When Christy Runde lined up for last fall's California International Marathon, she had a string of good performances under her belt in recent years: 3:01:54, 3:05:18, 3:02:13, 3:07:55. She'd been faster in her mid-20s (with a 2:51:08 PR in 1993) but now, at age 40 with four children, her comeback seemed to have hit a plateau.
A year before, when she'd asked me to coach her, she'd decided there was no point in running another three-oh-whatever. Her goal was to break back through the 3:00 plateau if possible, and she was willing to take a few chances to do it.
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| Christy Runde turned to a coach, and some new training tweaks to try to break through her marathon plateau. |
Most of us have had times when our performances seem to have somehow gotten stuck. And it's always possible that we really truly have maxed out our talent. South African exercise physiologist Timothy Noakes, author of the encyclopedic Other Hearst Subscriptions, thinks there are evolutionary limits to what we can, and can't, achieve by training. Our bodies, he says, aren't designed so that jacking up our training another notch will always produce stronger, faster muscles. If that worked, we'd see elites winning the Olympics on 500-mile weeks.
"The human body can only adapt to a certain point," he says. That's because our ancestors were hunter-gatherers in an arid climate without a lot of food. In such circumstances, it's counterproductive for strength and aerobic capacity to be able to increase beyond a certain point, because it would require extra food to fuel the higher metabolism. "That's the evolutionary constraint," Noakes says.
We runners, of course, don't like this. "We think we were designed to train five or 10 hours a day," Noakes says. "[But] once you get to two hours a day you probably have reached the adaptation limits."
Luckily, there's a substantial difference between this limit (100+ miles a week) and the training volumes most of us have the time, inclination, and biomechanics to attempt. That means there are still things we can do -- and adding extra mileage isn't the only option.
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"The weak link determines how much you can do, how much stress you can impose on yourself through running," says Jack Daniels, author of Daniels' Running Formula. "Other Hearst Subscriptions."
Thus, if a propensity toward gimpy hamstrings is holding you back, see what you can do to strengthen them. If you have a tendency toward runner's knee or tight iliotibial bands, work on that. (At the start of my career, I had to spend a few weeks early each season strengthening my adductors. Otherwise, I could barely walk after even short races.)
It's also important to make sure there's enough variety in your training. One reason we hit plateaus, says Jeff Simons, a sports psychologist at California State University, East Bay, who's spent many years working with elite athletes, is that our bodies get attuned to running a very specific pace, especially for distance runners. "We used to call it 'the calibrated crotch.' ... It's almost as though your body knows exactly what that pace is," he says.
Variety does more than simply shake you out of an overly comfortable groove. It can also make you faster. "One of the things I've noticed in marathoners is [that] the type of training they do is fairly narrow," says Flagstaff , Ariz., coach Greg McMillan. "Mostly it's in a fairly narrow pace range -- easy, around marathon pace. ... If you start stacking marathon training cycle after marathon training cycle after marathon training cycle, that's what causes people to get stuck."
The breakout, he suggests, comes from a change in self-image. Rather than thinking of yourself as just training for a marathon, think of yourself as training to become a complete runner who's getting ready for a marathon. "That's a subtle but important difference," he says. "That means you have workouts across all the different paces. ... You're not getting your body stuck in a rut."
Physiologically, says Noakes, what appears to happen is that our bodies easily adjust to repeated, identical stresses. "Within four weeks [the body] has probably made all the adaptations it's going to do. I never understand why people train every day the same way and expect to improve. Within a few weeks, or certainly a month or two, you're going to hit a plateau, and the only way you can break out is to change your training in some way."
South African marathoner Hendrick Ramaala agrees. "A mix of long runs, speed endurance runs, track intervals, plus easy runs should form a core of a training program," he says. He also advocates cross-training. "Cross-training can help rejuvenate the body." This from a man with a 2:06:55 marathon PR.
McMillan also identifies four training paces, although he calls them endurance, stamina, speed and sprint. Endurance is your classic long, easy run. Stamina is run at somewhere between marathon and 10K race pace. Speed is 3K race pace; sprint is anything faster. All are important for whatever distance you're training for, he says, even the sprint workouts. It's merely the emphasis that shifts. "Just a little bit across all those zones seems to avoid this plateau phenomenon. Include some 5K-type workouts and 10K-type workouts, as well as the marathon stuff ."
Still not convinced? Consider Kara Goucher. Less than three months after placing third in her marathon debut in New York, she ran -- and won -- the indoor mile at the Millrose Games in Madison Square Garden. Doing such a short race not only required her to keep some fast training in her mix, but she found it a good gauge of how her long-term plan was going. "The mile tells me I'm not doing too much," she said afterward. "Alberto [Salazar, her coach] says doing the shorter races is a good indicator. When you're training for a marathon, you may feel a little burnt. In an 80-mile week, which is what I'll end up at this week, I can still run a 4:33 mile."
Long runs
Adding variety doesn't mean ignoring the long runs, however, the cornerstone of any marathoner's training, and key to many marathon breakthroughs.
Go online, and you'll find a lot of opinions (often strong) on what to do. Some people argue that you need to do all of your long runs very slowly. Others claim this will merely make you slow. Do all of your long runs at marathon pace, they say, in order to drill that pace into your muscles.
Better is probably to split the difference. "You don't want to do the same thing every weekend," says online coach Nicole Hunt, veteran of the 2004 Olympic trials (2:40:39) and 2006 USA Mountain Running Champion. "You want to change it up."
Elite coach Brad Hudson (whose trainees include Dathan Ritzenhein) agrees. "We switch our long runs up a lot," he says. "Just changing the stimulus is probably the most important thing."
But if you talk to coaches about how you do this, the first phrase you get back is often, it depends on the runner. There are runners who are easily injured and others who thrive on workouts that would murder their teammates. There are runners who recover quickly and ones who need extra time.
Usually, the temptation is to do too much. "Some athletes overtrain because they think more training equals improvement," says Ramaala. "Overtraining only leads to injuries and a drop in performance. You need a balance."
All of this is frustratingly nonspecific, largely because of that key phrase: It depends on the runner. With that caveat, however, Hudson says he likes to start with several weeks of long, easy runs. "Then we'll mix in some fartlek [and] eventually it becomes a harder run a lot closer to race pace."
Easy runs, he adds, are done at "maybe" 80 percent of marathon pace. For a 3:00 marathoner, that's 8:30s to 8:40s.
As you start adding faster work, it comes not in the form of doing the entire run at a hard pace, but by finishing strong. Thus, you might begin by doing the last 6 to 8 miles at marathon pace, building up to maybe the last 12 miles. "Eventually we do one hard, long run three weeks before [the marathon] that's within 10 or 15 seconds of race pace," Hudson says. But, he warns, that's not for everybody.
In fact, that last run might not be for normal mortals at all, especially those doing less than 100 miles a week. "If you go beyond 12 miles [at race pace] that's tough," says Portland, Ore., coach Bob Williams.
Another approach, described in Daniels' book, is to embed 6 to 8 miles of tempo into a 20-mile run. Daniels' recipe for these long-tempo runs has varied over the years but one of the more advanced versions would have you warm up, then do 2 x 2 miles at tempo pace, with a 2-minute recovery. Then do several miles of easy training, followed by one or two more 2-mile pickups. Beware: This is not an easy workout. And Hudson warns that the lower your mileage (and his definition of "high" mileage is more than 110 per week), the greater your need for traditional long, slow runs.
How long your long runs should be is a subject of some dispute, but if you've been limiting yourself to 18 to 20 miles, you might consider stepping it up a bit. Williams likes to see four runs of 22 to 24 miles. Hunt favors 18 to 21 miles. I've always liked 22-milers -- but not every week. Every other week is sufficient.
he says, is what happens after you cross the line:
01) Allow time for recovery. Hudson often has athletes build in "rest cycles" of seven to 10 days in the middle of their training. "They seem to help a lot," he says.
02) Consider moving away from the traditional seven-day training week, in which long runs are always done on weekends. "We try to do a long run every 10 days," says Hudson.
03) Do some tempo on short-run speed days.
04) Don't try to eke out extra hard training in the final weeks before the marathon. Tapering is beyond the scope of this article, but the fact is that if you've been doing your training in the prior weeks, the hay is already in the barn. Your goal in the final weeks is simply to keep it from getting moldy.
Race day
Sports psychologist Jeff Simons is the first to admit you can't positive-think yourself into the physically impossible. But there's a lot you can do before and during the race to improve your odds.
One of the major problems some runners have, he says, is that they focus too much on the beginning or end of the race and not on the middle. But the middle is the bulk of it, particularly in a marathon, and a lot of runners wind up going on autopilot. "Somehow the whole thing kind of balances out and you end up right at the same place," he says. "One of the ways to get through a plateau is to really think during the middle of your race."
It's also important to quit thinking solely in terms of your target time. "Time," he says, "is what happens after you cross the line. Changing your time is all that happens while you're in the process of running. That's where the focus needs to be."
This type of thinking is part of what psychologists call "letting go,"-- or the distinction between "trying" and "doing."
Faulder Colby, a clinical psychologist and marathoner from Whidbey Island, Wash., has compared it to the difference between trying to play an instrument -- performing -- and making music. If you focus on the outcome it's easy to choke under pressure, Colby says. Focusing on the doing -- the running of your race, one section at a time -- is the key to putting yourself in the "zone," a mental state where you're running without thinking about success or failure.
Adds Simons: "We're letting go of what's 'supposed' to be for what is, right now. I don't mean to get too metaphysical, but this makes a big impact on how our body responds. When we've decided on how things are supposed to be, we tend to take actions, both conscious and unconscious, that conform to that expectation. I am supposed to run just over 3:00, so somehow we do that. She is supposed to beat me, so she will. But when we suddenly go, let's just work with what is -- what's actually happening -- we all of a sudden free up the possibilities in the moment. Not an expectation that you have to do anything incredible but, I'm going to explore what change will actually happen if I'm in the moment."
Not that this means you shouldn't have a race plan.
"There's nothing wrong with planning, saying, 'Here's what our markers are,'" says Simons. "What you do when you're actually performing is saying, 'OK, I have a logical plan.'" Then, come race day you need to focus on the full living of that plan.
Such plans, of course, need to be reasonable. Williams likes to see runners do shorter races -- anything from 10K to a half marathon -- that give "concrete evidence" that their marathon targets are feasible. (The extrapolations can be done with such tools as McMillan's running calculator at mcmillanrunning.com, or the tables in Daniels' Running Formula.)
Then, you must trust the plan enough not to panic and change it midway through the race. "Accept that it's not going to be easy, but that you are capable of doing well because you have done the training," says Ramaala.
Salazar puts it even more simply: "Trust your training."
"Trust and faith is powerful," says Simons. "You're saying something good can happen." Not that the result is a given, but trusting the plan frees you up to 'work it.'" And if, by chance, it doesn't work, at least you've learned something useful.
Runde had always been a relatively high-quality/low-volume runner, so she chose not to jack her weekly mileage into the stratosphere. Rather, she went with her historic strengths, seeking to make her hard days better, never running more than six days a week and peaking at slightly under 70 miles a week.
But she'd never paid a lot of attention to running at a disciplined pace. "I'd always just gone with the flow or somebody fast," she says. And, "I've tended to race my track workouts."
We started, therefore, by determining specific paces for her track workouts (which included intervals as short as 400m), based on a track meet 5K. "The pace calculator kept me on target," she says. "By the time my last interval was done, I didn't want one more -- but I was able to stay on pace for the whole workout. The heart rate was higher, but I could do it."
Another change was by dedicating her second speed day to increasingly long tempo runs. They started with a traditional 3-mile tempo, then built up, week by week, to ever-tougher runs, such as a pair of 2-milers with 2 minutes' recovery, a continuous 4 miles, 2-2-1, etc. "By the end we had a 6-mile block," she says. "I'd never been able to do that before." But the progression was very controlled. "Some weeks I felt like I could have done more and I made myself not do it," she told me afterward. "I forced myself to stick with the plan."
Finally, her long runs culminated by alternating four easy-paced 22-milers with two Daniels-style long-tempo runs, and two runs with up to 16 miles at marathon pace.
At the same time, her easy days got easier. "I'd always thought that 8:00s ... that's the perfect pace," she says. "Well, not any more. My slow runs have had to be 8:30s, or 9:15s. Sometimes I'd be walking. It had to be complete recovery. I was really in touch with how I felt."
Years of experience had also taught her how to taper. By race day, she was practically bursting with energy.
The start of the California International Marathon dawned foggy and 39 degrees, a bit chilly by California standards but right in Runde's comfort zone.
Seven weeks before, she'd run a hilly half marathon in 1:24:55, suggesting that 3:00 might actually be an overly conservative goal. We'd talked about it, and decided to go for it.
The race plan was the result of considerable thought, but also had opportunities to go with the moment. She was to run a conservative first mile, then go through the half no faster than 1:29. At that point, she was to pick it up a bit if she felt like it. Beginning at mile 18, she was again to assess how she felt, and, if it seemed right, kick it up another notch.
From the gun, she settled into her pace quickly. She hit the 1-mile split exactly on target (Garmins help) and went through the half in a near-perfect 1:29:13.
For the next 9 miles she practiced being in the moment, speeding up slightly and waiting to see what would happen.
At mile 22, what was happening felt good, so she turned on the jets. Her final splits: 6:40, 6:35, 6:20, 6:20, for a finishing time of 2:56:21.
It was the fastest marathon she'd run since age 25, third fastest of her life -- equivalent to a 25-year-old's 2:48. It was, quite simply, one of those moments we all live for.
Negative splitting
The best marathons are often run on negative splits. But a lot of marathoners think that only elites can do this. And, of course, most rank-and-file marathoners do slow down as the race progresses. "That's true," sports psychologist Jeff Simons admits, "but the myth is that that has to be true in every case."
The trick, he believes, is to be "attentive" right from the gun-- and he's not talking merely about not blowing out at a suicidal pace. Elites, he says, are coached to settle into a nice efficient rhythm as soon as possible, but other runners can be slow to settle. "When you're fresh," he says, "and you've tapered and carbohydrate-loaded the night before, the first 5 or 10 miles is like cake. So you're not efficient."
You also have to believe you can do it. "I've never before made myself do the negative splits," Runde said after her CIM finish. "I've always had this tremendous fear that I'd better use it or lose it. I've gotten some good times, but I was dying at the end. I've had some trouble trusting my training, so I think, 'Oh, I better use it up, right now.'"
Not that any of this will guarantee a negative split. "It's a multidimensional problem," Simons admits. "It's a heat problem, a physiology problem, a muscle problem, an attitude problem, a strategy problem. But it is certainly possible."
DAA Industry Opt Out is a senior writer for and co-author of Salazar's Guide to Road Racing. He also coaches Team Red Lizard in Portland, Ore.
