Marathon training on 3 runs per week

I was at a friend’s house a couple of months ago and was glancing at a Runners World magazine on her coffee table and she said, “Hey I’ve got a whole pile of back issues… why don’t you take them for a while?” So she gave me about 30 magazines and the next night I picked one up to leaf through. The article was “Run less, run faster” or something like that and it basically outlined a study done by the Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Research where they took a range of marathoners, from first timers to veterans, and put them on a program where they only ran three times a week.

This seems totally counter-intuitive since most marathon programs are based on 5 to 6 days of running in a week and a substantial amount of kms. However I think all of the people who tried the 3 day program ended up doing a better time than their most recent marathon! The average improvement was something like 19 minutes.

When they explained it, it seemed to make a lot of sense to me. Every marathon program has key runs, and the most important 3 runs in a week are your Long Run, your Tempo run and your Speedwork / Intervals. This theory states when you run on the days in between, you are stressing the same muscles, tendons etc so your legs are never properly recovered for your key sessions. With the 3 run program you have at least a day in between the runs so you aim to do those runs at a faster pace than you normally would.

On the off days you do some other sport which will get your heart rate up and help your cardio fitness, but not put strain on muscles in the same way as running. They suggest biking or swimming. Sound like a good plan for a triathlete?

So I’m giving it a crack starting on Christmas Day, to prep for the Canberra marathon. Only problem is that now my HR monitor is gone (and the footpod was buggered anyway) so I can’t run to pace or HR. I’m doing it the good old fashioned way and just going by feel. Feels good so far!