Marathon Training

There must be at least one person wondering what marathon training looks like.  (I know you are out there, but are just afraid to speak up.)  The answer is:  it all depends on what your goal is.

A world class marathon runner will run at a crazy stupid pace of about 4 minutes, 50 seconds per mile.  My best 10K (6.2 miles) race ever, when I was 23 years of age, was at a pace of about 6:20/ mile.  A 4:50 pace for 26 miles is an unimaginable feat.

My primary goal in running marathons has always been to finish.  When I ran the marathon in 2003, I finished in 3 hrs 47 minutes, at a pace of 8:40/mile.  I would hope to run now at about a 9:15/mile, or maybe 9:30, more realistically.  10:00/mile would actually make me happy. 

So, this is what the training would look like, with that goal in mind:

		Mon	Tues	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun			Week  total
6/25			3		3		5	2			13
7/2			3		3		4	3			13
7/9			3		3		3	3			12
7/16			3		3		3	3			12
7/23			3		3		4	3			13
7/30			3		3		5	3			14
8/6			3		4		6	3			16
8/13			3		4		4	3			14
8/20			4		4		6	3			17
8/27			4		4		8	3			19
9/3			4		4		10		21
9/10			4		4		8	3			19
9/17			4		4		12				20
9/24		4	4		4		10	3			25
10/1			4		4		14	3			25
10/8			5		5		10	3			23
10/15			4		5		16	3			28
10/22			4		5		12	3			24
10/29			4		5		18				27
11/5		3	5		6		12	3			29
11/12			4		6		20	3			33
11/19			4		4		12	3			23
11/26			3	2	3		8	3			17
12/3			2	2	rest	2	26.2				28

As you can see, all it takes is time.  Each one of those miles is roughly 9 minutes.  The total amount of actual running time involved is a mere 65 hours.  Piece of cake, as long as there are no injuries.