As a general rule, your recovery weeks should include about 70 percent as much training volume as your hard training weeks. For example, if your hard weeks consist of 60 miles (97 km) per week, then you would run about 42 miles (68 km) during your recovery week. Be sure to reduce the quantity and the intensity of your hard sessions during your recovery week. For example, cut the distance of your long run as well as the pace per mile, and schedule a session of striders rather than a hard
O2max session during a recovery week.
An old school of thought is to do several hard days in a row “to get used to running on tired legs.” Does this idea make sense?
As we’ve seen, the best way to prepare for marathon conditions is to do high-quality long runs and tempo runs. If you run a 22-miler (35 km) at 40 seconds per mile slower than goal marathon pace, starting relatively fresh, you’ll provide a more-specific stimulus to improve your marathon performance than if you start the run fatigued and struggle to run 2 minutes per mile slower than goal marathon pace. At least once every 3 weeks, give yourself the chance to do your long run fresh. You’ll feel great on these runs, thereby leading not only to a better effort but also to positive psychological reinforcement.
Doing an interval session or tempo run on tired legs makes no sense whatsoever. The objective of interval training (e.g., 6 × 1,000 m at 5K race pace) is to improve your maximal oxygen consumption. The objective of tempo runs (e.g., 5 mi at 10-mi race pace) is to improve your lactate threshold. If you run these workouts while tired, you’ll either do them more slowly than is optimal or you’ll have to cut back the volume of the workout (e.g., do fewer intervals or a shorter tempo run). In either case, you’ll provide less of a stimulus to improve than if you had started the workout relatively fresh.
Recovery Days (or Easy Days)
So far in this chapter, we’ve discussed the necessity of incorporating recovery into your training schedule. Following the hard/easy principle, 1 or more hard days are always followed by 1 or more easy days. Easy training days are more appropriately called recovery days because their purpose is to allow you to recover for your next hard effort.
So what constitutes a recovery day? As with most aspects of running, the answer depends on your physiology. Recovery days should be less difficult than hard sessions in the volume (distance) and intensity of training. In some cases, a recovery day should be a day of rest or a day of cross-training.
The most common training mistake marathon runners make is training too hard on recovery days. If you train too hard on a scheduled recovery day, then you’ll be a bit tired for your next hard day, and that workout won’t go as well as planned. If you’re like most runners, you’ll be ticked off, and you’ll run your next scheduled recovery day a bit harder. So begins a vicious cycle in which your recovery days are done too hard and the quality of your hard days declines. The result is mediocre performances in training and racing. Just as it takes discipline to push through a tempo run when you feel bad, so does it take discipline to train easily when you feel good on a planned recovery day.
The other mistake that marathoners often make is trying to squeeze in too much distance on recovery days. Early in your training program, when the marathon is still more than 8 weeks away, it probably doesn’t hurt to add a couple of extra miles to recovery days because the overall intensity of training tends to be rather low. When you’re into the last 8 weeks of training, however, you have hard sessions with specific purposes. If you go into your hard days tired from too many slow miles on your recovery days, then your overall progress will be compromised.
Your recovery days shouldn’t impose additional training stress on your muscles or your nervous system. You should try, therefore, to minimize the pounding on your legs on those days. Running on soft surfaces on your recovery days will reduce the cumulative impact your legs and back experience over the course of the week. When you consider that your recovery days occur when you’re the most tired and when your muscles are the most fatigued and least resilient, it makes sense to take it easy on your muscles on those days. This also implies avoiding hill running on your recovery days, not only because running uphill is likely to require more effort than is optimal for an easy day but also because downhill running tends to induce muscle damage, and you certainly don’t want to incur additional muscle damage on a recovery day.
Using a heart monitor is a good way to prevent yourself from training too hard on your recovery days. (See chapters 1 and 7 for information about training by heart rate.) If you keep your heart rate below 76 percent of your maximal heart rate or 70 percent of your heart rate reserve plus your resting heart rate, you’ll let your body recover to allow high-quality workouts on your hard training days.
For example, say your resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute and your maximal heart rate is 185 beats per minute. If you train by maximal heart rate, then you would want to keep your heart rate below 141 (185 ×.76) on your recovery days. Heart rate reserve is your maximal heart rate minus your resting pulse. In this example, then, your heart rate reserve is 135. If you train using this more-complicated but more-precise method, you would want to keep your heart rate below 144 [resting heart rate of 50 + (135 ×.70)] on your recovery days.
The lower-tech way to determine your appropriate recovery training intensity is to run approximately 2 minutes per mile (per 1.6 km) slower than your 10-mile (16 km) to half marathon race pace. For example, if you run the half marathon in 1:18, or just under 6 minutes per mile (per 1.6 km), then your recovery runs should be done at roughly an 8-minute-per-mile (per 1.6 km) pace.
At his peak, Bill Rodgers used to say that nobody working a full-time job would beat him in the marathon. He knew that even if someone could string together training to match his around the constraints of regular employment, the extra rest and attention to detail that his schedule allowed would give him an edge on race day.
Of course, you’re probably not trying to win Boston, nor do you likely have the luxury of quitting your job for the sake of your running. Still, you can hasten your recovery from hard workouts by regularly paying attention to these matters at work.
• Hydration. Always have a water bottle at your workstation, and commit to draining it several times a day.
• Calories. Keep healthful foods at work so that you can graze throughout the day as opposed to getting so famished that you hit the vending machines in desperation.
• Posture, part I. Make sure your computer screen is at eye level and not too far away so that you don’t sit with your head tilted and thrust forward all day.
• Posture, part II. Even if your computer is set up ideally, it’s still easy to sit with a slumped upper body when you’re at a desk all day. Sit with your head, shoulders, and hips aligned, and with a slight curve in your lower back. Good posture at work translates into fewer biomechanical woes on the run.
• Move. Get up and walk around at least once an hour to lessen the strain on your lower back and hamstrings. If the smokers in your office are allowed to leave their desks throughout the day to tend to their habit, then you should be able to stand and stretch your legs to tend to yours.