How to Become a Faster Marathoner this Summer
Speed Training is the Most Important Thing Marathoners Should Be Doing This Summer
By Coach Chris Knighton
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How to Use the Summer to Get Faster (What Most Marathoners Overlook)
We’re deep into spring now, and for many of us that means our goal races have come and gone.
With the Boston Marathon, London Marathon, and other spring-defining races behind us, it’s time to turn our eyes on what’s next.
It’s important to think of your racing schedule in two seasons: Spring and Fall.
And for those of us who want to run our best in 1 or 2 marathons of year, we are never that far away from the next marathon.
But with that said, you really only need 18 weeks of focused training to prepare for a marathon.
What should you do when it’s still too early to start training for your next marathon?
This is the case currently for those doing Chicago, Berlin, and NYC in the fall.
The best thing marathoners can do is choose to focus on getting faster.
And right now (Early May) is the time to do it.
That’s because when you focus on marathon training you are primarily focusing on improving your endurance.
The marathon, when you are properly trained, is basically a very long “easy” run where the goal is to not hit the wall.
While we hopefully can run it faster than a typical “easy day”, the pace should not feel hard, at all for at least the first 20 miles.
It’s the avoidance of hitting the wall, avoidance of fatigue, that is the main thing to achieve with marathon training. This means improving your endurance.
But how do you run a faster marathon?
You improve the floor of what a comfortable “marathon pace” is! And how do you do this?
Not by simply running more miles and long runs as we do in marathon training, but by focusing on good quality speed work that actually raises the floor of your paces higher.
When you run fast (5K pace and faster in training), you develop the biomechanics to increase your marathon pace.
A faster 5K time directly correlates to a faster marathon time.
But you can’t run a fast marathon if you can’t run a fast 5K.
Marathon pace will feel like a walk in the park compared to faster paces once you get used to them.
The biggest mistake marathoners make is to neglect the importance of fast training.
Running slow all the time makes you slow.
You need to break up marathon training with periods of speed-focused training to become the fastest marathon you can be.
The summer is the time to do this, before you really need to focus on the endurance-specific work of marathon training.
Re-read this and get started now.
Because in a month or two, you’ll have missed the window.
If you’d like help with your training, just reach out to me, Coach Chris, and I’m happy to give you a hand.
