Festina lente

RayCun wrote: »

Coming up to the end of the 10k, well into the last kilometre (how far, I don't know, rain on my watch). A guy, seems to be a local, has made a late surge, and he's been on my shoulder for a couple of minutes, but I'm holding him. His watch beeps, 6 miles. I see a 6 mile sign on the side of the road. There's a corner up ahead, and I convince myself that the finish must be just around that corner, time to go. Surge up to the corner, and around, and the finish line is ****ing miles away - and just like that, I stop running. :rolleyes:

The great thing about running is that every race presents a new and exciting opportunity to **** things up :rolleyes:

Bummer. What did you do then, though; walk to the finish, or get going again?

PaulieYifter wrote: »

Not answering for Ray but Magness plan is great. Lots of alternating sessions - great progression in the plan - it’s like a pendulum swinging either side of marathon pace where the swing stays closer to MP the closer you get to the big day. Focus is on steady, marathon and LT paces. Lots of easy running too.

I like that explanation of it, good metaphor for it. They call it funnel periodisation, Starts off with both non-specific speedwork and aerobic work in base phase which then funnel into more race specific training the closer you get to the race. The idea is that you will always stay in touch with different speeds during a training cycle, the intensity, volume and specificity just shift. This is the way pretty much all those top class Kenyan marathoners train or at least the principle is pretty much the same.

Many people will be familiar with plans like P+D and Daniels etc. Those plans would be called linear periodisation. Each phase has one specific purpose, base is all about aerobic endurance and then you move onto threshold phase etc etc. The difference with Magness and other plans that use a funnel model is that it attacks training from two different points. Many people are aware that base training builds a foundation for more specific training but the idea behind Magness like training is that you also need a speed base for specific training. The idea is that you truly never totally abandon one aspect.

Speed base Aerobic Base
(non-specific) (non-specific)
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
Race Specific

My rough little diagram above shows why it's called a funnel in simple terms. Speed development can be a bit of a confusing topic as many people think of speedwork as balls out grinding out 4xMile @5k as speedwork but there's a lot more to it than that. Early season Magness stuff focuses more on things like short hill sprints, alternating short sprints and generally progresses into 200''s which he really seems to like. All of these are used to improve your neuromuscular ability(how quickly your brain can send signals to the muscle to contract or more laymen, make you fast!).

You hear many myths in training, one of the biggest being that you shouldn't do this or that in that phase(e.g speedwork all year round). Well, this kind of approach spits in the face of those ideas and makes a lot more sense once you kind of start to get a grasp on it. How can you expect to run good specific sessions if you haven't run fast in months etc. The main thing in my opinion to be taken from magnesses approach is that you should keep in touch with all paces year round but where you are in training that dictates the intensity and volume that you prioritise towards each.

My graph didn't work:pac: