Marathon - 4 Training Sessions per Week

Carb

Just two quick questions for those of you more knowledgeable on the subject.

Are there any good 4 day training plans for marathons available. The lowest number of sessions I can find are for 5 days. Or is my only option to tweak an existing plan to suit.

And, in general, can a good marathon time be achieved doing 4 sessions per week. I realise this varies per person, but say those of you that achieved sub 3/3.30 times, do you feel you could have achieved this on a 4 day plan?

tunney

Carb wrote: »

Just two quick questions for those of you more knowledgeable on the subject.

Are there any good 4 day training plans for marathons available. The lowest number of sessions I can find are for 5 days. Or is my only option to tweak an existing plan to suit.

And, in general, can a good marathon time be achieved doing 4 sessions per week. I realise this varies per person, but say those of you that achieved sub 3/3.30 times, do you feel you could have achieved this on a 4 day plan?

Carb is this for a standalone marathon or part of an IM programme?

RoyMcC

Here's one with only three quality sessions per week plus two days cross training http://www.marathon-training-program.com/three-day.html

Not sure what the cognoscenti on here would make of it though...

Daithi BC

The FIRST program (http://www.furman.edu/first/) is a three day a week program (plus two days of easy cross training) which claims to have had a lot of success. There's not much mileage in it, but the three weekly runs are pretty tough.

I always used to train four days a wekk (with no cross training), and got myself down to a 1:23 half marathon and 3:09 marathon. Since then I've gone to five days a week, improved to a 1:18 half and 2:58 marathon, but been injured roughly 40% of the time, so I'm going back to four days a week. I'd prefer to be able to run most of the time rather than occassionally running faster.

Carb

tunney wrote: »

Carb is this for a standalone marathon or part of an IM programme?

It is and isn't. The marathon is standalone, but my training needs to incorporate swimming and cycling or I'll be nowhere by tri season. As you've seen from my log, mornings are predominantly swimming and gym, so I've got 5 evenings sessions and 2 weekend sessions available for cycling and running. The intended split is four running and three cycling. My cycling is weak, so I'd be concerned about dropping one of these, and I'm not sure if a morning run during the week is feasible. Obivously there's no shortage of cross training.

The marathon is a personal goal rather than a requirement. I want it for giving a focus to my running and endurance. When it is over, I intend dropping back on the high mileage to something more suitable for half marathon needs, work on speed, and increase my cycling.

There's my long winded answer.:)

Running Bing

Carb wrote: »

Just two quick questions for those of you more knowledgeable on the subject.

Are there any good 4 day training plans for marathons available. The lowest number of sessions I can find are for 5 days. Or is my only option to tweak an existing plan to suit.

And, in general, can a good marathon time be achieved doing 4 sessions per week. I realise this varies per person, but say those of you that achieved sub 3/3.30 times, do you feel you could have achieved this on a 4 day plan?

You'd want be naturally very good to run 3 hours on four days a week (or at least have a very good level of fitness behind you).

I did a 4 day programme for my first marathon (the non-runners marathon trainer book) and I wouldnt really recommend it. Essentially what you are doing is three days of exercise during the week then at the weekend running for hours (if your a beginner).

It took me well over three hours to do some of my long runs...now if elite marathoners would'nt run for three hours straight how does it make sense for a complete novice to put their body through that?

My advice would be too train for a few 5ks. A decent enough time should be doable off of 4 good days training (two steady runs, a tempo run and a long run...but if your only starting just run easy and build it up). The maybe look at the 10k, then a half and build up to a marathon.

Thats my two cents anyway. As you can tell Im not a fan of people new to running attempting marathons too soon but I know a lot of people have different views on it.

ronanmac

I did the DCM this year using the FIRST programme, which, as Daithi BC says, is three days a week running and two/three days cross-training (cycling and swimming). I didn't stick to it religiously (missing a lot of cross-training days ) but it suited me as family et al meant that I was pretty short on time this year.

Does it work? I managed to take 33 minutes off PB so it worked for me.
**SLOW RUNNER WARNING COMING UP**:
That said, my PB before Dublin was 4:28 and I am guessing sticking to any decent programme would have wiped a bit of time off my PB. Still and all, it did work and I'll use it again next year!

aero2k

Carb wrote: »

And, in general, can a good marathon time be achieved doing 4 sessions per week. I realise this varies per person, but say those of you that achieved sub 3/3.30 times, do you feel you could have achieved this on a 4 day plan?

I did 3:22 last year on 3-4 days running per week, approx 35 miles max. I followed the First program referred to above, though in retrospect my two cycling days were probably easier than the program intended. NB on race day I started too fast, 3:10 would have been a better reflection of my ability and the times for shorter distances would support this.
I increased to seven days per week around June this year, 55-60 miles. I don't think I'd have managed the sub-3 otherwise. (I'm 45 so this is a factor, if you're younger you may get away with less training)

Carb

Thanks for the replies folks, yes even you Running Bing.:)

I had a quick look at that FIRST program before my head started to fry. I'll have a proper read when I have more time.

Tunney's question actually give me an idea. I know there is IM training plans online, so I'm sure some of these have less than five running sessions per week. I'll need to do some investigating.