Adding Track Workouts to Marathon Training

Today I got my confirmation that I will be in Corral C for the Chicago Marathon! This news has, of course, led me to obsess over my training schedule between now and October.

I feel comfortable that the long runs will be much more manageable this year, so my main focus is going to be on my speed.

Therefore, the biggest change I will be making from last year’s marathon training is incorporating track workouts into my weekly training.

I am using Hal Higdon’s fantastic marathon training schedules as a basis for my training. His novice schedules served me well last year and I hope to follow the Intermediate-1 schedule this year. The intermediate plans, however, do not incorporate track workouts so I will be deviating a bit from Hal’s plans.

The specific type of track workout I will be using is 800m repeats (two loops of a standard track). Based on the Yasso 800s workouts, I will be trying to run each 800m repeat at four minutes, since my marathon goal time is four hours. So starting this week, I will be running 4x800m repeats with four minute warm-ups and a cooldown. Breaking it down further, this means I will start with an easy run for 4:00 minutes as a warm-up. Then 800m in (hopefully) 4:00. Then a 4:00 easy run and repeat until I’ve done the cycle four times.

That is the basis of what I will be doing as my track workout between now and October. The only thing that will change is how many times I repeat the 4:00 800m. Over the next four or five months, I will build up to completing 10 repetitions. My plan is to only do 800mx10 once, hopefully two to three weeks before the marathon itself. So marathon minus two weeks will be 800mx10, marathon minus three weeks will be 800×9, marathon minus four weeks will be 800×8, etc.

Doing it this way will give me several months where I can experiment with the workout, making sure I am able to maintain the same pace throughout four 800m repetitions.

photo via old town drafting