Now, you just finished the first weeks of your Frankfurt Marathon training. You run 3 times a week on a regular basis and now you are prepared to increase your distance and training runs until October. That’s exactly how marathon training works, at least a part of it, that is for the conditioning responsible. Over time, you will have the feeling that you are just standing in place and you might not feel any progress anymore. Why is this? Our body reacts to the trainings stimulation and adapts it to the different areas for example: heart/circulation, respiration, blood and muscles. This is of course especially in the marathons preparation very practical, that one can through regular training reach their goal of being able to complete the classic marathon distance of 42,195 kilometers. For a couple of weeks ago, running 10 to 12 kilometers was a small challenge, today you can do this run in the same tempo without hardly trying at all. Now, you see your training and how it has developed from the last weeks or months.
We’re talking about trainings stimulation, that we have to incorporate in our training. That the 10-12 km long continuous run in basic tempo the job in the coming weeks cannot take over, we need a new type of training that out body can adapt to. This is where the tempo training comes in. Next to the basic training that we need, you should at least give gas and do tempo training so that the intensive stimulation training sinks in. Now, there are a few that say that when they run in Frankfurt, they just want to “finish” and the time for them doesn’t matter, why should I do I tempo training? Even you want to develop your performance in the next few weeks and come well prepared when you are standing on the start line in Frankfurt. That’s why your body need as many different types of training stimulation, this you can obtain through different types of running training. But the question is, how does tempo training really work?
We differentiate the different types of tempo trainings such as Fartlek, interval training or tempo change. For all types applies the following: We divide the routes in faster and slower segments, because we cannot run this tempo at the moment. From week to week, we try to run the faster segments a little bit longer and the slower segments less, so that we may run a faster tempo by a competition. For starters, they can start out doing fartlek. With this you can run on your normal running route and simples easily “play with the speed” by changing the tempo, but please don’t integrate maximum sprints. You should instead increase your speed over distances over 200, 300 or 400 meters, since this training was very strenuous and not completely exhausted like in a competition. After the tempo training, comes the slower jogging phase, here you have time to recuperate before the next faster segment begins.
Next to the Fartlek training in different terrains, comes the classic interval training that you do on the track. This is however usually in trainings groups a very motivating type of trainings form, because the distances of the fasters and slower segments are fixed. For example, 10 x 400m, 6 x 1000m or 4 x 2000m classic interval, the breaks depend on the length of the intervals. Speed changing portions, you can of course complete on during your normal rounds, just switch between faster and slower segments using a GPS-watch. This is how you can control your 500m fast and your slower 500m each after 1km of changing up the tempo. This type of intensive training stimulation offers a change to your marathon preparation and you will see, that the tempo training will get easier from week to week. Calmer and longer training runs for the development of your condition are of course necessary and build the basic building blocks or your marathon training.
