Plans and Specificity

I'm currently training for Brighton Marathon in April, and following the Pfitzinger and Douglas 'up-to-55-miles per week' training plan. There's no denying that the plan is tough, especially completing both a long (up to 20 miles) plus a medium-long (up to 14 miles) run each week. However, I'm finishing the long runs feeling strong and that's giving me a lot of confidence for what will be my first ever marathon.

Chatting about training plans on a forum, someone mentioned that they weren't keen on the P&D plans as they don't include a large amount of speed work sessions. They are correct: most of the sessions are focussed towards endurance and marathon pace work. However, to my mind that's why I picked this plan. I'm not currently looking towards building speed and going faster.

This got me thinking about specificity of training. My goal is very specific: take my existing 5K/10K/HM pace and scale it up so that I can maintain the same level of performance over the marathon distance. To achieve this requires endurance and longer distance marathon pace work: exactly what the P&D plan offers.

If I want to run faster, I'm not going to try to achieve this as part of a marathon training programme. I'd first be looking to scale back and focus on improving my speed over the 5K-10K distance as these are more speed-specific distances. My training would be specific to these events: more intense VO2 Max and interval sessions, more threshold runs. Then, once I've locked in these speed improvements into my general running, I'd then be looking to switch back to a plan focussed on endurance and allowing me to apply these new performance gains over longer distances.

My take-away from this is that when your training time is limited, trying to improve multiple performance aspects at the same time just isn't going to work. You'll just get mediocre improvements across the board. Instead, work out what your main priority is and build a plan specific to that goal. When that goal is complete then is the time to decide if you want to change the focus. If so, build a plan specific to the new objective.