[alancraig]

Hello – I hope this is the right phrase to describe what I’m talking about. I’ve always been disproportionately faster with shorter distances. If I plug in my mile or 5K pace, I should be able to run the marathon a lot faster. The gap has gotten smaller as my fitness has improved, but it’s still pretty significant.

Surely this is at least fairly common. Do you have any suggestions for runners who are like this? Would the basic 80/20 balance still be appropriate? Or would you suggest modifying this? Maybe more like 90/10? Just curious. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[winoria]

That’s a good questions and I’m excited for the answer. I am the exact opposite and wondered about the same question but the other way around 🙂

[Matt Fitzgerald]

Hi Alan,

This is quite common. When we’re talking about the marathon specifically, the poor predictions are more training-related than genetic. Very few recreational runners are as prepared for marathons as they are for 5K’s. You can run pretty close to your best possible 5K off 35-40 miles per week, but unless you’re putting in 70-plus miles per week on the regular, you are going to “underperform” at that distance relative to shorter ones.

As for the genetic side of things, here’s an old blog post about why I’m generally against skewing your training based on perceived genetic strengths and weaknesses:

Should You Train Your DNA or Train for Your Event?

[alancraig]

Thanks! I’ll check out the article right now. To your point, the most I’ve even run was in the 50 miles per week range, and this was at the peak of my last marathon training. I missed 11 weeks of running (ouch) due to injuries this past fall / late summer. I’ve been back for almost 19 weeks, but am only around 30 miles per week. So I’d probably need to increase this considerably to be in better long distance shape.

Just trying to stay strong and increase gradually to make sure I’m not winding up injured again. But that does makes sense. Thanks again.

[Author]

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