Question:
I am 40 years old and began running
two months ago. I now run 6 days
a week, averaging about 22 miles
a week. I'm faster than I was when
I started, but I'm still very slow.
Anyway, I read John Parker's book
on heart monitor training and want
to start doing it. It makes some
sense to me.
He warns that to stay under your
70% ceiling on your slow days, it
will seem that you are going very,
very slow. I tried it today for
the first time and my fear was realized.
I cannot even jog and keep my heart
rate at the 70% level because I'm
still a novice. Instead I'm walking
at a very brisk 4.3mph on a tread
mill. It's hard to walk that fast,
but it's too slow to jog. Anyway,
any faster and I break the ceiling.
I'm not jazzed about this, but that
is not my main concern or why I
am writing.
Currently, on my hard days I can
run 3 miles in about 29 minutes.
That's pretty hard for me anyway.
I did 3 miles this morning and kept
it at 70% of max hr and it took
a bit over 42 minutes. I'm looking
at my training schedule and I'm
thinking that I need to change it
up. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to run
7 miles. Well, the long runs are
supposed to be run at an easy pace
(70%), so this would take me about
1 hour and 40 minutes.
Most programs will say run 7 miles,
but it's really shorthand for wnting
you to run for around 45 minutes.
Obviously I'm an hour slower if
I keep at 70%.
So here is my question (finally!),
should I (for now) be concentrating
on time instead of distance? I eventually
want to run a marathon, and some
of their long days may have you
run 14 miles or whatever. Well,
that would take 3:16 which violates
what they say out of the other side
of their mouth (never make any training
run more than 1.5 hours).
OK, so I rambled alot. My apologies.
I just wonder what my training shedule
should look like now. 45 minutes
runs daily (alternating easy/hard)
and an 1.5 hour long run? Or just
keep doing the miles, and waiting
to get faster before I up mileage.
Answer:
You've said very little about what
goals your training schedule is
supposed to serve (or said very
much about it). A training schedule
is never an end in itself, it's
a means. A typical duration for
a long run is about 90-120 minutes,
but on your milage, it may be a
good idea to run a little shorter.
It depends on what your training
goals are.
The important
thing is to train consistently.
No need to blindly or rigidly follow
a program. Just keep your milage
consistent, and gradually build
up as your fitness improves. Just
focus on general fitness. Once you've
built up some milage, you can start
doing long runs (1.5-2hrs or so)
on a regular basis, then you'll
be ready to do a serious marathon
training program.
When you start
training for a marathon, you will
have to train for distance, not
just time. After all, the marathon
is not any shorter for you than
it is for the elites, even though
you're slower.
But you don't want to do 3 hour
runs on a weekly basis. Most of
the marathon people start incorporating
these longer runs in the last 16
weeks or so before a marathon, the
rest of the time the long run is
usually under 2 hrs.
