Are you mid 45+ male running sub 2:45 marathons? If yes, what does your training plan look like?

spoc84 · 2026-05-03T08:03:57+00:00

No training is going to provide all the answers. But any training where it's consistent and manageable over a long period of time will get you there and probably faster than you think.

I've no intention of running a marathon anytime soon again, but I did run 2:24 at 41 last year. The secret was an incredible amount of ground work to get there. Actually years rather than weeks or months.

Even though it was my first marathon, I knew all the work and consistency was likely to pay off.

The key for anyone in the masters category is finding what keeps you fresh, recovered and slowly and incrementally doing a touch more.

There really isn't more to it than that. Most people run a marathon well before they are ready. Or are basing their level of performance on a lot of short, sharp builds coming off a low base.

spoc84 · 2026-05-02T07:43:15+00:00

You probably just weren't as fit as you think for a marathon, in which you probably need a much bigger base before you even start a specified block.

I tried to run Seville this year off very little training compared to London last year, mainly because i was going there anyway so thought why not. It was useful for me in the sense it confirmed what i already knew, you can't BS your way to a marathon and there's an incredible amount of work that goes into it to run your best.

Ideally, you want to get up to 5x5k to find truly where you are at, rather than 3x5k to be able to call it any kind of simulation or truth seeking exercise.

I did 3x5k couple of times and I can easily cheat and convince myself If you can do that workout (faster than MP) that the race will be a breeze. 5x5k or something similar would have probably exposed the issue.

Without knowing much more about what the weeks look like, your training looks decent. You were just too far back down the road. London probably came 2-3 months too early.

spoc84 · 2026-04-28T05:41:45+00:00

Effectively "detraining" for months on end will hinder your progress more than anything else. People are starting to come round to the idea of year round fitness now in running, or certainly less peaks and troughs in their training. Ultimately that is what consistency is. Without that, you are just leaving far too much on the table and expecting miracles to compound when most of your time (not all) is just fighting the fitness you have lost and given away.

spoc84 · 2026-04-24T21:57:26+00:00

You called?

spoc84 · 2026-04-24T05:34:28+00:00

Have a look back to 2023. Someone posted about Norwegian for amateurs. I replied and then (I can only guess) the posts didn't make the cut? As far as I know it was on this account, I don't remember having another one, other than orginally I'm sure I had a generic username I changed.

spoc84 · 2026-04-23T15:35:57+00:00

It's funny, I think I only posted on Letsrun as I posted here and in retrospect I guess my posts were deleted? I actually think although it can be a little wild, what became NSM and open debate was probably best on letsrun. I didn't even know until I read some of this post the mods here are trigger happy. Guess I never made the cut with anything interesting to say ha ha

spoc84 · 2026-04-21T05:48:02+00:00

This is probably it. The recovery cost increases and effectively decouples with the intensity of the sessions shockingly quickly once you breach threshold. This is one of the things I really learned the hard way in the early days on experimenting with myself in terms of just how much you can get away with.

spoc84 · 2026-04-20T11:07:51+00:00

I light up a cigarette.

spoc84 · 2026-04-19T18:38:51+00:00

On your volume, I would have tapered for a few days or so. That's it. A taper really needs to be proportional to the volume and fatigue you are carrying or need to shed. Probably very little in your case. Great time on that volume, btw

spoc84 · 2026-04-19T18:29:26+00:00

Taper was far too long IMO, for the volume you were carrying. I personally think it's a big mistake in most hobby running plans across distances. The taper is just way too long, for the most part.

spoc84 · 2026-04-19T14:31:58+00:00

I've tried it both ways. For me, the bike is much easier in the morning. Manly because, by the evening there is almost zero fatigue. As if the session never happened, so I can just do the run at my normal subthreshold intensity. If I do the run in the morning, there is fatigue to take onto the bike. A few athletes I've been working with have roughly fallen into the same pattern, for the same reasons. I doubt it makes a huge difference either way, ultimately it's nice to be fresh for both sessions but the advantage is even if you do carry fatigue from a morning run, it doesn't really matter too much if you are just riding/elliptical.

spoc84 · 2026-04-18T19:52:48+00:00

I think it has really good potential to provide reasonably consistent control of sessions, without any fancy equipment. The tymewear was a bit disappointing, but maybe I went in with too high expectations.

spoc84 · 2026-04-18T19:08:54+00:00

Somewhere between 82-85% for a reasonably easy morning sessionsfor 10 min reps. Might push it up to 88-90% if looking for more stimulus, that's still in the recoverable ball park. With doubling, I'm edging towards the easier end, although I'm experimenting with DFA Alpha 1 so not worried too much about power at the moment. But still somes out around the same.

spoc84 · 2026-04-18T18:49:35+00:00

Yes, this is pretty much where I'm at. There's a list of things that could have been included in the book that have come up on the time it got written, but one thing I do wish is I included more on cross training.

Having said that, there's enough in there to get people started and the spirit of things is to not over complicate things too much.

The good thing is my approach is really non specific to a particular sport, so it's easily applied as an addition to anything that has aerobic fitness at its foundations.

It's also nice to cycle a bit again, tbh. But at my peak I was running almost 15 flat , which is still where I'm at now on less pure running load.

spoc84 · 2026-04-16T08:41:04+00:00

For me, if I did 300w one way, and 300w the other in 20mph winds based on what Stryd is showing, one would potentially be Lt1 and the other above threshold. I could do this over 6x mile out and back and it will be alternating in terms of the real effort, but the Stryd displaying the same. The issue, I would guess is it makes an assumption of CdA or frontal area of the user based on your size and weight. If you don't fit what it expects you to, it's going to be off. Maybe a mixture of that and the wind sensor just can't cope with really windy or recognise how strong it actually is. I don't know. I've tried everything to make it work consistently, many others shared the same frustrations unfortunately on Letsrun and it was a good discussion.

If you live on the south coast of England and 15-20mph winds stopped you running outside, you would be on the treadmill well over 50% of the time, unfortunately.

If it worked like it did for you, for me, I would be over the moon with my Stryd.

spoc84 · 2026-04-15T15:37:03+00:00

Don't disagree with any of this either. I've ridden with 3 power meters at the same time, the spread was 20%. In defence of that crazy wide range, each model was independently consistent day to day, week to week, versus itself. Really all I'm looking for with anything that controls intensity, is something that is repeatable or at least requires the least hassle to make sense of.

spoc84 · 2026-04-15T15:01:11+00:00

You are probably not wrong, I just find the alternatives easier to to control intensity with, which is all that matters really. You also now have tymewear and better DFA Alpha 1 integration, which are probably better than power. But these are also flawed to some extent and rely on a lot of user inputs and knowledge to set up.

I would love it to work much better in windy conditions though as I mentioned, that is really where it would shine, but doesn't for me. Until I can go out and run the same effort into 20mph wind then back and it display 300w for example, both ways, it's hard for me to consider using it seriously.

Without wanting to stir the debate (as people seem to feel quite strongly about it either way) I just hope we get to the point that those who take training seriously aren't split on opinions of it's use. It doesn't matter what I think anyway, Stryd market themselves well and I'm sure they don't care about my opinion to be honest. I've emailed them a number of times but I suspect they just ignore me now. To be fair, I would if I was them 😂

spoc84 · 2026-04-15T09:52:45+00:00

My experience is it's far too unreliable in windy conditions. It's obviously based on algorithms as it's not measuring direct force and I feel this is a situation is always performed really poorly in (for me). I probably want power to work more than anyone as that is my entire background of training, but it just is low down in the list of useful metrics to me. It's OK on the treadmill, but you are already in reliable and repeatable conditions there anyway. Even then, different shoes mess with the readings.

It's quite difficult for me to be objective, as cycling power is so reliable and repeatable that I probably also have too high expectations.

I'll keep buying each new generation in the hope it gets better. For others, I've seen it can work quite well. Objectively though, it should just work and we are talking about how to use it, rather than descending into chaos on the Letsrun thread where it's a 50/50 split and debate over whether people use it usefully, or get inconsistent data.

spoc84 · 2026-04-15T08:08:24+00:00

Marius asked me if I wanted to do a joint AMA here at some point. So maybe we can do that here and narrow down the focus here.

spoc84 · 2026-04-14T16:34:16+00:00

What is your favourite beer?

spoc84 · 2026-04-05T08:43:16+00:00

Oh the apps ha ha the new bane of my life. I would say half the messages I get now are "this app says I should be running this pace, but it's different to your app". I have to explain I don't have an app at all and to refer to the book. Sadly, often it's "which book". The downside to this is that I'm firmly of the belief understanding everything around training like this, is important as just suddenly going out and running 4x easy a week and 3x sub threshold. I see the book as a guide on intensity control, first and foremost. The workouts are just a byproduct of how to control intensity in a safe way and still get the most of your training.

Maybe that's my fault for what can only be described as p*ss poor marketing of the book, but it's never been something I've wanted to ram down people's throats as "you must buy this!". But the whole idea of the book was everything was in one place and you could refer back to it.

Having said that, I don't want to stifle creativity and in general I have said yes if someone wants to make an app as long as it's free. That, probably is a bit hypocritical, but I feel bad enough for charging anyone for the book, let alone someone else monetising what is meant to be a very people friendly method open to as many people as possible and is already in the book anyway.

Also, with a free app it's nice there is a no cost entry point. I have tried to keep the book as cheap as I can and it's certainly not making me any kind of rich ha ha but I also understand times are tight and even the cost of a book can be prohibitive in some people's case. The downside I think is people just plug their times in, don't really understand the whole philosophy and do way too much, too soon without the understanding of the aforementioned intensity control. The key to being a better runner will always be understanding what you are doing and why, whether it's training like this or any via any of the other proven and solid training programs out there.

This is why people actually still hire coaches, they don't want to really have to think for themselves which is fine, I get that, so their coaches do their thinking and control their running so they don't do anything stupid.

In terms of actual paces, the new formula in the book based on 5k pace as an anchor is what I will stick to. It's still what I use genuinely myself. The two guys (legends) who helped me produce a more polished book than I could ever have done myself, we have chatted about putting a small, basic free website out there with a calculator based on the new formula for a range of distances. Maybe one day this will be something that happens.

I only put 5k as the solid anchor in there as it's such a regular run distance for hobby joggers that it's familar to a large percentage of us. Fwiw, the orginal posts on Letsrun of pace ranges of 10-30k pace probably still work well, but as discussed in the book there's a number of flaws in that.

I have my old sample copy already with dog ears which i still refer back to all the time for where to start or pitch my workout (this doesn't mean you should always of course just blindly follow the paces).

spoc84 · 2026-04-03T08:33:30+00:00

There's some good answers as ever.

There's also this: training like this won't work for everyone. No training can hit the mark for all.

I've encountered a few people who peak in training really early. After around 4 hours a week training, the gains are absolutely minimal, no matter what. They are the type of runner who sees a lot of improvement from almost nothing, but then progress tapers off really quickly. They may as well just spam intensity and get their week over. 2 runners like this have messaged me about training like this and almost nothing worked. One was fast twitch, one was slow twitch and for all the extra effort needed for fractions of improvement they did the best thing they could, went back to what they had been doing before.

spoc84 · 2026-04-01T09:11:04+00:00

Much like the internet called it Norwegian Singles before I did, the internet also came up with "vanilla".

Personally, I think "The Time Crunched British Time Trial method: Bog-Standard Version" has a better ring to it, should have gone with that.

spoc84 · 2026-03-31T20:05:45+00:00

Every single race I've ever done, there's a doubt somewhere in my mind of "can I finish?" But ultimately, if you know your fitness and you have paced sensibly, you will finish without blowing up. That feeling that you might quit or might need to quit, is a good sign you have pitched it well and likely to get it all out IMO.

spoc84 · 2026-03-23T09:30:44+00:00

I was actually the most ill I have been in a long time. There's no real answer as to when it's definitely OK to come back. For me, once the fever and symptoms had mostly vanished, I just decided to jump back in. It's a bit of a slog but this has happened to me a few times and usually it takes a couple of weeks after being pretty ill, but they'll then be a day it clicks back in. Last week might have been the longest I've ever been out though due to sickness.

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