Speed work for the Comrades Marathon – Must you do it?

Speed work for the Comrades Marathon – Must you do it?

With entries for the 2015 Comrades Marathon opening soon we are starting to get more and more questions about next year’s Comrades. Today we chat about speed work and how it relates to your Comrades Marathon training, particularly if you are aiming for a Bill Rowan medal.

Jaryd Weelson got in touch via our website and asked if one could try incorporating speed work into the runs for the Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan programme to increase speed? Or would it be in addition to the Bill Rowan training on the rest days?

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Brad Brown: With entries for the 2015 Comrades Marathon opening soon we are starting to get more and more questions about next year’s Comrades. Today we chat about speed work and how it relates to your Comrades Marathon training, particularly if you are aiming for a Bill Rowan medal.

Jaryd Weelson got in touch via our website and asked if one could try incorporating speed work into the runs for the Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan programme to increase speed? Or would it be in addition to the Bill Rowan training on the rest days?

Lindsey Parry: The Bill Rowan programme initially won’t, but there will be some intensity training that will come in, but it will be more along the lines of strength work and more specifically doing some hill work.

Run a time trail as your speed work

I would do the odd time trial which will definitely help with speed work. The reality is that we are training to run 6minutes per kay. So on the Bill Rowan programme we are looking at 6 minutes per kilometre, and if you want to run 6 minutes per kay you probably need a marathon in the region of 3 and a half hours – which is well under 6 minutes per km.

If you are capable of running a 3.5 hour marathon – speed is not going to trip you up on race day at comrades. The consistency of training is far more important that high intensity training.

High intensity training is also the place where you are at the highest risk for injury. I certainly wouldn’t add any speed work to the Bill Rowan programme. Some hard work will come, but the focus will be on training consistently and getting the right mileage to allow you to run at that sub max level for a really long period of time.

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