The traditional training pyramid has runners progressing from long to short, slow to fast. While that may work for a 5 or 10km, there are better ways to train for a marathon and longer.
A training model should go from weaknesses to strengths, general fitness to race specific. Start early with the things that are the most different from the race and take the longest to improve. Finish with the training that is the most similar to the race.
A training pyramid is a series of phases in a training cycle that progressively build towards your racing goals. Each phase has a main focus. It’s not that you exclusively do a single type of training during each phase or that you don’t do that type of training in other phases. At the bottom, I’ll discuss how to integrate variety through the phases.
1. Base Building –Base building is building your bone, muscle, and connective tissue strength, and aerobic capacity. It’s like training to train. The bigger your base, the more (volume and intensity) training you can handle, the faster you can progress, and the less likely you are to get injured.
Training stress should be kept low to allow you to easily adapt, and reduce the risk of injury. Runs should be almost exclusively of low intensity with gradually increasing volume. You can do moderately long runs, but they shouldn’t be exhausting. Racing and high intensity runs should be kept to a minimum.
If you are changing your racing focus- e.g., adding distance or intensity, changing terrain – you will need more time base building. For example, if you are going from 5/10kms to marathon, from marathons to 100-miles, or from roads to mountains, you may need several months of base building before starting to train for your goal race. It’s similar if you are going from running to triathlons, where you might need months of building fitness swimming and biking. It might even take a few seasons to get it right – by that I mean getting beyond the point of merely surviving, but being able to thrive at your goal race.
Every training cycle should start with base building. However, your base is not just what you do in the current season, but what you’ve built up in your body over time. Someone with years of consistent running doesn’t need as much base building as someone newer to running or stepping up in distance.
2. Weaknesses – Weaknesses are the things that are most limiting your performance. They are relative and very individual. On a simple level they can be thought of as speed vs. endurance, but it can be more complex than that; for example, up hills, down hills, technical terrain, eating and drinking on the run, heat.
Even the most beginning runners have relative strengths. Even the most experienced ones have relative weaknesses. These can change over time.
Weaknesses often are the things we like the least, the things we avoid. However, breakthroughs often come from attacking our weaknesses. That means doing the things we don’t like until we get better, until we no longer dislike them (at least not nearly as much).
Weaknesses tend to take longer to work on than strengths. While a natural ultra runner responds well to longer distances, for example, they may struggle with speed training. Give yourself sufficient time to reap the benefit of training your weaknesses. Significant improvements may take a few seasons. You need to keep working at it to keep it from limiting your performance.
Working on your weaknesses might mean switching the order of the phases or adding another phase early on. For example, if you are stepping up in distance, distance is a weakness. You might want to do a long run phase early, then return to this later.
This does not necessarily need to be a distinct phase. Working on your weaknesses can be started early, during the off-season and base building phases, then weaved throughout the earlier phases of a training cycle.
3. Sprints/Power – Short sprints are near all-out with long recoveries. These can be done on hills to add power.
Why do you even need to do this if you’re running a marathon or ultra? Sprinting improves stride power and efficiency, which will help you at any pace/distance. It also engages fast twitch muscle fibers that you will need to use in longer races as your more energy efficient muscle fibers fatigue.
Sprinting is the furthest type of running you will be doing for longer races so should be done early in the training cycle.
Types of workouts include:
- 5 – 10 second sprints. 10 seconds is about the limit of the ATP energy stores in your muscles so going longer isn’t better. These are explosive, all-out efforts.
- Striders, on hills if possible. Go nearly all out until your legs start to tighten up, then hold it for a few strides more. This is typically around 30 seconds, but can be more or less depending on experience and fitness. Longer is not better. If you’re stride breaks down, you’re not gaining like you should.
- Bounding, box jumps, and stairs.
- Squats and lunges.
Doing sprints on hills adds power to your stride. Sprinting on hills also reduces the risk of injury.
When doing speed work, make sure you are well warmed up. Roll into the sprints. I like to skip and some short strides before taking off. Skipping, with a strong knee drive and arm swing, mimic the type of powerful sprint stride you want, especially for uphills. Then, when you start to sprint, take a few strides to build to full speed/power.
For marathons and longer, this phase can be fairly short, a few weeks. Then, since these are fairly low stress, they can and should be continued in later phases.
4. Speed/Tempo – These are hard, sub-maximal efforts longer than sprints. Longer speed training increase cardio capacity and lactate tolerance.
Examples of longer speed sessions include:
- VO2Max intervals – 2 – 6 minutes hard at 3km-5km race effort. Work-to-rest (w:r, w = work/hard, r = rest/easy) is about 2.5-3:1; e.g., 5 min hard, 2 min easy.
- Cruise/tempo intervals – 3 – 15 minutes hard at 10km – 1hr race effort. w:r 5:1; e.g., 15 min hard, 3min easy.
- Tempo runs – 20-45 minutes hard at ~½-marathon effort. This might include some 5-10km races. You can repeat the shorter tempos, but generally don’t do > 1-hour at tempo pace.
- Fartleks – Fartlek means “speed play” in Swedish. In general, this is a less structured format of speed training. For example, you might run hard for two lamp posts and easy for one, or hard to the top of the next rise. If you are new to speed training, this is a good place to start.
For marathons, this phase might be several weeks long; for ultras, perhaps only 2-3. Since these workouts are high stress, they should be infrequent during later phases.
If training for hilly races, you can do these sessions on hills and trails. In general, do the hard efforts on the uphills and flats, not technical terrain. It’s OK to do these fartlek style around terrain.
Note that elites often race a ½-marathon, all-out, 4-6 weeks prior to a marathon. I don’t recommend that for most. We’re not elites. Unless you have years of running 80, 100, 120 mile weeks, it’s unlikely that you can recover enough to reap the benefits of racing a ½-marathon so close to a marathon, let alone recover enough to continue quality training.
5. Long/Race Effort – As you get closer to the race, your training focus should be runs that most simulate the race.
For a marathon, this is two partial phases. Early on in this phase, focus on building your long, steady runs (LSD). Later, switch the focus towards marathon race pace/effort (MRP). MRP includes steady state runs with perhaps 1-1.5 hours at MRP, and progression runs. A progression run is where you start slow and gradually increase your pace/effort to MRP towards the end of a longer run. For example, for an 8:00 marathon pace, run 9:30 for the 1st hour, then 20min each at 9:00, 8:30, finally 8:00 pace.
For an ultra, this means long runs. Try to simulate race terrain and conditions (weather, night) as much as possible. Practice running tired. Rather than mega training runs (> ~ 4 hours, the costs/damage from long runs start to outweigh the benefits), do doubles (morning then evening run) and back-to-back weekend long runs.
For longer races, this might be the longest phase (after base) starting ~12 weeks out from the race, leading to the taper ~3 weeks out. The bigger the jump in distance, the more time you’ll need. Start your training cycle early so you don’t shortchange yourself.
6. Taper – You don’t fully recover while in training. You recover enough to continue to train. Tapering allows your body to more fully recover so you can start the race well-rested. To prep for the race, you want to be as rested as possible.
During this phase, decrease your training load. Try to maintain the same training pattern of training days, although with less volume. It’s good to continue doing striders, but otherwise you shouldn’t do anything more intense than race effort.
Don’t worry about losing fitness. The amount of fitness you will lose during the taper is insignificant and will be more than made up for by hitting the starting line fresh.
Don’t worry about what you have or haven’t done in training to this point. Don’t try to cram in any last minute fitness improvements during this phase. It can take weeks to adapt to new training stress so you won’t reap the benefits and are more likely to do harm than good.
7. Race – This phase speaks for itself. Your fitness is your fitness. You can’t change that. All you can do is adapt your strategy and goals to your fitness (and conditions). Learn from the experience and incorporate that knowledge into your next training cycle.
Putting it together: Focus on the goal for each phase. That doesn’t mean not doing other types of training, variety is important, but don’t let them interfere with your focus. That means avoiding (or minimizing) hard, high intensity training and races during the base and long run phases, and minimizing super long runs during your speed phases. It’s probably OK to do long runs during your speed phases, but they shouldn’t be exhausting. It’s OK to do striders and hill sprints during your longer run phases, and you probably should, but hard VO2Max intervals, tempo runs, and racing should be avoided or limited.
This is not meant to be a training plan. It’s a framework from which to build the details of a training plan.
Don’t rush through these phases. Take the time to do it right for long term success.
Train smart. Have fun. Smile. See you on the trails.
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