Tonight I was looking to do a track session that would be a marathon type effort to give me the confidence going into the taper that I was in good shape and ready for the marathon on May 6th. After a bit of research about tapering etc I came across an article by Frank Horwill. For those who dont know Frank Horwill there is an excellent profile of the man on the Serpentine Running Club website. He sadly died in January this year but his legacy lives on. I have read a number of his articles and they are absolutely fascinating and thought provoking.
http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_about_frank.html
One of the articles is entitled Leaving No Stone Unturned and is about marathon training. In it he describes a variable pace session that he calls "the greatest training aid for the marathon". The session is a 10km continuous run alternating laps at 5km speed with marathon pace laps as recovery. He describes an athlete who he was coaching being able to (eventually) run 25 laps alternating 80 second laps with 90 second laps for 25 laps. The athlete in question went onto run 2.37 for the marathon. With that in mind I decided that tonight was the night to try this for myself. Only time will tell if this session is too close to marathon day but here was the outcome.
82 (88) 82 (89) 81 (91) 81 (91) 81 (90) 80 (90) 81 (89) 80 (90) 80 (90) 80 (91) 80 (90) 80 (91) 80.
The full article can be read here....Article Number 11
http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_frank.html
Frank - I salute you Sir!
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