Lessons in marathon running: Why running less often builds even more

All marathon journeys are about reaching your destination: the finish! In the fifth of our monthly series, The Irish Times continues its running lessons to help make that journey a little easier and a lot more fun – right to the finish of the 2023 Irish Life Dublin Marathon on October 29th.

Part 1: No other sporting event delights in the long countdown more than this classic distance

Part 2: Why you should get into the habit of doing morning runs

Part 3: Most of the comprehensive training plans begin six months in advance, others reckon four months is about enough

Northampton’s rise to the last four: Bulking up, defensive steel and attacking prowess

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Leona Maguire on the globe-trotting golf circuit: ‘We always joke that we’d make a very good Netflix series’

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Part 4: Here’s how to increase your running time and distance

If, like me, you always measure marathon running in old money – as in miles, not kilometres – you will know the importance of understanding your mile splits.

Not quite the Jacob Ingebrigtsen mile splits – as in the 4:00.3 followed by the 3:53.8 he ran in immediate succession to break the world two-mile best in Paris last month, his time of 7:54.10 improving by over four seconds the previous mark of 7:58.61 run by Daniel Komen in 1997.

For the marathon it’s a little less daunting and a lot more about consistency; if you want to run under 2:30, for example, this will mean running faster than six-minute miles, or an average of 5:42-per-mile; if you want to run under 3:00, the average would be about a minute slower per mile, 6:52. And so on up or down.

These marathon pace charts – in miles or kilometres – are the ally of every marathon runner and are best learned off by heart.

There are some valuable lessons to be learned from Ingebrigtsen’s approach to running, the 22-year-old Norwegian unquestionably the best middle-distance runner in the world right now.

The Olympic 1,500m champion, World 5,000m champion, and multiple European champion on the track and cross-country, he’s also the most consistent.

It helps that Ingebrigtsen has been running for about as long as he could walk (check out the Team Ingebrigtsen series on YouTube, if you haven’t already), but his approach to training can apply to any running distance, including the marathon.

After breaking that two-mile mark in Paris, Ingebrigtsen did a telling interview which mildly surprised but also resonated with a lot of runners.

“One of the biggest mistakes a lot of people do is they go too hard in training,” said Ingebrigtsen. “And that’s basically because of their mentality.

“What they’re struggling with is they don’t believe in themselves. That’s why they need to put it out in training. Because they need to build up that confidence, and I think that’s the wrong mindset.

“I think what’s most misunderstood is that our training is only the fundamentals of performing well as a runner. What really matters is we need to build a house . . . And if you don’t know how to put on a roof, the fundamentals or the walls don’t matter.”

It’s both thoughtful and philosophical, and holds true whether you’re training for the mile or the marathon. Because there is that tendency to push too far and too often, as if every training run must somehow count, especially the harder ones.

Ingebrigtsen continued: “I’ve been competing my whole life and obviously I’m competing in training, but I’m never running faster in training than I do in competition, because I want the competition to be the number that’s behind my name.

“A good session is worth nothing, compared to a good race.”

It reminded me a little of that period of running in college in America, where fortunately for me I got to share the occasional training run with John Treacy, the Olympic marathon silver medallist from LA in 1984, and at the time still very much in his running prime.

Feeling that need to push hard on every run, long or short, I’d be laughing to myself running with Treacy sometimes, because he insisted on running so easy and so slow. Of course Treacy was putting the work in, slowly but surely and at his own pace, but he also knew exactly when and when not to push.

Because when it came to the harder sessions, Treacy might well have been laughing at me, soon to be left somewhere behind, unable to last the pace or the distance for very long.

Interestingly Nick Griggs made that same point last week, the Irish Under-20 record holder for the 1,500m, mile, 3,000m and 5,000m admitting he’s only now understanding the importance of not pushing on every training run; sometimes less is indeed more.

“When I was 14, 15 16, I ran everything absolutely flat out, all my sessions I would go in as if I was about to go to war. It took me a while, I just thought I had to be working really hard to improve fitness, but that’s really not the case.”

That’s old advice but it will be good for you.

Do

Practice drinking on the run

There is a passage in Frank Shorter’s book where he talks about preparing his drinks for the 1972 Olympic marathon in Munich. Along with his US team-mate Kenny Moore, he opened several bottles of Coca-Cola and poured them into a plastic beaker to ensure all the fizz was gone by the time he sipped on them mid-race.

Shorter won by the way, and Moore finished fourth; it clearly worked for them, although I’m not sure they’d recommend flat Coca-Cola in this marathon age.

Such is the range of so-called sporting drinks it’s impossible to tell which works best; what matters is which one works best for you.

These means sampling around with different brands and also volumes, and best of all when on the run. Even the most basic should contain the essential electrolytes, especially sodium.

Same with the running gels, the basic rule of which is to use in strict moderation. Nothing will undo a marathon quicker than a bellyful of gel – which makes practising consumption on the run also essential.

The recovery drinks, which often contain protein, should also be restricted to exactly that: recovery.

Don’t

Get caught up on distance

Courtney McGuire provided one of the headline stories of last year’s Irish Life Dublin Marathon, and in more ways than one.

The 23-year-old from Clonmel was making her debut in the marathon distance, and despite her complete lack of experience, she delivered the perfect result, the first Irish woman home, her time of 2:32:52 moving her to seventh on the Irish all-time list.

Afterwards, McGuire spoke about her balanced approach to training, not getting caught up in the distance: she also spoke about the importance of cross-training, also including some days when she only ran on the treadmill.

Her weekly mileage didn’t hit the heights normally associated with marathon training, still it served her perfectly well.

There is often the belief or fear that conquering the marathon is all about the distance, and there was an old school of thought which reckoned the best way of doing this was to run beyond the marathon distance in training, up to 27 or 28 miles.

That was old advice but is not good for you, the better approach being McGuire’s, who trained well within herself, then pulled comfortably through the distance on marathon day.

Targets

Tempo runs versus interval runs

You don’t have to hang around marathon runners for very long to hear them talk about tempo runs or intervals, both key ingredients in marathon training.

The target for a tempo run should be somewhere just under your desired marathon pace, the speed at which you can still maintain aerobically, for between 40-50 minutes, building up to an hour, only no more than once a week.

The ultimate target is proportional improvement, to the point where the tempo starts to feel that bit easier.

The interval runs are different, over a chosen and much shorter distance, and the target here is to run well under marathon pace. That distance is typically between 800m and a mile, repeated between six to eight times, with a short interval recovery of between 60-90 seconds.

There is no better place to target the interval runs than on the running track. If at all accessible it breaks up the routine of running around the roads or the park, and of course the running track also doesn’t lie, whatever the target in mind.