Usefullness of spinning for marathon training?

Eurorunner

I am currently doing an hours run/jog (approx. 10k) every second day or minimum 3x/week. Started back about 7 weeks ago - having not gotten any exercise whatsoever for over a year.

Was wondering how beneficial it would be to cycle in between my running days - for the purpose of building up on the cardio side of things? The goal would be to run a marathon at the end of the year. Do any of you do this type of cross training and what sort of distance would I need to cover for this to contribute towards improving fitness levels?

I know that some of you would probably run 4x/week - but due to work/time pressures, I wouldnt be able to commit to this every week. That said, there are sometimes days in between when i can make time - but i dont want to deviate from my every second days running routine. This is when i thought it might be useful to do a bit of spinning.

What do you think?

daveirl

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Enduro

Combining cycling with running training will help reduce the chances of getting some types of running injuries. It will help your overall cardio fitness, but you won't gain much running specific benifit per-se, apart from better climbing ability. Its certainly a lot better than doing nothing.

Eurorunner

Thanks for that. I will probably reserve it for the odd occasion when i have already increased distance run for the week by 10 per cent, or when I notice any niggles - so i can ease back off and prevent them from becoming bigger problems.

Genghis

Eurorunner,

Spinning will certainly help your running if you add it to the three run sessions you plan to do a week. In fact, if you are going to add a fourth session, there may be more benefit in making this 'cross training' as it reduces the risk of overuse injury while still promoting your fitness.

My experience is that since I began triathlon training my running has imporved no end - speed has substantially increased, endurance has been extended and my marathon PBs have dropped - despite doing up to 50% less running a week. That said, my overall training time per week would've jumped sharply also, so maybe it is not directly analogous.

Just one other comment - if you run approx 10k every single run, you will not only risk losing interest, you will also become good only at that distance. To train for a marathon try extending a weekend run gradually up to 20-22 miles (6 weeks or so before your big day), keep one of your 10ks (which might become 12-14k as you go on) and maybe add a shorter run which you would try running at a slightly faster pace than the 10k you now do.

Good Luck!

daveirl

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Genghis

daveirl wrote:

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I have done these too, but they are injury-prone due to their high speed nature. I didn't find that they predicted my time all that accurately either ... but then I was never going to do a sub-2hr50 marathon.

daveirl

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Genghis

I did, I started with 4, then next week 5, more or less adding one more interval per week until I got to 10, which I did once about 3-4 weeks before the marathon. I would say it took about 9 weeks to get from 4 to 10, as some weeks I maintained what I did the week before.

Eurorunner

Thanks for the info Genghis - I'm off work today so will probably hit the bike for a couple of hours.

Just one other comment - if you run approx 10k every single run, you will not only risk losing interest, you will also become good only at that distance. To train for a marathon try extending a weekend run gradually up to 20-22 miles

I'm up to one and a half hours now - increasing week on week by a little bit - whatevers within the comfort zone as i dont want to pick up any strains/niggles.
Must drive round the circuit i'm doing and find out what distance it is i'm covering...