I Quit Marathon Training and Got Faster

[00:00:00] I’ve been running for 30 years and I’m doing something in training that I’ve never done before so that I can try to run sub 17 in the 5K again and sub five minute mile. Let’s see how I go on this kind of rainy, kind of damp, 80 minute, super easy off road long run. Let’s go. Alright, I’ll be going over whether you should run short or run long, and if.

[00:00:25] You really do need long runs. A bit more on like the training structure and why I’m doing what I’m doing and more of like the mindset shift and I’m just doing something that I really enjoy doing. Been slogging out this 5K stuff, half marathon marathons for a long time. Let’s see what happens when I don’t do a long run.

[00:00:42] I don’t train like a distance runner and hopefully you learn a bit. Find out more about how I train and see how I go. Alright, so what I’m actually doing that you can actually take away is I transitioned from an off season of no long runs and I actually talked about that in a previous episode and I wanted to really just see like how much fitness do I lose.

[00:01:03] And also I wanted to make sure that I recovered ’cause the long runs were really killing me. And I didn’t lose that much fitness. How crazy is that? I shortened all my workouts in the off season, but now I’m transitioning into the build season or the build phase mezo cycle, and that’s six weeks of going on two to three workouts plus a long run.

[00:01:28] Oh, and gotta talk about what my choice of shoe is for this run. It is the soy. Ride 18, which I’m growing to absolutely love for. Everything from easy recovery, runs, walks to like probably uptempo steady runs, so thoroughly impressed. Now my long run is going to be. Very easy, and this is what I’m doing right now.

[00:01:52] Very easy off road. I want my body to really absorb all the training from the week and to not shatter myself. So soft surface here, uh, gets to zone out. He’ll slow me down. So seeing how that goes, I liked it in the past, can do more of that. And those two to three workouts, I’m doing one like very fast.

[00:02:17] Session more like one mile pace work and then another three K to 5K pace work, and then another seven K to 10 K pace like tempo work. So that’s like huge. Alright, so the actual week, as I said, it’s only week one, but I’m actually feeling quite, quite good. Like I feel like slightly undertrained. I went into the long run, which is, you know, five days of training and it was like.

[00:02:44] Whoa, I’m feeling great. Like I could do more than that. That’s a great sign. And old Daren would go and do way too much and then burn himself out by week three. But this time I’m like, nah, feel it out. Always have a little bit of the tank when you finish and you’re good to go. So that’s been nice and I’m taking that full day off one Monday.

[00:03:03] That’s huge. Alright, future Daren here. Totally forgot to, uh, break down the week for you. New format, working out the bugs. Alright, so Monday. Was full rest and recovery. I do a sauna session. It’s about 45 minutes. Tuesday I did a blended kind of VO two max threshold session. It was a Mona fart, which is like a speed fart flick, which is really, really interesting.

[00:03:31] And I’m a big fan of this now. Um, and then Wednesday was my strength day and a easy run. Thursday was a sub threshold day Friday, I did a long, my long activity, 15 minute bike ride, 15 minute run, 20 minute run, then a 15 minute swim. And then Saturday was my steady run and a strength session. And I’m not gonna lie, honestly.

[00:03:58] The, the marathon training is just not my strength. Some people love it. Shout to you, marathoners out there, but not this guy. I like my time. I like my energy. I like not feeling smashed on Tuesday, Wednesday. So, uh, yeah, huge, huge difference. And not this dread of, oh, you know, I gotta eat all these calories.

[00:04:18] I gotta drink all the, ah, that. Always, always gave me anxiety. So it’s very nice to not have that. And you know, this block, it’s only week one of six weeks, technically 18 weeks. So we’ll see how I go. I’ll check in one weeks, four and five and in, in three blocks from now. So something that I touched on earlier, which I wanna really, really like.

[00:04:42] Punch in is injury and like minimizing the risk. We can’t, we can’t predict it. We can only minimize the risk by doing many, many variables. 1% better, 1% better sort of things. And the biggest thing that I really wanna focus on again, is recovery. Recovery. Rest and I’m just taking a full day off and that mentally I’m also resting, recovering, and I’m not burning out.

[00:05:13] Alright? Gotta always end a workout with some strides. Might as well do it on this big ass hill.

[00:05:30] All right. Here we go.

[00:05:51] All right. It’s actually four of ’em, so I’m done. Back to the end. So to end this all, I actually have something really cool. I got a course. It’s an email course, really easy. You don’t have to sign up for anything. It’s free and it’s six free lessons so that you can run injury free. It’s called the 1% Better Injury Free Method, and it’s all about consistency, habits.

[00:06:16] You know better. It’s like, how do you run farther and longer, easier without burning out, without getting injured? And I wanna help you. So you’ll get that and hopefully you can become slightly better, just 1% better every day. Thanks for rocking. Thanks for coming on this. I didn’t even tell you this 80 minute run with me.

[00:06:35] Uh, should be 80, probably about 75. I’m only tacking on about five to 8% on my long run per week to avoid injury, and hopefully we can do something kind of cool together again. I wanna go sub 17 in the 5K go sub five minutes in a mile. Let’s see what happens. Happy running. 1% better every day, every week, every month, every, every year.

[00:06:59] Peace.