As Emmet Maloneenters into his last six weeks of training, he talks to experienced marathoner Dick Hooper about what's left on the agenda
It's not that I'm not enjoying the longer runs that come with the later stages of training for my first marathon but I do have to confess to having felt just a little bit of relief a while back when I first heard of the whole concept of "tapering off".
I'm still not entirely clear how it can be that your body performs better over 26 miles if you start to wind down your preparations two or three weeks beforehand. (It sort of seems cruel to lull your limbs into believing the worst is behind them like that.) Still, given that it means there's only a month or so before the worst is behind me, I'm really not complaining.
Naturally, of course, it's important to remember that things are going to get a good deal harder before they begin to get a little easier again.
"If you have six weeks or so left before your marathon," says three-times winner of the now Adidas-sponsored Dublin race Dick Hooper, "then the next four weeks are definitely the most important from a training perspective. You're going to do the bulk of your runs, your long runs and both mentally and physically they're critical to preparing you for the race itself."
Hooper, who raced over the distance himself some 42 times and competed at three Olympic Games, still runs and coaches with his club Raheny Shamrocks.
"What I'd be telling people is to aim for an 18-mile run and a 20, maybe two 18s and a 20 and you'll be sure of surviving the day. If you can do a 20 and a 22 then you're into the territory of achieving time goals that you've set for yourself but the main thing for most people is to get those two or three longer runs done and when you do you'll notice almost immediately the difference when you drop down to something like 14 or 16 miles."
Covering the distance is, apparently, the key thing on these outings with pace not an issue unless it is going to be on the day. Indeed running slowly helps condition the body to burning fat rather than carbohydrates which, come race day, should help you to avoid hitting the dreaded "wall".
Hooper, meanwhile, also advises that you start getting used to pacing yourself lest you fall prey to a little bit of over exuberance on the race day itself.
"It's easily enough done in the excitement of the thing," he says. "Maybe not even in the first two or three miles but in the fifth to tenth miles with people out cheering you on and people running quickly beside you. It's important to be careful then and, ideally, to prepare for it."
While it's important not to overdo it or raise the distances you are covering in long runs by more than a couple of miles each week, a run of 20 miles or more is going to greatly bolster both your self belief and physical capacity to run the longer distance a few weeks later.
"The mental preparation is every bit as important as the physical," he says. "You have to educate your body to distribute the energy it has over four hours or so and you have to teach the mind to occupy itself for the same sort of time span.
"If you have a good experience then it will be a huge help when it comes to going back out for the race but if you have a bad experience then that makes things that bit more difficult."
For those still trying to make an impact on their prospective finishing time, there is the opportunity to make a difference by doing some speed-work although, observes Hooper, a great many people will never see the need.
"You'd be surprised at how much speed you can coax out of a body but you'd be surprised too by the number of people who never do that sort of work, they simply get very good at putting in the miles and so if they run 4:30 this year, they'll run it again that bit more easily next year because they have that many more miles under their belts in the meantime."
For those who do want quicken things up, the most common types of training techniques are interval training, tempo runs and fartleks (Swedish for "speed play").
Perhaps the most effective way of setting your goals and gauging your progress when engaged in these forms of training is by using a heart monitor (the cheapest ones start at under €40) although before you start you'll have to discover your own "maximum heart rate" which is not the most precise of sciences unless, of course, you have the right equipment.
The most common equation is to subtract your age from 220, leaving me with an estimated figure of 180. A more precise method, suggests Eddie Daly, a GP and member of Bray Runners, might be to run flat out up a 500 metre or so hill and jog back a few times while wearing a heart monitor.
By the third ascent, Daly observes, whatever rate your heart is beating at is going to be pretty much its upper limit although he cautions that, "if you're 55, five stone overweight and smoking a lot, this really isn't recommended for day one of the new regime".
The idea then, is to improve your aerobic capacity through a combination of slow, steady running and speed work with at least one faster run recommended each week. Most of your running will be done with your heart rate at 73-83 per cent of its maximum but during the most intensive sessions the rate may commonly come within just a few beats of its upper limit.
"You have to clock up the miles in order to build the stamina required to run a marathon," says Daly. "But if you're pushing yourself all the time then you're far more likely to pick up injuries, even minor strains, so it's important to run well within your limits most of the time so as to avoid problems and to make sure you're well rested and fully recovered for your next session."
By running more quickly in controlled sessions, he says, you can build up your body's tolerance of the lactate acid that tends to build up in the muscles as you run. When the acid builds up it becomes much harder to maintain the pace of your running.
"If you can improve the amount of lactate acid you can tolerate in your muscles," he says, "you can run a marathon significantly faster."
Fartleks are runs containing significant variations in pace. The runner can play with the speed he or she is running at almost randomly although, ultimately, a reasonable portion of the overall session is completed at a quicker pace.
Interval training involves repetition of particular predetermined distances separated by carefully controlled rest periods - three two-mile runs at race pace, for instance, with five-minute rests or a dozen 400-metre runs with shorter breaks.
Lactate threshold/tempo runs generally involve a light, easy pace at the outset of the training session, a more intense period in the middle followed by another easy phase to wind down. A 40-minute run might be divided into three sections with a 10-minute warm-up followed by a more intense 20-minute period at something like 10-mile race pace, before a 10-minute cool down.
A fairly comprehensive list of recommended training paces taking into account your times in recent races can be obtained at www.mcmillanrunning.com.
For further details on the marathon and previously published material in the HealthSupplement log on to: http://www.ireland.com/focus/marathonfocus/