(FM – Full Marathon, HM = Half Marathon)
Here is some modifications that can be used for the Monday and Wednesday workouts if you are fairly new to speed work. Again, if you have not done at least a half or a full marathon in the last 6-8 months, wait till about week 8 to start and speed work.
The speed work is mainly done at the beginning of the week (Monday on the schedule). For the past two weeks the FM (Full Marathon) group would have been doing 30 by 30s (30 seconds hard run followed by a 30 second jog). A modification …is to walk the 30 seconds between the run portions. This will make it easier to complete all the repeats. The idea is to start the process of making you faster and pushing back the threshold in which you get tired or heart rates is near its maximum (80-90%). How fast is hard??? It should be around 80% of your maximum speed. Start out slower and finish faster.
The Wednesday run is not a “speed” workout but more of a “pace booster” run. What this means is that we want to make it feel easier for you to run your predicted pace by training to run about 30 seconds faster than you will in a F/HM. Therefore, the goal pace (F/FM) minus 30-45 seconds. Now, for those of you who have run a full or half straight through without walking can modify this a little. Rather than do any repeats, you run the minutes straight through. For example, this week the Full Marathon group schedule is running 4 minutes, walking a minute, and completing 5 repeats. So if you are running straight through you will need to run 25 minutes at your goal place minus 15-30 seconds. Your goal pace should be your H/FM pace that you would like to achieve or at least your best in the last 6-8 months.
There are no heat adjustments to these runs. The heat adjustment should be taken into account in your warm up and cool down. Slow down on the warm-up and limit the length of the warm-up. For example, you can start the harder run at 20 minutes exactly and just have a nice slow jog to finish the total suggested minutes for the day