And one thing to mention is that we didn't completely disregard high intensity work. We just gave it to her once we were confident she could handle it with minimal injury risk. And so a really common session is 1k intervals and not everyone can handle that early on. And so it is very popular to start with that kind of training, which is fine if the, the person can handle it. But eventually she was able to handle a, you know, a 6 times 1 km high intensity session. But it should be said that she was able to get these, you know, PB improvements without those sessions in there. But definitely towards the back end of the program when she could handle it, it was a great top up and booster and then the actual structure like we mentioned was two or three weeks on one kind of deload recovery week. Is there anything to finish off for anything? Any marathon runners out there who are inspired by such a massive pb, what's the lesson here they can take out of this of improvement?

I think one of the biggest things that Lauren did so well was she was she turned up every day for work. She did not miss sessions and she was really disappointed if something happened with being a PE Teacher at school, something happened when she was on camp. We had to work so hard to make sure that she was fitting in the sessions that she felt bad about missing, but she just barely missed a session. And consistency, I've said many times, will. Will be far more better program than actually the best program in the world. So just making sure that you. You are consistently running and doing your program each week, that will. That will do wonders for your end result. There's many other things that contribute to it, but consistency is one key thing.

Yeah, that's a great way to finish. I mean, we've spoken a lot about what we did, but she was the one actually doing it. So, you know, from Trivalo perspective, we're very proud of Lauren. It's a really incredible improvement and a really incredible run. And as you mentioned at the end, incredible execution, which is so down to the athlete. And they have to be disciplined enough to do that, otherwise they won't get the marathon result they want. So that's a great way to finish. Congratulations, Lauren. We're really proud of that result from you, and we hope you enjoyed this case study.

Sam.