S3E1: The Sub-3 Marathon Formula

Hey everybody, welcome back to the consistently good podcast. I am your host Jeff Cunningham and I'm here to talk to you guys today about something near, it's something dear to my heart and that's breaking three hours in the marathon. Can I tell you guys how incredibly excited I am to be back for season three and I get to open season three with this banger? And I'm calling it a banger because I know there's a lot of people that are fired up about that goal. But I can tell you that what I'm fired up about is that I get to do this. I get to talk to you guys about coaching. I get to talk to you guys about running. I get to talk to you guys about dream chasing and getting better. Frankly, in a sport that literally has made my life and changed my life from when I was a tiny, tiny little guy, you know, up to this point and hopefully beyond. But we're here to talk about the three hour marathon breaking it. So, man, let's get into it, okay? [Music] I know that it's always sort of been a thing. Even when I ran my very first marathon back in January 1998, breaking three hours was still a thing and Pete was talked about. But that was sort of pre-social media era. That was before the proliferation of a lot of these marathons. It was pretty easy. You could just go and just sign up for just about any marathon you wanted. Even back then, I mean, obviously Boston had qualifying standards, but they were far easier to hit than they are now. Signing up for some of the biggest marathons in the world was easier, like New York, Chicago, than now. And so, sub-three has taken on a life of its own, I think, as sort of the popularity of the marathon has grown. I think that these two things have sort of had parallel tracks. And I think that the breaking three sort of goal has really accelerated with Instagram and Facebook, but especially Instagram over the last decade. And it's really, really gaining steam. But I think that we hear about it so much that there's this notion that it's extremely common and that it is fairly easy to do for perhaps the unwitting who maybe don't really realize what goes into it. And so, I was looking at some of the data, some of the statistics, and it's actually pretty remarkable. Back in 2025, just this past year, there was about 57,000 people in the entire world who broke three hours in the marathon, only 57,000 in the entire world. And if you look at the number of people who ran marathons, it was about 1.3 million people actually completed a marathon. So, you're looking at about 4.4% of the people who ran marathons actually broke three hours. The statistics, we dive a little bit deeper, about 21,000 Americans, people from the United States actually did it. And when you look at the global population, it looks like it's about eight people out of every one million people have broken three hours in the marathon in a one year span of 2025. It's about 7% of men and less than 1% of women do it. So, in 2025, about 7,000 women in the entire world, for instance, broke three hours in the marathon. So, my point is, this is incredibly elite. It's talked about so much that I think that it's at the four of so many conversations that there's this almost, I don't want to call it a confirmation bias, but it's this bias in favor of it being more common than what it is, because it's just talked about so much, right? But it's very, very doable. It's uncommon, but it's very, very doable. And the question is, do you want to be uncommon? Do you want to be in that group of people who have done it? And I don't mean for this to be such a niche podcast episode that it feels almost exclusionary and exclusionist. Is that a word? Maybe, to the people who either can't or haven't, okay? But it's a topic that I think is talked about so much that I really want to address it with a lot of specifics. And I've addressed it before on other podcasts. I've addressed it with Nick Baer on his podcast, and I've addressed it on other podcasts with other podcasters. But I haven't really dug as deep into it as I'm going to do today. First of all, I want everybody to understand that more of you can do it than perhaps believe you can. Okay? And it's because I think that we're trained to hang our glass ceiling of talent a little too low over our head as we sort of march through life. I think we're trained to hem ourselves in on a tiny little plot of land that we believe is our talent. And so what I want to encourage all of you to do is we get into this conversation is be willing to consider that you can push that glass ceiling up much further over your head without you banging your head. Okay? And you can move the fences on your ranch of talent out to the very, very, very edge of that ranch. And that's where we're going to roam. And it's a much bigger space from a talent standpoint. Then maybe you've either been conditioned to believe or have been told flat out that you've got from a talent standpoint. Now, I looked at sort of what it takes and keep in mind, I think in all populations, you could plot populations on a bell curve. In other words, out on the edges, if you could picture a bell, right? Out on the edges of the bell on the left and the right hand side, you've got the people who are outliers. Right? You've got the people over here who don't need to train very much, don't need to do much right. And they can still get away with it and break three hours in the marathon. Take, for instance, a collegiate runner, like a guy who's run 1430 in the 5K. Okay? I get it. But you've got to realize that person's already a statistical outlier by being that fast. Okay? So what I'm talking about is sort of this big middle part of the bell curve, sort of the parameters and the data and the paces and the volume. It would generally apply, I think, to like the middle 70, 75, 80% of us who are of relatively ordinary talent. And of course, ordinary is still sort of within this tiny little subgroup of people who can do it and do do it. Right? So we're still talking about your extraordinary, but you still within that population, you're on the fat part of the bell curve. Okay? So I'm going to be talking about paces, volume, intensity, how often you're doing your long runs, how hard you're doing your long runs. All these things today on sort of data that I've compiled over the years of coaching this and the hundreds of people who have broken three hours in the marathon, there are trends. There are paces, there are certain diagnostic workouts, there are certain measurables. Okay? That I find have generally worked and are applicable and I'm going to be talking about that formula for you today. Now, can I do it? That's the question I get asked a lot. Right? Can I do it? And what I tell people is this, if you can run a 5K in 1830 to 19 minutes, you are pretty close with maybe one good training block. It most maybe a couple of training blocks away. Maybe if something doesn't go perfect in your first attempt, you're pretty much there from a aptitude standpoint. 39 minutes for the 10K. Okay? Maybe up to 3930. If you're not super snappy and you don't have a ton of foot speed or maybe down to 3830. If maybe you run slightly lower volume and your aerobic ability isn't quite as good at the longer stuff. And really, you know, under 40 minutes, 39 minutes, down to 38, mid 38, high 38, you're okay. You're okay. You have that aptitude. Assuming that we put the things in place that I'm about to talk about, you follow that up with the training, you're probably going to be okay chasing that three hour barrier. 126 and a half marathon. Okay? Down to 85. And some people, some people we can fudge it up close to 87 minutes. If they're just a super, super aerobic beast, they can run sort of metronomically at a pace that's not a ton slower than our half marathon pace. It can extend that out to the marathon. That would be a pretty unique person who can run 127, 127 mid and a half marathon and go break three in the marathon. But I've seen it done. But I would tell you, if you could get down around 126 flat, I'm feeling pretty good about your chances is long as we control for the controllables that will allow you to then go and run a marathon at a fast pace. Okay? Now, a few months ago, I went on the line podcast with Dr. Kristen Holmes, PhD, and we were topping it up about sort of how to structure your training, how to get better at your training. training. And I talked to her about this acronym, call it dive in, we're diving into the training. It's density, intensity, volume, and then the non-running factors such as sleep diet and strength training. And this is where we actually put that acronym and put actually those concepts actually toward today. Okay. Now, I may be addressing them slightly a little bit out of order than sort of the way they track in the acronym because I'm actually going to talk to you guys. Shall we say in a way where the conversations typically go? When I'll get a phone call from fired up a young lady or some fired up young guy who just ran 126.57 in the Huffin half marathon and they're saying, okay, coach, I think I'm there. I think I could do it's my goal. Or somebody who's fired up just broke 130 for the first time. It says, hey, okay, can I do it? Can I do it if I keep getting faster? Like now I can sniff it. I can at least sniff it. And these are the conversations that I have. And usually, okay, usually what I'll talk about first is telling them it depends. And it depends on these things. And listen, for most of you probably know this, but some of you may not know that I'm a dirt bag lawyer, okay. And so unfortunately, when it comes to saying, will I break through hours of marathon? Can I break through hours of marathon? I say, with a reasonable amount of certainty, I can tell you that you can if blah, blah, but I still add and it depends. And I know that that's maddening to people. But I think with sports, I think with running, I think we all understand that it depends really, really is applicable. And we all have an idea of the general things that it depends on. So I always tell people, hey, it depends. But let's talk about your training up to now. And then let's talk about the training that you need to do to go an average essentially 650 a mile for the marathon, okay. And about 415 per kilometer, okay, for the marathon. Now, when I say 650, I understand that technically, if you ran exactly, exactly 26.20 miles, it's probably closer to 652. I get that. But the reality of it is, is everybody who's ever run a marathon knows you look at your garment and it's going to or your chorus or whatever it is. And it might say anywhere from 26.3 to 26. Sometimes I'm 26.5 miles. And so what I tell people generally is, let's call 650 pace, which technically, if you ran exactly 26.20, I think it comes up to like 258 high, right? 259 flatage, 258 high. But you don't run your tangents perfectly. And so let's call it 650 pace, okay. There's not to tell people volume. What is your volume? And let me tell you what you need to do. I don't know. And I could be, I could be mistaken. And I know there's going to be the person who did it who's going to let me know they were the one. I don't remember anybody doing it off of four days of running a week or four days of aerobic exercise per week, okay. I suppose that there's an outlier out there who could run four days a week and maybe do some elliptical or some stationary bike or whatever it is. But generally speaking, five to seven days a week is what it takes of running, okay. Now, from my five day of weekers, it requires you to be probably more talented than most people who are in this space, okay. And able to do lower volume than most people in this space or if you have some injury concerns, some comorbidities to prevail. Yeah, you might be running five days a week, but we might be getting six to seven days of aerobic exercise because you might run Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but on Wednesday, you might be on an elliptical for 80 minutes or 90 minutes, right? You might be on a bike for an hour or 75 minutes, spin in the crank, get your heart rate up, increasing heart stroke volume, blood plasma volume, mitochondrial density, all of the stuff that is needed for aerobic performance, which is what you need to run well in distance races. Five to seven days a week, though is what I'm telling you. Seven, it's a rarity when it takes that much, okay. The sweet spot for me as a coach is you probably need to be running six days a week, okay. That's the sweet spot for me as a coach. Now, how much are you supposed to be running on each of those days? It depends, dirtbag, lawyer, qualifier, but let me tell you this. It's a rare case when I've ever seen anybody do it on under 50 miles a week. And it's a rare case when I've seen anybody do it where they needed more than 80 miles a week, okay. You're just saying, but Jeff, this is not going very well from my blueprint. You just gave us a 30 mile sort of a zone that we need to be in. And my answer is, yeah, that's right. Because let's look at what you're doing on each of these days. Because keep in mind, if you're running 50 miles in five days, you're averaging 10 days a week, 10 miles a day, right? You do 50 miles in seven days, right? You're not doing nearly that much. You're averaging seven to eight miles a day, right? Here's what I would tell you. Generally speaking, seven to 10 miles a day on your EC runs, eight to nine is usually pretty sufficient, but I like to be able to get a lot of people up to where they're running at about 10 miles a day on their EC runs. And typically I would put those on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday in a typical training week, okay? The sweet spot I find often is around 65 miles a week, up to 70, okay? And maybe as low as 60, but man, if you can really run some solid 65 to 70 mile weeks and be hitting eight to 10 miles on your EC days, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, you're probably in that zone of hitting some training volume. Generally for the people plotting on this fat part of the bell curve again, that's kind of where we need to get. You know, you say, well, what about my long runs? The long runs are interesting. I always like putting them on Saturday. That way, you know, if you like living Cleveland, you can take Sunday off and go watch the Browns loose as somebody all fall, right? Or go to church with your family. It just works Monday through Saturday. I think it's a nice training week, but everybody's different because a lot of you guys may work nights. My head, some people that work 12 hours on 20, you know, or 24 on 48 off. So you can move that around. Do your long run on Sunday. If you typically, hey, if the fun bunch run club makes on Sunday, that's when they do their long runs. By all means, go do your long run on Sunday. Take Saturday off or you could even just take Monday off, right? You know, I like to think in a work week because in the Western world, in many other places in the world, we go to work on Monday and we're off on Saturday and Sunday. So I tend to think Monday to Sunday with Sunday being the last day of the week. Okay. But six days a week long runs Saturday. Typically, how would do it? Easy runs Monday Tuesday. Thursday. Do your easy runs. Okay. Now, that is sort of looking at your volume. Okay. On the long runs themselves, when we're looking at the volume of the long runs, I would tell you this much. I think three 20 plus mile runs prior to the marathon is often enough to get it done. Sometimes it's fused to some people do as many as five, but two to five 20 plus mile runs. You don't need to be running 20 miles every weekend for like 12, 13, 14 weeks prior to breaking three in the marathon. I would also recommend against trying to run a marathon, having not run at least two 20 plus mile runs going in. You know, you can get away with doing one. Maybe if you've done a bunch of 18 not time mile runs, it really knocks those head of the park. But once again, I would recommend, let's try to hit three, three 20 plus mile runs. And I think that can really get you there. Four works really, really well. If you could get there and you're comfortable hitting the volume, you're not rolling over tons of fatigue into the following week, things like that. I recommend stair stepping these long runs. So when we're talking about the volume of your runs, right? You know, maybe go 16, you know, and then you could go 15, then 17, 16, 18, 16, 20, 16, 22, 16. You could go like that stair step, go up and down. Here's what I find. Listen, we talk about quote, the hard workouts. And my world, in my world, running 20 miles is hard. I don't really care how easy you run for most mortals, 20 miles is a hard run. So what I tell people is this, let's treat Saturdays sort of special, long run days are special. Okay. You need to carve up, you need to sleep, you need to treat those Saturday long runs is special. But I also think that it's hard to stack 20, then 21, then 22, then 23 miles a week after week after week without doing so that's without taking like a down week. So I recommend stair stepping and it works pretty well, guys. It works pretty well. You go 18, 16, 19, 16, 20, 16, you know, or you can have 17, so it'd be like base camp, be like your base long run that you can slide back to as you stare step up to, you know, I find 22 miles for your longish run, really suffice. It's quite well, okay? Maybe 21, maybe 23, but that range typically works well. When you're looking at this sort of this dive in acronym, I'm gonna address intensity and density actually a bit simultaneously. Okay, what is density? And to review, density is how close together your hard efforts are. Density is how close together you do hard workouts. Once every two days, every four days, every seven, right? That's your density. It's how dense, how dense is the quality work? I don't mean to sort of imply that 10 miles in a nice, easy pace, let's call it zone two, for the purposes of conversation, isn't a quality run. But when I say quality, what I mean is, is the days where you have pace goals, splits, where you're running faster than race pace. And so you have to look at your density regarding how close you do those workouts together. And I think going back up to my stair step, long run plan, we have to look at the density of your long runs and how close together you're doing those huge, huge, huge ones too, 'cause that can get you in trouble. The two main things are chronic fatigue and injury. We really, really, really want to avoid that because like the podcast is called consistently good, you want to be consistent through your processes, consistent in the way you structure things. It needs to be reproducible, almost predictable, and you need to create rhythm for your body, rhythm in your life. And there's nothing more disruptive to all of that than getting injured or chronically fatigue because then you unfortunately have involuntarily induced lack of consistency, okay? Now, when we look at your training intensity, make sure that your easy days are easy. I can't stress this enough, okay? You are gonna get what you need to get better at this game if you train in the proper effort zones and train at the proper intensities every single day. 'Cause a lot of people think when I talk about intensity, they want to go straight to the workouts. You know, I'm running mile repeats or I'm doing a tempo run. How fast should I be doing that? And people tend to give sort of short shrift to thinking about how the lack of intense running, the pulling back and sort of hippie hitting the break pedal and running nice and easy on your easy runs, that's an intensity consideration we need to be thinking about. We want to be for lack of better way of putting it, unintense, okay? On our easy runs and on our long runs when we're not injecting any pace into them. I'll get to the long runs and I'll get to injecting pace into the long runs in a moment. So for my six day run week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, guys, we better be running easy, okay? I call them zero effort runs, all right? Obviously some effort has to go into like being upright by people going down the road, but you get what I'm saying, which is I want to almost look at these zero effort runs, meaning no pressing, no straining, get the foot off the gas pedal, make it conversational, right? Now listen, I'm talking a lot, talking kind of fast maybe today, 'cause I'm so fired up about this, but the reality is it should be a conversational pace. You should be able to talk to Betty Sue about how Claire Bell did in her dance recital. You know, you should be able to talk to Eddie Earl about how E from Did and his Friday night football game out there in Gainesville, right? You gotta be talking. If you could talk your whole run, you're probably running easy. Let's go zero effort. Let's put our, let's put effort into making those easy, okay? You will get massive gains, massive adaptations. A lot of the sciencey stuff I've talked about before, we know that if you press, press, press, press, press, press, you break, break, break, break, break, eventually. Don't do it. Do not fall prey to the 1% better everyday mentality. Don't try to get 1% better, okay? By running too fast on your easy runs on those designated days, can't stress it enough, okay? Now, how many hard workouts a week do I need to do? How many workouts a week have I been doing? It might be counterproductive. For me, once again, this is Jeff Cunningham's coaching world. All right? One big hard workout a week, typically placed on a Wednesday morning, but you can float it for various reasons. The Exit Incesive Life prevailed. I mean, maybe, you know, you know, little Claire Bell was up all night with a cough and wasn't feeling good. You get any sleep, okay, fine, float your workout to Thursday. That's okay. Or maybe you need to put it on Tuesday, because you've got a bar misfit that you've got to be at later, you know, in the week or you're going on vacation, whatever. But generally, Wednesday mornings, let's put a big workout in there. I like that spacing between your hard workouts on Wednesdays and then your Saturday long runs, okay? I recommend on Fridays, often, if you are not necessarily doing a hard workout on a Saturday morning, we can do what I refer to as a little bit of speed development, maybe a little bit of neuromuscular stimulus. What might that Friday look like before I come back to the all important Wednesday? Oh, guys, go out, run an easy two or three miles, duck inside the gate at the local high school track. Run eight or 10 times 100 meters, nice and quick and fast, but not spring all out with maybe 200 meter easy run float in between. Maybe do eight to 10 of those, duck back out, go and do another mile or two. You have a nice little fun, little fart-like-y speed day that's not intense, not psychologically overwhelming. You don't need to have, you know, sit cross-legged and have a saying on it to get yourself ready to go out and do it. Just go out, have a little fun on Fridays, okay? Maybe go out and I like to throw in, maybe you could do a five or a seven or eight mile run and you can take the middle miles, maybe the middle four miles of a five-miler, right? And throw in two by 20 seconds, sort of fast surges, just running nice and quick, 20 seconds, then just slow down the easy run pace. Then 20 seconds fast, just slow back down the easy run pace. You could do that twice a mile for the middle. I don't know, five miles of a seven-miler, you've probably gotten in around 10 anywhere from 85 to 110 meter fast little spurts. What does this do? Like I said, it just builds those neurologic pathways that leave you connected to sort of your foot speed, your turnover, you don't need a lot of it. You don't need a lot of sprint work. In fact, that would challenge that you don't need any sprint work, okay, to run a marathon because in no world is 650 pace or 415 per kilometer, anything near sprinting for almost anybody listening to this podcast. And so if you could just spin down and run down and maybe into the mid five minute pace range, even up to six flat pace range, if you're not feeling just super snappy that day, for 10, 20 second segments during a five, seven, eight mile run on a Friday, gosh, that's pretty solid, okay? Now, you could alternate that. You can do 10 times 101 week. Then you can go out and do a seven mile or just throw in some searches, 20 seconds, twice a mile, maybe 30 seconds, maybe once per K for the middle nine kilometers of an 11 K run. You can get creative with it, but that's basic sort of stuff that you can throw in, right? It's fun fast, I call it fun fast. Wednesdays. What are we doing on Wednesdays? And I know you're all screaming, you're like get to it, cunning ham. I wanted to talk about all this other stuff because you all want the workouts. Guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give you the workouts. I might be the worst capitalist on the planet. I probably ought to put all this in a book and charge all the gazillion bucks for it, but here we go, some giving it to you, all right? To break three hours in the marathon, you probably, once again, I'm gonna keep giving you all this reminder, this is for the fat part of the bell curve. I get it. Some of you can do all of your repeat work at 610, 615 per mile. Okay? You're super robust. Maybe you're a high volume runner. You're a great aerobic runner, and you can go out and break three hours in the marathon and you're screaming, going, "Cunning ham doesn't know what he's talking about." I would say that that's fairly unusual, and so awesome if you could do that, right? And then there are some people that say, "I have to be running way down, way under six minutes of myel pace to be able to do a sub three hour marathon on my repeat work." Here's what I'll tell you. For your repeat work, you need to be able to run 550 to six minute pace on your repeat work. When you go down to the track, or if you have a measured flat path, or a street, or any flat piece of ground where you can measure, maybe a half mile, a 1K, 1200 meters. in a mile and you can run back and forth on that, put little cones out, you can discreetly, discreetly people. I will tell you discreetly, maybe take a little dot of paint and put it in an inconspicuous spot where you would know where it is on the edge of maybe a little footpath or maybe on the curb out in front of your house. Okay. So you go, "Oh, that's my quarter mile mark. That's my half mile mark." Right? That way, you don't have to be staring at your garment all the time. You can actually just have this marked out. You can use a measuring wheel that surfators use. I'm an old cranky guy that goes out in the house at the moon. I still own a wheel. I like to measure things with a wheel. But you can garment off your little half mile segment on a path or a street if you don't have access to a track. Tracks best way to go. Reminder, do not use your garment. Don't use your GPS on a track. It typically will not work. Manually split everything when you're on the track. Guys, not only is today the first day of season three the consistently good podcast today is the day your life is going to change. We have maple cinnamon go bars. From day one, the go bars probably one of the best products that BPN has ever made. But the reality of it is this is that nostalgia. This is taking you back when you were a little kid. Wake up, Saturday morning. Have you some cinnamon toast? Maybe have you some maple syrup on your pancakes? 200 calories. 34 grams of carbohydrates. I'm munching on one now. I'm very careful. I'm chewing in your ear. Why? Because my wife tells me I can't do it, but I can do it in all your ear. This is freaking fantastic. A big energy boost. O base bar. Easy to digest carbohydrate. It'll pack that nice punch for you when you're headed out for a workout. You had to grab something really fast. You're headed out for a run. Guys, get your go bar. Go order it today. Listen to this podcast. Get on bpnsubs.com. Get you a box today. It'll be gone by noon. Here's three track workouts. I would love to give you guys because I think these three are really, really good. Now there's just different permutations that you can do, right? But I like these three. If you can run 10 to 14 times 800 meters and you can run anywhere from 255 to 258 up to 259 on those on one minute recovery, you're probably in good enough shape to say that you're ready to run a three hour marathon. If all the other stuff is in place, if your volume is proper, if your density is proper, if the intensity on your easy runs is kept easy, 10 to 14 times a K. Now you might start your bill with eight. Eight times 800. Excuse me. It may be 255 to 259, right? You might do that workout. I don't know. 14 weeks before the marathon, 14 weeks before the marathon, right? And then maybe the next time you do it, you do nine. Then the next time you do that workout, right? If you do 800 again, you can do 10, okay? And sort of add a rep, okay? Add your volume just a little bit at a time and you'll be fine. What's another track workout that I would recommend? If you can get to where you can run eight to 10 times 1000 meter repeats in 340 to 344 with one minute walking recovery, okay? I would say you're in pretty good shape to be able to say, okay, I've got the capacity to run a three hour marathon in the very, very, just a near future, okay? But once again, maybe start at seven times 1000 and then go eighth the next time you do it, then nine than 10. I mean, some of you may want to go as far as 11 times a K. I don't think anybody to break through our hour's a marathon needs to go out and run 14 times 1000 meters. I don't think that level of volume is needed, okay? You do 12 times an eight, 10 times a K, 10 times a 1000 K, I call them Ks. 10 times a 1000, you're probably in good shape, okay? But once again, start out maybe with seven times a 1000, then that's 7,000 meters, okay? And so that's about the same distance as nine times 800. So maybe the next week, if you did 7 times a thousand in average 342 on them, right, then the next week maybe you want to go out and run 9 times 800 to mix it up a little bit, and do them in 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 655, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256, 256. Okay. On one minute recovery, right? And then you can you can go the next week, and you can you know if you did K's, then go 800, and you can go K's again the next week, or you can do this workout. Here's the third track workout I like. It's a big one. It's 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 2K, 2K, 2K. If you're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, my head is spinning." Now what the answer is you're going to do 4 times 2K and 3 times 1K, and you'll book in your workout with your 2K's on the end, and these alternate, 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 1K, 2K, 2K. Okay. Now you might, the first time you try this, you might just want to do 3 times 2K, 1 times 1K, right? Because 3 times 2K is 6,000 meters, and then 2 times 1K would be 8,000, so that would be about 8,000 meters, right? If you did four sets of 2K and 3, 1K, then you would, I think, be at 11,000 meters. So if you can get anywhere from running 8 to 11,000 meters of work by the last, say, five weeks of your marathon block, okay? I think you're in really, really good shape. Maybe the last six weeks of your marathon block, if you can be in that 8 to 11,000 meter range on the total volume of your repeat sessions, and you can do, you know, like I said, 800,000, the 2K, 1K's, that's an interesting workout because let me talk to you about the paces just a little on that. Those 2K's were long enough. You can slow those paces down just a little bit. So let's say you're doing your 1K's in, I don't know, let's say you're doing the 1K's in 342, 3343 on that. That's like, that's like 555 pace, 554 pace. You can maybe push those 2K's up to 605 pace, maybe even 610 pace and be fine. So run it 2K, which is 1.25 miles, that's five laps on a track, okay? Become through the mile in 608, 610, 605 on that, run smooth and comfortable, take 2 minutes recovery. The general recommendation is walking, okay? About 1 minute of recovery per 1000 meters run. I don't get silly with 800s and go, well, we should do 52 seconds recovery because it's 800,000, that's starting to get silly, okay? So I'll recommend about a minute recovery between your 1K's and 8. Just take 2 minutes after this 2K, right? Minimum a minute and a half, slow it down to maybe 605, 610 pace, it's a little nuanced, and then drop back down to running under 345 on the 1K segments, take 1 minute and just alternate, 2 minutes after the 2K, 1 minute after the 1K's, alternate that. Now, you can do 1200s using the same pace ranges. You can even do a cut down where you go, I don't know, 1,400, 1,000, 1,000 meters, you can even do that descending and keep your recovery anywhere from a minute and a half for 1,500 meters down to about a minute for 800s and sort of come down the ladder. There's all kinds of fun ways you can do it. But my recommendation is for any repeats that are under, say, 1,500, 1,400 meters, you should really be at 550 to 6 minute pace on about a minute of recovery per 1,000 meters run is the general rule. What do I find this equates to? It's actually pretty close to critical velocity pace that I've talked to before, about before. And that's really what we're doing when we're running these paces, when we're training for a 3 hour marathon is these are generally speaking critical velocity workouts. That's why I'm talking about 1 minute recovery per 1,000 meters run. Resist to earth to run too fast. Resist to earth. Listen man, I'm a dirt bag lawyer like I've said twice today so far. And the reality of it is, is one of the things that I learned very early on in my career is just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can be annoying and file that motion to compel. Maybe just a phone call to that lawyer saying, hey man, I think you forgot to turn over this evidence to me because you shoot it over to me, right? Lot less annoying. Just because you can run faster on these 800s and 1000s where you have blood squirting out the corners of your eyes. You've got nuts and bolts flying off your hips and your knees and all that. Just because you can't, doesn't mean you should. Because the chance of you laying around, rolling around in the mud like a scalded earthworm when you're done are pretty good because that mentality of running like that till the gas tank is completely empty at the end of the workout. I call that here in Texas, the football coaching short hiker upper workouts. You know, that football coach that wore those horrible gray bike brand coaching shorts and they hocked them suckers up. You tough guys. Come on boys. I need you to run to your puke. Not what we're doing. It's not what we're doing here. So hold some gas in the tank. Hold that foot off of the accelerator, even when you have this sort of this tough guy or tough girl sort of high schoolish run until you puke and you're laying on the ground. And how? that carries over a bit, I think, into our sporting lives after high school and even post-collegedly, I admit I ran like that in college, some too. Don't do it. Your effort level should not exceed an eight on a scale of one to 10 on these repeat workouts. Okay, some days it may be a little hard. The last couple of reps, you may be close to eight and a half for a nine on your effort scale. Listen, no crime committed per se, but you gotta be careful where it's like, "Oh man, I've run all these repeats in 256. "I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna scald. "I'm gonna run like a scalded dog on these last two "and dip down and you're running 249, 247. "And you're, you're, you got drool connected "from your bottom lip to the ground. "You know, that's when you've had a tough one. "When it's a string and it connects to the ground "from your bottom lip. "Hey, you know, um, just hold that in reserve. "You know it's there. "You don't have to do it to convince yourself. "And guess what? "You wake up Thursday morning "and you do not feel like you've been beaten by a pallet "of hammers." And so then on Thursday, you get up, you go have a nice conversational run with Eddie Earl or Blueberry or Sally May, okay? And you're down there running down the road and it feels pretty good, pretty easy. You're like a little fatigue from the day before, but nothing extraordinary, right? Nothing what I would, that I would refer to as aberrant. Okay? Be careful. Resist the urge to do the football coaching short hiker upper last 800 or last 1000. Hold it in, hold onto those reins. Be super, super, super disciplined. Okay? Really be disciplined. You know you're tough. You know you're capable. You don't have to prove it to yourself by running yourself ragged on those last couple of reps. Just hold it in. You're gonna be okay. A little faster. Oh, okay, fine. But you don't need to go and hammer like all out. All right? Now, tempo workouts. I recommend alternating these. Okay? One week, okay? On maybe a Wednesday, you can go to the track or go to your path and run your repeats. I recommend then, let's go up and learn, run a tempo session. Now, anywhere from a row big threshold, which is sort of your pace that you can run for two to three hours, down to max VO2, which is your pace you can run all out for 10 minutes. So you can imagine that there's like a wide range of the kinds of running you can do. But when we're talking about tempo sessions, we're really talking about a lot of lactate threshold stuff, which is sort of your one hour race pace, down to slightly faster than that. You can sort of work all the way down to half marathon and even paces between 10K and half marathon pace. Okay? Um, um, you know, and in the reality of it is, you stay in those zones and keep yourself out of trouble. What do the three hour marathon workouts look like on one of these days? I'm gonna give you three, although obviously, the permutations on these are almost innumerable, but I'm gonna give you three solid sessions that I like to use. One of them can be a five to six, even up to a seven mile tempo run, at I would say 640 to 645 pace, okay? Maybe dipping down into the high six thirties of the weather's great, you're feeling good and you're at the end of your session, your session, meaning a five to six, even up to a seven mile tempo run. I mean, I tell you, if you can go out run six miles at 640 flat pace, feeling really, really solid, never going over the line into sort of a race effort, you're nailing it. But then after you're done with this tempo run, let's go jog 800 meters, okay? Nice and easy. Grab a sip of water, but let's go to the line and run maybe two times a mile repeat, and on these, we're gonna go faster. I would say, drop down maybe 10, 15 seconds a mile faster than what you ran on your tempo run. So let's say you go and ran seven miles at 640 pace, or six miles at 640 pace, go and run easy for 800 meters, let's go run two times a mile repeat in 625, with a two minute active jogging recovery in between, okay? You can even do six miles and do three times a mile repeat. Five miles and do it through three times a mile repeat, okay? Seven miles, maybe do two times a mile repeat, something of that ilk. That's a session that's really, really good. All right? Now, another work I'd like to use is maybe doing a four mile tempo run, let's say 635 to 640 pace on the front end, going jog 800 meters, then let's go and run four times an 800, and let's drop that down to not what you're doing when you're running 800s on the track. Let's run these about probably 10 seconds slower, even up to 15 seconds to throw you a dome on the track. So maybe go and run a four mile at 640 pace, four times an 800, 305 to 310, with a minute and a half jog in between, okay? And then here's the tough part. Come back and do another four mile tempo run. Maybe a three-miler. Run it, 640 pace, right? Four miles at 640, four times an 800 and 310, on a minute and a half recovery, four miles at 640. Guys, that is a recipe for success. If you can hit a workout like that and feel in control and feel good and not wrecked and you can wake up the next day and not feel super fatigued, jaded, achy, sore, exhausted, all the stuff that comes with flying a little bit too close to the sun on our hard days, okay? Another session I have to use. Good old fashioned mile repeats, guys. Knock down six to eight of them. I like people to build up to eight if you can. Seven works two, okay? And let's run them typically. Once again, I'm telling you, typically, let's run these about 20 to 30 seconds faster than goal marathon pace. So let's call it 25 seconds, right? If you can run eight-by-mile repeat in 625, maybe down to 620 with a minute, let's call it two-minute easy jog recovery. You're in really, really good shape, right? So what I'm managing this, you go out and do eight-by-mile repeat in 625, two minutes recovery. The next week come back 10 times an 800, 255 to 259 on a minute walk recoveries, right? Then come back the next week and run, I don't know, six miles at 640 pace and then three times a mile repeat in 625, right? With two minute jogs in between them. I mean, that's pretty good three weeks, guys. That's a pretty good three weeks, okay? Now your long runs. What I recommend is on weeks where you're doing your long run at an easy pace, okay? And at the beginning of the block, you might be only running 14, 13, 14, 15 miles on your long run at the beginning of the blocks, right? And just sort of building into it is, you know, you get your 13, then 12, then 11 weeks out from the marathon. As long as you're running your runs, just at an easy pace. Once again, conversational, out there with blueberry and Betty Sue, just talking about how Rankin County just absolutely crushed us on Friday, not in that football game. Just run easy. On Fridays was to our hundreds, maybe do our 22nd accelerations, okay? And then go out Saturday and just nice easy long run. When we get, when we get about eight weeks out, sometimes nine, maybe seven weeks out from the marathon, things are gonna change a little bit. Every other week, I recommend inserting large segments of pace work in your long runs, okay? There are innumerable ways to do it. Many coaches structure it differently on sort of the segments that they have them run, the pace of the segments, the length of the segments, but the reality is, is everybody should be doing something in their long run workouts. At various points during the block, here's what I recommend. You need to be doing probably at least two to three long run workouts up to four, I think to get the job done. When would you do these? I say let's do it eight weeks, six weeks, four weeks, and approximately two weeks out from the marathon, I'll get to that last one, two weeks before in a little bit. Or you can do, do them nine, seven, five, and three weeks out. If you're prefer to do a 20 to 21 day taper, some people get to feel really, really stale in the taper and feel really sluggish and restless by the time they get to the end of a three week taper. So I've gravitated a bit in recent years to like a shorter 14 to 16 day taper, and I'll get to that in a moment. But do them every other week. Why it's a density thing. It's just really hard to go out and do a 20 mile workout on a weekend, then do a midweek workout on Wednesday, then do a 21 mile workout the next weekend, then a Wednesday workout, then a 22, I mean, you get the picture here. So here's what I like to do. Let's do a 20 mile workout. Let's say structure this, where we're six weeks out, let's do a 20 mile workout. Then let's drop back to 16 to 17 the next week. Then four weeks out, we can do a 20 to 21 mile workout, drop back to 16, 17 miles easy. party, pacing, talking to Betty Sue, right? On those down, on those sort of down weeks, then go up, maybe hit a 22-mile workout. 14 to 16 days prior to the marathon. It keeps you fresh, it keeps you feeling better. It leaves you then able to really do a bang-up job on your midweek workout, right? Without having to then have junk in your legs every single time you get to Monday because you've throttled yourself on the weekends. So I'm thinking maybe two, three, and then up to four. Now, what are some long run workouts? Your first one actually can be a bit fart-like-y, okay? You can do maybe eight times three or four minutes at slightly faster than go marathon pace with a two-minute float at slower than marathon pace, but maybe slightly faster than just easy run pace, right? So maybe run eight times four minutes at 640 to 645 pace with two minutes at, let's say, 730 to 740 pace and alternate that. Four minutes at 640, two minutes at 740, four minutes at 640, two minutes at 740, do that eight times, nine, maybe ten times during the 20 mile run or even maybe a 19 mile run, eight weeks out, seven weeks out from the marathon, okay? Two weeks later, come back. I like doing a four, three, two, one, cut down. It's sort of canova-esque, okay? You might run, say, five miles on the front end and then run four miles at 645 pace, then a mile float, then three miles at 640 pace, then a mile float, then two miles at 635 pace, right? A mile float and then a mile around 630, right? And that would be mile 18 maybe of the workout and then 19 and 20 run nice easy two on the end, you're to 20 miles, right? When I say float, there's a difference between a float and a jog. Here's one thing that I've begun stressing more in recent months and years. Listen, man, if you go out and run four miles at 645 pace and then you jog a mile in 14 minutes, you're getting almost full recovery, okay? Almost full recovery and then you come back and run your three-miler and you run 635 pace. You're feeling real good about that and you scramble to your cell phone to text coach or text your buddy, look what I did, bubble-bots, yeah, but the devil's in the details, right? Your recovery's were so slow that your heart rate is dropping in a man's amount. You are coming, quote unquote, down so much that, yeah, I bet you can run three miles pretty easily when you essentially power walk a mile, okay? So what I tell people is let's make sure that we're training for the marathon, not training to run four miles, three miles, two miles, one miles as fast as we can run those segments and then just basically not doing anything for that mile in between. So here's what I would tell you. Control the pace on the segments on these long run workouts and then keep the pace moving fairly briskly, okay? On your one mile, quote unquote, float, here's what I would tell people. You really probably ought to try to keep that thing under eight minutes, okay? For your one-mile recovery run. If you ran four miles of 640 and then go on run a mile and 750, then three miles and 635 to 640, then a mile and 745 to 750, that's probably pretty good workout. That's probably pretty good workout, okay? Even down to 730 on those quote, floats because they're not jogs, okay? They're floats. So it's faster than a jog. A float is even faster than sort of what your daily, easy run pace would be by just a little bit, by just a little bit, okay? So maybe four, three, two, one, it's 10 miles of work, great stuff. Maybe you can do a 424 on 21, 22 mile day. You get a mile float in between the, after the first four and a mile float after the two mile segments. So you can go four miles to 640, maybe two miles at 625 to 630 pace, then four miles back up at 640 to 645 pace, mile float between segments, right? That's what 10 miles, then 11, 12 miles with the float to between. So let's do two miles on a tail end. That's 14 miles. If you want to get to 21, start with six, seven miles easy on the front end, seven miles conversational, running with blueberry, petty sue, and then after your seven miles, easy seven miles, launch into it. Four miles, float, two miles, float, four miles, two miles on a tail end, get to 21 miles, go and chug you a protein shake, go get some carbs, get to the house, okay? And then we have what's called the big daddy workout. The big daddy workout is one that I like to use now and again, and I don't always use it for everybody I coach, but I've used it pretty effectively for a lot of people I coach. And so it's the only sort of like workout that I'm super proud to admit that I just literally created out of thin air one time. It worked great. I've used it before, and basically here's what you do. It's 22 miles. You need to do six sets of one mile, okay? You do two miles easy on the front end. I'm sorry. And then six sets of one mile at, oh gosh, I don't know guys. And anywhere from 20 to 30 seconds slower than goal marathon pace, right? So in this case, we would be, let's run 715, okay? 720, 720, right? Or a mile. And then let's run two mile straight at about 10 seconds. Fashionable marathon pace, right? So the workout might look like 720 always start actually with the, with the, with the slow mile, right? So do two miles warm up. Then go 720 640 640 726 4640 726 40 640 640. It can be 725. It can be 638 642. But you get the drift that sort of range up down down. Slow for one. Slow for one. Fast for two. Slow for one. Fast for two. Do six x to that. That's 18 miles. Okay. And that'll, that'll, that'll, that'll have you seeing a couple of stars now. By the time you get to that into that six set, you're going to be feeling it. You're going to be feeling it. Okay. And then go two mile easy. Cool down. You're at 22 miles. Now where do you place this last one if you do this big daddy, but you don't have to. You can do, you know, a five, you know, a six mile four mile two mile cut down. You can do a four three two one. You can do five two five four two four. You can do all kinds of little permutations on these, but the, this is sort of, forgive the expression, the genre of workout. You need to be doing, okay? Once every other week, probably six four and two ish. Here's the ish. I like if you have a Sunday marathon for you to do your last long one workout, if your work schedules and life schedules will allow for it on Friday, 16 days before the marathon. People said, well, why can't I just do it two weeks before I have a Saturday marathon, do it 14 days? What's the difference? Well, the difference is seven percent, seven percent, okay? If you look at the differences, you're doing a workout 15 days or 14 days or 16 days versus 15 days anywhere from six and a half to eight percent. Okay, more recovery by adding in that extra day to your taper. Seven percent is statistically significant enough to where I think we ought to be taking heat and paying attention to that. So I tend to not like to push these really, really last big long one workout too close to your marathon because then you're going to spend possibly a lot of the next week recovering from this pretty, pretty tough workout, okay? So try to put it on maybe on a Friday if you have a Sunday marathon and suddenly you've got a 16 day taper that works really nicely. Do it on a Saturday, 15 days, you're pretty solid, right? Oh, if you don't have somewhere to be on a Friday or a Saturday, 15, 16 days before a marathon, do it on a Thursday, but that zone is kind of nice and I find that sometimes the 21 day tapers can be, excuse me, I'm so sorry, the 21 day tapers can be a bit long and sometimes people get a little sluggish, but sometimes they work great and if you've traditionally done pretty well on 2021 day tapers, buy all means. Do your last big long one workout three weeks before and then it opens up the opportunity to do something a little bit paceier, maybe at the 10 day mark, okay? Which is the midpoint of your taper. You can do some big workout, maybe a big or a hard six to seven mile session where you might be running 20 seconds a mile faster than go on marathon pace for the whole six or seven miles. You can do that 10 days out from a marathon, maybe if you do a 20 day taper, okay? The non-running stuff, guys eat a good diet, okay? Make sure that you're eating plenty of carbohydrates. I cannot stress enough that underfueling is one of the biggest problems in the marathon running world. I find that people are not eating enough carbohydrates. They don't really appreciate how much fuel we need to put in when we are burning as many calories and we're using as much energy as we are every single day. Inrun, inrun nutrition. On your long runs, even on your day to run, you can condition your gut. Take gels, BPN Go gels, for instance. Take them. I don't know if you have any session that's over an hour in length. Take a gel. Understand that you need five to 700 milligrams of sodium per hour. Okay, when you're exercising and when you're running in a race, understand that you probably need a gel once every 20 to 35 minutes, depending on what your GI tract can handle. Okay, once every three to four miles, a bare minimum. A bare bones fueling plan would be a gel at 5, 10, 15 and 20. That's bare bones barely getting it done. But it's better than nothing. Do not shortchange yourself by failing to fuel you would never leave on a driving vacation. To go drive across, drive the Topeka. Okay, with your gas tank on empty. Because you ain't going to get to Topeka. Because you might have a really well-built car. You might have a great engine under your hood. But without gas, you ain't going to go. Same thing with fuel. So let's fuel inruns. Practice, practice, practice. Do not wait until two long runs before the marathon to go. Well, now I'm going to go down and purchase some gels and I'm going to start. Now, man, let's start 13, 14, 12 weeks before, okay? Do it even on days when you don't think you're going to need any fuel. I'm only going to go and run for 75 minutes today. Now, man, here's what I would recommend. Put a gel on your stomach at the 5 mile mark. Just to get your stomach and your GI tract used to putting the carbohydrates and the sodium and the stuff that's in gel gels that's in your electrolyte replacement fluids on your stomach that way on race day, okay? You're going to be really, really used to it and you have a reproducible fueling plan. Lifting, be do something, be doing something. Forgive me. A couple of days a week will get it done. One day a week's better than none, guys. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Get something that's functional, that's reproducible, that you're going to stick to. If you can do it 30 minutes, twice, three times a week, hit the big stuff, maybe some band work, have some dumbbells, maybe in your bedroom or your living room or your garage where you can go and take care of the basics, addressing some posterior change strength, your quad strength, hamstrings, glutes, hit the good stuff, you're well on your way. Don't make it elaborate, okay? You can, you can go down to the gym and do barbell lifts and all of that, that's really good. But man, a lot of you are busy. A lot of you may not have the time to mix that in. Let's do what we can on that front and the reality is, we do have to make it about the running because it's a running race. We really do have to keep the running at the front and center, be doing something strengthwise, more from a preventative standpoint. If not from a performance enhancement standpoint, it'll help prevent some injuries. Okay? Sleep, people sleep, you got to sleep. You neurologically recharge when you're asleep. Your muscle fibers are connective tissue, heal after hard sessions. We now understand that sleep deprivation, unfortunately, which is glorified a little too much. I think especially in Western culture where it's go, go, go, go all the time, you got to try to wrestle some sleep. Even if it's an extra 15, 20 minutes or not, more than normal, really proud or it has that. Don't doom, scroll, put the phone down, go get in the bed, turn the lights off and let's try to get some good sleep. Your body's full, thank you. You'll function so much better. Okay? At the end of the day, though, the last thing I want to address is pick your race. Pick your race. You got to pick your race that's going to allow you to perform your best. Listen, man, I've been saying this and I'm sticking to it. It hasn't failed me much. Lop is too short for three things. Drinkin' bad coffee, drinkin' bad red wine and run in hilly hot marathons. Now listen, I get it. I get it. The big serve marathon is a fantastic race. It's an amazing experience. It's hilly, though. Okay? And if you are right at that cusp and you've been hitting these workouts and you're right there, and wait, your PR is 304 or 306. Be careful. Be careful picking a race that may be a three to four minute hurdle or barrier to you because that's how much it's going to slow you down because of the topography. Listen, wonderful races. Interest incredible experiences and just some incredible people all over the world, all over the U.S. to put on these wonderful marathons. But choose the race that's going to benefit you the most for this incredible goal. Choose the race that's going to benefit you the most to have this for what some people is sort of their drop the mic moment. Their sort of elite moment as a runner because breaking through makes you elite. Pick a race that has good weather. Traditionally, get out your Omanac, go back and look at the last 10 years, throw out the warmest day, throw out the coldest day, average the starting temperature for the middle of eight years there and that's what you can kind of predict you're probably going to get in that locale. Do the research on your race, right? How many people break three on that course? Are you going to be running completely alone, right? Go do the research and past your results and say, hey, I'm not going to be able to pass in your princess this still a little bit. That's okay, man. I'm not going to be surrounded by people who are going to be my height people and I'm going to be their height person going in that last six miles. That last five miles of the marathon, where am I going to be a no man's land? Is it going to be 75 degrees? Am I going to be running uphill alone? Right, you got to be thinking about these things just a little bit when you know you're marching for air is relatively small. Okay, and I get to go and do one of my favorite parts of every day when I come into the studio to record these is going to my mail back to see what we've got. So I'm going to put on my little spectacles here and let's take a look and see. Oh, I like this one because I think this is on a lot of people's mind unfortunately, which is from Nutty Fit Bondy. The question is how fast can one get back to their pre-injury fitness and speed after an injury? That's a good question and there's a little bit of sort of an it depends to it, but my answer very simply is faster than you may think. I think that what happens is we believe that we spend all this time building all this fitness and that we lose it fairly instantaneously or really quickly and the answer is yeah, we can have a dip and a lot of times we feel rusty coming back from an injury and we don't feel super, super great and we have lost a little fitness, right? When you haven't been running, okay? But if you stayed active and you've cross trained a bit, right? While you're sort of healing whatever has ailed you, you are going to be really surprised at how fast you get back in shape as long as you're patient and as long as you're sort of meticulous in your approach in building volume, okay? Understand that there is sort of this concept of aerobic memory and neurologically sort of once you've been in shape, it's possible to get back in shape much faster and so if you're injured but you've been running really, really well and running fairly good volume up to that injury, listen man, you're going to be able to get back really, really fast and breathe deeply. It can be a bit anxiety inducing. I admit it, I understand. Am I ever going to get back where I was? The answer empirically is yes, you're going to be just fine. Now listen, this has been a lot of fun. I have my own take, right, on the best way to go about trying to control the controllables to break through hours in a marathon. Good luck to everybody out there. Good luck on your running journey. There is no dream that's too big and there is no goal that's too small. Own your goals. Chase your dreams within reason and believe in some you. You got to believe in some you and I think you could get this done if you're close, okay? Alright, I had fun chatting with you guys about this. Y'all be a go-be good but you know what coach is about to say. Go-be consistently good. Alright, coach out.