Well, there’s an alternative training program you can try, tell me if you could stick to it beyond week 3. I’d very much would like to post your report afterwards.
This half year plan of Janne Holmen, pretty much the current reference in marathon running here in Finland, although he lives in Uppsala Sweden (not good, not good). He starts locker und flockig (=German for “easy’n fluffy”) at around 100km per week and ramps this quickly up to around 180km for the first 15weeks. A lot cross country, hill sessions, intervals 200-2000m, 10-16km hard runs, long runs of 30-40km and a couple of competitions.
Then he focuses on speed work for a 4-5 weeks with intervals up to 3000m, 16-20km hard runs, long runs 35-40km and a lot of 150 accelerations.
The 8 to 9 weeks prior to the marathon see weekly kilometers climb up to 250km - that’s almost 36km a day! Long runs increase up to 45km. 2 weeks before the race weekly pensum is reduced to “only” 90 km.
Hm, there might be a reason why he runs a 2:10h and me a 2:49 on the marathon distance. One thing’s for sure, I won’t give up my day job for the time being.
today’s training: 8×1000m intervals, 3:15 - 3:22min, with 2km warm up and 3km cool down 17km altogether.
