2:19:00 this is the new standard to qualify for men’s US Olympic Trials marathon. It is three minutes faster then the old standard but only 56 seconds faster then the standard was in 1984 when the USA had is most qualifiers (260 or so). Also, though the exact qualifying window is yet to be announced, we can be fairly sure we will have more than the 16 months those qualifiers had back in ‘84 so all in all it is an attainable time. In this article I will explore how an athlete can approach qualifying for this–the ultimate domestic race–while also revisiting how I qualified for the last trials.
Step one is to find your race, or races if it takes a few tries. This is an area that I think a lot of athletes really do a poor job at and an area that can make a huge difference as to whether you are going to be lining up with the nations best or watching from the sidelines. Chicago and NYC are both fast marathons by the 3 hour plus marathoners standards. In that world, where 10 min prs and time swings are common place, they should be. But in reality Chicago is 2 to 3 minutes faster then NYC. There is a big difference between the fitness needed to run 2:16 vs. a 2:19. But the speed of the course isn’t the only consideration though. I live at the 25 mile mark on one of the fastest marathon courses in the USA but the winner runs in the 2:40 to 2:50 range every year because the race offers no prize money and no incentives to bring in any sort of professional runners. It is hard to run fast in a solo time trial, it is near impossible to do it in one that is more then two hours long. Also with the new rules you can’t run certain courses because they are considered aided. For example I qualified at the Austin marathon which was point to point with about the same net drop as the Boston marathon, very fast, now if they still used that same course it wouldn’t be an acceptable race. Also heat has a huge effect on marathon performance, look at a race’s weather history as well as recent years.
So to sum up you need a race that is going to have a number of athletes running fast but more over running the pace you are looking to run. Going to a marathon that brought in 8 sub 2:10 guys who go out in 1:04 while you go out in 1:08–10 minutes up on the next runner and not able to even see the lead pack after the first 5k–doesn’t do you much good either. You need a course that is fast. But unless it’s Boston it better not have a net drop as it may be disallowed, when the time comes double check the list of banned courses. The weather needs to be good, now there are no sure things, every fast course has had bad years, Chicago and twin cities were crushed by heat last year, Cal international was so windy in 1987 that eventual trials champion, Mark Conover, was only able to muster a 2:18. My own choice in Austin in February wasn’t without risk it had been in the 70’s the year before but more years then not the weather was good and it was a top choice on all other factors so I went with it. The races to really look for are the ones to cater to the guys going for qualifiers. Chicago tends to do this offering bonuses to all runners getting the standard and sometimes offering pacesetters at set paces to help as well. Houston and Austin did this with great success in the build-up to the last trials. The beauty of these set ups is that they really draw in large groups of like minded runners and you will find yourself in a large pack of well matched runners sharing the work load and getting the most out of each other.
Now you have your race and it is time to train. Here is the next big mistake most people make. They say hey I’m a real fast 10k guy or I’m only a 30:30 10k guy but I’m a real long driver, the type of runner who gets better the longer the race. Either way they most often come up with a training schedule that looks almost exactly like there 10k training schedule just the long runs are a bit longer and the miles are a bit or a lot higher. A best case scenario is that they do a lot of aerobic threshold running and training at about half marathon pace. Either way, these athletes tend to perform real well in half marathon races but tend to under perform in the marathon. You should be able to run within 5% of your half marathon pace for the marathon so a half of 1:06:11 should be the fastest you need to run sub 2:19. Guys who run within 4% are not uncommon and some get even closer then that. In my first marathon I didn’t fall completely into this trap but I did fall into it a bit. I got fit enough that I got away with it but I ran a low 1:04 half marathon during my prep and only ran 2:15:28 in my qualifying race. Based on my half time I should have run in the high 2:13’s or low 2:14;00’s but like so many marathoners I just couldn’t finish the last 4 miles. Why? I had hit the wall, more to the point I had run out of glycogen. But why did I run out of glycogen? Well the same reason so many other marathoners run out of glycogen, my body wasn’t burning enough fat so it burned up all its glycogen before the 26.2 miles was done. How do we stop this? Simple a ton of training at paces from 90 to 100 percent of marathon goal pace.
Ideally if you do a 16 week marathon training phase the first 8 weeks will be focused on what is traditional American marathon training either your beefed up 10k schedule or a schedule heavy on the aerobic threshold training. Then you spend the rest of your workouts focusing on running marathon pace in a number of different ways. As part of interval workouts covering 12 to 18 miles, as part of progression runs and runs where you run multiple paces to stimulate your body to be more efficient and to recover during hard efforts, ie 30k with 10k at normal training pace, 5k at half marathon pace, 5k at normal training pace, 10k at marathon pace. The final marathon pace workout you should be doing long runs finishing at marathon pace. Kenny Moore had a standard workout he used that was a 36 mile long run! He would run the first 30 miles easy, 7 min pace or a bit slower, then the last 6 miles in 30 minutes, his marathon pace (PR 2:11). Now you don’t need to be this extreme but surely a long run of 2:20 or so with the last half hour to 40 minutes at marathon pace will be of huge benefit. When you shift your pace to mp from a slower pace, at which your body naturally burns more fat, at a point where you are already tired your body tends to keep burning the same ratio of fat to carbs and as such learns to burn more fat at the faster pace. During my build-up to the last Olympic trials I did over 120 miles of training at marathon pace over the hardest 6 weeks of work, more then 20 miles a week. Despite a small injury that slowed me a good bit late in the race I still moved from 10th to 7th over the last lap, 5 miles, of the race. Compare this to my first marathon where I didn’t have a nagging injury bothering me but over the last 4 miles I averaged close to 5:30 mile pace after averaging 5:06 for the first 22 miles and I went from 6th to 7th over that stretch as well. What was the difference? I had only run about 50 miles at marathon pace during my specific preparation phase for the race.
You should also do one hard long run of about the time you plan on running so 2:10 to 2:20 at 90 to 95% of your marathon pace. Doing this run while you are tired and in the middle of full mileage weeks will be extremely difficult but it will help push your body to use more fat at faster paces and ready your muscles and your mind to the task of running 26.2 miles at a very quick pace.
The taper is the final part of your training. A great taper only enables you to run as good as you are but man a bad one can kill you. I personally prefer a 2 week taper getting roughly 80% and 60% of my miles in and cutting back to 1 workout, instead of 2 to 4, a week and cutting the intensity of those workouts way back. I also feel that for a first time taper this is the place to start because it is very middle of the road. It may not be ideal for you but it should be close enough that it won’t kill you completely and then as you see how it goes you can make your taper more or less extreme in hopes of finding the perfect balance for you.
I think as you read over this article you may be thinking to yourself he left out one important aspect, mileage. How many miles should I be running to make this breakthrough? Well it wasn’t a mistake. The great Bill Bowerman once said “If someone says, ‘Hey, I ran 100 miles this week. How far did you run?’ Ignore him! What the hell difference does it make? The magic is in the man, not the 100 miles.”
Benji Durden was as unsuccessful a high school and college runner as anyone. Slower then Sell, slower then me, but he ran 2:09 and he made an Olympic team and he did it on 80 to 90 mile weeks. Now me I love the big miles and my body responds to them. I have also shaped my life to fit those miles, you may not have that luxury but that is no reason to give up on your dream to qualify for the trials. How you choose your miles should not be a more is better type of conversation. It should be a decision based on what type of training best benefits your body. Now that also means if you improve fastest on 140 mile weeks but you only stay healthy for a few weeks doing them then 120 weeks are better because consistency trumps speed of improvement every time. If you aren’t healthy for the start of the race I don’t care how fit you are you won’t do well. Now one thing I will say about low miles is that you need to remember that if you are running lower miles you are not going into workouts as tired and as such you need to run harder in those workouts to get the same benefits, in the case of marathon pace running this doesn’t mean running faster, your goal pace is goal pace, it means running longer at that pace or running it with less breaks, maybe doing 12 to 16 mile runs at mp instead of 4 or 5 by 3 miles at mp with half mile rests.
Now the final thing is commitment and luck. The great Australian coach Percy Cerutty said “Hard things take time, impossible things take a little longer.” Time is your friend now; it won’t be for long. Now is the time to start. Get together your training partners and start to find your loops,your workout courses, and your long runs that will become legend, at least in your own small world. When you and your group all make the jump and become Olympic trialists, if luck is on your side the weather will be good, you will run the perfect race on the perfect day and achieve that for which you have strived. But even if you don’t I promise you will be richer for having tried.
The American Distance Project 