Welcome to the next edition of Ask Coach Parry podcast. I’m Brad Brown, with me, coach, Lindsey Parry. Welcome back onto the podcast, I’m disappointed, I thought you were going to be the next in line for the Kaiser Chiefs job, but obviously not?

Lindsey Parry: Look, maybe if fitness was the only requirement for winning the PSL, I might have had a job. But it’s a little long since I had anything technically and tactically to do with football.

BB: We’ll have to wait and see, maybe you might be the next one, who knows? Lindsey, today’s question I think is a fantastic one. It comes from Irene Gonzales and Irene was asking about running a PB. She ran the Comrades Marathon this year, she missed out on a Bill Rowan by literally a few seconds. She wanted to know, is there an optimal time to running a marathon PB before Comrades. When is the best time to do it?

LP: I prefer doing that this year, so taking a proper break from Comrades, which we’re kind of nearing the end of that now. People can really start at looking getting back on the road. Then I like to look through to the end of the year.

The ideal is if you can get yourself off to a nice fast, flat, cool marathon in Europe, the US, but we don’t all have access to international marathons. So then it’s looking around locally, but in terms of a timing point of view; for me it should be this year, somewhere around late October/November/December.

Worst case, it should be around January or the end of January next year. You don’t want to leave racing marathons later than that if Comrades is your main goal for the year.

How to improve your marathon times

BB: Staying on the marathon, Barbara Foot wanted to know; how do you better your marathon times? Is it a case of just improving your shorter times, like 5, 10, half marathon and the marathon will then follow? What’s the best way to go about it?

LP: That is exactly what you need to do.

It’s about getting the balance right between doing enough speed work to improve your 5, 10, 21 times, and also doing enough endurance work so that you can translate those performances into the marathon. For some people it is just a question of running more and running more consistently.

It does vary from individual to individual what you need to do to improve. It depends how long you’ve been running for. It depends what your time is right now. It’s very different if I’m talking to a 4:55 runner or if I’m talking to a 3:15 runner. The things that I would let them do are quite different in terms of what they need to do to improve.

5km – start improving marathon times here

The principle is there, work on your 5km park run time get that down. That will translate into you getting fast over 10, fast over 21 and fast over the marathon, provided that there is enough endurance in the program.

BB: Awesome stuff, Irene, thank you for your question. I know Irene and her hubbie David. Irene’s a much better runner than David and I think it’s time he starts looking at marathon PBs too. Barbara, thank you very much for your question too. From myself, Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry, until next time, it’s cheers.