Marathon Newsletter Week 6

Dear Marathon Runner,

Week six, and I hope you're all progressing nicely with mileage, and mixing in some faster sessions, and recovery running, and time in between to get over it all. You've all been a bit quiet on the thread - I hope you're still enjoying the newsletter - let me know.

Time for a round up of training completed this week. We have 636 Fetchies listed against VLM now (last years race has reached 890, and that figure is still creeping up as people add the race retrospectively, but I think we'll comfortably beat that by the time we're done). 460 of you ran, median mileage was 26.92 (just slightly higher than last week, but not the highest so far). Median long run was 10.5 miles (pretty much identical to last week). Are we seeing a patch of mojo loss here, or are people fitting in their recovery weeks at different times? Here's the mileage breakdown for last week, broken down by predicted marathon time:

Week 5 summary 3:00 3:15 3:30 3:45 4:00 4:15 4:30 4:45 5:00
Race Pace 6:52 7:27 8:01 8:35 9:10 9:44 10:18 10:53 11:27
Total Mileage 50 36 34 33 27 27 23 16 20
Average Pace (mins/mile) 7:26 7:55 8:23 8:42 9:08 9:31 9:37 9:53 10:44
Longest Run 16 14 16 14 13 11 12 10 10
Longest Run Pace (mins/mile) 7:30 7:57 8:26 8:58 9:08 9:33 9:34 9:56 10:50

The long runs are inching upwards - all groups are a mile or two up compared to two weeks ago, and the 3:30 and 3:45 groups seem to have chilled out their long run pace quite a bit, which is good news according to the experts. My top tip for increasing long run distance is to run the same route as the previous week, but add the extra mileage earlier rather than later. There's nothing worse than getting to the latter stages of your run *and* feeling as tired as you did last time, *and* having to squeeze another mile out. Add the mileage early and fool your body!

A lot of training plans advocate doing a few races in the build up to your marathon, and it's definitely handy for at least a few reasons - they give you a milestone to aim for along the way; they give you a chance to try out all your kit and pre-race preparation; and you can see how it feels to run at the pace you're aiming for in the marathon.

As usual, I thought it'd be good to have a look at the training data to see if there's a pattern. I compared the WAVA rating scored in marathons to the WAVA rating scored in build-up races. Seeing a higher WAVA in one of these races would indicate that the runner had raced it (NB It seems that across the board, people pick up higher WAVA ratings for shorter distances e.g. Boab gets 84.06% for a 15:53 5k, and 82.95% for a 2:31 marathon). So although these rules are a little shaky, I found the following:

Hard run races per marathon 3:00 3:15 3:30 3:45 4:00 4:15 4:30 4:45 5:00
5-10 miles 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.9 0.8 0.8
10 to 18 miles 1.1 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.3
18 and above 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.2
Total Races per marathon 2.6 2.9 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.5 2.6 2.3 2.3

So for example, a 4:00 runner will on average complete one race of 5-10 miles, 1.4 races of 10-18 miles, and 0.3 races of 18 miles and above. I notice that the 3:00 runners race less than most, and tend to do slightly more in terms of shorter races. I guess this is because they focus hard on the marathon, and racing along the way is something that should not take up too much energy. It's also interesting to see that very few runners will race their longest races in the build-up to the marathon - remember this when you're booking up 20 mile races - you might feel great on the day, but you're there for the experience of being in a long run with other people, with safety pins, hopefully in your full racing kit - and it's just preparation for marathon day, so don't go out too quick.

I hope you're still enjoying the newsletter, and if I may, I'd reiterate what I said in the first paragraph, that it would be really helpful to hear your feedback and suggestions. If you are still enjoying the newsletter and the whole Fetch marathon experience, you could do some or all of the following:

  1. Send this newsletter to friends and club mates, post it on your club forum (might give some of them a laugh if nothing else), and tell *EVERYONE* about it.
  2. Add a prediction of your VLM time, even if it's just an estimate, and keep logging your training - I hope to squeeze plenty of motivational stats out for you.
  3. Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to try to cover in future weeks - there's a discussion thread
  4. Join our Fetchpoint groups as a runner or as a supporter - more information on Fetchpoint to follow in coming weeks.

Happy Running,
Ian Williams aka 'Fetch'
Editor, www.fetcheveryone.com