6 Comments

Your log is great Marco - love reading about the thought process and see everything that goes into the progress you are making. I was wondering what the reason for dropping (or becoming more flexible) with your rest/non-running day was. I noticed leading up to the 100k and the weeks after you had quite a few weeks running every day. Wishing you a speedy recovery with your current niggles and a great build up to Chicago! It's a fantastic race!

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thank you Will, really appreciate it. Indeed with the build up to the 100 km I tried to see if I could add more and more volume and dropped the rest day due to the fact that I was doing very little or no intensity (as the race specific workouts were very long but not "hard"). After this, I thought I'd make some changes in my periodization, being more careful with intensity, but potentially running more (1 day off every 2 weeks, and adding some doubles). I think this went wrong when I still tried to do it in a period in which I started racing again. I should have rested the day after the race instead of doing a double, which is of course obvious in hindsight, but I was feeling very good and tried to see if I could push it a bit more. I would still like to keep going with this experiment, so being a bit more careful with intensity (more controlled efforts, and maybe some more frequent small doses of harder efforts), and keeping the volume as high as I can, but I need to watch it better when I race or when I do other things that get my muscles very damaged - that's a weak spot for me. Thank you again for your message and all the best for your training!

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Nice job Marco. Your progress is inspiring. Sub3 is a very far target for me 3.06.50 my best time.

How do you manage hydration in the marathon races? Do you align it with gels? how often and how much do you drink. I find it hard to gauge whether I am hydrating properly.

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thank you. I sweat a lot, so I tend to drink every time I have the opportunity (normally every 5 km, while I take gels and sodium every 7 km, hence they are not aligned). I take just a sip or two as it's not easy to drink while running at the maximum effort we can sustain for the distance without having other issues (at least for me, I get easily GI problems). At the end, I am still quite dehydrated (very thirsty).

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Thanks for keeping this detailed log updated. Interesting to note the focus on threshold trainings and probably the philosophy of 2 sessions a week, and being very flexible about it, based on physiological adaptation. Aussies are hardcore about their Tues, Thursday and Saturday hard days with a long run Sunday, and would be a good study to see if any change in the pattern would yield better results in terms of adaptation and fitness

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thank you! indeed it's difficult for me to have "workout days" as I don't recover that way :) some weeks I can do two, but that normally means that one is on tuesday or on sunday, and therefore the following week or prior week there is only one. It seems enough stimulus though to keep progressing.

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