A step in a different direction

Hi guys,

This afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting to George Anderson on the phone for roughly an hour, talking about my training direction and my focus. The conversation was very enlightening and George offered ideas that I probably wouldn't have considered had I been training on my own.

I recently joined the FP Run Club, which is an online coaching resource combining the experience of the UK's top running coaches. George launched the FP Run Club a couple of months ago to support marathon runners wanting to achieve their goals. He also offered two free coaching calls to his Twitter followers (ah, good ol' Twitter) if they signed up to the FP Run Club within a particular time. I quickly jumped to the opportunity.

On the phone, I told George about my goals, my training direction and what I've normally done in training. He also took note of the event I'm preparing for (Berlin on September 26th).

George commented that September 26th is still a fair bit of time away. What he was really getting at is that the running programmes offered by FP Run Club have a maximum length of 16 weeks! At the time of writing, I have exactly 26 weeks to Berlin. The 16-week running programmes are designed with time goals in mind, from just finishing a marathon to sub-3 hours which is what I want to follow. The rationale is that extended periods of training would more likely be more harmful than good, such as peaking at the wrong time, or picking up injuries as a result of prolonged training. This leaves me 10 weeks of running to no programme, so what am I to do?

On the phone, George recommended 6 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper prior to starting the running programme. Since I actually have 10 weeks to go, I'm going to make this 8 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper. George also recommended that I drop the long run and hard intervals entirely, and devote most of my focus on hill work and threshold runs. After noting down the pace and distance of my recent long runs, he suggested that I limit the time spent on my feet to around 90-110 minutes, instead of going as far as 150-180 minutes. The extra volume will most likely lead to injury, and since I'm already accustomed to running long distance, I'm already running to my strength instead of addressing my weaknesses. My weakness, which I've alluded to in my earlier post, is speed endurance (the amount of time where high speeds can be maintained).

I mentioned that my 5 km splits in the Reading Half Marathon were averaging between 22-23 minutes. George advised me not to look into it too deeply, but agrees that if I want to break 3 hours this year I would need to lower my 10 km time to around 35-38 minutes if I were to run a 10 km race. The only way to get faster over shorter distances is to increase the quality of my threshold and hill runs, and not focus on volume, which is something I've been guilty of (by association!) over the past couple of months.

Two key workouts that George proposed include:

• Threshold running
• Continuous hills

I'm already familiar with threshold running, having done forms of it in training already. George defined over the phone what he believes threshold running is, and I'll be trying to incorporate that definition into my training.

Continuous hills is a whole different workout for me. Also known as Kenyan hills, which was popularised by the Kenyans, who are of course the world leaders of distance running. Looking back at my past training schedules, hill workouts have been very few and far between. So I'm keen to include hill training as a regular run in my training programme.

As to the frequency of training, George stresses quality over volume. I've already known this, but looking at my past training recaps, I've been emphasising volume over quality instead. For the 10 week period, George recommends at least a continuous hills session, a threshold session and a long run session, with some recovery runs thrown in. I'm not sure what's in store in the 16-week training programme, but the 10 week "preliminary period" is designed to get me in the best possible form to allow me to undertake the 16-week sub-3 hour training programme. Without the long run at this stage, I'm using these preliminary 10 weeks as a means of improving my times at shorter distances, and I mentioned to George that the kinds of running workouts in this period is similar to training for a 10 km race (just without the faster intervals).

Lastly, I mentioned to George that I'll be running the Rotterdam marathon in April and the Copenhagen marathon in May. These will be like my marathon long runs, so to speak. As I expected, George advised me to take these slowly and run for the experience.

Overall, this was a very fruitful discussion with a top running coach, who has given me something new to focus on. I can't wait to get started again.

Itching to get the running shoes on,

Aaron