Easy 10k

Ran from home down to Burswood on a cooler although windy morning. Seemed plenty of runners out this morning which is great to see. Again pulled up ok from yesterdays tempo run which is further sign that I am adapting to the training. 10.0km @ 5.07min/k; Ave Hr 131bpm.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I have a double run now on my long run day, the reasons highlighted below from 'J':

Saturday double run...

I see lots of benefits, not all of them physiological... essentially marathon training is about time on your feet, maximum aerobic efficiency and maintaining this at as high a % VO2max as possible. A term I like to use is “resistance to fatigue”. The better you handle your long runs, the better you will run a marathon. The better you can recover from hard and long sessions, the easier you will find a marathon on your body (and the faster you will go). Improving in the quality sessions are really important, but handling and backing up from the long runs is also imperative. Right now I don’t think you handle and back up form your long runs well enough.

Doing another run in the afternoon after your long run will:
1. Increase the effects of the long run (fat burning, increased capillarisation, and just time on your feet).
2. Right now your body is used to resting after a long run. You do a long run and your body says, “Oh I’m tired. Time to stop!” Well, if we send it the message “no, you are not done yet. Get out there again.” You will force your body to cope and adapt and be ready again for more. It is like the stimulus and recovery we talked about before. If we give your body this extra stimulus (that it doesn’t usually have, is not expecting and is not wanting!), it will be forced to adapt and then be ready next time to handle the long run better – just in case it has to go again.
3. I think for you this could be a real boost as right now, you are ‘letting’ your body take a lot of recovery after a long run. You will still get two easy days after, I’m just adding one more run in there. I can add a second run in on your quality days, or other easy days, but I think you will get the most benefit out of backing up on your long run day. Plus it is a Saturday, so you have Sunday to recover (and Saturday during the day).
4. Double run on the long run day is the only way we can overload the marathon distance during prep. The tempo runs and long runs are the most marathon-specific sessions. We won’t go longer than a half marathon at pace during the prep. Adding a second run on long runs days (from time to time) gives the over-distance end of the spectrum.
5. It will give you more volume on your long run day and the day will end up being marathon distance or more.
6. There will be a psychological benefit as you will know what you have managed to achieve – and that you can go again even when you think you are really tired.

There are no ‘scientific studies’ to prove this theory that I know of, but I have used it on myself and others and I believe it is a powerful and relatively simple way to get a big marathon-specific benefit. I think you will be surprised that you won’t actually feel too bad in the pm run. In my experience, most people feel better than expected and run quite strongly in the second run on long run day. You will still feel tired the next day, but the second run will actually help you recover – immediate effect (‘active recovery’) and longer term (adaptive effect).