Marathon-Specific Training: How to Peak at Race Day — with John Starrett

Hello and welcome to the aerobic edge podcast. I'm Yoast, your coach over at PACEBODYS. And in today's episode, we're interviewing again coach John Starritz. We're looking forward to speaking to him about the marathon-specific block of training. Welcome, John, and welcome back to the aerobic edge podcast. If you're having me back on again, a toasty, coach toasty, good to be back. You're very welcome, looking forward to our to our chat. In the last episode, we discussed the foundation, the super base to build someone's fitness, and then the bridge training to sharpen the athlete. And now we're going into the marathon-specific training. What does the marathon-specific training add to the entire periodized system? Yeah, that's a good question, as usual. It depends on the athlete. So obviously you've got beginner runners, intermediate runners, sub-a-lead and elite runners, general to give the listeners a, what the view is, an overview. For me, the marathon block is 11 or 12 weeks, and the idea is to get the athlete in the best half marathon shape as possible before they start the marathon block. And that normally entails, depending on the time of the year and weather conditions, either a 10k race or a half marathon, because you can work out your marathon pace off a 10k equally well as you can on the half marathon. So get them into that shape, and then they've got 11 or 12 weeks. As a general outline, because obviously everybody's different, but a general outline, the idea is the first three weeks or so of the marathon block itself. But if we talk about the weekend runs first, then come in and talk about the midweek sessions. It's to extend out, and they're not too difficult either. So the first week would probably be something like two miles easy or three K easy, 12 miles or 20 odd K at roughly, I'll work in miles and then I'll convert to kilometers, I'll probably be easy. So if you say two miles easy, 12 miles at 22nd slower than marathon pace, two miles easy. That would be the first long run, or in kilometers, that's three kilometers easy, 20 odd kilometers at about 12 seconds slower than marathon pace, three kilometers easy. And then the next weekend, we progress that out in terms of the distance, and we get a little bit quicker. Now it's safe to do this is not too aggressive. So the next week, it would be two miles easy, 14 miles at 15 seconds slower than marathon pace, two miles easy. Well, that would be roughly three K easy at nine seconds slower than marathon pace, three K easy. And then the following week, we progress it out again, two miles easy, 16 miles at 10 seconds slower than marathon pace, two miles easy, or in kilometers roughly, three kilometers easy, 26 kilometers at six seconds slower than marathon pace, three kilometers easy. And this is the important part now because we hold that distance there. So we stay with the three kilometer warmer and the three kilometer cooldown or the two mile warm up and the two mile cooldown and stick it at 16, 26 kilometers. But now what we start to do is introduce some marathon pace. So the next week, we should be roughly around about week four, it would be two miles easy, you do 16 miles, but you would break it down into 10 miles at 10 seconds slower than marathon pace, six miles at marathon pace, two mile cooldown, or in kilometers that would roughly be three kilometers easy, 16 kilometers at six seconds slower than marathon pace and 10 kilometers at marathon pace. Then the next week, we flip that around so that we go three kilometers, three two miles easy, then we go six miles at 10 seconds slower than marathon pace, 10 miles at marathon pace, two miles down, or in kilometers that would be three kilometers easy, 10 kilometers at six seconds slower than marathon pace and 16 kilometers at marathon pace and then three kilometers easy. The following week, we go two miles easy, 16 miles at marathon pace, two miles easy, or in kilometers, three kilometers easy, 26 km at marathon pace, three K easy. And then the week after that is the big one and this roughly lands about four weeks before the marathon. So that would be two miles easy, 18 miles at marathon pace, two miles easy, or in kilometers, three kilometers easy, roughly 28, 29 kilometers at marathon pace, three K easy. And then from there, then we taper the long run in, but that's not a taper as per say, but with taper in the long run in. And when we get to this point here, sort of week five out, we do the 16 miles at marathon pace or the 26 km at marathon pace. And then the next week, the 18 miles at marathon pace or the 28 km at marathon pace. And then the week after that, which is now six, back to again, to the same runners two weeks prior, which is two miles easy, 16 miles at marathon pace, two miles easy, or three K easy, 26 km at marathon pace, three K easy. Those three runs are really important because what we're doing now is really dialing in, that teaching the body to burn glycogen efficiently at marathon pace. And that's the core thing that the training is about. So we've obviously we're fed in with the 26 K or the 16 miles of been introduced a bit of marathon pace. Now the week five out four out and three out, they're all at marathon pace. And what generally happens is after the 28 K or the 18 miles at marathon pace, the following week when they do the 26 K at marathon pace or the 16 miles at marathon pace, it feels a lot easier. They feel very, very strong and comfortable. And that's the key sign that you're after. If that's the case, then they're ready. And then the week after that, which is two weeks after marathon, two miles easy, 14 miles at marathon pace, two miles easy, or three K easy, 24 km at marathon pace, three K easy. And then the weekend before the race, it would generally be three K easy, 10 km at marathon pace, three K easy, or two miles easy, six miles at marathon pace, two miles easy. So we take that long run down and into there. The person ticks off those three sessions, the 26 K at marathon pace, or the 16 miles at marathon pace, the 18 miles at marathon pace, 28 K at marathon pace, 26 K at marathon pace, 16 miles at marathon, if they tick those three sessions off there, they'll be feeling really strong and confident. And it's normally a very good sign that that will be their marathon pace on racely, in and around there. And then what we do with the midweek session, and this is why it's kind of important, you want, you're runner to be in good half marathon shape as they come into the block. We don't try to get quicker. Everything's about extending out and building up into marathon pace, extending out and then bringing it down. So the idea behind the midweek session in the marathon block is more of a support role. It's not to push on and try and get quicker. The pace is pretty much decided at the beginning of the block, and so is the time. And we just tick off the sessions, tick tick tick all the way through. So the midweek sessions, we generally will work in and around half marathon pace, or a little bit quicker than that, depending on the level of the athlete, it could be threshold or 10 mile effort, or half marathon pace with the sessions. So there's sample of that would be, and again, you would change some of these sessions, but it could be something like a week one, it might be something like the 20 minute warmup, 30 minutes at half marathon effort, 20 minute cool down, week two, 20 minute warmup, 35 minutes at half marathon effort, 20 minute cool down week three, 20 minute warmup, 40 minutes at half marathon effort, 20 minute cool down. So they're the first three weeks. So if you remember what we were doing with the weekend, run, it was going from 12 miles 14 miles 16, or from 20 K, 24 K, 26 K extended now, and so are the midweek sessions extended now as well, but that 30, 35 and 40 in the midweek at half marathon effort, they're not too hard of a session, and your runner doesn't need to be bang on pace, even if they're a little bit slower or it's fine, it's more just to build into the marathon block, and then what comes after that tends to be a little bit more important. So this is where you kind of make a decision what you're doing the midweek, it depends how well your runners doing with the weekend runs or the long runs, so you've got a couple of options here. So if the next two weeks, you could drop in either fresh old or 10 mile effort, something a little bit quicker than marathon pace, but not quite so long in one segment, so you could do something like four times 10 minutes or three minutes easy, or two times, and that could progress then into two times 20 minutes, and then we come into the week of the bigger run, that brings us into 26 K or the 16 miles, at marathon pace, and then it depends on how your athletes feeling, and this is where they are, the coaching comes in a lot more in and around this stage, there's a number of different workouts that you can do from ranging, if you want to make it a little bit easier, something like 12 times three minutes at threshold, or 12 times three minutes at 10 mile effort, or 35 seconds, that's basically, you're looking at 36 minutes with a threshold for a very short recovery. Now that session on paper sounds quite difficult, but it's managed properly, it's quite an easy session to do, then you could progress at the next week to 15 times three minutes of 35 seconds, and then the week of the big run, maybe goes up in the eight times five minutes, or eight times one mile, or eight times sixteen hundred meters, depending on the level of the athlete at threshold, or 10 mile effort, or for one minute, jog recovery, and then the following week, there's no midweek workout, you have at what can over cause a super compensation week, so after the 18 miles of the 28K marathon pace, you don't do a workout in that week, everything's nice and easy, so that the athlete basically recovers from that run, the adaptations kick in, they become stronger, so that when the following week, when they do the 26K again at marathon pace or the 16 at marathon pace, they're feeling really strong and comfortable, and that's where you want them to feel, and then you've got a range of workouts for the midweek that you can do, it depends whether you might need to sharpen them up a little bit, or whether you just want to maintain then it's better to maintain, so you can actually even repeat the first three weeks of the midweek, you can go 30, 35, 40 again, or you could give them some threshold sessions in there depending on the experience of the runner, how the history's been through the block, how they're feeling on what they need, and then in terms of the taper, the tapest 10 days out, so and the reason for that is the overload principle, what you do today is affected in 10 days time, so 10 days out I would generally give them some sort of threshold session or a half marathon type session in that, generally would be 20 minutes easy, 40 minutes at half marathon effort, or 20 minutes easy, and 20 minutes easy, that's a kind of key session there, now I would give that more to like a beginner runner and an intermediate runner, that would be the 10 day out, the last tough workout because the workout on the weekend is only two miles easy, six miles at marathon pace, two miles easy, or three K easy, 10 K at marathon pace, three K easy, so that's the last harder workout, now with elite runners there's a range of different things I would do, so I have a session what I call a lactate shunts, and what we do here is we alternate between marathon pace and half marathon pace, so maybe three weeks, so two weeks out we might give them something like 16 K or 10 miles, but generally I would use K so there's even for people that work in miles, and they would do one K at marathon pace, one K at half marathon pace, one K at marathon pace, one K at half marathon pace, for 16 K, now that sounds like a really tough session, but if you think about it, all you're doing is running 16 miles at marathon pace or half marathon pace, so it's not that difficult really when you think about it on paper, but it can, it's probably above the level of a intermediate or beginner runner, it's more kind of an elite type session, and then the following week, which would be the 10 days out, instead of doing the 40 minutes at half marathon pace, you can give them 20 K alternating between marathon pace and half marathon pace, now why this is a good session was is because what it's doing is is getting them running at marathon pace and then picking up the pace down into kind of half marathon pace where the lactate levels would go up slightly, they pick up that lactate, they shut it around and are teaching the body to utilize the lactate as fuel at marathon pace, which becomes important in the final six miles of the final 10 kilometers of the marathon race itself, so that's our 10 days out, and then what I do is cut the 65 minute easy runs down to 45 minute easy in the from like nine days out eight days out, they would do the seven days out, they would do the last marathon pace from the six miles or 10 K at marathon pace, and then in the final week depends how many times a week the person runs, whether they're a beginner, an intermediate or an elite, with kind of beginners and intermediates, I keep it really, really simple, the runs are at 45 minutes, and we've been two of the runs, if they're intermediate, I'd put strides in there, if they're a beginner runner, I would put strides in one of the 45 minute runs, with elite runners, I tend to give them a little bit at marathon pace, so nothing too serious, maybe like two times two miles or four miles at marathon pace, just dialing that in and then one session of strides, and then the day before the marathon itself, everybody does 35 minutes shake out, and that's the taper. Well, that's the complete schedule of the marathon block. Thank you. And what we noticed, of course, is that it's mostly, and depending on the athlete, of course, it's 10 miles, fresh hold and half marathon paces, but in a lot of plans, you see a lot of K repeats or mile repeats at five K paces, or even faster, but what's the risk of doing that in a marathon block? Before we continue, if this conversation is resonating with you, chances are you're the kind of runner who wants to train smarter and not harder. That's exactly who I work with at base bodies. I coach recreational runners to achieve their personal best, who are serious about building real aerobic fitness. The kind of fitness that actually shows up on race day. So if you're looking for one on one personalized coaching, head over to basebody.com and book a 30 minute free consultation call with me. That's an excellent question because a lot of people do that, and a lot of people raise a half marathon four weeks before, which isn't a good idea, but I'll answer your question to visible. So the idea behind the whole block is to extend out and get the body used to burning glycogen at marathon pace, or efficiently at marathon pace. And that's what we're working at when we get to that 60 mile or 26 K, 18 miles or 28 K, 16 miles, 26 K there. If you pop in something like a five K type session, first of all, it's got no relevance with the marathon. Secondly, with the mileage in those long runs, you're increasing the risk of the person getting injured. Because when you do five K type sessions, a lot more stress goes through the musculoskeletal system because of the paces that you're running at. And secondly, you're kind of what you're doing is you're teaching the body to burn glycogen at a much faster pace, rather than dialing in to keeping it all in as close to possible at marathon pace. So a five K session will be basically all of the work that you've done building up. And if you start throwing in five K and 10 K type sessions in there, the body gets confused a bit. And instead of it being really dialled in. And the analogy that I give to people is something like a Volvo car, purring a long motorway or an auto band or a freeway, just cruising along, just burning diesel or petrol efficiently. Whereas the five K sessions, like a boy racer, it's gone really fast quickly and they're slower, please stop them and speed enough again and things like that. You want to keep it everything under control all the way through the marathon block. So marathon blocks that are generally regarded as being really tough. But if you manage it right, they can actually be quite easy. Because with this system, what happens is the athletes are just gradually each week extending now starting off not too difficult. And then they just take the sessions off. And the same with the midweek sessions, just take everything off. You want B type workouts, you're not pushing too hard, you're not trying to force things. Where it can become challenge and having said that though, is the weather conditions. So if you get a windy day and you've got that big run at 18 miles at marathon pace, then what you have to do is you kind of have to think about that, dial it back a little bit. I even know you're wanting to burn like you said at marathon pace. If you've got like a, I don't know, 30 kilometer wind or let's say, I don't know, 20 mile an hour wind, headwind, parts of that. And you try to run at marathon pace, you're going to be working too hard for it. So sometimes that can be a challenge also in certain countries as well. If you've got that run and you've got 30 degrees Celsius and the dew points 30, that run isn't happening in that pace, not a chance. You'd have to dial it back and there's some of the challenges that you have in as a coach. That's why you've got to try to manipulate the weeks. Well, so I've given you an outline there. That's not what everybody would do. You have to tweak it around the athlete, you have to tweak it around the conditions. And you know, at the experience of the athlete as well in the level and the weather conditions too. Very good point. It's not just a copy of the base, the schedule we did. I do our athletes. It's it's really personalized. Yeah. And just come back to the point I made about the half marathon. A lot of people will do a half marathon four or six weeks out before a marathon. And I'm going to explain why that's a bad idea. And it is a really bad idea to do that as well. Because first of all, if you're going to race, you have to taper. So we've given the overload principle. You've got your half marathon. And let's say it's four weeks out, okay? So 10 days before that you need to tape. If it's going to be meaningful, you have to taper into it. So you're losing a long run on the weekend, the midweek session. And you're losing a long marathon pace session. That should be the peak marathon pace session that you do four weeks out. So you're losing that. And then you have to recover from that half marathon. So you lose that half marathon race cost you five workouts. And it's a no benefit because somebody runs a really good half marathon. It doesn't mean that they're in good marathon shape. It means they're in good half marathon shape. And that's a tell tell sign that they're probably going to struggle in the last 10 K or the last six miles of the marathon. If they do that, and plus they've lost four or five workouts there as well, just to do that. So again, it's all about this burning glycogen efficiently at marathon pace on the weekend and supporting that in the midweek. But to do that, and quite often people get injured when they do this as well when they go and do these half marathons because they're pushing really hard in there in the middle of a block where the mileage might be a little bit higher too. Yeah, and this marathon blocker really have to protect your marathon specific training and your endurance because you want to race a good race. And that's screwed up by doing the wrong workout. Yeah, I mean, I've seen over the years, people do these half marathons. And if they run a really good half marathon, a lot of the time they don't run a good marathon. If they do this and run a half marathon, it doesn't go too well. Quite often they'll run a good marathon. But sometimes what you can get somebody might do a PB or a PR in the half marathon and still PR in the marathon. But they would have probably done a much better PR in the marathon or PB in the marathon if they hadn't done that half marathon four to six weeks out. Yeah, exactly. And with the marathon training block, the most well-known run is the long run. But what is the biggest mistake you see in traditional marathon blocks in the long run? All that there are two main ones. The first one is where people pre-fatigue for it. So a lot of coaches do this and it's because they don't understand the musculoskeletal system. They understand the energy systems. So the idea is you might do a say a workout on Saturday, a hard workout, you know, decent volume as well. And then they give them a long study run the next day. But what they don't understand is the musculoskeletal system needs time to recover. And you're not simulating the fatigue that you get after 20 miles continuous running because you've had 24 hours to recover anyway. Is the first thing all that's happened is the muscle fibres haven't fully recovered. So a lot of people get injured using the that method. That's one of the biggest mistakes that I see. And you get ultra runners doing this as well and it's stupid because it doesn't actually simulate what happens in an ultra race as well. All you're doing is increasing the risk of the person getting injured and actually over-training in their central nervous system becoming overloaded as well. So that's one of the big mistakes. The other one, which is again, a lot of people do this and I'll explain where they get it from. You'll get people saying, "That 18 miles at marathon pace is too much in the training block." You've got to run 26 miles at marathon pace. You've got to prepare the body for that. It doesn't matter where you're a man, woman, beginner or elite. Now, you might not give a beginner under that 18 miles at marathon pace, but you've probably given the time equivalent of it. Because if they can do the time equivalent of it, they're going to be able to complete the marathon. But a mistake a lot of people make is they'll do something like this where they'll do something like they'll do five Ks at marathon pace or one K flow, five K at marathon pace or one K flow, okay? Now, where that comes from, that's very similar to a Ronaldo Canova's midweek sessions. And the first thing that people would do these sessions don't understand is when Canova dishes these sessions out, they're done at altitude. So the time difference that he uses, in fact, is in the altitude. Whereas people do in these sessions, it doesn't factor in the altitude. The other thing is you don't get one K flow after every five K in a marathon. Now, I'm not saying you've got to run 26 miles at marathon pace, but if you're running five K at marathon pace, and then you're doing like a float recovery or a jog recovery or an easy recovery, then you're doing five K again. You know, what's going to happen when you're 15 Ks at the marathon? And you haven't had that recovery, you see? You've got to struggle. There's a people who turn around now and argue that say, well, what happens when you get to 18 miles in the marathon? How do you run the last eight miles? And one of the, at the guy that I'm coach at the moment will be going to the next Olympics more than lightly. He asks that question. And it's a good question to ask because what happens is when you get that 18 miles or 28 miles at marathon pace, it's not about the extra distance. It's all the training that you've done before it, the cumulative effect of the training and the super compensation we that pushes you on forward. And then you freshen up as you come in. And then as you freshen up as you come in and into the taper, your body starts to soar more water and more carbohydrates as glycogen. So your body starts, the adaptation starts to happen about three weeks out, two weeks out, pick up as well and go in in. And what happens as well in the final week, a lot of people will feel sluggish before their marathon may be in the early part of the week. And the reason for that is all of the metabolic changes and your body's sort of moving or transforming to its new homeostasis. So all of the trainings coming in behind that, the blood's changing, the glycogen stores us changing, the plasma's changing, everything's changing, and then it settles down. And it's a fine art to get that taper right. And where people go wrong, two weeks out, quite often they might do 16 miles or 26k marathon pace. That's too much for the body to recover from in that time, but between then and in the marathon. I've seen that quite a lot of elite run as well in too much two weeks out. Yeah, exactly. So now we really understand why it's really an art that last part of the marathon coaching, it's really more than just running a long run. It's more adapting and it's really structured as specific to the marathon. Yeah, and so, you know, within the elite athlete, for example, I might give them more than 18 miles of athletes. I might give them 20 as well. It depends on the runner. I also give like a, with elite runners, I add an extra week into the build so that I can bring in what I call a structural run, which would be something along the lines of three miles easy, 18 miles at 10 seconds over the marathon pace. Three miles easy. That's 24 in total. Or that could be changed across the case like 5k probably six seconds over the marathon pace per kilometer and 5k easy. That's what I would call a structural run. I wouldn't give a workout the week after that either in the midweek. You have to recover from that one. And then they would either go into, it depends how you do the build. They could go into that the 26k at marathon pace in the 28 or you can go from that long structure one into the 28k at marathon pace. There'd be no workouts for two weeks in the midweek because they have to recover from those. Or another one that I might do is rather than using 18 miles of 28k at marathon pace, I might give an elite runner 20 miles at marathon pace. It depends on the build and the durability and the experience of the runner and the type of runner they are and their injury history as well. So all of those things are factored into this as well. But I wouldn't give that to a beginner or an intermediate runner. They don't need it. They won't recover after running like that, or not to recover soon enough for the race before it. There's another thing you can do here as well. And now I've used this in training as well. You can sometimes you don't even need to train at marathon pace. So I'm kind of contradict myself a little bit here, but let me explain. What you do is you can do structural runs that are slower than marathon pace. And then you can run at marathon pace early in the block. So you can go sort of like 12, 14, 16 at marathon pace. But then you don't do the long run at marathon pace. You can do it at 10 seconds per mile or six seconds per kilometer slower. But then the midweek sessions kind of change as well a little bit. Then it depends whether you're at altitude as well, how you would do these workouts. But for me, the best way to do it is to that point where you're doing the 16, 18, 16, 14, six miles or equivalent in kilometers at marathon pace, that really does dial in into it, you know, so that the runners able to burn the luggage in efficiently at marathon pace. And it's safe because you built up there safely. You're not hammering the sessions in the midweek. And another mistake that people make in the marathon block as well is they'll do two workouts in the midweek. They might do like a 5k 10k a tempo. And then a long slow run, the long slow run in the marathon block doesn't teach you anything. It doesn't really have a place in the specific part of the marathon unless it's a beginner runner, which is just trying to get round. So now, again, it depends on the history and the type of sessions that you do. But for me, over the years of doing this, the more confidence is gained from doing those three big runs of 16, 18, and 16 at marathon pace or the 26, 28, and 26. Yeah, exactly. And now the athlete has a render marathon. What's a general overview of the recovery after it? Okay, again, that's a really, really important part. And that's why I've been so busy on calls to midnight nearly every day, and now that recovery is up in the coach, and this is where a lot of people go really wrong. Okay, so the protocol I use is after the marathon, one week completely off, no running. The next week, and this is for beginners, intermediates, and elites, is one week completely off, and I explain the reason and why behind it in week two, 35, 45, 55, 65, easy, or the equivalent of how many runs a week they do and a long run of 18 minutes easy, all nice and easy, okay? And then the next week, back up to the normal kind of training runs for the easy, so 65 minute, easy runs, and the 90 minute easy, so that's three weeks after. And then after that, I'll introduce them back into very light workouts, and the workout that I would normally give in week four, so it's 65 easy. What I would do is I'd give the midweek workout would be something like 20 minutes at threshold, three minutes easy, six times one minute at 5KF or one minute jog recovery. And the reason for that is thresholds safe to run out, it's a, you know, sustained, or it doesn't have to be bang on for a threshold pace, you know, just roughly around the effort that somebody could hold for an hour, and then the six times one minute is like a rust buster, it starts to get the biomechanics right, just starts to get the system working again, about overloading it too much, and I'll come back to why in a minute, and then the next week, I'd keep that midweek session the same, but then push out, depending on the level of the athlete, to 10 times one minute at 5KF or 12, the more advanced athlete and more experience will be 12, and then next week it'd be 20 minutes at threshold, and then three minutes easy, and 15 times one minute, and then they're back into full training, so that's actually like a six weeks cycle, I think it is there, basically, on the reason, and on the weekend, in week four, so they've done week off, 18 minutes easy, 90 minutes easy, and week three and week four, I would give them an endurance spine run, which is 30 minutes easy, 40 minutes endurance spine run, 30 minutes easy, we covered what the endurance spine one is, it's depending on the level of the athlete, it's effectively the effort that they're a beginner or intermediate runner could hold for roughly about 90 minutes, and then the next week that 40 becomes 50, and then the 50 becomes 60, and then after the six weeks, then they're ready to go and move into the next block of training. The reason for this is it takes roughly three weeks to recover metabolically from a marathon, and four to six weeks for the central nervous system to recover from a hard marathon, and I've explained this to people, and people have said to me, after a week of no running, and trying to get beginner and intermediate runners to take a week off after a marathon, it's very, very difficult, because they're all addicted to running, and they want to get out there. If you get this bit wrong, those four to six weeks after a marathon, you're going to be in trouble, you're going to get burnt out, you're going to get stale, and probably get injured as well, and if you race in that time, you're asking for trouble, although some people, if their marathon hasn't gone quite well, they might do a marathon four to six weeks later, and sometimes it can go actually quite well, because what's happened has been a problem in the marathon, they haven't done their fitness in that marathon, and it actually works as like a super long run, and they can actually run faster in the second one, that does happen sometimes, but ideally you want to do your marathon, give it your best shot, run well, and then recover properly and come in. So the key thing that people miss is, and I've seen it now with my own runners, when they do the 20 minute tempo in the six times one minute, they say, "I don't feel right, I feel a bit clunky," and so that's because the central nervous system hasn't recovered. Yeah, exactly, it's more in just endurance also. The brain has a big part in our running, and sometimes we don't understand the role of our brain and the nervous system in our training, but it's a very, very big part of training. 100% yeah and again people kind of coaches tend to look in energy systems and we're about looking at a holistic point of view as well because mentally from training in the marathon itself is tough and you have to recover from that you have to reset and what I do is after that six week recovery quite often that I've been doing these calls the last three weeks now after the spring marathon said to people just enjoy the training a little bit don't get help about pace as an effort when we get in you know now we're coming into summer pick a few part runs to take case just to mix things up a bit you don't want to be hammering the training all year round if you do you're not going to enjoy it you're going to burn out you're going to get injured and just be digging it yourself into deeper holes so after the marathon it's really really important for those four to six weeks to be careful and then when you come back in after that you do it properly you'll find that your default fitness six weeks after the marathon is actually far superior to them when you went into the marathon now I don't mean you've run a faster marathon I mean you're like sort of maybe a 10k 10 mile half marathon paces will be a little bit quicker so your training paces so that it's a building block from the marathon so you build up into the marathon do the marathon drop down and then as you come back up again your default fitness is a little bit higher and that's how you start that progression year on year on year and why people get better yeah exactly well perfect now in the in the last a conversation three episodes we've discussed the entire marathon training how long does a complete schedule take probably it's depending on the athlete of course and beginners are probably longer than than elites but in a general idea how long is the is this a complete training period well it again it depends where you're picking up somebody and when their marathon is and things like that what I've done is I've given you an overview and outline and nine time at 10 oh that way you have to change things and tweak things and that's where the experience as a coach comes in and the art of it but in the perfect world and I do get people coming to me with a 12 month build up you know so a beginner runner you start them off with the foundation you know getting them up to the 65 if easy and the 90 easy then you'd move them into the pre-super base which is very important for beginner runners because that's what gets them away from being hit flexed dominant and getting the quads more involved in the running improving hip extension and improving their running economy with the hillblast and the progressive strides and then their techniques better so because a lot of time beginner runners or people are running four hours for a marathon they're shuffling and what happens is most coaches give them speed works they're trying to get them faster and they get injured because the load goes through the Achilles and the calf the gastrochance layers and then they get injured or they have knee problems so you've got to get their glutes more involved in the running and that loads of risk getting injured and they make massive improvements in their running economy at that point and then you put the fitness on them with a suit what I call the super base which is roughly about 14 weeks you know it depends again because that's an outline and then the bridge training I think I'm expect about that in the last one it depends when the marathon is you know it depends how many weeks or months you sometimes you can go from the super base straight into marathon training because if you think about it the last runs of the super base are a 30 minutes easier 60 minute endurance by and runs 30 minutes easier that feeds beautifully into the marathon training and the last midweek workout is eight times five minutes which again feeds beautifully into marathon training as well so sometimes what happens is I'll have somebody in marathon training but on the weekend but in the midweek it'll be doing the super base as well depends on the level as well or I might keep them going on it and then peel them away or I might just stop the super base and put them into marathon training and again it depends you know what the experience is the injury history and all of those sorts of things as well sometimes I have a beginner runner who's got a marathon saying three months okay and they come in and they're adamant that they're doing the marathon so I give them the choice I say look we can do marathon training in a basic way but you're not going to get a lot out of it or you can do the super base workouts in the midweek and we can just extend out using time only nothing to do a marathon place for your long run so you go through this pre-super base where you're doing the hillblasts and the progressive strides which are going to make you a better runner and more efficient then when you come out of the marathon training and you've recovered then we can move into the super base and carry on from there so you can blend things in basically as well but again you know that's where the art comes into it yeah exactly so that's a good overview of the complete system thank you and last question you did a big announcement on Instagram a few weeks back can you tell us a bit more about that I'm always making big announcements what was it about you attempting the the marathon well you see that I suppose like when I came to Thailand two years ago and I'd nobody telling me what to do I was my own boss to some degree there so I enjoyed myself for the first year so I was going out and having dinner every night and you know I was maybe the odd bottle of wine here and there as well but I actually started smoking as well which is this dumbest thing in the world ever you know at age of 59 and I thought I'd be okay I'll be able to stop and things and they'd gradually you know from one or two cigarettes a day it went into full blown typical runner addiction thing of 30 cigarettes a day but I knew I was going to stop and I had to obviously for health reasons and things and stuff like that and about a year ago I decided I'd do it but I wasn't quite ready to do it but then I don't know how it's 10 weeks ago in fact actually 10 or 12 weeks ago I decided I was going to stop drinking get the weight down and then also stop the smoking for health reasons and then I thought well I might as well I've never ran a marathon I've done that ran a half marathon in 68 minutes or 15 a meter training but I've never actually ran a marathon so I thought this is perfect now I can go through this whole system from a complete beginner I've got to lose weight I've got to stop drinking I've got to stop smoking and I've got to build up start off with walking and then jog walking then into the foundation the pre-super base the super base bridge training marathon specific training stuff or what I'll do is I'll you know so I'll be I'll probably need about two years for it so I thought I'll be 63 and then I've thought to myself okay I'll like try and break free hours and that seems a big thing that everybody's after but then I was out walking with my girlfriend Nudge and I thought I'm just gonna try running to see if I've still got my running in stride or if I run like an old man or a shuckler and so she videoed me and as everybody said that my strides a little bit like kip chogies which was unbelievable given the you know what I've been I've been setting my chair for the last six years doing nothing so I thought hmm I know free hours is going to be too easy for me even if I'd be 63 and I thought 245 is kind of maybe breaking 245 and then I thought I'd like like if I've got my stride and with the all of the training and seeing it for I could probably break 240 and I thought that that'd be realistic and I'd bet on myself doing that as well but then I thought what I'll look at is the best times all of all time for a 63-year-old so I started looking into this and then I saw obviously a tummy who's is beast and he I think it was 59 I think he had a lot of problems with alcohol over the years and stuff and stopped and he came back into run after he'd run on the times so I'll apologise for him and that's where I get this wrong but I think he ran to 2950 something at the age of 59 and then at 60 I think he ran to 30 in two seconds and then something something that 61 and 62 and then at 63 he ran I think 230 and 46 or 230 and 48 some around there and I thought well if I think I can run 238 you know around six-minute mile pace and maybe I can get down there you know as I reach go and then I looked at the all-timeless and like I think he's like about 10 minutes faster than everyone else and I thought why is that then and then I looked at the years when people ran and it was a long time ago so there's nobody I know there's I think there's a French guy recently he's come from broken his records you know in the 60 plus era as well or you know 60 plus age groups but everybody else was from the 70s and 80s and I realised what it was obviously got the new fueling in the super shoes because I thought how has he taken I think it was nearly 10 minutes of the record of eight minutes or something like that again apologies if I've got that wrong but it's a super shoes in the fueling and the training as well so I thought okay so for me to run say 238 will super shoes and with the fueling would probably the same of running like a 242 or 245 some around there which I think I could do in old shoes and old fueling so I think a 238 as well with my compass would I bet on me getting down to 230 no so I won't bet on it at all but I don't mean breaking 240 I don't get injured a lot when I run as well probably because I don't run long enough I only run for three months and then stop because I prefer the coaching part but this I'm excited about this and I actually think I can do it as well well I'm not saying I can do the 230 I think that will be a very very far reach but I think I'm getting the 240 well it's a great project to do I've had quite a few 60 year olds who disagree with me but then they've got to look at where their starting point is compared to mine so you know it's not like I'm just starting running at the age of I although I've had five years off okay but I've never trained properly for an extended period of time like I can run out you know I was able to run under 15 minutes 31 minutes for 10k 68 for a half marathon offer a couple of months training doing 1500 meter training so if I put all of this together and that I haven't had the whole history where people have been running for 20 years and doing it six days a week and stuff like that and so I suppose without coming across as a big head or anything like that I think my talent was a lot higher than some of the 60 year olds you know my my ceiling's a lot higher and I've not exhausted that over the years we've been reason battering myself in training and things, who I think if I can put this together. together. That's why I've got a good shout out. I've been doing this a long time, 40 years of coach over 900 people to sub-free marathon. No, at less free US Olympic marathon trials coaching online. I've had male and female athletes in the US Olympic marathon trials. There are the Olympics as well, Masters champions, all sorts of that. I know what I'm doing, but I know that when I train, I'm stupid. And that's why I'm asking you to coach me. Because you've done my course and you know all of the methods, sir, your job is to coach me. Yeah, okay. My job is to renew in sometimes. And it's good to, like, because I know that I do stupid things in training. And that's what's helped me as a coach. It's like, say the endurance fine runs are 40, 50, 60 that we're doing the super bass on the bridge training. Whenever I used to do those in training, say, I had a 60 minute super bass endurance fine run to do, it wasn't called an endurance fine run then, but I used to do those or say I would do these 10 posts. I'd get to 40 minutes and stop the little voice in my head to talk to me and say, okay, that will take that today. That's a good session. Because I ran it too fast. So it wasn't at the effort I could hold for 90 minutes. You see, and that's why I can now, I can explain to the people the importance of not doing that and why it's important that you do it for 90 minutes. You go for the cycle of 40, 50, 60, come back around for the 40, 50, 60s and go free seconds per kilometer quicker or five seconds per mile. And it should feel exactly the same. It should be in control. You should feel like after the 40 minutes, you could do another 50, after the 50s, you could do another 40, after the 60s, you could do another 30. And those runs, they build up micro control biogenesis and angiogenesis, which are two of the key things that we're looking to do, blame blood vessels and grow in the mitochondria. And also making, there's other things well there, they're about making them stronger, without getting too technical. And they're really good sessions. But my problem was I used to run too fast and the reason is because I hated long runs. So I was in the nozzle. Also, there we go. But yeah, that's, and with your guidance, and if it doesn't, not my fault, it's your fault as a coach. And that's what I get. What also in my brain grows and roses? Because sometimes, you know, whilst I've got a fantastic record in terms of like results and things, it doesn't always come, you know, there are times that people don't run sub three hours, you know, for a number of reasons and things. It's not 100% guaranteed, nothing is, you know, the marathon things can go wrong. You need, you need a lot to go right. And most people when they go into a marathon thing are on the day I'll be able to do this, and this, it's very rare it does. The most thing is you need everything to go right to get the best out of your trainer to get in and around where you are as well. So a lot of people will, you know, they'll fall short a little bit as well, especially if they've missed things in the training and the block. And that's where the coaching part comes into it as well, how to adapt the training. And then maybe realign the goals or change the goals. And then again, the weather's in the big thing. If you look at the weather over the last 12 months and nearly all of the marathons, I don't mean say like, I think Boston was okay, somebody was telling me that the day, but Seville was okay. CIM in the US was okay, but nearly all the marathons around the world, because that's a couple of people all over the globe, nearly all of the marathons have been hot, you know, or say like in Ballarat in Australia recently, it was windy and hot, but not hot in terms of Australian standards, but the wind picked up on the second lap in the Ballarat. So you've got the wind in the first lap, which is hitting people as well. So by the time they come round onto the second lap and getting the wind again and the temperature had gone up a bit. Some of the people who ran in that, I think I had six people doing it for Ram PBs, I had two people who were more than capable of going under three hours and they didn't go under three hours. But I think it was, it wasn't that they weren't prepared and ready. It was more of a case of the conditions on the day. They were just a little bit unlucky and that happens in marathons as well. Yeah, exactly. Well, looking forward to doing this together and we'll of course let the viewers know and let them see how it all goes down for for you for us. But we need not a lot to get right. Well, thank you, John, for this for this conversation. We've really talked a lot about the marathon specific block and why it's such an important part of training. Thank you very much for for your time today. My pleasure. My pleasure, to stay. Thanks very much for having me on. Yes, you're very welcome and see you next time. Case. That's a wrap for today's episode and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the RobiCat podcast, the best thing you can do is leave a review at Spotify or Apple Podcast. It just takes a few minutes and helps other runners to find the show. And if you want to take your training to the next level, come and talk to me. I'll work with recreational runners who want to structure the evidence-based approach to building real aerobic fitness. The first call is free. You'll find the link in the show notes or over at pacebodies.com. Thank you for listening and see you in the next one.