A couple of days ago, I did my last hard workout before the Seattle Marathon.  Diligently following Jack Daniels' marathon Plan A, I've been much more structured in my training for my first marathon than any other endurance event I've done.  I feel like I have learned a lot from this plan, and I thought that I would share some of my perspectives.

Daniels' Marathon Plan A
In his excellent book, Daniels details several specific marathon training plans.  I selected his "Plan A" because it seemed fairly general, and it looked like I would be able to handle it.  The basic structure of this plan is to start by doing several weeks of base work to build durability and aerobic fitness, then follow several phases where there remains a lot of easy base running in conjunction with two "quality" workouts each week.  The quality workouts include some faster running, either "T" (threshold) pace intervals or "M" (marathon) pace long runs.  T pace is one's fastest pace for one hour of running, which is just slower than 10k pace for most people.  M pace is the pace that can be maintained for a marathon.  All other running is at "E" (easy) pace, which for me is about a minute per mile slower than M pace.  E pace roughly corresponds to heart rate zone 2 if you follow Friel's HR taxonomy.

What I Did
Since early August, I have managed to follow Daniels' plan very closely.  I didn't miss any quality workouts except for two times when I intentionally replaced them with races.  I had to eliminate most of "phase 2" due to a lack of time between when I started formal marathon training and when the race occurs.  I did the vast majority of my Monday through Friday training as part of my commuting to or from work.  The phase 1 ramp up worked really well for me, as I went from around 25 miles per week that I was doing for triathlon training up to a peak week of 83 miles.  Most weeks were around 75 miles, until I started tapering a couple of weeks ago.

What I Learned
Doing lots of easy running really does help endurance.  Surely my biggest endurance sports learning of the last year is that doing a lot of miles at a relatively easy pace really helps endurance for longer events.  Easy pace has less injury risk, requires less emotional energy to perform, allows much quicker recovery, and it really does build endurance fitness.  For example, right after finishing phase 1 of my training, I took a minute off my 10k PR in the Bank to Bay 10k, despite doing exactly zero miles at faster than E pace in the preceding six weeks.

Structured training really helps focus.  Following a plan with an appropriate amount of detail was really good for me.  Daniels' Plan A had just the right amount of structure for me: enough that I had to focus and plan for the two weekly quality workouts, but not to much that I couldn't fit it into my very hectic schedule.  Since all but two of the weekly workouts are unstructured, I had a lot of flexibility with this plan.

Commuting works great for E runs.  I found it really effective to do lots and lots of E workouts while commuting.  Because these are generally unstructured workouts, I didn't need to be at all precise about selecting a route that accommodates the workout.  I was able to select routes on the basis of how long I wanted to run, scenery, timing, and the like.  Most of my good commuting routes are fairly hilly, but when doing E pace runs I just slow down or speed up to maintain the right heart rate.  If I had to stop randomly for a stop light or to wait for a bus, it didn't matter.

Commuting is hard to combine with quality workouts.  Because of the structure of quality workouts, e.g. 2x15min at T pace, doing these workouts while getting somewhere specific is hard to do.  Stopping for a light in the middle of an interval is obviously undesirable.  Doing intervals while running downhill is dangerous because of the injury risks, so route selection gets much harder.  I reluctantly did a couple of quality workouts as commutes because of time constraints, but as much as possible I tried to avoid this.

Quality workouts in the dark are hard.  I don't mind easy running in the dark, so long as there is just enough light to see the ground in front of me.  Running fast in the dark is really challenging, though.  When training near my limit, concentrating on obstacles in the path is much harder, and I found it nearly impossible to go really hard while ensuring that I didn't trip over something. 

Use occasional hills to diversify interval workouts.  Because the Seattle Marathon course is somewhat hilly, I wanted to get in some hill training in my quality workouts.  What I found works well is to select a route where the last one or two intervals have a significant uphill component.  Obviously, I had to slow down a little to complete these workouts at the right intensity.  Having the uphill work seemed effective for me.

It is cool using the real race course as a training route.  I'm fortunate to live very near the Seattle Marathon start/finish.  Therefore, I frequently used the real race course for training.  I did the last 4-5 miles of the course about a dozen times, in part because it is easy for me to combine the finish with commuting.  I did other significant sections of the course about a half dozen times.  Over the course of my training, I have run every inch of the course except for the parts on the I-90 express lanes, which I had to simulate with surface streets.  I feel like I know the course really well.

Don't go over 2.5 hours in L runs.  Feeling especially ambitious in my last "L" run (long run at E pace), I decided to do most of the Seattle Marathon course.  I ended up doing 24.1 miles in 3:02, skipping the I-90 bridge part of the course and doing a little extra before and after the course to get to and from my house.  While it was cool and not all that hard to complete this workout, I felt very tired for a while after.  Daniels suggests never doing workouts this long, and he is right.  I should not have taken the risk of going this long so as to avoid the tiredness I felt afterward.

M runs are hard.  Daniels' plan A has several workouts of this form: 2 miles E + 15 miles M + 2 miles E.  These are brutal workouts, but they are very gratifying to complete.  I did my last M run a week after the 24.1-mile L run, and that made for a serious effort.  I did manage to do it at my M pace, even including the hilly parts of the Seattle Marathon course, but it was quite an effort.  I did my other M runs on a flat course while a bit more rested, and those were challenging and fun.  It took many days before I felt somewhat recovered from these runs.

Running training is a lot simpler than triathlon training.  This is probably an obvious comment, but it sure is simpler to train for a single-sport event than a multi-sport event.  Because I could concentrate on just running, I removed a lot of the complexities of working on the other sports.  Also, the absolute limit my body can handle for running seems to be around ten hours weekly, so I can find the time to train at my physical limit for running in the ten hours per week that I am willing to devote to endurance sports.  I could physically do and benefit from much more than ten hours of weekly triathlon training, but there is no way that I could find the time for that.

Public Statement of Goals
"They say" that it is good to be pubic about goals (something about "accountability"), so here are mine for the race next weekend:

Good: 3:20:59.  I started this whole thing wanting to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  For my age, I need to do 3:20:59 to qualify.  Based on how I have been running, this should be completely possible, barring injury, sickness or bizarre weather.

Better: 3:10.  For men under age 35, the BQ time is 3:10:59.  It would be cool to hit this time so I don't need any sort of "for my age" disclaimer.

Best: 2:59.  My 1:24:01 time from the Halloween Half Marathon suggests that I should be able to do under three hours in a full marathon.  It would certainly be cool to be able to say that my first marathon was faster than Lance Armstrong's marathon debut, but achieving this will require perfect execution and decent conditions.  Hopefully, I will avoid the stress fractures he got.

The Plan
I'm going to try to do the first half as close to 1:30 as I can manage it.  Since the first half is fairly flat, I am pretty confident about being able to do 1:30 without too much difficulty.  Then:

• If feeling good, pick up the pace a bit, perhaps +10sec/mile.
• If feeling OK, just maintain pace and soldier on.
• If not feeling OK, back off and guarantee the BQ. 

At mile 20, the serious hills start, so I am ready to put down the hammer then and try to survive to the finish.  I'll be downing a gel every 20 minutes, and I will drink at least a big sip of water at every station.

If you see me in Memorial Stadium at 11:14am next Sunday, expect to see a big smile on my face despite the discomfort I will surely be feeling.