Should we all train like Kipchoge for the marathon?

Try it for 18 months and report back.

I second that.

good luck

it seems to me that there is no point in copying what Kipchoge is doing now unless you first copy what he did to get there. in 2007 he ran his first 10,000m on the track. in 2012 he ran his first half marathon, and he didn't run a marathon until 2013 by which time he had been racing and training for 5000m and 10,000m for 6 years. I think you probably need to do that first.

cheers.

Last summer I stumbled upon an article from sweatelite that had his 2017 Berlin buildup. One thing I took away from it and adopted into my own training was doing my easy run on Sunday a little slower than usual, and doing the Monday easy run a little faster than usual. That was the main change to my training from last summer through last fall and I dropped my half marathon PR from 1:16 high down to 1:14 low. Before that my easy days were usually the same pace, so I think having one day as a true recovery effort and another at a moderate effort helped fill in the gaps. Monday became my favorite training run of the week, just running at a solid clip while still being totally relaxed.

cotton shirt wrote:

it seems to me that there is no point in copying what Kipchoge is doing now unless you first copy what he did to get there. in 2007 he ran his first 10,000m on the track. in 2012 he ran his first half marathon, and he didn't run a marathon until 2013 by which time he had been racing and training for 5000m and 10,000m for 6 years. I think you probably need to do that first.

cheers.

This was my initial thought as well, but then again, have all the other guys in Sang’s group who are chasing him around in his workouts done that? Even Kamworor has way less lifetime training under his belt, but seems to thrive on very similar workouts. I doubt Sang is just training Eliud and knowingly setting the young guys up for burnout?

I’m not suggesting that any newbies hop right into the Kipchoge training plan, or even that an experience runner should copy all that volume... but why not give it a go if you were a collegiate runner and have got a couple marathon cycles under your belt? Too much risk of injury/overtraining?

I’ll add that the most striking aspect of his training to me is the general absence of reps longer than 1k. He leaves the “sustained” pace work (and pretty much all the marathon pace work) in the hard long run, and works on faster, shorter stuff on the rest of the week. This is really different from how I have trained for and seen other Americans train for marathons in the past.

Some of his workouts seem sort of like 10k training. I wonder if this is worth emulating.

I personally adopted a two threshold intervals, one long run approach to my distance running, with the other 4 days being easy 60-90 minute runs. I do sessions totaling 12K. So, 12x1K w/ 200m recovery, 6x2K w/ 400m recovery, 4x3K w/ 600m recovery, plus a 120-150 min long run each week. I've set PR's at the 10K, Half, and Full off of this training template. Even better, I've remained consistent and injury free.

googler wrote:

I’ll add that the most striking aspect of his training to me is the general absence of reps longer than 1k. He leaves the “sustained” pace work (and pretty much all the marathon pace work) in the hard long run, and works on faster, shorter stuff on the rest of the week. This is really different from how I have trained for and seen other Americans train for marathons in the past.

I think that’s a really interesting insight. I know I do VO2-type work up to 1600m reps and do tempo (threshold) intervals from 800m to 5k.

Does anyone have insight on what his periodization looks like? Does he start his cycle doing the progression-type long runs, or does that come later?

cotton shirt wrote:

it seems to me that there is no point in copying what Kipchoge is doing now unless you first copy what he did to get there. in 2007 he ran his first 10,000m on the track. in 2012 he ran his first half marathon, and he didn't run a marathon until 2013 by which time he had been racing and training for 5000m and 10,000m for 6 years. I think you probably need to do that first.

cheers.

Yeah, few things come to mind. 1, we're talking about Kipchoge. 2, lifetime mileage. 3, we're talking about Kipchoge.

Not gonna lie, I misread the title (my eyes omitted the word "like") when I clicked on this thread and thought we were going to do some kind of real-life version of Twitch Plays Pokemon. In other words, Letsrun would vote on Kipchoge's training from day to day.

A lot of what is Eliud Kipchoge is doing is nothing new. He does a long steady run(think Lydiard and his athletes doing that 22 mile run), some reps on the track (again, marathon runner have been doing stuff like this forever) and a timed interval session. Though for most runners, they need more rest. So switching it to a 9-14 day cycle i.e.

Long run at a steady pace

Easy

Easy

Track session

Easy

Easy

Timed interval session

Easy

Easy

Also, I like how he'll do shorter reps at 5k pace. A lot of marathoners forget this. But I can tell a difference in my legs when I do some shorter reps during marathon training vs when I don't. I'd also go out on a limb and say American men forgetting to do this is another reason for the lack of sub 2:10 guys in America. They only think about mileage and tempos. And they are missing that final piece of the puzzle. Here is some info on Sammy Wanjiru training. Guess what? He's doing 10 x 400m reps leading up to his marathons!

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2817968

I'd say it is much more "relaxed". Than Eliud training. But all the basic elements are there: long steady runs, easy, some intervals, rinse and repeat.

googler wrote:

I’ll add that the most striking aspect of his training to me is the general absence of reps longer than 1k. He leaves the “sustained” pace work (and pretty much all the marathon pace work) in the hard long run, and works on faster, shorter stuff on the rest of the week. This is really different from how I have trained for and seen other Americans train for marathons in the past.

Some of his workouts seem sort of like 10k training. I wonder if this is worth emulating.

This is exactly how marathoners used to train in the past. All this "sustained" pace work and MP running is the new school of training.

Honestly this is very similar to just about every elite american distance runner.

5-10 miles of intervals or fartlek around 4:40-4:50 pace one day

5-10 miles of intervals or fartlek later in the week but a little different than the previous one

Long run fluctuating between 15-23 miles depending on goal race, often with faster portions built in that tough marathon pace or a little faster.

The difference is that Kipchoge was running 12:54 5k's at age 18/19 and our Americans are running 14:00 5k pace for only 3200 meters or 3k in high school/freshmen in college.

Are we waiting too long to get to elite level training? Should middle school kids be running 40 -50 miles per week so that our high school kids can run 70-90 miles per week?

You have to remember that most of his training is at 2200m altitude, so the paces need to be adjusted for sea level.

I think the most striking thing about his training is that he doesn't race at all in the buildup (unless I missed something). Nor does he seem to get hurt or ever deviate from schedule.

A few reasons I would hesitate to copy (or perhaps even scale) this training for most people on this board:

Elevation - Kipchoge (and his compatriots) were born and raised at 7000-8000 feet elevation and are training at that elevation, but will be racing at (or near) sea level. They devote training time to faster paces with shorter reps because longer reps are more distinctly more stressful at that elevation than at sea level. They are also dealing with a larger gap between their normal training paces and the paces at which they will race because they will race down at sea level. They have to do the shorter/faster to counteract the slower-than-at-sea-level running they are doing on other days. Look at how college programs like Colorado and NAU train - they have more shorter reps (like 300s and 400s @VO2 Max-ish effort) than you would expect of many programs training for 10k XC, but they know they need some faster-than-race-pace work in order to be successful, and trying to make those faster reps longer would make the workouts more stressful than they want. Same concept with Kipchoge.

Race Duration - The body doesn't really know distance. The body knows duration and intensity. Since Kipchoge's race duration will only be barely over 2 hours, he can maintain a higher intensity than can someone who requires an extra 30 minutes (or however much more time) to cover the same distance. His training reflects this.

Recovery - One of the physiological traits that separates many of the truly elite from the rest of us is their recovery rate. One of the things that probably makes Kipchoge and Kamworor great is their ability to recover from and absorb the workload we see in their training. That same density of workload would break a lot of us. Most of us could handle two quality sessions (at pretty high volume) and a long run every week, but make that long run quite long and intense (like they do) and many of us would eventually break down.

This doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from Kipchoge's training. We just need to remember that the surrounding details like elevation, talent (for recovery in particular), race duration, etc. matter before we simply copy and paste his training to do as our own.

I personally think his training is while is worth emulating depending on your goal. There are two things you must remember with Kipchoge that go beyond his training:

1) He is perhaps the most mentally strong runner we have ever witnessed.

2) His physical gifts are beyond what almost any human has ever been blessed with.

So his schedule really just assures that he gets to the line healthy and in good general shape. He never drops out of races. He never gets dropped by competitors. He never wavers in his approach. His mental ability is largely what allows him to win races - he knows if he shows up healthy that he will give himself an opportunity to win. Contrast this with Bekele who will drop out when things aren’t going well, or trains to hard and can’t show up healthy.

I think this schedule works because he is able go consistently build on it year after year without having to take layoffs for injury. And because his mind is able to push his body to limits most of us cannot fathom.

ya sure train like kip. it's so easy.

step 1 is to get your 5k down to 124x

then run 10 years in a row under 13 min.

they you're ready to take on the marathon training.

don't forget several trips to the gym per week and the 2000 plus meters elevation.

Yeah it would be great to emulate Kipchoge. Do you have the time to not have another job and rest the remainder of the day like he does? I know he does chores at the camps but a lot of his time is spent off his feet relaxing.

Can you also stay healthy doing that volume, he doesn't get injured very often. Are you a tiny Kenyan who was literally built to run distance. Have you had years of world-class performance and training under your belt? He won his first world championship on the track in 2003.

Do you have his technological and pharmaceudical aids to enhance your recovery?