5 Training Changes I Made to Run a 2:30 Marathon

0:00What's up guys? Welcome back to another training talk. It's a serious training talk for serious runners. I'm trying to put the rain jacket. Not only do I have the rain jacket on myself, I have to put it on the camera as well because of course as soon as I come out here to film and start raining it's kind of been like this on and off all day today. No long run today. It's Sunday. I didn't do a long run today because it's the week after the marathon and actually after my last two marathons, not Wilmington, but after Bay State that was a terrible race and I pulled back a lot in the second half, worse race of my life. So I did do a 20 mile long run the weekend after Bay State and then after Kioa, I didn't do a 20 mile long run but it was Jim's holiday 100 over here. So I did that the weekend after Kioa. So I realized I haven't had an off weekend without a 20 mile long run or the equivalent because the holiday 100 is only 18 miles but there's 3,000 feet of elevation gain or whatever it is and it's very hilly and on the

1:02trail. So I haven't had anything a weekend or a week because sometimes I will shift the long run to Wednesday or Thursday if I'm traveling or something. I haven't had anything without a long run since before Bay State which was in October and I did 14 miles and I think that was at a six flat pace the weekend before Bay State. So yeah, I think I well earned one down week and the next weekend I think I'll be back up to the 20 mile long runs but that's why there's no long run video today. We did do a nice photo shoot for the new merch collection out here. Shout out to my guy Jason Siegel. That will be dropping very soon. Should I give you the date 313? Is the plan for now? Is the plan for now? You never know. Anything can change. That's the thing about operating a business startups, mate. There is a friend, an old boss. A guy used to work for his name is Richard McBeath. He was Australian and he was the founder of a startup called Money Made. I was the head of growth there. And whenever anything wasn't exactly right, he would say startups, mate, in his Australian accent because as a thing would be in a startup, you might have to change things. Anyway, speaking

2:06of changing things and speaking of modifications, today I'm going to go over five training changes that I made to run a 230 marathon. Again, this is a serious training talk for serious runners. No joking around today. Keeping it short and to the point, I did not just yap for two minutes about random things. So I wanted to put together this video because from Kioa December to Wilmington, I actually feel like my training was highly unimpressive. The eight weeks between Kioa and Wilmington, I didn't do anything mind-blowing to run that 230, but there are some subtle changes that I've made not just from the second to last marathon, to the last marathon, but the last six months. And even looking back over the last year, these different optimizations. And I'm also thinking about doing a, I don't want to give away too much. Now, I'm also thinking about putting together a framework for the different phases of marathon

3:07improvement and progression. You have your consistency gains phase. You have more of the strength building gains phase when you start getting those big jumps. And then you have the optimization phase. I'm definitely on the optimization phase now of improving. But there's a few changes that I've made over the past both short term eight weeks and then six months that have helped me crack and get to this next level two hours and 30 minute marathon. Okay. Number one. And I'm not saying, by the way, these, I'm not saying these are things that you should do or this is how you run a faster marathon. These are things that worked for me in the whole, the whole reason that we make these changes. And a lot of the time, why changes work is because it's variation and it's giving the body a different stimulus. So if you're running super high mileage for a long time, pulling it down might make sense. But if you're newer and you haven't ever done running higher mileage than higher mileage, make sense. But change number one. Is that a one? I don't know. Change number one. That

4:12I made that helped me run a 230 marathon. No recovery runs. Now this one sounds weird. It sounds, no recovery runs. Sounds like I decided I'm just not going to run relaxed at all. I'm going to start doing all my runs as work hours. But no, my entire theory ever since base date. So base date was October. That was a 242. I went backwards in the marathon by three minutes because I had a toe worries. And Keo was the 232. And then Wilmington was the 232. But my whole theory was that I want to improve the quality of my mileage. And I also want to be a lot more conservative with my training. And so naturally what happened because my mileage wasn't as high. I went from maxing out at 130 to 140 over the summer to pulling it down and hanging out right around that 100 mile mark. I realized, and this is looking back, right? Again, I'm not saying these are things you should do. I've evaluated my training. And I looked at, okay, these are the changes that actually happened, whether they were intentional or not, I pretty much dropped the recovery run by pulling the mileage down significantly 140, 120 versus 100. That's a huge

5:16change. That's a big difference on the body. Really, the proportion of eight minute miles significantly reduced or even disappeared. I would have a lot of these days where I would do a workout in the morning, getting after it, getting down to marathon face or even faster. And then after noon, I'll pop out here and could be running 730 miles or even faster. It could be running 620 miles because that volume decreased. I was able to increase the intensity and even with an everyday run, the intensity of that might not be super high, but higher than it would have been if the volume was higher. So those are the two of the big, you have volume, you have intensity, right? You also have frequency, which is another dial to play with. I like keeping the frequency high. I double every day of the week, Monday to Friday, every work day. But those two things are always in balance. It doesn't matter if you're running 40 miles a week or 140 miles a week or four miles a week, you're always going to have to modulate the volume with the intensity. It's like a scale. If you can only run four miles a week and you're sprinting that, that's going to significantly increase the recovery time needed. Now,

6:19if you decide to walk two of those miles, maybe you can now increase your volume to six miles a week, walk two miles and do slight jogging. For me, I found that, okay, I'm reducing my volume so that the intensity can come up a little bit better. And why that was good for me personally. Again, it's going to be different for every time run. And why that was good for me personally, was it allowed me to run at a pace more similar or closer in to my marathon pace and really work on that running economy at the slower paces. It's a lot of it is about the aerobic development and getting the time on feet and strengthening. I felt that personally, I done a lot of the strength building, I done a lot of the aerobic development and then I needed the running economy. So pulling the mileage down slightly enabled me to have that, that breakthrough and that improvement. The one thing that is super important to say though, and I always need to make this caveat is that doesn't mean running less is better or running lower volume is better. If I never went up to 120 or

7:19140, it would not have had the same effect. I was able to adapt and absorb. So you always have to put it into context and I've told you about this before. This is one of the things that drives me nuts. When people say, Oh, I ran my fastest marathon when I reduced my volume. Yes, technically I did do that as well, but it's only because I had that super high volume period of training. I also didn't do any race pace tempos in the last eight weeks leading into the race. That's not saying that's the best way to train. But that's what worked for me because I built up a lot of that previously. All right. Number two. So I alluded to this before, but I love high frequency. So I run 10 times typically between Monday to Friday, maybe nine, maybe there's, there's one day where I have to do something where I can't get that second run in. But ideally, I'm running 10 times between Monday and Friday in the AM and the PM. It sounds like a lot, but I mean, I work from home, I get in 10 to 12 in the morning, and then I get in four in the afternoon or the evening after work with the stroller and four miles, really translates into 30 minutes.

8:20And this is something, the number two here, it's shorter doubles. This is something that really started working for me well, where in the past, I'd try to push it on the doubles, really slam as many miles as I could at the lunch break or after work six miles to eight miles. And that's good. It's good for an aerobic base building period, but what I found was that during peak marathon training, and it wasn't enabling me to run as fast. And I noticed that I was actually not wanting to run with the stroller as much because six miles with the stroller or eight miles with the stroller. That's a lot of volume with the added intensity of pushing that carriage up and down the hill. So shorter doubles, shrinking them down to four miles or 30 minutes. I could always run that double fresher and similar to the first one where I dropped that recovery run. I'm not doing any eight minute miles in the afternoon run. Same exact thing because that afternoon run, a lot of the time it was becoming a slog or a drag or just a pure jog at six to eight miles. But I bring the volume down to four miles. All of a sudden I get to mile two. I have two miles left. I could send it home. I also did change up my

9:23double route. I used to go same exact. I would do the first four miles of my morning run, but I switched my route. I started doing a different one out and back on this side of the neighborhood. Still four miles, but sometimes getting that variation can be helpful. And I started running my double a lot faster. The bonus was with running the double faster with, I don't know if changing up the route, but with running the double faster with shortening it, it became my favorite run of the week. I felt like I reclaimed by running in a way. And there was less expectations. It wasn't a workout. It wasn't a training run. Also, I don't film. I don't film on that afternoon run. So I can just go out there and enjoy the activity of running. And it really became my favorite run of the week. That's number two, shorter doubles for you. So I want to do some application here too. For you, if you're not running doubles, maybe it becomes, okay, you have your workout Tuesday and your long run Saturday or Sunday. Hopefully Sunday, that's a supple Saturday, no, but you do your long run.

10:26You have maybe one or two workouts per week. What it could become if you're not doubling is shortening some of those recovery runs or filler runs. However, the reason why it is effective for me and why I was able to run a fast marathon doing that is because I keep my volume high all the time. And I do run 100 miles a week, which translates into nine to 10 hours. If you are running a four hour marathon or a 430 marathon, if you're running four to five times a week, you're likely not going to see an improvement or a positive effect in your training by shortening your runs. It was really because of the volume that I've training out where I was able to see that adaptation from shortening the run. But if you find that some of your weekly midweek runs, your filler, I don't want to call them filler. I guess that's the best way to say any runs were not, it's not the prescriptive long run. It's also not a workout. If you find that those runs are taxing you and sapping your legs and you're not coming into your quality sessions as they be called in the Daniel system, as fresh as you'd like, then either slowing down significantly or even shortening, shortening,

11:30yes, shortening the mileage or reducing the mileage on those filler runs could help. But it's going to have to depend on where you are in your journey as a runner, because for 99% of people out there, nine, I'm trying to say, what's the exact percentage of people for a lot of runners out there? There's so many gains to be made by increasing the aerobic volume, right? Getting the BMI in a good place, increasing the aerobic volume, working in the hill sprints, running five to six times a week. Those things are going to improve the running economy, make us overall stronger as a runner, strengthen our foundation, our physical health and fitness foundation, not just our running foundation. So for most people out there, cutting your run to 30 minutes would not be my recommendation. It really just depends on your volume and then also your history, right? Or if you're super injury prone, that could be a good thing. So that's just what worked for me. And I hope is with these training talks I'm doing as well, that because again, this is a high IQ audience, you can use what I say to apply it to your training because everyone is going to be different. All right,

12:31number three, the third change I made to run a 230 marathon. You've heard of me talk about this before. Hill sprints. I don't know why I'm clapping. Hill sprints make me clap. Hill sprints make me clap. Hill sprints make me clap. I don't know. It's Sunday, man. I'm tired. Sunday should be the day of rest, right? It mostly was the day of rest, but I think May Scott's sick. She had her birthday party yesterday. I think she got sick from that or that just maybe woke up some latent or a deep down sickness. Now I feel maybe I'm getting it. Of course, after a big marathon, your immune system is going to be compromised. I'm just tired. I'm just tired. So I'm clapping. I'm saying crazy things. Hill sprints though. Third change I made to run a 230 marathon. I started working these in. I think right before base date, maybe, what was it? It was, let's say, Q3 2025, Q3 2025. So Hill sprints, the goal is

13:31improve power, improve injury resistance or reduce the chance of getting injured by building strength and then improve running economy. And then the sneaky fourth thing is can build a bridge. So be a bridge from faster running into other types of faster running or be a bridge from strength into speed so that you always have that base foundation. You always have some turnover and I've been doing them every week. I think I'm going to do them tomorrow too, even though I'm very tired and I still need to recover. I have I think 53 miles this past week. So it's going to be my lowest mileage week in a while. Typically, I'll maybe even go down to 70 after a marathon, but yeah, I just wasn't feeling it this week. And I think next week, I'll aim for 70. I really want to take it slowly this time because this is a thing. This is the exact time where a lot of people get injured. You do a big marathon, you're hungry to get back after it again, you jump into it too quickly, stress fracture or something.

14:35I don't want that to happen. I want to take this conservatively. And these are the hard things that we learn as runners, man. And the other thing I've learned and the entire concept of this video is what worked for me in the past, what worked for me as a 249 marathoner or a 319 marathoner is not going to work for me as a 230 marathoner. So yeah, I'm about getting after it all the time. I'm about putting in the work. I'm about upping my best, but sometimes that actually means recovering and relaxing. Now, I'm not going to take a 20 mile week and stop running, but doing listening to my body and doing a two week rebuild instead of a one week rebuild or maybe even a three week ramp back up to peak level. That's going to enable me in the longer term to get back after it. Better, but the hill sprints they build power, they build a bridge between strength and speed, they help the injury resistance. They're also really fun. It's a good way to break up the monotony of the mileage. I do a Monday after the Sunday long run. I mean Sunday, and especially I'm going to talk about this next, but my the long run style I was doing, it's a slog. It is a grind to

15:38do these 20 mile long runs every week. Again, thankfully I wasn't able or wasn't I wasn't I didn't assign myself to do it today. Shout out to my coach for not having me do a 20 mile long run today. Yeah, Hill sprints are great. If you are not doing them, you should do them. I do 10 seconds, 10 by 10 seconds at around 90 to 95% of max power. And how I like doing them as well is building into it. So I'm not going out there on the first rep and just absolutely trying to tear the tarmac off the ground. I start out really relaxed and then last three to four reps. I'm firing off the ground and it also takes for me three, usually three to four reps to really feel like that neuromuscular coordination is going. So every Monday, 10 by 10 seconds, Hill sprints, I usually do six by 10 seconds strides or six by 15 seconds strides to warm up into a one minute uphill surge. And thankfully, I have a beautiful neighborhood for doing anything related to hills. So I'll do that one minute surge and then I'll do the Hill sprints. And again, it's a really nice

16:41way to break up the week and it almost feels like free mileage in a sense because if you're doing 10 by 10 second Hill sprints with a one to three minute recovery. And some people like super long recoveries usually take about a minute recovery. I don't love super long recoveries and I don't know different people have different theories on how long you should recover first sprints. I'm not going to get into that. But even if you do short recoveries on these a minute to two minutes, you do 10 Hill sprints. You get three miles or something right there. So I'll do six miles and then I do the Hill sprints and then I have one mile cooled out and the run is over. So it makes 10 miles feel really simple. It gets some variation on the calendar. It builds strength and helps improve the running economy and keeps that foundation of speed always right there. So that wouldn't want to add on something else like four hundreds. We add on those faster four hundreds. The bodies are already primed and used to having the legs snap off the ground like that. All right. Number four, the fourth training change I made to run a two 30 marathon faster

17:44steady long runs. So very similar to the doubles thing shortening the doubles running them faster. I was realizing at a slightly lower mileage level and also I didn't put this in as a explicit one of these changes. But also my workouts were not as big and crazy because I actually told myself I wasn't going to run a marathon in this early early spring late winter because my calendar my schedule was just so bad. So I wasn't doing 10 mile marathon tempos. I wasn't doing big threshold sessions. And this taught me, man, your body really does hold on to that fitness. And I did a lot of great work last year. However, to get to the next level, I'm going to need to do the the thresholds and the tempos again, because my body has absorbed that work, but I've done all the thresholds and the tempos at that 530 to 540 pace. If I now want to become an even faster marathoner, I'm going to have to do those thresholds and the tempos at the 515 to 530 pace. So I can't get by doing the same exact training. You have to think about the periodization. If I go back to a full

18:49year ago, I was doing really fast stuff. Again, there's 200s, 400s. And then spring through the summer, I was doing a lot of thresholds and tempos late fall, kind of a recovery period. Just grinded out, base day wasn't great. And then I did this sharper, smaller, your lower mileage, a little bit faster. And so what that translated to for the long run, leaving up into Wilmington, even Kewa too, was just very steady smooth long runs right around 630 to 7 flat pace. Let me actually fire up my long run calendar so I can give you a sense of what these workouts look like. Because in the past, typically, what I'd want to do if I'm in peak marathon training and really targeting a goal race is to be going 10 miles at a 540 pace or 10 miles at goal marathon pace, something like four by two miles at goal marathon pace, two by two miles at threshold and beginning with four miles at marathon pace in the end. I was just doing smooth, steady session. So let's take a look at this.

19:53Yeah, February 5th, this is right before I went to France, my long run, 20 miles, 717 pace, not impressive. The next week in France, my 20 mile long run, 20.69 miles, 744 pace, not impressive. Okay, go back to two weeks, February 1st at 8 10 am, 20 mile long run on the treadmill, 615 pace with a lot of those right around 6 flat. That was the best session I did for this entire block and that was all by feel. I was just vibing on the treadmill and that felt good. So that was the best session week before it was going to be a snow storm. So I just needed to get some miles in because I knew the next day I wasn't going to be able to run a lot. So I did 23 miles, but it was a 712 pace. Nothing that crazy, no work out or anything, just very steady mileage and finished with the last two miles, 654 and 634. And that was in the Puma Dv8 and I truly for actually week before that January 11th. And this was the first run back post post holidays,

21:04January, yeah, January 11th, 20 miles, 806 pace, man, horrible run. I actually remember that run, and that was just like average 126 heart rate, man. I could not get anything going. And then January 4th, did I do a 26 mile day? That's crazy. 22 miles in the morning. Why did I do my long run on Saturday? I don't remember. 22 miles in the morning, January 4th, average pace, 701. So again, that's how a lot of my long runs were, 20 miles, 7 flat, 701. I wasn't going super far in the tank. Not looking at this, though. I didn't even realize I did a 22 piece and a 23 piece, but that's what happens when you do 20 all the time, which is very steady, smooth long runs. A lot of them were right around that 7 flat. I had that one good session at around 6 flat, but none of them except for the one very early on the block that ate flat in the Puma Dv naturally for. None of them were super slaggy jugs. A lot of them were tighter, a little bit faster,

22:07and what I remember is finishing strong right around that 20 mile mark. And none of them, just looking through, we just went through all them. None of them were marathon pace workouts. None of them included even a mile of threshold pace. It was all focused on aerobic steady mileage, which brings me to point number five here, the fifth training change I made to run a 230 marathon. Zone three maxing. This is maybe the theory of this entire build of what I did to go from that terrible 242. And I was probably in and for base date, I was probably in 233 or 234 shape, but I ran a 242 because I pulled back and I just blew up mentally. So I probably could have run 234 that day. So I basically went from 234 shape into 232 shape. I was probably in 230 shape actually for Kioa, but I ran a 232 and that into 230 shape and 233. I should have run a 230 and I did

23:14in Wilmington. And a lot of what brought me down from that 235 fitness range, maybe six, once ago, five months ago to the 230 was the zone three maxing and tightening it up, putting the aerobic pressure on. And when I say zone three max, I mean getting into that middle zone, the gray zone, a lot of runners are afraid to do zone three. I've actually started to see this Wayne, which is nice, but historically, there's been the church of zone two. So zone two is when your heart rate is in that roughly 70% of maximum. For me, it's about 140 and I love the chorus range. The chorus heart rate ranges are perfect. 140 is actually the exact part where it flips over. So at a 140 and below, I'm in the blue, which is zone two or no, zone one. And then above that, I mean, regardless, wait, what? Yes. Okay. Sorry. 140 and below. I am in zone one recovery. 140 and above. I'm in zone two, 158 and above. I'm in zone three. For me, zone three miles are typically in the 150s,

24:23because you'll have some in zone two. If I'm in zone three for the entire run, that's more, that's more of a workout, but getting occasionally up into that 160, averaging right around 155. That means I'm running a faster study pace. And those are the miles that for me, I've been seeing the most benefit from over the last four to five months that allowed me to hit that local maximum as I was talking about a few weeks ago. So reducing the volume with those filler miles, I didn't need it at this phase. Again, we have mileage on the hat, right? Myelage is really good. Myelage is the foundation of everything. But for me at this stage where I was at, I needed to focus more on quality miles versus just getting as much volume as possible. Now, I'm going to come back around and run another higher volume period. I really want to get back up to 110 and 120 at some points, but it's about different phases. Again, it's about that periodization. So to be able to squeeze all the juice out of my current fitness level and to make it from that mid to 30s range down to 230, it was the zone three max and baby running faster, reducing some of the volume, reducing some of those

25:29recovery miles and just feeling sharp and fresh. And that's the biggest thing that the 100% the biggest day of this entire block was not running super high volume, not running those slower miles. I just felt so fresh and snappy and poppy all the time. And I think mentally it helped too. Coming out here in every single run, being able to pop 720s and faster, I just felt a lot more confident. So zone three maxing, that's what worked for me over the past six or so months. And again, it's going to depend where you are in your phase as a runner. Those zone two miles are so foundational. And I did two back to back 5,000 mile years. That's why I ran the sub 230. It's not any of these five things I'm saying today. That was just the icing on top, which let me unlock that last little piece. The reason I ran this 230 and the reason I went down from the beginning of 2024, I ran a 256 in around my neighborhood in marathon training. The reason I went down from a 256 in marathon training or a 249 at Coast Guard to a 230 at Wilmington. It's not any of the thresholds.

26:37Yeah, those things are good. But it's the 5,000 mile years in 2024 and in 2025. That's what did it. That foundation man. And again, that will improve your overall strength. It will improve your BMI. It will also improve your running economy and your lactate threshold and all those things too. Mostly the aerobic volume will translate into you being a stronger endurance runner by making you be able to run any pace for longer. And then all these other things are great additions and optimizations. So that is what I have for you today. Five changes that I made to run a 230 marathon. I think I'm going to do this one take style. No edits. Just rip it raw. So I should say now this video is brought to you by the Supple app. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure to get on the Supple app because it's the best community for people who are getting after it daily. We will also have discount code for the merch again 10% off of the spring drop on the Supple app. When it launches, we also have the 10% off of running warehouse. So 10% off of all fuel. And that's the thing. I want

27:39to do another video. I'm thinking about debunking debunking training theories or the five most overrated training techniques or something like that. One of them is the fasted long run. I do not believe in the concept of a fasted long run. That's a video for another video, but I don't. So you know, when I do believe in fueling well, whether it's with the real food beforehand or with the gels darting or both, which is what I recommend. You want to eat a good breakfast and then with the gels, you can get 10% off of your gels with the running warehouse discount code. You could also get 20% off of gear, which is crazy. 20% off of all the gear, all the brands that they have on running warehouse with our exclusive Supple app discount code. And then of course, the best buy selling trade running shoe marketplace. I want to make sure I'm plugging all this stuff and doing a good job. Oh, also, Charlie told me to say this. My wife, if you've been listening to the podcast, and I should probably say this on the next podcast as well. But if you've been listening to the podcast,

28:41please leave a review, a five star review. If you don't like it, leave a YouTube comment and tell me why you don't like it. Don't leave a negative review, please. You could be super negative here or go on Instagram, even DM me on Instagram and tell me how much you hate it. But if you do like it, please leave a positive review with five stars because that helps on Apple and Spotify with the algorithm. So that is all I have for you today. I really hope you appreciate this. I want to commit to doing more of these training talks. Last time I did it with the improve these three things, starting a faster marathon. You guys show me a lot of love in the comments. And sometimes it's hard because the shoe videos perform a lot better than the training videos that everyone cares about the hyperboost edge. Nobody cares about how to improve as a marathoner for some reason. So I'm going to do these for the people that do enjoy them. Like you. And I appreciate you. And I'll be back tomorrow with another video. Should I turn it off?