10K speed in IM Marathon

In a previous thread “Qualifying for Hawaii” there was debate about the need for 10K speed in a IM marathon. At least that was the other side of it. There were plenty that believed speed isn’t as important for a great IM split (sub 3:30)

Those that felt pretty strong about it said “you need to be running sub-35 min to think about running sub-3:30 i and IM marathon split”

Is there truth to such an idea? I just don’t see how working on getting the type of speed that would reflect in 10k time benefit my IM marathon split.

Dan
Note: These are all hypothetical questions and I’m have no current plans to run under 3:30 in IM.

level but an IM marathon is about how strong you are not how fast you are, there are plenty of people that are running wise slow (1.40 for a half) that pull off 3.30-3.40 for a full IM marathon because they are strong and there are people that are fast (sub 1.25) that can not break 4 hours because they have great foot speed but they dont have the physical muscular strength to cover the IM marathon at 8’s…

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Hey Dan, What’s up dude? Dan once saw a mystic orb of light hovering over my unconcious (sleeping) body at a stage race called the Starved Rock Classic. We think it was an attempted UFO abduction.

IMHO running a sub 35 minute 10K may not be a prerequisite for going sub 3:30 in the marathon at Ironman, but then again, I don’t know what IS a prerequisite for that since I’ve never done it either. I went 3:46 in 1997 at Canada if my memory serves me correctly. At that time the fastest I could do 10K was probably 40 minutes. It seems like they may be two different types of speed. Maybe? I used to be able to run 33:00 for a 10K when I was about 24 (I’m 41 now) and I know I couldn’t have gone sub-3:30 then, I didn’t have the endurance. Interesting questions. Those “predictor” charts that extrapolate your 10K speed to Marathon pace never worked for me very well. I was always slower.

I was the one who originally posted that. It wasn’t ment to be a hard fast number that exactly correlated to running sub-3:30 in an IM. Several things were caveats to that.

Running a stand-alone marathon is ALOT different than running an IM marathon. If you could easily run a 50 min 10K then in theory you could run a 3:30 marathon, but we all know how hard and rare that would be. Extrapolate that difference over and IM and the difficulty and resulting marathon slowdown increase exponentially.

I agree that running a marathon, especially a IM marathon, is about strength over speed. I run with the U of Maryland XC team, and while I could outrun any of them in a Marathon or even a half, when it gets down to the 10k, they will smoke me. Alot. They are simply faster speedier runners, but I have more strength. However, running that fast in a 10k is the result of running alot of miles (among alot of other things) which is the basis for strength.

There is a correlation between running faster for a 10k and running faster for a marathon. This difference is even greater when talking about IM becasue of the great fatigue involved. You can’t be fast and fragile, but as I said before, you could be the strongest slow runner in the world and never get a sniff of 4hrs.

Anyone who thinks that they don’t need to do speedwork for IM is missing the big picture. No, you don’t need to go into the kind of pace it takes to run 4:30 mile repeats, but when you increase your mile repeat pace, you increase your pace across the board. Lower that mile PR and everything else gets faster too. And it’s not just limited to mile repeats, but interval training in general. Want to go faster for the long haul? Go faster for the shorter distence first.

tommy

My question wasn’t meant to call you out. I just thought it was an interesting topic that was getting buried within a previous deep thread and was hoping to get more about out of everyone was saying. I’m glad I asked.

…as for the UFO incident. It’s true. There was an orb hovering over Tom. It was making a noise and everything. I can’t believe no one else heard it. IT didn’t cause any undo harm. Tom went on to win the overall and we won the overall team. Ahh the good days of bike racing and UFO’s. Thanks Tom!

To do well in triathlon you have to move away from the mindset of it being three sports rather than one. The point is that if you tell a guy who runs 80-100 miles a week that you are gonna do some tempo work at 7 minute pace he will say you suck. But if you can run 7 minute pace for 26.2 after 112 on the bike dude you are haulin’ balls. The most direct route to running speed in multisport is by becoming a more efficent cyclist. When I did my first IMs in '92 and '93 (canada) I was doing about 36-37 min 10K’s consistently (age ~33-34). I was even weaker as a cyclist then than I am now. Never broke 4:20 for an IM marathon. But by 1997-98 with more cycling strength I was able to run 3:50 or so at IM Canada…even tho my bike split didn’t change much, I was much less taxed going on to the run. My open 10K times slowed down to around 39-40, though!! None of these times are impressive to anyone but I think they are demonstrative of my point.

Marlin, re:LVL. Remember this guy developed his speed many many years before he came to long distance triathlon (he was a top placer at ITU races all thru the early 90’s). It is counterintuitive to suggest that one starting from square one pursue speed before endurance/ aerobic base.

Chip,

Good points. The key is a balance between bike/run fitness.

Having a fast 10K time to ones credit does not nesscarily convert to a fast IM marathon split, although I think that it does help a bit. Running well in an IM marathon is about number of things. I will list them in no specific order of importance:

  • Being able to grind out mile after mile at a set pace( emphasis on grind)

  • Being able to manage increasing fatigue both mentally and physically

  • Being able to manage and balance nutition and hydration late in the bike ride and all the way through the IM marathon

  • Being able to ride 112 miles and it not completely kill you

  • Being optimistic and working through the bad patchs( because there will be bad patchs)

How do you do this? Get as fit as you can for the bike. Make Long runs at steady pace in hilly terrain a year round staple of your training. If sub a 3:30 IM marathon is your goal - never run slower than 8:00 min/mile. Run in hilly terrain all the time. The hills add natural strength to your running.

Best wishes.

Being faster in 10k definitely doesn’t mean you’ll run a fast IM marathon. In my first IM race I figured that I’d run around 3 flat since my marathon is low 2:30s and I run 32 minute 10ks. During the race I was smoking out of the gate on the run and went through 10k in 41-42 minutes then my hands got numb and mile 7 was 8:30 … the rest of the race was a survival shuffle for a 3:30 marathon split. When I did Roth two years later I held sub 7 minute miles for the first 10 miles and then bonked for a while, then was able to gradually get back on track for a 3:18. My next one will be sub-3:10 (at least that is the plan). Obviously speed is not the only factor … nutrition, heat, how hard you swim and ride, … all come into play.

my goal is to go under 3:00 for the marathon. my bike is getting much stronger and although I can’t run near 30 flat anymore in a 10k, I am much stronger. That is my rationalization, gravitate toward being a 32-33 min 10k who emphises strength work rather than “speed” work. That is not to say that I don’t do any speedwork, just in a different manner. Laugh now, but I’ll let my dirty little secret out of the bag and tell you I want to go 9 hours flat (I’m looking toward 2005, I’d like to go under 1:55 OD before making the total sellout to IM training, probably never happen but we all have dreams . . .).

This is a great thread. I was going to call the poster on that sub-35 comment but it got pushed aside.

Personal observation: Track sessions have helped my triathlon performance because they help my leg speed, sense of pace, and my ability to suffer. I improved rapidly late last season with speed work and credit the run that helped me pass four or five athletes ahead of me for allowing me to capture my first (and only to date) podium finish in a triathlon. I have no reason to think they won’t help my IM marathon run (PR is 3:38:21 last year at IMNZ), but as others have noted so many other factors come into play in an IM marathon.

Question: How does one distinguish strength from speed sessions? I know with a current 10k time of around 38-39 minutes I suppose a speed session would be something like 8x800m in 2:45 with 3:00 rest, while a strength session would be 8x800m in 3:00 or say 5-6x1600m in 6:15 with 1:00 rest.

Any good suggestions for running “strength” sessions?

p.s. I’m not laughing. Anyone shooting for sub-9 scares me!

Dan, I think I can humbly say I may be able to speak to this issue with some authority. I was, WAAAAAAAY back, the first ever (pro or age group) to break 3 hours at IM Canada. I went 2:55. Trust me, 15 years later I’m not exactly doing that. In fact, I’m desperately struggling to hold on to my Marathon split while raising my swim/bike times. Not an easy task. I think Fleck hit on it pretty well with the theme of raising cycling fitness to the level where you can get off the bike in a relatively unfatigued state and then use strength to get a solid pace rolling in the Mar. Let’s be honest, few people are going to really be drawing off “speed” as such in an IM Mar. It’s purely an aerobic threshold effort. You’ve got to get efficiency or aerobic threshold levels up to a point where you can run say 8 min. miles without fatiguing heavily. How to do this?

IMO there are these factors:

  1. innate talent for running

  2. strength as defined as ability to run at an aerobic threshold pace for a long time w/o fatiguing

  3. nutrition

  4. mental focus

Numbers 2-4 are within your ability to control. Strength can best be gained by having trained at or near your Lactate Threshold on regular occasions in the final weeks of the buildup. This is best done with Tempo runs at but not exceeding LT for approx. 20-30 minutes. Add a few long runs to build metabolic efficiency and endurance at AT and you should see improvement.

I really do not think a lot of emphasis on pure 10k type speed is that productive at the injury risk it poses. If that were the case, then by extension we would be doing much more concentrated speed work on the bike too like track pursuits etc. which I do not hear being advocated. Instead, you have people like Larsen recommending a lot of ten mile time trials and such. What is that, basically a Tempo workout.

If you really want to try and reach some corellation between 10k times and Marathon or Olympic distance and IM, then use 4.66X your 10k or Oly. Tri to get a predicted Mar. or IM time, it’s pretty darn close. Having said this, it’s my O that your Mar. split in an IM is somewhere around 25 to 35 minutes slower than you would run in an open Mar. Now, this is troublesome because a lot can get your IM split drifitng (usually slower, heat, nutrition etc.) but, you can play around with this for fun. Say, you ran 40 min. for 10K, you multiply by 4.66 and get 3:06:24 for a Marathon. OK, lets add in 25 to 35 minutes and you get a 3:31 to 3:41 IM split. 4.66 is academically derived from several of the exercise phys. guys, the 25 to 35 minute rule is my own seat of the pants theory. FWIW. Play around with 4.66 times Oly. tri times and you see some interesting prdictions. Ie., 2:20 X 4.66 = 10:52.

The question I would like to pose, is, should we be going with our own personal strengths or continually working on weaknesses? I find to a degree working on weaknesses is a risk in that it starts to cannibalize your personal strong points. Any thoughts out there?

I appreciate all the high quality responses from everyone on this topic. It’s makes me glad I asked the question.

Dan

pdxjohn said: "I find to a degree working on weaknesses is a risk in that it starts to cannibalize your personal strong points. "
This is the fascinating part of tri training. I’ve been working the bike hard the last few years, since it was a major problem for me - bottom 40% of my AG on the bike leg, top 10% on the run. It worked, now top 30% on the bike, but fallen back to top 20% on the run. Overall my times have dropped significantly, though: which is after all the point. So I’m going to keep the bike focus until it’s top 20% as well, or my run gets worse than 20th percentile. Swimming gets maintenance only: to improve from current 20th percentile would take too much time, and not buy me much in the final results.

On the original contention, that sub-35 10k speed is needed for sub 3:30 IM mar, I disagree. Standalone 10k is a reasonable predictor of standalone marathon, but there are just too many other factors in an IM. Plus, the 10k is run at or near LT, whereas the IM marathon is purely aerobic - different systems, different training needed. Sub-35 is overly pessimistic IMO. I ran a 2:45 marathon several years before I ran sub-35 10k.

DAMMIT! I ment it as a round number…not a freakin hard and fast rule. I’ve said this three times now. not necessarily 35 min, but faster than the same pace for the marathon. If you run a 10k in 8min pace, in GENERAL you won’t be able to run an IM marathon in 8min pace. Or 6 min pace or ten min pace. 35 min isn’t the magic number from God. It was just an example.

The original point was that the guy wasn’t going to be able to meet his time goals with what he currently was running. Prove me wrong.

Rant over. Back to normal. Deep breath.

tommy