but then again... you are talking to a chick that had to WALK her long run yesterday :-(

>> well if i was mark allen, i probably wouldn't need more
>> than a 2:30 run.
True. He probably put in 23+ miles in those runs.

I run my 21 milers in 2:30-2:35. Regarding recovery, I am convinced that I would have a harder time to recover if I was running slower. (It seems like more pounding.)

This said, I have to agree that bike fitness is key to a faster Ironman marathon.

Cheers,
Alex

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First with the head, then with the heart. -- HG

..hey, I think you got the right picture. if you are going to run longer than 2 hours it needs to be at Ironman race pace. Most people don't. When we had our IronTour in LP in July, on day 2 we had a 2 hour run followed by a 3.5 hour ride followed by a 40 min swim. I was running 8-9 min miles and I was way off the back. Way further behind guys who finish 40 min behind me an a half Ironman or an hour behind me in a full !

Totally agree.

I did LP in 04 and was a few minutes behind your time this year. The highlighted sentence above would be the cliffs' notes of my ATP for that year. Fall/Winter was a run build up. Basically training like a marathoner with swim/bike on maintenance with a strength program kicked in for good measure. Around end of Feb, start of March I pulled back the run (except for one 2 hour group run a week) and significantly increased my bike mileage. I took a few work vacation days in April and May and had some pretty good bike camps (400+ mile weeks) which I think set me up well for IMLP in July. Most of my runs in the spring and leading up to LP were on trails or rolling hills for strength which I think help more than any sort of speed for the (edit over) 3:30 guys.

Coupled with a very conservative pacing plan (you gotta control your ego and let everyone buy you on the first lap, especially on the first climb out of LP) on the bike everything sort of worked out for my first IM finish.

My only mistake was come June I was feeling super strong and couldn't resist testing myself (during group rides and doing one too many races all out) too much.

This will probably come out wrong, but I wonder is D.P.'s point is that one does not actually "run" a 4:00 marathon or, at least, on certainly does not "race" a 4:00 marathon. If anything, one survives a 4:00 marathon.
Thus, it makes little sense to train for a 4:00 marathon as part of tri training. Instead, train so you are starting your marathon fresher, and then maybe your 4:00 marathon becomes a 3:45 marathon as result of actually doing less run mileage. (However, I imagine your overall training volume in terms of time would actually increase if more time is spend biking and less running.)
Whether this is the right approach or just wishfull thinking (anything to avoid 2+ hour runs!) remains to be seen. Probably too individual to know for sure. I know for me that regular 2+ hour runs and long bike rides just makes me slow at everything and I have no desire to go out and run 8:00 miles for hours.

...Garth...exactly. I am not sure how much training is required to run-walk-shuffle 4-5 hour marathon pace. Most dudes could wing that off the bike training and minimal run. I am suggesting that because you will be fresher overall through your training and fresher coming into T2, your Ironman marathon time "might" come down (if you pace yourself well as Trevor suggested).

Dev

Well Dev, I've done 4 IM races and have always broken 3:30 for the run and I would have to agree with you (although I do go up to 2:30 instead of 2). I think that the key to faster marathons is more bike training. My first ironman was my slowest run since I went too hard on the bike without enough bike strength to allow me to use my run like I should have. The past 2 years I neglected my swim and run training to put my bike miles way up and was able to use my legs for the run much more effectively.

Do you think the same need for exceptional bike fitness applies for the half?

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

Kiwipat, my answer is yes and no. In a half Ironman you need bike strength to hold a fast bike speed and stay "in contact", but you also need fairly high end closing run speed, so you need to train for that too. 90K is not enough biking to kill your legs to the extent of an Ironman bike. It requires way less bike training and since the separation between studly and fading is not a lot, you also need great run speed to be competitive (this could mean placing in your agegroup or doing a PB).

I guess the key point is that you can fake a half Ironman bike and still get off and fake a quick half marathon, but you can't fake an Ironman bike and hope to run a marathon. No WAY.

Dev

#1) - isolating a single work out in the midst of an unkonwn training week doesn't highlight much. Your examples of the pro's who didn't do single long runs, is I'd guess not very relevant if they were doing 30 hr training weeks with 60 miles of running per week.

#2) - "Gordo the recycler" is apt., like most successful people relatively early in their career, he has done more observation (and promotion) than discovery. His advice, which is very solid (but often lacking in an understanding of real world life dynamics, as it relates to mostly the nothing-but-tri crowd) "stands on the shoulders" of folks who have trained and learned from years of trial and error. It is not like he had to figure out training regimins or sodium imbalances...Like bike fit's evolution, there really aren't really any more secrets out there to be discovered, or any "art" that only a few can figure out (in general). It is all pretty standard stuff - eat well, learn good form, train steadily and get strong...but as in most things, people want to think it is something special, not plain hard work over time.

Reggiedog, I did actually advocate doing lots of running in the winter, just avoid going super long in one session.

As for Gordo, like Intel, Microsoft and Cisco, the innovation is not huge, but the marketing machine is. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, the best innovations are always useless without good marketing (OK, I am the engineer gone to the marketing dark side...)

Gordo may have stated the obvious, but if it was that obvious, he has added value to the entire tri industry. Unlike many secretive coaches who won't help you unless you sign up with them, Gordo helps all kind of guys for free, offers free advice in the form of numerous articles etc and generally added value to the tri world.

If I could run a consistent sub- 2:50, I'd probably limit training runs to 2:30.

The IM run is like the last 26.2 of a 50+ mile ultra for us mortals. People run 3+ for ultra training, so I'm running 3 hours if I ever do another IM.

How the hell is somebody supposed to run a solid steady pace for 3:45 to 4:00 on 2-hour training runs? I know I can't.

Another thing that needs to be considered is total run volume for the week. It's common knowledge that long runs are key, but total volume is also important. There's a big difference between a guy who has 2 runs in a week- one that's 1 hour long and one that's 2 hours long, and another who adds another 2 hour run and a 45 minute track session.

I think cutting out the really long runs could make sense, but only if you use that extra energy to do more frequent, shorter runs. I've done an Ironman on 1 three hour run, and 4 2 hour runs (averaging about 4 hours/week-by inujury, not by choice), and it's not something I would ever repeat.

Stan

good points...but perhaps whereas in an IM 5% of the field are 'really running', for a half that might shift to 35/40%...that still leaves the MOP/BOP folks doing a sort of shuffle.

And if that is the case, superior bike fitness should still win out. I mean, for most MOPrs a half is still a 5hr day, which is a hell of a tough aerobic session, at least for me.

Good thread!

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

good read ^^ see you at muskoka next year?

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"The aspect of sport that you learn is that you have your good times and your bad times, but you share it with great people." - George Gregan

I think I may be evidence of Dev's point. I built my running base training for Boston in April. After Boston, my longest run was 1:45. Spent most of May and June trying to focus on the bike. Did IM Austria on July 2nd and ran a 3:40 marathon.

I agree that run volume is important even though perhaps the actual length of the long run beyond 2 hours is not hugely important. I'm suggesting that you get the bulk of your run volume done early in your Ironman prep, for those of us living in frozen Tundraland, that would be before mid April when the weather gets reasonable for biking. Then pile on the bike miles in late April, May, Jun and early July if you are doing Ironman LP. If you are doing IMC or Wisconsin, you have extra room mid summer to throw in run focus weeks with perhaps big run volume, but not huge long runs. For LP, we barely have enough weeks without snow on the road to get the requisite overall bike volume in.

Typically though, trying to jack up run volume while doing biking and swimming is the quickest way to being overtrained. Every coach worth anything will tell you that he'd rather see you 5% undertrained than 5% ovetrained. So why not take an approach that minimizes the chance of being overtrained and potentially injured ?

Sparky, I guess we were on the same program. The better approach would be to do the winter base miles and skip Boston so that you don't lose 10-14 days in late April recovering when you should really be piling on mega bike miles (OK, so I piled on mega bike miles starting a few days after Boston, but they weren' the quality they'd be on fresher legs, that did not return for at least a few weeks).

Tedspace, of course...Muskoka. June is always Epicman-Muskoka-Tupper Lake. It is permanently engraved on the family calendar. Rule 1 of family calendar. If your family assumes that you do the same race every year, you better keep doing it, cause if you skip it this year, it is likely wiped off the calendar next year :-). Muskoka-Tupper Lake is like Xmas-New Years week every year, only 6 months out of phase.

Dev

Not to come off like a kiss ass but thanks for this thread. Really interesting stuff as I get ready for IMLP '06.

The gist of what I'm taking from this thread that superior bike fitness will get me off the bike fresher and then let me run stronger. This is better than preparing myself solely for the marathon portion of IM and the accompanying pounding (and possible injury/extended recovery time) that the run training will take.

So, based on the information bandied about here I'll plan on a strong winter of run training and than a back off in the Spring in which I'll focus on my bike strength (which is already my strongest discipline). This will get me out of T2 fresher and more ready for the run.

Great thread...Great Read...Thanks All

B.

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I agree Dev. My longest run all year was less than 2hrs (1:50). And I only ran a couple of other times over 1:30. Still ran a 3:38 at LP and 10:18 overall.. Biking is the key. My legs take a few days to recover if I run over 2 hrs so I don't do it. if I run less than 2 hrs they bounce right back.

Low slow distance makes long slow runners - Sebastian Coe

Run less distance at a faster pace. If I can't run close to Jack Daniels easy (E) pace for the entire run, I'm running too long.

[reply]This will probably come out wrong, but I wonder is D.P.'s point is that one does not actually "run" a 4:00 marathon or, at least, on certainly does not "race" a 4:00 marathon. If anything, one survives a 4:00 marathon. "

Well I don't know.. i'd like to think I was racing a 4:02 marathon. Negative split it and I would say I wasn't shuffling. again my PR running stand alone is 3:35. It's tought to say because I have never tried not running longer than 2 hours in training. But I see you guys point. this post is for fatster people!!!

[reply]Low slow distance makes long slow runners - Sebastian Coe

Run less distance at a faster pace. If I can't run close to Jack Daniels easy (E) pace for the entire run, I'm running too long.[/reply]

see my coach does not agree with that. i do my mile repeats at 6:45-6:50 min mile but then will run 9 min/mile on sunday. If that... yet, I race faster. i guess it depends. I used to think like that and often still do. somehow I think i need to run faster to be faster. I remember doing this one long 20 miler at 8 min mile training for AZ just for the confidence. probably was stupid. Next run was 9 min/mile...

I disagree. I did 3:47 ish at LP. But, based on my spring 10K times my predicted fresh marathon time would have been around 3:10-3:15 ish nowhere near sub. 2:50-ish.

Yes, do the 2:30-3:00 hours runs but in the fall and winter (using IMLP as example) to get a good base. Basically Maffetone 180-age pace stuff .

Then in early spring cut back to one 2:00 long run and try to keep freq. up. (5-6 runs per week) and build your bike mileage way up. The two hour runs shouldn't just be ploding along either. I liked to build from easy to finishing at a mod-hard pace. Try to get used to a little discomfort. :-)

If you do that I bet you could run 3:45. The trick is to keep the bike mileage constantly above 200 miles (including one long 100+miler a week) with a few crazy weeks mixed in for good measure.

Fast people get fast by not training slow.