Improving Your Marathon PB By 21mins [CASE STUDY]

Billy came to us after running a solid 4 hour, 11 minute marathon. And this was on a tough marathon course. In his own words, he had done what was required to get through the race, but he knew it wasn't enough to run as well as he could. So he wanted a program that was going to help him get the most out of himself. And second time around, hopefully dip under the four hour mark. So, dad, start us off with this case study. What did you identify immediately in Billy's previous program that needed to change this time around?

Great intro, Jordan. It's important to get context on this event. It's not a standard marathon. It's one of the iconic races we have here in Australia. The Great Ocean Road is a beautiful stretch of road down the peninsula. The west coast, sorry, not the peninsula, west coast of Victoria. And it's all hills. The road runs parallel to the ocean and it's a spectacular place to ride your bike. And they do a marathon on it and it's got incredible elevation. The whole thing is hill. So, so it's not your standard marathon. And it also goes for 44.6km because it goes from one town to another and not the typical marathon course which is 42.2. So. So understanding that is kind of where we need to look at what sort of preparation he was doing in the past. And so he'd already done this event before and 4 hours 11. So if, if you take off probably 15 minutes from what in a normal marathon. So he's around a 3:55 around four hour marathon runner on a normal distance. But for this event that's the time and that's what we had to work with. And so looking at what he'd done in his training program prior to us taking over was kind of one of the things I had to look at. And that's great because when athletes come to us, we get to see their history and training peaks of what sessions they've been doing. And, and the things that were striking me immediately was yeah, sure he was running, he was doing some training, but that's just not enough. You just can't go out running each day. It will definitely help you if you do actually run, but you'll get the result that he got compared to the result we got him where we had variation in his program. We had, you know, some easy days, so you had some harder days. We had some stress days where he was, you know, getting a load onto his body with heels because this course was all hills. And in his previous program he wasn't hardly Doing any of that. He was running similar sessions every day and not having any recovery in between those sessions where he was just running the same pace day after day and he was just getting progressively tired and sore and he wasn't doing any rehab stuff or recovery work in between sessions. He was definitely putting the work in and there's no criticism there. He was trying to train, but when you don't have good advice and good variation and good structure, then you're going to get the result like that. And you know, he was really distraught halfway through that event, not only did he prepare poorly with the volume of training he'd done, he also executed on the day ridiculously. And he, he was running, you know, low 5 minute K pace and ended up running, you know, 6:10 pace by the 3 quarters of the way through. So, so yeah, he, he just felt great early, the standard line, you know, I felt great, so I ran to how I felt and then I felt terrible and then I had no control over how I was running the, the second half of the race. And this went on for almost 35k. So. So it was a really terrible experience and you know, it was pretty gutsy to re sign up for it, but he wanted to really make everything right and give him, you know, just see if he could do it properly. So. So yeah, that was kind of, that's how he presented.

Yeah, look, it's a, it's a really interesting case study when someone comes and they want to do the exact same event because it's a really good test of A and B. And I think the key point there is that you mentioned, you know, he was doing a lot of running, which is going to be good for an ath. And Joe Friel, who is our go to source for the amateur athlete, I think one of the best points he makes is that amateurs, age groupers, just need to do the miles. We just need to get the K's in the legs, the K's on the bike. For triathletes, even if it's, even if it's quote unquote junk miles, you know, zone one stuff. And there's a lot of rhetoric out there that says that says zone one is potentially pointless. And no, it's really, you need the time on your feet, especially if you're preparing for something like a marathon. And so just training frequently, it's a really good first step. But as he just said, he was putting the work, but putting it down in potentially the wrong order in the wrong places and getting the recovery wrong. So yeah, before we jump into kind of the keys of the training program. I think one extra point you wanted to make was that he had come to us and after his campaign last time, he decided to take a bit of a break. But that break turned into six weeks off of almost no running. And he was so pissed off with himself for letting that happen. And that's kind of what we spoke about in a recent podcast with, you know, base training and off season is that don't put yourself backwards after you've done all that hard work. You know, if he's. Especially in his mind, he was ready to go again and go for a pb, but he's, he's put himself six weeks backwards in the whole preparation phase.

Yeah, it's important to understand that, you know, you, you've got to a level of fitness, whether it's where you wanted to be or not. You are at a level it's 6 out of 10 and, and if you take too long off, he's ended up back at 3 out of 10. And so we spent a whole lot of time running easy where we could have had, he just had a short break. We could have resumed at, you know, 30, 40Ks a week, whereas, you know, we had to resume at 20Ks a week then just easing back into a program. And that took. Took four to six weeks for us to get his body back adapted to the load. And that's, that's really a good point that we mentioned previous podcasts is that's how impacting it is if you keep doing that on, off type of training. And I think that's kind of important for everybody to remember that you're sure you need to have an off period, but you just need to look after yourself during that period and make sure that you're not losing fitness, you're just maintaining. And you know, throughout everybody that we coaches year, they have holidays, they have breaks, and the key is to actually use those breaks as training camps or use those breaks as not losing form. They're the two fitness, sorry, not form. You're going to lose form, lose that fitness. So they're the two options, isn't it? I'm going to go in there with a training camp mindset where I'm going to really add to my fitness or I'm going to have a fun family holiday where it's not about me and my training, but I'm still going to maintain my fitness and not lose it. And I think you have to be in one of those two camps. And the third camp is I'm not going to do anything and not worry about it. And therefore you're going to be putting yourself back a long way back from where you were prior to that point. And, and I think, you know, we do need the miles. And I did say that in the intro, you know, he, he was doing that, but they're just not enough. You need, you need to do the actual amount of miles that are required for your event. And, and looking at his program, he was doing, you know, the, the 30 to 50Ks a week for that whole campaign that he did prior to joining us. And with us, he started at 20k a week and we ended up, you know, some big weeks where he did 60, 70, 80 and 90. And we progressed that that way all the way through his program, but letting his body absorb the load along the way. So you know, three or four weeks of 20 to 30K with an easy week of, of, of 20K and then, you know, 30 to 40K, three or four weeks and then an easy week of 20K and then, you Know, 40 to 50 to 60K in another easy week and, and just letting himself recover and that, that's, look at how it is. And if you dig into those weeks, you know, some of the weeks we had lots of just easy runs, but we had specific stuff that we were doing that was going to be beneficial and mutually allowing him to race that event with the hills. And that was our key thing. We really made sure that he got the miles in his legs and was progressing those distances and duration each week and then getting specific to what, what should he be doing that's relatable to his event? And he wasn't doing any hills pretty much in his previous campaign.

Yeah, that's, that's the next key point is, okay, identifying what went wrong, not what, what went wrong last time. That was a tongue twister. But what was missing potentially and the requirement of the course was probably the key thing missing was he did a lot of running work, but the requirement of the course is this is an insanely underrating course. It's extremely tough. So that was one of the key things introduced this year was really making sure there was a lot of undulating runs as that endurance run, that aerobic run had to have as much undulation as possible building over time. And yeah, a lot of hill work, doing some hill repeat interviews, getting that strength in the legs. I think that's one of the key points that was a cornerstone of this program.

Yeah, and not just making those long runs, the slow easy runs, you know, definitely having that for three or four weeks out of every fourth week or fifth week, then we would throw in a progressive fast run where I think he started with a 16k or even a 10k, then a 16, then a 21, then a 25, then a 30k. And you know that seems like it's a lot but over a period of 25 weeks you're throwing them in every four to five weeks and just progressing the duration. And you know the intensity was going to be obviously as compared to a 10k to a 30k. He was pretty much running the same pace by the time he got to week 25 compared to where he was in week four. So he could maintain that pace. He could run in 10k at 30k which was quite astounding but just shows you how you can progress. And you know those long runs with the hills, they were great. But also we had that, that testing kind of long endurance progressive fast run in there every four to five weeks. So I think that was important to note.

Yeah, I guess to summarize the keys it was, it was the building up of the volume like you were speaking about and then the structure of the volume. So doing the work but in the right spots and allowing for recovery, understanding the requirements of the course. So building on that, that heel strength. And I think one major one you pointed out was he was really religious with his work outside of running this time around with, with the prehab. The. The foam roll of the nutrition, trying to get enough sleep. And he really had a pretty ideal campaign with, with very little interruptions which makes a world of difference when preparing for a marathon.

Yeah, I think that was amazing how he was so diligent in everything. And we talk about, you know, off the bike is a term that we use what are you doing off the bike? Or we can, you can use that phrase what are you doing off your running shoes? That means what are you doing when you're not running? What are you doing when you're not riding? And most people are just sitting up with their feet up on the couch. And he religiously.

Which is good by the way, the more you can rest. It's a great.

But that is one of the resting things you want to do which is relax and sleep and do that stuff to the best of your ability. But also you can do some stretching and you can do some foam roller work or some self massage and pre running warm up stuff and getting your nutrition for your training. Right. Not just for your everyday eating but, but you know, on those long. We did some split Runs where he ran two and a half hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, getting that nutrition right for those sessions and in between. But yeah, he was just all in and making sure that all the stuff that he wasn't doing last year, he was not going to leave any stone unturned. And these are the things that he had the right mindset around. So it was a great, fun experience to coach him because it was just, you know, what am I doing next, coach, and what should I be doing? Is there anything I should be adding? And we talked about that continuously, how you're going with all that and making sure that he was filling me in with how he's recovering or not recovering after some of the sessions. And we would adjust those sessions. We were meant to have a specific session. We had to move it because he hadn't quite recovered. And especially when he's doing a lot of those weekend runs where the Monday, Tuesday we had to really just almost recover and not try and get into his normal program because the weekends where we did those fast, progressive runs, that's a real impact and makes the body struggle to recover. Whereas when you're doing the long, easy, slow runs, your body's used to that because you've been doing it for 15, 20 weeks, whereas you only do those fast, progressive runs once every four or five weeks. And the body's just not used to that pace and intensity. So you need to give yourself a recovery during those, those weekends that are tough.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So some of my, some of the, my favorite bits of data to. When you look back at the campaign and, and what happened from the start was that his first five kilometer time trial with us was at 509 pace. And granted, I'll say that wasn't his peak time. He could run a little bit faster than that, but not much faster because, no, not shortly after that. He ran a 4,53 5k pace TT. So his form was about between 4,53 and 509 pace when he started. And then he ran the whole marathon the second time around at 5,10 pace. So to do your best 5k at 509 or fractionally quicker and then be able to run a whole marathon. And that shows the fitness that came with the campaign. And that 5k time, by the way, just progressively, it was awesome. The amount of tests that were done, it was honestly eight to ten tests or so. Each one just kind of progressively got quicker by 3, 5, 8 seconds, 10 seconds per K. And his quickest one got down to 408 pace, wiping off 5 minutes off his 5K PB. So that was awesome. But it was translating that, as you said, into those longer efforts and really getting that experience of those progressively faster runs in the Lex. So can you take us through the importance of some of those key training sessions? Because it got to the point where in the last phase of the training, this last kind of 6 to 8 to 10 week block, there was two half marathons in there, there was a 25k training run. And when we say training run, it's not just an easy run, it's a, you know, it's a run, a 30k run, a 32k run. That's five really solid long runs, which on the surface can feel like a lot, but that's what gave him the strength and the legs to perform well on race day.

Yeah, and if you go back to your first point, his first time trial was at 5:09 pace. And then on race day, he ran the whole 44.7k the same pace as he did 25 weeks earlier. Just stop and think about that. That's phenomenal. You could only do that for 5K and now you've done it for 44.7, basically the same pace. And so the only way to get that is to, you know, train with that variation, get some intensity into your training, do the heel repeats, do the long run where it's got lots of undulations in it, get the rest right, get your recovery and your rehab right. And then those key training sessions where, you know, a couple of those half marathons. I think his first half marathon was 143 and then his next one on a really hilly course, when we was deliberate to do that in a race down at the Mornington Peninsula, which is all hills. And he ran a 137. So that was a 5 minute, 6 minute PB on a course that was. The first one was flat, the second one was hilly, so it would have been actually faster. And getting him used to running the ups and downhills because that's what was going to happen on race day on the great ocean road was, you know, how hard do I run the uphill and how hard do I run the downhill? Because, you know, last time he was just running hard up the hills and just, you know, trying to keep up with everybody around him who was doing the same thing was I was really instilling into him this time. You can't run the hills hard. You know, you can't afford to spike your heart rate every time you come to A hill. And some of those hills might have been 30 second hills. And some of them were actually five minute hills because they're quite long dragging hills. And if you're trying to run the hills hard, then you're actually going to really spike your heart rate, build up the lactate, burn the fuel quicker, possibly run out of fuel and go hunger flat. And the fatigue from doing that when you haven't done it in training is going to be really poor outcome. And the execution thing that he did well was from those practice sessions where on race day executed brilliantly. You could not have got a better execution when I looked at his data. And how did he achieve that? Well, he practiced it in these five sessions that we gave him. A couple of half marathons, a 25k or a 30k and a 32k where we honed in on. You need to run at this pace. And if you run any faster, you know, you're just repeating the stuff that you've done before and you're going to get a poor outcome. You already know that. So let's just not go down that track. So he did those runs for execution practice. He did those runs through his body to understand how to run the hills properly. We did a lot of those key, key sessions in undulation. So he got to practice what it feels like to run, you know, the equivalent of 5 minute 10k pace when you're on an undulating course. And you need to understand what I'm saying here. It has to feel like 5 minute 10k pace, but it actually you are running up the hill at 5:30 pace. And I don't think people understand what I mean there. You're not going to run 5 minute 10k pace up the hill, but it should feel the same. And so you're actually doing 5:30 pace. And so when you go on the downhill, you should try to run downhill at the same pace. So the feeling should be the same uphill downhill, but you'll run 4:50 pace on the downhill, so it'll average out to 5, 10. So you run 5:30 uphill, 450 downhill, you're not trying to run fast downhill. It's just, it's easier. It's like running headwind or tailwind. And so you're getting the feeling of running evenly the whole way. And as long as you get that feeling and not charging up the hill at 5 minute 10k pace and then really struggling over the crest and out of breath, you've spiked your heart rate and you can only run the downhill at 5:05 pace. So you end up just slowly, progressively running slower. And that's the key thing that we're doing in those training sessions to get him used to practicing that. So why it becomes automatic on race day? Do it in training, it becomes automatic. It's no different to anything in life if you practice it enough, if you study for an exam. When those questions come on exam day, you've had a go at questions and you know the answers. Same with riding a bike. You know, practice riding the power come race day, execute the power as a marathon runner. Same thing. Practice it in training, get to feel what it feels like. Cover your watch up sometimes. Am I running 5, 10k pace for a kilometer? And then have a look. Oh, yeah, great. It was 5:10 or it was 5:05 or it was 5:20. And you get to feel in your mind by experimenting what does it feel like. So these are important things to use. You feel on undulating courses, because on a flat course, it's easy. You just run to the pace. And the only thing that can contribute to you having to be confused is a headwind or a tailwind. And where it's undulating, you've really got to concentrate on making sure that you're in control of that feel of trying to run evenly in terms of effort. It's definitely not even in terms of pace. It's trying to run evenly in terms of your effort. And that will allow you to run the pace the whole way. And, you know, his execution, as I said earlier, was, you know, people were running past him early and he said, that was me last year. He was sort of laughing to himself going, this is really easy. And I know that I was those guys running away from me. And pretty soon, halfway through the event, they stopped running away from him. And then he started, you know, picking off people. And even though he said he was really struggling at the end, but it was a really happy struggle because he knew he'd nailed the whole run and all he had to do was finish off that. You know, that last 4 or 5k was tough, he said, because it was a horrible day. It was a westerly headwind, 20 kilometer headwind the whole way. So it goes from A to B, one direction run. And so that headwind, we had had no wind for three weeks the whole time leading up into this race and no rain. And on race day, he had the worst conditions possible. Sleeting rain and headwind. And so his run time was, you know, 3:51, I think, which was. And he did 411. So it was literally 21 minutes. 20 to 21 minutes. PB, that's amazing. In a marathon to. In a campaign that only went for 25 weeks to improve 21 minutes. And his goal was to break four hours, which he thought was a bit ambitious. You know, 11 minute improvement is going to be a bit. A big ask. And three quarters away through our training campaign, I said to him, I don't sound too confident, mate, but. But your four hour is not going to be an issue. It's can you break 3 hours 50? And had it not been those conditions, he would have broken 3 hours 50. So. But yeah, he was super stoked with the outcome and he couldn't take the smile off his face. And the phone call on the way home was one of those great calls again where, you know, the athletes achieved everything he wanted to achieve. He's so pleased with his preparation. Standing on the start line, all he knew he had to do was execute. He'd done all the preparation and that was what made him so proud, was he prepared well, but he'd actually executed on the day and he achieved his goals by. He smashed his goals and you know, after it was like, you know, what's next? And, you know, picking a flat marathon is what he's. What he's keen to do and seeing what actual time he can do. And watch this space because there's way more left in, in Billy's running career because this is the start of an exciting progression of how. I can't wait to see what he can get down to then. There's no ceiling here. This could be a good one to follow.

What a great summary. It's just always great to see a campaign go so well and they don't always go that well. And no doubt there's interruptions in there and it's not all smooth sailing. And congrats to Billy for doing all the work and doing everything he could in his power to get to the start line in that great preparation. And that's the key and trusting the process. And yeah, he had two main goals. It was get go under four hours for the great Ocean Road Marathon. And that's a big tick. And another one was actually go under 45 minutes for 10k, which he got 4407. So coming from a 5k starting time trial of 509, which is generally on track for over 50 minutes for the 10k 52 and a half minutes or so, that's well under what he was at the. Where he was at the start of the campaign running 4407. So any final message to runners or even Ironman athletes about half marathon or marathon prep that you want to get out of this?

Yeah, look, the message is always very similar. Jordan, some people are probably sick of us saying it, but you're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. If you just do the basic stuff right, keep it simple, strip it back, do the work, that's the first thing. Stay consistent and get the rehab right and have variety in your training program that's really replicating the requirements of the course. I think if you get those things right, the sky's the limit. And it's just two examples of a campaign he did himself and a campaign he did with some guidance and unbelievable difference. Of course people say, well, of course, you know, that's what a coach's job is. But you know, I think the expectation that you could do 21 minute PB in the space of one year to another with only 25 weeks preparation, I think that shows that it's more than just a few guiding hints here and there. It's really honing in on what's best for that particular athlete. And this is a result you can get if you actually do work together well and the athlete is on board and motivated to do what you're asking. And you know, as I said, you know, there's more to come. It's a great example, a great case study of what is possible if you're prepared to follow a really good coaching plan.

If you are prepared to follow a really good coaching plan and you want to have a similar campaign and strategy, then apply to get coached with us. You can go to trivelocoaching.com we'll have a conversation with you and see if you're a good fit for the Trivelo program and process and find out what your goals are. And most importantly, make sure that you're going to work with our system and we can actually help you. So go there. It's a free call to have. And our guarantee is that if you don't improve in your testing in the first eight weeks of the program, then the coaching is on us. So, TravellerCoaching.com as always, thank you very much for listening to another podcast episode and we'll see you on the next one.

Sam.