The Marathon Part 1

Welcome to the podcast from Stazastable, the Stable Master Speaks. My name is Majela Starrott and my name is John Starrott aka the Stable Master. In this episode, coming to you live from our mobile studio somewhere in Kerry, Pernod Carr Park, this time, we'll have a quick review of the feedback from the first episode and now it's the winners of our competition because you actually were all entered into a competition last week, even though you didn't realise it, for the most complimentary comments on our first podcast. We will review the stable gossip, news and racing and then we'll move on to coach's corner where John will examine the marathon and why so many people get it wrong. Yeah and but before we get cracking I just want to mention that I posted on the Instagram about that we'd recorded this one about a week ago which we had but it went on for far too long and we ended up covering too many topics so we're going to break those down into separate podcasts because it's still pretty interesting because as I said you know it was a cracking podcast but just way way too long and all over the place and then we tried to record it again on Sunday but I was sick because I came down with Covid. For the ten time. It's probably man flu really but you can hear my horse voice there you see that with a stable horse voice. He's been having cold baths so he can sound sexy all week. Yeah like Barry White but anyway yeah so but we're giving it a good old lash now and we'll see how it goes. Right then let's start with the feedback first of all we'd like to thank you very very much for over 70 comments that we've had about the podcast and all of it was very good and with some very good suggestions of how we can go forward and maybe make it a little bit better so again thank you most sincerely. We decided to award three prizes of a month in Spain at John's warm weather training camp. Yeah that's right and before I just announced the winners of that so we've got three people there there are a couple of other prizes as well and I just want to mention a couple of comments. The first prize outside of the warm weather training camp goes to Nigel the Rosser in Australia. Nigel mentioned that this podcast would be recorded from my swimming pool in Spain. He's wrong the third podcast probably will because I'll be out in Spain in a couple of weeks I'm for a month doing the warm weather training camp. I'll be home cutting the grass. However Nigel just so you know we're going to fly you out to Spain from Australia for two days and you can be my personal butler and you can serve me cocktails wearing a manchini while I record the podcast. Now I understand you're size small is that correct let me know and we'll send the manchini over to you. Also just want to mention as well about Val Gavenda who's won a prize outside of this too and this is what Val sent in. He said please tell Majella that she has a lovely voice and my lawn is quite overgrown in the back garden. If she got any time on her hands could you come and cut it? I do Val and actually if anybody else out there needs me to cut their grass I work very cheaply and John doesn't really pay me very much at all for all of my input into the podcast so I am looking for a third job if anybody's interested. So the subtext of that is that Majella is a cheap chick. Okay so good value good value not cheap good value. Okay that's true yeah and so let's have a look at the winners of the guys that have won the the month in Spain. So first off Mark Watts, Karl Gloster and Fyodor Regan all win a month at the stable warm weather training camp in Spain. I'll send the details after the podcast. Guys you don't need to take the full month because I know you might not be able to you can take a week 10 days two weeks three weeks four weeks it's up to you guys okay but the top comment was from Fyodor who fancies himself as a bit of a writer and this is his comment. Perfectly Cromulant first episode I like the heenie riff at the end and it's good to have Majella pricking the balloon of pomposity great stuff but just giving that Fyodor kind of fancies himself as a bit of a writer I'm guessing that his parents had a particular pawnshawn for the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and that's why they named him Fyodor but on Russian writing just as a little aside here for Fyodor many years ago before you were all born I remember getting on a bus in London to travel to Greece and I think it took three or four days to get there it was called The Magic Bus there was nothing magic about it was horrendous but when I went there I took two books with me one was War and Peace and the other was The Rivergirl a narrative poem by Wendy Cope and War and Peace is my introduction to Russian literature I read a few pages and got absolutely bored and left it but then moved on to the The Rivergirl and by Wendy Cope and read it and it's a beautiful poem and I was sitting in the campsite one day at the bar in the middle of the afternoon ratted on Retzina and in walks this woman she starts she saw the book and she started talking to me about the book and I was giving it all a big stuff saying oh yeah it's a load of sexist nonsense and it transpired that the woman that was talking to was Wendy Cope the poet who'd written the book and not the first one when you pissed off I'm sure but then we came pretty good friends after that and I did a lot of chats about poetry and we actually went to I remember rightly we went to Rupert Brooks Grave which was Rupert Brooks the First World War poet was buried in Skiiros but coming back from Skiiros I sort of thought I'd investigate Russian literature a little bit more and so I got into a little bit of Chekhov and a bit of Dostoevsky but Chekhov to me is a match for James Joyce on the short story so anyway that's a little riff there for Theodore the Russian writer and so anyway let's get on with the the real events just to say we'll have a quick look at the stable news roundup now there's loads of results recently from the stable news and you can check them all out and the race reports on the website Stazastable.com but the race reports are fantastic but just to give you some of the really great results that have come in recently we'll start off with Jan Tastik who snaffled the course record by over five minutes the win in the bling in the Glenmore 10 then across the pond we had Rachel Brewer who won the North Shore Classic Half Marathon 120 that's Rachel's first race in a long time she'd been that injured so she's come back we had Mark Cox just ran 34 minutes for 10 K to take six minutes off his 10 K PB he also recently took 31 minutes off his marathon PB to go sub three hours in 251 and in that same race we had Karl Gloster who ran his first marathon in 245 I think it was off the top of my head but he's only been running two years and he also recently just knocked six minutes of his 10 K PB to finish third in the Folkstone Coastal 10 K running 33 14 and then Majella's friend Val walked 19 minutes off his marathon PB to go sub three in 256 and then down under where Nigel De La Rossa is the mancini man we had Elise Becombe who sliced eight minutes off her half marathon PB to run 124 and take third prize in that race and obviously we've recently had the Cork marathon in half so we had some great results from there notably Brenda Canty who took eight minutes off her half marathon time Paula Machini 12 minutes off his marathon time to run 313 Jason Crosby popped seven minutes off his marathon time to go free 14 poor Drik Sheehan the old fella ran a PB in the half marathon 123 and he won the over 65s race as well and then zipping across the pond again DJ Jorff has just taken 1320 off his half marathon PB going 129 54 and we welcome DJ's wife Laurel to the state which he joined yesterday so they're the big results but the even bigger results are Darren O'Connor who went sub three hours he went from 341 to 255 slicing 46 minutes off his marathon PB now this feeds into what we're going to be talking about and also Claire Coleman who obliterated her 406 PB and ran 316 taking 50 minutes of her PB so like I said you can go to stazastable.com and look at the race results and the many many more there and the race reports and it's all entertaining stuff I suppose we need to get stuck into the coaching corner the meat of it so what are we going to be talking about today John well a lot of people who sent in comments were asking you know if we could talk about the marathon so I was thinking about the way to structure the podcast and I think the main thing that we want to get across to people is tips to help them that's what people want to know so rather than waffling on too much about my riffs in the literary world and my life let's talk about things that are gonna help people and nearly everybody wants to know about the marathon now it's a big big topic so it could be like a four or five parts so I think in this part there's just to kick things off what we'll do is if we have a little look back to sort of like COVID time because I think that feeds in nicely so from a coach's point of view COVID was fantastic because there weren't any races it meant we could periodize the training properly so we had you know we we knew we had a probably a good year to get some training done uninterrupted about racing and as a result of that if we look back to say is September October last year when all the marathons came back on within the stable we had a hundred and five people running marathons of those 105 97 run PB's now the majority of those run big PB's from 10 minutes to one hour the seven people who didn't run PB's there were a couple of reasons for it like traveling from the US to the UK's so jet lag a couple of people got COVID a couple of people picked up little niggles and things like that and a couple of people just got their races wrong but generally you know a great result there with sort of 97 people out of 105 running huge PB's and you think that was because of the COVID lockdown that led to all these PB's not necessarily the COVID lockdown itself but the fact that we were able to train for a year for the marathon and that's basically how you should do it most people do two marathons a year but really it should only be one marathon a year but there are some caveats with that which are well if we I think what we need to do is we need to look at the different types of runner so you've got elites you've got sub elites you've got the club runner you've got the guy the person trying to break three hours for the marathon and then people running between four hours and three hours so I suppose if we look at each of those categories because each category would approach the marathon in different ways but let's start with the elite okay now we're within the elite how would you define an elite first of all okay yeah yeah good good point so let's let's say this is gonna be a bit contentious but another people have different opinions of this but this is how I see it if we say the pinnacle of distance running is I suppose get into the Olympics and world records so the Olympic the qualifying time for the men in the Olympics I think it's 211 30 off the top of my head and 229 30 for women so if somebody's have run in those times they're probably you know be categorised as elite however we have to look at the elephant in the room and that's the shoes and the fueling okay explain further okay so everybody in the running world knows that the shoes give given advantage and a lot of the sports scientists and sports journalists are missing the fact that it's not just the shoes it's the morton the fueling so I'll just explain a little bit about that as well because it does sort of change or change I suppose the times compared to the past like five years ago so everybody thinks that the shoes are taken about four minutes off but if you run just with the shoes I think at the top end at the very elite end where we're talking Kipchoge and the guys are running sub two five you're looking with the shoes I suppose and with Morton as well about one minute to two minutes is the the difference compared to the old style but the old fueling and the old shoes when you're getting into the 210 to 11 category the people that are qualifying for the Olympics in the men's that is I think you're probably looking at about three or four minutes so a 210 guys really in old school I know or in old money a 213 to 14 guy and then I suppose if we go to that national standard and how do we define national standard and I think really this is probably the best way to define an elite somebody who's competing at national standard because if you're at national standard you have the ability or the opportunity at least to qualify for the Olympics so you're in there with everybody else and on that any given day you've got a chance and if we use the US Olympic trials qualifying times as that benchmark so in the men that's 218 and in the women it's now 237 has been moved down from 245 to 237 because of the shoes so many people qualified in the last Olympic trials they've knocked eight minutes off it and brought it down to 237 so that's pretty reasonable so I think that they're good benchmarks 218 and 237 for the women I think would qualify people as being an elite now within the elite structure you also have you've got different tiers as well so right at the top end you've got the world's best okay and as I mentioned there then you've got the 210 guys but just to put a bit of context on that an elite in Ireland so if we look at the Irish the people from Ireland that qualified for the Olympics we had three men Steve Scully and Kevin Seawood Paul Pollock and then the women's we had Vinula Britton and Ifa Cook now if we go to the men first of all if we if we took any one of those men and plop them into Kenya would they be elite no so even if we give them their time their 210 with their shoes and their drink they'd they'd be even struggling to be probably subal ee in Kenya and here's why a 210 guy in Kenya is more like a club runner in Ireland or the UK they wouldn't get the chance to get outside to race in the big races they would struggle for sponsorship they'd probably be living in a single room with an outdoor toilet and outdoor shower and they're probably milking cows and washing clothes to get enough money just to basically feed themselves so you know that's just a because at the moment there's a lot going on in Ireland in the UK about people wanting money for athletes who are competing at a national standard and really when you compare it across you know to other countries and things should these people be getting you're actually talking about training right now no sponsorship deals yeah no you're right I was just putting a bit of context on what an elite isn't work but you're right so let's peel it back round again so if we say 218 then is the benchmark for the sub elite sorry for the elite so a sub elite in my book is somebody that's running between 218 and 225 as a man 237 to 244 ish as a woman a club athlete or a good club runner for me is somebody's running 225 to 230 bearing in mind the shoes are 230 is really like 234 so that's a good club runner and in the women's sort of 247 to 252 in that area there and then of course we've got everybody else trying to get under three hours and then the people going from four hours down to three hours so they're the different categories now that's important because each of those categories would approach the marathon in a different way and how they would you know compete over the year so with an elite runner you would be looking at they might need to get the qualifying standard for the Olympic trials then once I've got this the qualifying standard they compete in the marathon and then if they're good enough then they go off to the major championship so that could be three marathons within a year or within 18 months or whenever six months or so now because they do that it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to do it equally a lot of elites will run two marathons a year one in the spring and one in the fall or the autumn and they do that because they want to try and win money and also they've got to have the exposure out there for you know on social media and the results to gain sponsorship as well okay but I suppose they're professionals aren't they that's what they do all the time well most of them are professionals but there are some people that aren't professionals you know they have jobs as well and even back you know when I was younger and running and things as well a lot of guys who are running 210 to 112 will work and a good example as we mentioned earlier say like Kevin Seawood who's coached by the great coach over in the UK there Andy Hobdall Kevin there it works as a vice principal or a principal of a school and Paul Pollock also coached by Andy Hobdall is a doctor so some people work and some people don't but yeah your point taken there about you know they need to earn money but because they do that then what everybody else is everybody else kind of follows that and that's what a lot of runners do wrong they look at what elites do and they try to copy what they're doing when really what they should be doing is looking at their own situation and trying to work out what's the best way for them to improve so you think three marathons or two marathons a year is excessive for a non-elite person absolutely yeah so and that's where we if we peel it back to the Covid situation why it was so good because people weren't able to race they were able to train properly and periodize their training and that's why so many within our group in the stable made such big improvements and even at the elite level as well so if you look at say Eva Cook for example going from 246 down to 232 and then qualifying for the Olympics as well if it didn't overrace so that's an example there and the same with some of the other elites I've got in the group at the moment the Kenyan guys that I've got at the moment don't overrace either and so if we come back around say like to Darren I don't think Darren's ran a marathon in the last 18 months you know she's been able to train and he's taken what was it 47 minutes off his PB Patrick Lawrence as another guys took nearly an hour off his PB Jamie McCarthy nearly an hour of his PB as well as your advice to just run one marathon a year then yeah that's the executive summary one man one marathon a year but you've also got to look at how to decide to run that marathon or when so you have to say do I want to run it in autumn or spring which are the main times when the marathons are and you have to look at that and then say to yourself okay do I prefer training in the winter in the wind and the cold and the rain or do I prefer the summer when it might be a bit warmer and humid do I want to race in the early autumn or late autumn because again the weather impacts how you're going to run possibly and the same in the spring so there are things that you have to pick so that's where you start you pick where you think your best opportunity is for your best time for me I think late autumn's the best for most runners in like Europe and I suppose in the US as well it means you're not training in in climate weather like wind and rain because one of the main jobs you have to do with your marathon training is to run at marathon pace and what you're trying to do is teach the body to burn glycogen economically at marathon pace if it's if you're trying to run in the wind and the rain that's very difficult to do so yes you could put the same effort in but you're not teaching the body to burn glycogen at marathon pace if you're running 20 seconds slower so that's one of the problems you have maybe training in the winter the other thing as well is you have to factor in his family so maybe people go on summer holidays for an extended period of time would that interrupt their autumn that their autumn marathon training and if so how do you combat that and get around that and deal with that and that's something that we'll talk about and the same at winter you've got Christmas and all of their festivities does that interrupt the pre-training going into the marathon? We like the Christmas festivities don't we John? Yes we do we do so that's something to consider as well but let's take for example somebody who's gonna run say you Majella's let's say you're a free 30 marathon runner and you just ran the Dublin marathon in free 30 and you're saying I'd love to get under three hours and that's what most people want to do who sort of are running at the moment outside of the elite category what you would do there is you'd need to take so we'll give a rough outline and then in the next episodes we're going to a little bit more detail but the rough outline for the preparation over the year would be something along these lines you finish your marathon you need to take a minimum of three weeks to recover but let me explain you'd need to take about a week to 10 days off of no running at all and then probably a week and a half of just easy running building back up to 65 minutes a day and the reason for this is you might feel like after a few days that you've recovered but you haven't neurologically it takes three weeks to recover from a hard marathon and if you try to come back before that you'll probably find that when you move in on in the year you're gonna end up getting injured or getting stale and burnt out and won't perform very well so I'd say three weeks you know for basic recovery then a week to transition back into normal training so if you've ran the Dublin marathon at the end of October November is kind of recovery and transitioning back into training and then sharpening up a little bit as well and we're giving that it's Christmas is a good time as well because you don't want to be training too hard all year around so December could be some light training bringing you back into speed work and tempo runs and without too much stress if you miss the odd run here and there you know with Christmas as well it doesn't put too much pressure on the family and stuff like that too but once we get into the new year that's the time to start getting the skates going now what you really have to do is you have to focus on improving your half marathon time okay because the quicker you get over the half marathon the faster you will be over the marathon if you do the training properly where a lot of people go wrong is they think they go down the scale and I think I need to get quicker over 5k or 10k and then I'll be faster over the marathon it doesn't work like that it's more about your threshold your half marathon sort of time and closing that with the marathon so the better way to work is to work towards improving your half marathon so January February March April May would be about improving your half marathon time and the reason why you should do that outside of the elite section so we're talking about people who are maybe a free 30 run they're trying to break three hours is most people in that sort of category there would probably be over 30 and probably possibly in their 40s and 50s as well and the safest way to train is in that area there where you're working around the threshold and just giving the odd session like a 5k tickle 10k tickle and then some structural runs so you'd be focusing on what I call the endurance spine and the structural runs which we'll talk about another time so there'd be your long runs your session in the week which would mainly be focusing at improving like your 10 mile half marathon in 10k without putting too much stress on the faster stuff because if you do that's where the injury risk is a lot of people think that the injury risk is in high mileage it isn't if you progress mileage properly it isn't necessarily a problem if you go into the speed working you're a little bit older that's where the big risk is because the muscular skeletal system gets overstressed and you get injured and you also get burnt out as well so that's one reason for the sort of kind of targeting the half marathon area also the training is far more enjoyable and if it's windy and raining through the January February March April months you're not having to try and do a 24 mile run with 18 miles at marathon pace your long runs probably gonna be two hours and if it's a horrendous day you don't have to stress too much you can drop the tempo when maybe turn it into a fire like session so whenever the winds on your back or something like that you can pick up the pace and you're not losing fitness that way and that's a good way to do it to work in there and to feed into there and that's exactly what the guys did in the group last year who ended up running all of the PB's in September and October this is what we focused on then after that we go into what I call the marathon bridge and again I'll expand on that in you know the next episode but the marathon bridge really is transitioning out of that half marathon 10 mile 10k type training and preparing you for going into the marathon training now ideally when you hit marathon training you want to be fit what a lot of people do is they say oh I'm gonna do a 20 week build up for a marathon or a 16 week build up for a marathon and run myself into fitness so they work on their speed and their endurance at the same time in progressing the mileage invariably what happens is they get injured burnt out or stale because it's too long for most people to be concentrating on the marathon blocker training so the better way to do it is is to start your marathon training with a half marathon race from that half marathon race about 12 weeks out from your marathon date you can almost tell within a minute what your marathon time is going to be all things being equal what you do you get your pace for your marathon your half marathon so if you ran your half marathon at say six minute mile pace or seven minute mile pace or eight minute mile pace just to make it easy to explain all you do is for the faster athlete so somebody who's sort of like already sub three hours you add 20 seconds on to your marathon onto your half marathon pace and that gives you your pace for your marathon six minutes 20 seconds yeah for some marathon mile yeah that that's kind of what you'd be doing if you run six if you run six minute mile pace for your half you're looking at six twenty for your marathon pace if you run seven minute minute miles for your half marathon you're looking probably at 720 to 725 if you run eight minute miles you're looking at about 825 pace okay so that's important because you carry that then into your marathon training so you're not trying to work out what your marathon pace is going to be and this is the problem when if you're working on speed and extending and trying to get faster during the marathon buildup it all goes wrong if you know your pace already all you have to work on is extending and that means then you can work on the long reps and the structural run the marathon pace runs and then it all kind of knits together neatly so that four weeks out from your marathon date you're doing something along the lines of a two mile warm-up 18 miles at marathon pace and a two mile cool down and then five weeks out you're probably doing something along three miles warm-up 18 miles at 10 seconds slower the marathon pace and three mile cool down when you get those two sessions ticked off you're tapering the long run down into the marathon and you know you're going to hit the times because you'll have practiced all the fuel and have everything right and ready to go so what we're doing there is it's more of a marathon in the sprint then of course absolutely or even an ultra marathon if it's year after year so but what we're looking at really here is is the more you get off the half marathon time each year the more you get off your marathon time so if you do two marathons a year you don't have the time to recover from the marathon work on your half marathon speed and then go into marathon training fit and improve so invariably what happens with somebody who runs back-to-back marathons are half say autumn spring autumn spring they they kind of stagnate I've seen it so many times so the guy might be running let's say somebody's run three hours and five minutes in this in the spring time so they think to themselves okay brilliant I know I can break three hours in the autumn but then they fail and they end up running maybe three three they just take a couple of minutes off because they rush back from their previous marathon and then they try to get a little bit quicker but they haven't got enough time to get faster properly in a progressive structured way and hit marathon training already fit and ready to go again so really they're just constantly running in and around the same place so if you think to yourself if this applies to you why are you not improving you know that you let you do a marathon block after marathon block this is probably the reason why you're probably getting injured stay all burnt out and not giving you enough time to get faster now by faster remember I don't mean over 5k in 10k we mean the half marathon there's no point for most people in their 30s and 40s and 50s trying to get faster over 5k yes you can you can get a little bit quicker but it won't necessarily translate into the marathon and it will more than likely end up at you getting injured because what you're probably going to do if you do 5k training is you're going to do the 5k training that's based around Frank Horwell's multi-pace training which is too intense for people in there like who come into running in their older age rather than like school kids and elite level sort of track runners so if you're doing sessions like 8 times 1k 4 times 1 mile 6 times 800 10 times 400 and you're in your mid 30s and older it's not a good idea because you're putting your musculoskeletal system under an awful lot of stress and pressure and now this is one of the things a lot of coaches will give you sessions like that and we'll come at it from this idea but a coach who comes from a physiotherapy or physical therapy background as well will understand that this is not necessarily the best thing because they understand that putting the body under that stress and pressure isn't a good idea as you get older yes you can do it but the return of the training that you're putting in is diminishing so you're better off working more comfortably enjoy the training work on the half marathon work on the threshold given the threshold at tickle and you can take in a year you can take seven to ten minutes off your half marathon time you know if you're running 130 there's no reason why you can't get from 130 down to 120 in the space of eight in the space of eight months we've done it loads of times within the group we've had people going from 142 to 122 in 10 months just by progressively structured training and that's without hammering out 10 times 400 and 8 times 800 and 8 times 1000 and things like that so that's you know one of the key ways to do it but we'll get stuck into the ins and outs of the training probably in the next episode where I will talk about another way to approach this and this is the main way that I approach the marathon when most people is we start off with probably I think the best kept secret in the distance running world which is the stazza super base so I talked to you about that that's four months then the marathon bridge then the marathon specific training so the next episode will go through all of those things yeah that makes I know very little about running really apart from what I've inadvertently picked up from listening to you but that really actually does make sense to me it does to to take a more long-term approach to it so you're building up gradually and you're not chucking the body into into pain yeah well that's it it's more sustainable really and more enjoyable you're not like battering away doing marathon training after marathon training the family's getting annoyed because you're always out doing long runs and you're you know like when I was training everybody knows they would be going mad I'd be out for four hours doing a long run or something and come back and I'd be no good for anything I couldn't cut the grass or anything at all so I don't know if all that's how my jello ends up cutting the grass before that so but yeah just just a couple of quick things as well if you've got any comments you can drop us an email at staza stable 1965 at gmail.com you can hit me on Instagram at staza underscore stable you can even drop me a whatsapp message my phone number is plus three five three eight three four three five double six nine so drop me a whatsapp message if you want anything there and also we'll set up the links for doing like direct messaging on on the podcast and then of course there's the the website itself as well staza stable.com you know just drop us a message through there if there's anything if there's anything you want to talk about or want us to talk about then send us a message you know and we'll go for it from there anyway thanks for listening yes thank you very much and sadly nobody wanted to hear about John running naked in the woods so actually they deliberately asked that we we not talk about that so sorry John actually in fairness it's more to keep it more appropriate for you guys in terms of what you want to learn about running that's the idea really yeah he was running very fast through the woods okay right then on the next episode we'll go into a little bit of detail about the staza's super base the marathon bridge and the marathon specific training and that's really for the guys who are running sort of like between four hours and two thirty you know we'll break it down into those two segments and then in the next episode we'll look more at the Subilee and the elite marathon training yes thank you very much for listening yep thank you take care bye you