London Marathon under 3 hours...?!

[ryandj2]

Hi, well I don't know if anyone here will be particularly interested in my marathon training log but I wanted to keep a record of it and here seemed like a good enough place!

As mentioned here... http://forum.myprotein.co.uk/cardio-...-marathon.html ... I got in to do the marathon on 25th April 2010.

I have done a couple of marathons before, most recently being Nottingham in 2007 which I finished in 3 hours 35. Not bad, but I was hoping for under 3 and made a mistake of going off too fast and running out of steam half way round. The training plan i followed before was excessive with 5-6 days of running, easily over 50 miles a week.

So this time round, I am going to follow something along these lines: The FIRST Three Day A Week Marathon Schedule - Runner's World General

I won't need to start that till Christmas so will build up with sprints and getting up to a decent 10 mile time by then. I am also doing the Great South Run at the end of October so that will give me a good indication of where I am!

Plan is, 3 days a week running as in the RW plan above, then gym 2-3 days a week following a sort of SL5x5 programme http://forum.myprotein.co.uk/trainin...glift-5x5.html. I don't want to lose too much strength or muscle size (what little I have gained this last year or so) but realize this may be ambitious for now, so will see how it goes.

Current stats:

5'11"
12 stone 5 lbs
Body fat 18% (from Tanita, athough not sure how reliable that is)

[ryandj2]

Monday 5th October

Circuit training 50 minutes

[ryandj2]

Tuesday 6th October

Run, to test the waters...

3 miles
23 minutes
7:35/mile

[ryandj2]

Thursday 8th October

Sprint sessions

8x200m (times in seconds) jogging as rest(slowing down to walks for the last few sets)

35
45
47
36
26
35
40
39

Average = 37.9

[Ripped Barbarian]

Good luck mate.

Consider sprint training as well as long distance, keep muscle levels on your legs up:
Bigger legs mean lazier contractions are required, fatigue sets in slower and your mitochondria can keep up better.

From research and experimentation i have done i believe that the 'getting in lots of miles training' alone for a goal of doing a single event is misguided and inefficient.
A quicker route to fitness is a strong, intense stressor.....if you can sprint like a cheetah for 2 miles then running a marathon will be a walk in the park, providing you have the metabolic ability to provide fuel (given by your LD training and nutrition techniques)
Continuing to do medium length runs at slow pace won't do much to boost fitness and running capability, it'll just use energy.

To complete a marathon quickly your body needs:
-Cardiovascular ability to deal with the demands in blood.
-Lung efficiency to supply oxygen and expel Co2 (you better not smoke!)
-Adaptations to supplying energy (glycogen and fat) for the length of the run, you will need to burn mostly fat.
-Physical muscle ability to carry you without undue fatigue (larger muscles would help)
-Mitochondria fitness, an ability to regenerate large amounts of ATP from the fuel your body supplies (this required B vitamins, magnesium, phosphate etc) and sufficient fitness and requirements for cell singalling/PNS signalling.

These are of course achieved through training the body (giving a stressor so it adapts to make the exericse easier, or even possible) and through diet/supplementation as i describe.

I havn't run a marathon with my training/nutrition techniques (i did a 28 mile run back in 2004) but i have done 10k runs and got 38 minute times without much pain, or any training other than short distance.

EDIT: Oh i see you have some sprint sessions, excellent! ...ignore my babbling about them above then!

[robja88]

not sure about marthons don't really have much knowledge of long distance running, good luck.


however the reason i'm posting is, u say your 5stone 5lbs at 5Ft 11", surely thats a typo?

[ryandj2]

Quote

not sure about marthons don't really have much knowledge of long distance running, good luck.


however the reason i'm posting is, u say your 5stone 5lbs at 5Ft 11", surely thats a typo?

Whoops! 12 stone 5 lbs! Corrected that thanks. Dunno what i was thinking.

RB - cheers for the tips!! I am planning on doing sprints as a main part of the training! Check out the link in the first post for the plan i plan to follow!

With regards to adapting to fat burning for distance, any tips there?

[cheef]

good post rb nothing to add to that good luck tho

[echelon101]

Quote

Body fat 18% (from Tanita, athough not sure how reliable that is)

That's really high, for a dedicated marathon runner, you will need sub-10% at least.

[Ripped Barbarian]

Quote

With regards to adapting to fat burning for distance, any tips there?

A lot of long distance runners will use lots of carbohydrates to keep themselves 'fueled' during runs, when it comes to glycogen depletion (aka 'the wall') they'll find their body isn't very good at switching to fat burning quick, or utilizing large amounts of fat.
If you use sprinting techniques your leg muscles/liver will tend to be adapted to using glucose so will store more glycogen and delay 'the wall' however over a marathon distance you will require a smooth transition to greater fat burning and should actually be burning fat all through the race.

You know what switches on fat burning? AMP activated kinase.
Sprinting is the biggest activator of this pathway so will improve fat burning switch over.

You should also try some morning, fasted running (but not excessive distance due to cortisol when exercising in fasted state).
The body will be in a glycogen depleted state much faster and will upregulate genes/enzymes involved in fatty acid mobilisation/oxidation.

Quote

Because the AMPK response to exercise decreases with increased training duration, many questions arise that would challenge the AMPK role with respect to biochemical adaptations to exercise and endurance training. This is due in part to the marked increases in the biogenesis and upregulation of mitochondria, GLUT-4, UCP-3, Hexokinase II and other metabolic and mitochondrial enzymes despite decreases in AMPK activity with training. Questions also arise because skeletal muscle cells which express these decreases in AMPK activity in response to endurance training also seem to be maintaining an oxidative dependent approach to energy metabolism, which is likewise thought to be regulated to some extent by AMPK activity.[22][23]

If the AMPK response to exercise is responsible in part for biochemical adaptations to training, how then can these adaptations to training be maintained if the AMPK response to exercise is being attenuated with training? It is hypothesized that these adaptive roles to training are maintained by AMPK activity and that the increases in AMPK activity in response to exercise in trained skeletal muscle have not yet been observed due to biochemical adaptations that the training itself stimulated in the muscle tissue to reduce the metabolic need for AMPK activation. In other words, AMPK will not become activated until it is "apparent" that the cell is in need of greater adaptation to exercise. Until energy stores (ATP) are depleted (ATP low + AMP high), AMPK will remain inactivated. Biochemical preparations for a high-intensity energy challenge must be exhausted before AMPK is to be activated in order to mediate further metabolic adaptations to exercise.

In other words, you need to push the body faster to achieve higher fitness rather than longer distances.

Long distance is just a matter of fatigue/energy supplies and ability to regerate ATP etc.