 Okay, so am I doing the math right? Here we go, an eight week buildup, holding the peak volume for three weeks, so nine, 10, 11 weeks, and then the three week. Onward and upward, how we doing today, everybody? All right, diving right into the studio, talking about marathon training blocks today, talking about the volume, peaking, pacing, all that good stuff. But first, I'll give you an update on my knee and the run today, and by the way, feeling so much better than compared to yesterday. If you saw yesterday's vlog, you know what I'm talking about, but today, I went four and a half miles, eight, 40 a mile, still nice and easy, but just felt so, so much better, and yes, zero. A big zero on the pain scale for the knee, and today's run was the first back-to-back runs in this marathon training block because last week, so my game plan last week, which the volume of training for last week, we're gonna talk more about this here in a second, but the volume of training was 15 miles for the week, which is pretty low for me, but I did that over the course of four runs, so I ran Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, so I took three days off because of my runner's knee, I was just being very, very cautious coming back from the injury to take a day off in between the runs, and sure enough, I'm arriving in the second week of the marathon training block, feeling very, very encouraged and healthy and good to go, so what is a training block? A training block is a given amount of time that you have to train for a race to get as fit as possible in that amount of time, okay? So usually for a marathon, it's that 12 to 14-week window, sometimes you can pull it off in that 10-week window, preferably you want about 12 weeks, and usually a lot of the elite runners will work with a 16-week training window, so about four months. For me, going into my spring 2020 marathon, it's gonna be that 12 to 14-week window. Now before I go too much further into the structure of my marathon training blocks, I wanna give a shout out to two old vlogs, so these vlogs go more into the science side behind why I train how I train. If you've been following the channel a long time, you know I'm a big proponent of building your aerobic capacity, your cardiac efficiency first before you start adding speed work and interval training, okay? So it's two old vlogs. I'm gonna, I will remember to link to them, upper radiant corner, those cards that pop out, you can click on those after you watch this vlog, so click on those cards. One of them is called how to run faster, build the aerobic engine first. That's the first one, that one's done very, a lot of people have watched that one, but this next one has actually done even better. It was all about the two hour training principle that I apply to my running and training, getting ready for a marathon race. So both of those are upper radiant corner. If you wanna go way further into the science behind why I emphasize aerobic training over anaerobic training, especially for a marathon distance race, okay? So there it is, upper radiant corner. Now as I'm formulating my training block, specifically a marathon training block right now, I am very, very focused on peaking. I love the art of peaking in a training block, okay? So what do I mean, peaking for those that have never heard this before is if the top of the mountain, the top of the pyramid is as fit as you can be, meaning you are primed and ready to go, your talent level is being drawn out of you because yeah, your natural talent level is being drawn out of you to the highest degree, okay? You're getting all that you can on race day out of your natural given ability, okay? So peaking. And for me, again, here's the pyramid. Here's your, at the bottom of the pyramid is that aerobic base of training, that big aerobic base that I'm a big proponent of, the bigger the base of aerobic training, I believe the higher the pyramid can be on race day, meaning the faster you can race on race day. So for a marathon training block for peaking, it's an art form, how to lay out your ascent in volume in what I already mentioned. So these are the four questions that I ask myself and that you can ask yourself as well in thinking about how do I structure my volume of training in a training block, okay? So here we go, I have them written down here. Where should my volume of training start, okay? I'll come back to that. How high should my volume go? How quickly should my volume get to that highest point, okay? And how long should I hold the highest point of volume, okay, before I start to taper, all right? Okay, number one, where should my volume of training start? Depends on a couple factors. The two that I look at mostly, there's some other factors, but the two major ones are experience level and injury history. Now, I'm coming off of runner's knee right now. Therefore, I'm starting a little lower than I typically would, okay? Last week, 15 miles a week, that's a pretty low volume of training for me in a given week. Usually as I start a training block, it would be closer to 30, okay? So that's point number one. Number two, how high should my volume of training go? Or another way to say it, what's my max amount of miles or kilometers that I will be running in a given week? And this will vary once again from runner to runner. And again, it comes down to experience, injury history. There's some other factors as well. For example, do you live at 10,000 feet above sea level or do you live right at sea level, okay? But for me, I'll just put a number out for you, not afraid to say it. I plan, yeah, asterisk, emphasis on plan to run 120 miles as my highest volume in this next training block. Now, why did I say asterisk or plan? Because you have to listen to the body. Not only every single day, but every single hour of the day. Like as soon as I get above 100 miles a week, you're so tuned in to what's happening in your legs especially. You just have to listen to the body to make sure you're not going down a path of injury, okay? So, and then a number that I put out to folks that are curious, like Seth, I have no clue how many miles I should be running in a week. For my marathon, I often say, if you can aspire to get to 70, that's a great, when I get to 70 miles a week, my fitness levels, they start to, I feel like my fitness really starts to come around. So that's the number that I often share with people is at least 70 miles a week, okay? So that's number two. And number three, here we go. How quickly should my volume of training ascend to that peak point of 120 miles, all right? Another way to phrase it in your mind is how long, how many weeks does it take you to get there? And so you don't want, you want a nice, slow, gradual growth. You don't want two weeks or three weeks or even four weeks to get to that peak volume of training. For me, in this next training block, and again, I'm gonna listen to the body, but I will be adding, and there's different strategies out there, but I like to add 10 to 15 miles a week. So if you do the math, for me, if last week I ran 15 miles, I plan to get to 120 miles for my peak volume of training over the course of eight weeks. So that's two months of training to get there so that my body can adapt to the stress levels that I am putting it under, okay? But again, it's planning. If my body says, no, no, no, you need to pause, I will pause. In fact, I'm also planning just so you know, at 100, when I get to basically 100 or 110 miles per week of training, I plan to take a down week. So an easy week where I will cut my volume from 110 miles down to 40 to 50. I'm just gonna take an easy week. It's kind of a new game plan that I have for this next marathon training block, okay? So that's my ascent. It's not immediate. It's, and if you, okay, one last point, if you don't have experience with high volumes of training, I would not, do not add 10 to 15 miles a week. I would add honestly three to five miles per week. And I would not be afraid, this is another tip, tip of the day, is to add, go to, let's say you've never run more than 40 miles in a week, I would go to 35 miles in a week. And then I would pause there and hold 35 miles for at least two weeks. And if you have time, hold it for three weeks and then drop back down to 30, 25 to 30. And then go up to 40 just to make sure your body once again is adapting to the higher stress levels that you are putting it under with more volume of training, okay? So, oh, anyway, it's just, I just, I don't wanna see anyone get injured because they're ascending too quickly in their volume. Okay, number four, how long should I hold that peak volume of training, that 120 miles a week? For me, my go to number is at least two weeks and possibly three weeks. Again, listening to the body and listening to when does the body need to start the taper? You know, if you've been watching the channel for a long time, you know that I love the three week taper. A lot of people do two week tapers, which is fine. I prefer the three week taper mostly because I'm coming off on such a high volume of training. I feel like I need a three week taper. So going from 120 miles a week to that 90 to 100 mile a week and then down to, I believe I dropped down to like 60 to 70, maybe 75 and then all the way down to 30 to 40 that last week before the peak race, the marathon race. So am I doing the math right? Here we go. An eight week buildup, holding the peak volume for three weeks. So nine, 10, 11 weeks and then the three week taper, 12, 13, 14. Boom. Now I'm not gonna get into specific marathon training workouts in this blog. I'll save that for another vlog, but I will say this. As far as that 14 week window when I begin to introduce anaerobic training or interval training or yes, even threshold training, it does not start everybody. It does not start until week seven. So halfway through the training block. Why? Two reasons. Number one, I have found that when I plunge my pH levels, this gets into the scientific side a little bit, but the pH levels of my blood too early too often in a training block, I get so tired and sluggish. And okay, when you do interval training and you go anaerobic, meaning you go into oxygen debt, your pH levels and your blood go down. And it's really, basically it takes more time for your body to recover, which makes sense because that's what workouts do. And so when I do that too early in a training block, it just makes the, it makes later in the training block really, really difficult when I'm hitting 100 miles a week, 110 miles a week, 120 miles a week. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is peaking, okay? I have found once again, that I would much rather arrive at the starting line just right at the top of the pyramid. And when I do the interval training too early in the training block, I end up peaking. I feel like I'm ready to race two weeks before the race, three weeks before the race, rather than feeling, okay, I'm arriving at the starting line at the exact right time, rather than, so like when you do a workout three weeks out from a marathon and you're like, this workout feels so easy, it might mean you're ready to race. And that's actually not a good thing. You don't wanna, you don't want your workouts at the end of the training block to be like race day, okay? You wanna save the good stuff for race day. So that's why also I don't introduce interval training too early in the training block and I wait till around right at week seven basically, depending again on how the body is reacting to that aerobic base building phase. Okay, just to wrap it up real quick, the four questions that I ask myself in preparing my marathon training block, okay? Number one, where should my volume of training begin? All right? What is my peak volume of training going to be? All right? Number three, how long does it take, how many weeks does it take me to arrive at that peak volume of training? All right? And number four, last but not least, how long do I hold the peak volume of training at that peak level? All right? There you go. That is my structure for creating my marathon training block. Oh my goodness. What a day. Okay, question of the day. How do you structure your volume of training for a marathon? What does it look like? Okay? Now, if you want to chime in with a half marathon or 10K, that's fine too, if you've never trained for a marathon, but specifically if you train for marathons, this is where your wisdom can shine down in the comments. We would all appreciate it. Okay, I hope that helps answer some questions around how I like to structure my training going into a marathon. All right? Love you all. Thanks for being here. I'm gonna toss it back on the right too. How to run faster, building that aerobic engine first. That'll be on the right for you. And then we'll toss it back to the two hour marathon training vlog that'll be on the left. All right, everyone. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. See beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.