November and December - building an Aerobic Base

BUILDING YOUR AEROBIC CAPACITY DURING THE WINTER

Marathon seasons tend to fall in either Spring or Autumn, to take advantage of the likelihood of moderate climatic conditions.

For a Spring marathon, training will be starting about now with a gradual build to a peak in late March and through April.

A layered Approach

The intuitive feeling when planning a marathon is to start to train with your final predicted marathon time in mind - with great ambition, the temptation is to set off with Tempo runs from early in the schedule to get fast, and then to build up the distances of those Tempo or Marathon pace runs.

However, in terms of building a progressive programme, this should be turned on its head, starting with long but slow-to-stead pace runs, aiming at building aerobic capacity, over which you can layer different types of training progressively over time.

The layering of faster training onto a large aerobic base is the basis of the training developed by Arthur Lydiard in New Zealand in the 1960’s and used in some form by marathon runners the world over ever since.

Endurance First

The most important part of the Lydiard technique is putting down an aerobic base that everything else will stack up on. This is mostly achieved by lots of steady running, which has the effect of improving the delivery of oxygen to the working muscles, both through an improved heart/lung function and the development of more capillary beds, these taking oxygenated blood to, and waste products from, the muscles.

Athletes with a reasonable foundation of training can look at a counter-intuitive schedule, that starts with long runs that build quicker over time, rather than quick runs that build in length through the schedule.

With an April Marathon in mind, November and December are the perfect time to put down the aerobic base. By keeping runs on the slower side of steady, volume can build up quite quickly. Getting regular 2 to 2 ½ hour runs in now, backed up by several steady runs of 45mins to and hour during the week, and some double-days, over a 6-to-8-week period, you will lay the foundation that you are looking for, then be in a position go on and build strength, speed endurance (repeatable speed) and 5km leg speed, that will bring you to a peak.

I hear all the time from athletes that when they first start to work on building aerobic base they feel like they are getting slower – and the feeling is correct – but once acclimated to the new volume, pace returns and by the final 8 weeks large improvements in the ability to maintain a fast pace are realised.

It is a question of trust and belief that slower running can eventually turn into much faster running.