Kiptum’s training program to break 2hrs

I have a question not entirely related to his training.

Maybe it's a very dumb one, because I have never run a serious marathon but I've run two PBs at 10k just a week after hard halfs.

If you race a marathon as fast as you can, on peak shape, and then basically rest for a few days and let your body recover and overcompensate for the effort...

...Wouldn't you be ready to bang a marathon at top fitness in, let's say, 15-21 days?

An old running rule says that for every mile you race you generally need at least a day of recovery after before you can race that same distance at your best again. I feel this applies pretty accurately up to the half marathon but for the full marathon not that well. Typically most top marathon runners seem to need a good 3-6 months to fully recovery and prep again for another marathon.

It's a good question. The main problem, for most mere mortals, is the recovery time required after an all out marathon.

When I was running 130-150mi per week, I ran a smaller marathon 5 or 6 weeks out from my goal marathon a couple of times, but never all out. (Think running 2:24 when in 2:18 shape. This also had the added benefit of some prize money.) With that type of volume, I was rarely sore from the midterm marathon and often times not sore from my goal marathon. I felt I performed better in my goal race with a marathon in the build up. However, my body was completely drained energy wise after every goal marathon as opposed to feeling fresh with one week of easy after the midterm marathon.

I also tried this double marathon when I was running lower volume (100mi per week) and was sore enought that it impacted my training and energy levels through the goal marathon, which was a failure.

TL;DR Recovery is hard and a marathon does too much damage to recover from unless you're running mega volume, IMO.

yeah… cool story

If that schedule is real there is not a snowball’s chance in hell it’s possible without heroic doses of PEDs. No one else is training like that.

It's actually far from a dumb question in my opinion. Of course it could be that I have a dumb opinion but, anyway...

I think it's Great Dane who's referencing what we used to call "Jack Foster's Rule" because Jack was the guy who created it. Jack said that he found he needed an easy day for every mile he raced, so basically a week after a 6 mile/10,000, two weeks after a half marathon (though in Jack's day there were so few of those he may never have raced one,) and nearly a month after a marathon. Joe Henderson used an ammended version of Jack's rule and suggested an easy day for each kilometer you've raced.

Jack and Joe were both on the high side of forty when they created those "rules." You need more recovery time when you're old so maybe younger runners need fewer easy days after a hard race and so maybe if a forty plus guy needs a month of easy days after a marathon someone on the down side of thirty needs only half as many which would have them ready for another marathon in the time frame you're suggesting. And there have been a small number of guys who seem able to do that, Kawauchi, Doug Kurtis, Kjell Erik Stahl, Cavin Woodward ( a lesser known name in marathoning but an all time great ultra guy who once set world records for fifty and one hundred miles in the same race and could go under 2:20 in marathons by a fairly comfortable margin.)

I think that maybe the main element that comes into play here is mental. Shorter used to say that you had to forget your last marathon before you can run your next one. When I was in my twenties I found that I could train and race at non marathon distances normally after a hard marathon in no more than a week and sometimes a day or two less.I once ran a mile/two mil double at an indoor meet the night after running a marathon PB. But I seemed to need at least three months before I could run what for me was a good marathon. If I had much less of a gap than that I found that when I got to the late stages of the race, the one where you're just wishing you were done, I could not seem to push through that part very well.

Maybe no one else today is training that much without PEDs, but there have been people in the past who did that sort of mileage. Shorter was doing it before Munich, don't know about Montreal, Dave Bedford did it. Fullerton State had a bunch of guys in the early to mid 70s doing it.

Don't believe in this except if he is full peds loaded. You don't run every week a 30-40 k training run equal to a marathon in 2:05 even if you are the sub 2:01 world record holder. Don't believe in everything you read without using plain logic.

Being as insane as it is both in volume & intensity...

...Is this workload a step down from his training block before London & Chicago, right?

It says he's not doing a week with 300k like he did in his Chicago preparation.

Yep, volume is a bit lower. Intensity/quality/pace is same-ish?

Reported.
Abusive attack on Kiptum, falsely accusing him of being on drugs. The poster is promoting the use of drugs in athletics by saying that drugs are needed to run fast, which is factually incorrect. Abusive drug spam posters like this one should be permanently banned from the forum.

With that argument you’re basically saying he must be the only one doping because no one else can train like that.

If you've tapered properly - prior to the race - you will have actually lost fitness, but freshened up enough to negate the loss (and then some).

If you wait another 3 weeks to then race another, you'll have lost even more fitness, and likely won't be as fresh as you were for the first one.

Just an anecdote to add to that, I recently did a marathon, and then did my first light workout 9 days after. It was some threshold intervals, and my LT2 pace was 12 secs/km slower than what it was prior to the taper.

Why would you report the post when it's not against the rules?

Dunes runner, outstanding troll post. A public figure in a sport rife with drug cheats deserves skepticism for rewriting the record book. I especially love your unsupported hypothesis that it is factually incorrect that drugs are needed to run fast. Are drugs needed to run faster than 2:02 in the marathon - probably. I still follow the sport and read let's run, because even though I am skeptical of almost all athletes seetibg world records, I believe that some, likely a small minority, of top athletes are clean. What is so pernicious about performance enhancing drugs is that they significantly improve recovery and make harder training possible, benefits they can last for the life of an athlete and why life time bans for runners like Burrito Shelby are necessary. Because of the training benefits of banned performance enhance drugs, I think it is reasonable that a large portion of any thread about Kiptums training should also include discussion about possible drug use.

The structure of the week is a typical Kenyan one. The volume is just higher than normal. The obvious key is to not get injured. Being only in his mid 20s and not injury prone he may be able to pull it off. Most guys his age are still on the track. It will be interesting and I appreciate that he’s taking a big chance to get fit enough to break 2.

And squishy bouncy supershoes, no way to do that mileage with Nike Air Flows - whatever the PEDs.

For those of us who don’t use FB, would you be so kind to copy-paste the training program? Please! Thank you.