When to start training for boston marathon
HOW TO QUALIFY FOR THE BOSTON MARATHON | TRAINING TIPS | SAGE RUNNING BQ PLAN
New York Chicago Boston Oh Boston
there's only one hi there coach the
agenda of vo2max productions here is
another training talk today we're going
to talk about the Boston Marathon and
kind of the idea of improving your
marathon time to basically meet a time
goal the century it comes down to at a
pretty high level and you know I was
reflecting on Boston it gave me this
nice certificate in the mail real happy
with how my race at Boston ones here
have done in a couple times and this
year went a lot better than the first
time is fry my best career marathon to
date even though the time doesn't
reflect that because we kind of had
crappy weather but that's part of the
game that's part of the idea of you know
focusing on certain marathon races or
half marathon races to improve your
performance improve your personal best
and to move closer to maybe a long-term
goal and for a lot of people Boston is
an ultimate goal in marathon running for
people all over the world because of its
rich history you've got over a hundred
18 years of of race history the people
of Boston the unique point-to-point
course and then finishing in downtown
it's a really special event and then
it's exclusivity it's an exclusive event
because you have to qualify to to get in
at least most people do and there are
time standards and they're their time
standards that people you really have to
push yourself to meet I think for the
the hardest one is is men in the 18 I
believe it's 18 to 29 year old age
category so you tuned to something young
men oh that's the most hard the fastest
time standard I think it's a three or
five but you usually need to get under
that standard to even get entry so 302 I
think God
next year but a lot of people you might
as well go for sub three hours if you're
in that time range where's for women
it's a little bit different and as you
get older it's kind of age graded on on
up so if you're a guy in you're over 65
you could run I think about four hours a
little over four hours maybe and get in
but you're over 65 so it's it's a really
really good performance all these
performance our age graded down
especially you know in the low
three-hour ranges for most people in
their 40s 50s 60s it's it's a very
stringent bold and it's a time to let
people chase for years to get a lifetime
accomplishment if you get in so really a
special thing there I think some of you
guys maybe can relate to that in my
quest my personal quest of trying to
qualify for a US Olympic Trials marathon
it's the same type of thing you're
chasing a time goal where you really
have to push yourself and you have you
can only do it on qualified courses in
certain races and you know sometimes the
weather is crappy and you don't train
right and things fall apart and you miss
it by a minute or you're you know two
seconds a mile off and not I've been
there too so Boston qualifying Olympic
Trials qualifying trying to get your
personal best in a marathon it takes
years and years of dedication and
sacrifice for a lot of people and
depending on your talent level you know
some people could do it maybe off of
less training than others but a lot of
people are going to really have to
maximize their marathon training and
that's what this talk is really about is
how to optimize your training to go
after that BEQ if you're getting close
now the first thing I'll say is go to
our website Sage running comm and check
out our BQ plan now not really but yeah
really at the end of this talk you can
check it out we do have a plan
specifically designed for those trying
to qualify for Boston and usually it's
targeted for people that have already
been within 10 or 15 minutes of the
standard because if you're in that range
you could definitely you know pop a big
when I get a 10 minute PR sometimes
depending on how long you've been
training and what your weekly mileage is
now the first note on Boston Marathon
training is weekly mileage usually
people aren't going to be able to
qualify for bazan based you know running
20 or 30 miles a week you're gonna have
to make in a much more concerted effort
a lot of people I know people people
that work you know full-time jobs
that'll sacrifice a ton and train maybe
up to 90 or 100 miles a week to get
there BQ um and it was not saying it
necessarily will take that kind of
mileage our Boston Marathon BQ plan
marathon training plan goes up to a high
of 65 or 75 miles per week as the top
end there but again depending on your
talent level unless you're really really
a talented runner you're probably not
going to be able to run close to your
best performance of a marathon or under
a VQ time unless you're running at least
40 or 50 miles a week my brother just
got a VQ and he's a very talented runner
but he didn't run for years and he got
up to he still had to get up to 40 or 50
miles a week to crack three hours in the
marathon
um and so for many people though it's
going to take years and years and months
even to get up to that kind of volume of
mileage so mileage is really the first
component that separates you from you
know trying to finish a marathon to
actually trying to really improve to
reach your full potential in the
marathon to maybe even eventually chase
after a BEQ time and generally hires
better as long as you don't get injured
if you have the time and energy and
resources for it I'd say go for it but
you can't get injured and so you do have
to be cautious with that and generally
you see the people at Boston usually are
running at least 50 60 sometimes over 70
miles a week or more to push their body
to get to that time and it goes back to
how many years you've been running what
your training age is you know it takes
years and years of this aerobic base
building and steady consistent mileage
over months and months and years and
years to really build up and when you
toe the starting line in a marathon it's
really how many years have you been how
many thousands of miles of you lifetime
miles have you accumulated how many
years have you really put into the sport
now we have the mileage component but
now we'll look at factors of basic speed
now with training you know I referred it
Jack Daniel's a lot sandy 9 really like
his coaching philosophy me read a lot of
books on
or any training and he has a V dot a
bowl in his book which is essentially
kind of like a race calculator
equivalents a race performances over
different distances from a mile all the
way up to a marathon and every distance
in between so you have to be careful
with race calculators and equivalency
tables because people say oh I run a you
know an 18 minute 5k I should be able to
go step through the marathon easily
doesn't always doesn't usually work like
that you'd have to train specifically
for the marathon and be very talented at
the marathon with a big mileage-based
Seville pull off a sub-3 off of 18
minute 5k speed which is a time that a
lot of high school cross-country runners
could run but they're not going to run a
marathon of course so you'd have to take
it with a grain of salt but it gives you
rough indicators of the bare minimum
requirement to run a certain time in the
marathon so for example we'll go with
the fast end of the spectrum the three
hour barrier three hour marathon and
I've done a talk on training for step
three before you can check that on my
channel as well but if you're going
after a three three hour marathon
obviously you need your half marathon
pace to be faster than that
and if it's not already I suggest by
working on that first to some degree
because if you're not running if you're
peer and the half marathon and this goes
with Jack Daniels table
right in between about a 126 half
marathon uh is that's kind of the bare
minimum of half marathon speed you need
first up three now it's kind of fits
into the formula of add five minutes to
your half marathon time and then double
it for your full marathon or just double
your half marathon time add ten minutes
well this is about four minutes for
people that in my time range for me it's
it's more like double your half and add
three minutes but you have to understand
that when you're in the low to our
ranges every minute every second is kind
of worth a lot more proportionately than
if you're in the three or four hour
marathon range but for a lot of people
that's a good rough starting point and a
lot of people generally I mean you could
run a one twenty half
and then maybe fail to put to 1/30
half-marathons back to back that happens
all the time because people don't train
specifically for the marathon event they
don't they treat it like a half marathon
marathons are totally different beats so
a bare minimum speed and this is if
you're more like a marathon specialist
or even ultra runner you know 127 126 if
you can't run that for the half it's
going to be really hard to run to sub
1:30 half marathons back-to-back like
wise that goes with the 10k speed you
need sub about sub 39 minute 10k speed
and to do that how you run a sub 39
minute 10k well you better be running
the sub 19 5k and so it kind of goes all
the way down from there now I'm not a
miler I'm not a sprinter I don't have
the fast lake speed even at 5k or 10k
but I've run unfasten off in the half
marathon to ensure that I have a little
bit of a buffer when I try to go after
my personal best in the marathon and
it's a good way to kind of get an idea
of what kind of speed you need to be
attaining at least in the half marathon
to be able to do that kind of conversion
and that's really the next time take
away is what training do you need to do
to improve yourself to be able to
sustain more of your speed a higher
percentage of your speed at the shorter
distances and kind of translate that
into a time that's going to be really
competitive and a big personal best for
you in the full marathon so you got the
mileage component your history and
running and then the speed requirements
how do you what workouts you need to do
to really transition into that well this
could be a really really long talk it's
already getting long but generally and
as you see this in all of our stage
running comp plans but also in my
philosophy preach through all these
training talks over the years it got a
lot of videos out here on YouTube now
but you need a good mix of workouts and
all great marathon plans have these
mixes of workouts and it's really about
getting in the right mix of speed the
right intensity on long runs duration
long runs and recovering and absorbing
training so you have the strength to to
go the full 26.2 miles at a faster pace
and you know key workouts if you look at
key indicator types of workouts and
these you know are going to rotate
depending on each training week but
things that have really helped would be
things like two-mile repeats and
actually first before I get into some
specific workouts and I'm not going to
cover them all because it would be too
long of a talk and it would give a relay
our stage running plan
not really but think of it in terms of
five pace five paces and in the middle
I'm not going to flick you off here but
in the middle let's pretend this is
marathon race pace and let's pretend
that off on this side these guys are
slower than marathon pace and then off
on this side these guys are faster than
marathon race pace so you got marathon
race pace in the middle here I'm gonna
make a little sticky note on there so
it's easier to see and I'm so I'm not
flicking you guys off ah all right so
this marathon pace this is not working
well there so marathon pace in the
middle slower faster so you've got these
five notches of paces that's kind of an
oversimplification but generally that's
kind of what you want to be working with
now on the slowest end of the spectrum
we have our easy recovery jog type of
pace right it's it's super slow super
relaxed now maybe on this next notch we
have a more intense type of long run
pace where we kind of throw down
we might even call it an up-tempo pace
that's what we call it on our stage
running calm pace intensity spectrum
which I suggest you check out after
watching this video then you have
marathon pace which is very close to
that and could there could be some
overlap here then working down higher
intensity speed below marathon pace
faster than marathon pace we're at this
finger here this is not a good way to do
things but this is lactate threshold
tempo run pace and it's a notch faster
than Maryland pace it might be closer to
your 10k pace it might be closer to half
marathon pace depending on what timer
engine and depending on the workout but
that's going to be that intensity and
then this intensity the fastest end of
the spectrum for Jen
marathon training is going to be the
vo2max which is more like 5k type of
race pace now we could go even farther
we could go two strides in sprinting
speed but that's the general five pace
type of theory that coaches have
preached over decades it's not a sage
original sorry guys but that's kind of
an oversimplification of things but
that's kind of illustrating the point
that you needed speed training to run
such an endurance event and a lot of
people don't realize that intensity at
some level does lead to success now if
you're doing a bunch of 400 meter
repeats on the track that's not very
specific even Yasso 800s it's not super
specific to marathon training unless
you're backing it up with some really
good quality long runs in some longer
types of lactate threshold or tempo run
types of efforts or even racing a half
marathon as part of your build up into a
full marathon always a good indicator
not necessarily the best way to get a
half marathon PR but a lot of times it
does work in that way you get really fit
doing marathon training in general but
if you're super dialed for the marathon
it doesn't mean you're going to be super
speedy at 5k and 10k and you might miss
your half marathon BR because you're
doing high mileage during that half
marathon a race that you do during your
marathon build up which you probably
should be doing because high mileage
does tire the legs out it calluses the
leg so and so when you do workouts in a
marathon training program to get faster
let's say you're doing you do things
like to model repeats to work on your
tempo and lactate threshold pace and
let's say you do them an estimated 10k
race pace and maybe you're using a
calculator to kind of rough roughly
estimate what your 10k pace is or you
know what your your 10k pyaare pace is
what is your current 10k PR or what
should you do for 10k in your marathon
training that's really the question so
if you have a rough an indicator of what
kind of pace that is and what kind of
heart rate you you walk right around at
that pace you know kind of what to do
your two-mile repeats at and again we
spell this out all in our programs but
this is kind of an oversimplification
you're going to need workouts like that
two mile repeats you're going to need
workouts like three mile repeats or
three by 5k
what I like to do two to three by five K
you're going to need some long runs yeah
generally most marathoners are always
going to be running long runs 18 20
maybe even 22 miles in length really
spending a lot of time on your feet and
a rough indicator of intensity for those
long runs is how close did you get to
marathon pace maybe for good six miles
in there at the end
did you throw down the second half of
that long run and surged faster than
marathon pace for some of those miles
and what was your average pace per mile
during that whole long run was it within
40 or 30 seconds per mile of what you
want to accomplish on race day now if
you're a real beginner with marathon
running and you're doing maybe a 1415
mile long run a lot of times people
beginners maybe in slower time Rangers
could easily run that whole long run at
their marathon pace or even faster but
it's not always a good indicator of what
you could hold after 20 miles because
the second half of the marathon the last
10k of a marathon so to speak is this
important second half half way being the
20 mile mark because it's that important
you hit the wall things go exponentially
better exponentially good and that
really makes your brakes your race and
so we look at it in terms of long run
intensity to get in terms of lactate
threshold good mix of the lactate
threshold two and three mile repeats
essentially and then we look at getting
in some leg turnover types of workouts
where you're doing track sessions you're
doing intervals on a track at more like
5k to 10k pace and so you're doing the
speed intervals and you're knowing that
with that example of the three hour
marathon or you know your 10k pace is 38
minutes 39 minutes for a 10k and you're
doing repeat kilometers or repeat miles
kind of at that pace or even a little
faster and it could be anywhere between
20 seconds to 30 seconds per mile faster
than your goal marathon pace and that's
kind of a real feasible type of speed
stimulus in that sort of time range goal
marathon pace
our marathoner being 651 to 652 per mile
pace and so that's kind of just a rough
rough scratching the surface type of
training talk for what it takes to
qualify for Boston but it takes a lot of
hard work
guts blood sweat and tears basically a
lot of sacrifice especially for people
with full-time jobs and maybe a family
and you know balancing all sorts of
things but it's a real noble goal and
it's something that all of us that run
race marathons who want to improve our
times could could learn something from
the whole process of chasing that
standard when it's right there is really
a great thing and people get a great
experience at the Boston Marathon I've
always enjoyed my time there even though
the first time I'm in Boston the race
went really bad but it's it's a great
atmosphere and a great race to be a part
of anything with New York and Chicago -
I like those a lot in any race actually
but the idea of improving yourself as a
runner on with the higher mileage
training with having a set training
schedule where you know you're doing a
good mix of workouts including speed
shorter workouts lactate threshold
workouts and workouts that revolve
around goal pace and your current
fitness as your current fitness
hopefully progresses and increases
throughout the training cycle um and our
you know our plans differ in length but
usually this is this nice 16 week type
of build up plan some people might think
that's really short but again if you've
been running for months and months and
you have a couple weeks at least or
maybe a month of easy mileage running
ascending to 40 or 50 miles a week built
up already then you could jump into
these workouts especially if you have
years of experience and previous
marathon finishes whereas if you're a
true beginner you're probably not gonna
want to do that quite yet um but that's
kind of the gist of what it takes to be
Q you can check out our Sage running
marathon EQ marathon training plan on
our website Sage running comm definitely
check out the pace intensity spectrum
chart I kind of do a little graphic of
it right here so you could kind of get
an idea footing what I'm talking about
it is
Abell on our websites adjoining comm
it's a very obvious coaching plug right
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support and feedback I hope your late
fall early winter type of trainings
going well it's getting cold here in
Boulder and I wish you the best of luck
with your future races or future events
thanks for watching and stay tuned for
more of you to max productions
