One of the most common mistakes that a lot of runners make are the paces at which they train. There are 2 main traps that you can fall into- going too fast on your easy days, and not going hard enough on your hard days.

For a lot of runners, especially newer runners, the mistake is going hard all the time. When I first starting to run regularly, my thought process was that if I ran hard all the time, on race day my hard pace would feel easy. That seems logical enough if you don't understand that different types of runs have different sorts of physiological benefits. Now that I've been around the block a few times, I've come to realize that if I go too hard on my easy days, it really screws up my hard training sessions. I notice that the most on Tuesdays, which is my intervals workouts day. If I push the pace on my long Sunday run, I have a really hard time hitting my targetted paces on Tuesday, so I make sure I watch the pace. I generally try to keep my long run pace about 30 seconds/ km slower than my marathon pace. One note on that- I often do the last couple of km at close to marathon pace to get my legs used to finishing fast, but overall, I aim to keep my long run pace fairly comfortable. If I do that, I generally do pretty well with my Tuesday intervals. That's the "Train Slow to Train Fast" bit of the blog title.

The next bit is "Train Fast to Race Fast." As important as it is to keep portions on your training slow, it's equally important to do some of your training at the pace you plan on racing. In my current training, I have 2 speed sessions per week. On Tuesdays I do intervals, which, depending on the distance, are run at either 5km race pace or 10km race pace. It's really helpful to do those sessions where you legs get used to turning over quickly. On Thursdays I do my marathon pace sessions, which are generally longer- early in the training cycle I might do 12km with 8km at marathon pace, and as it gets closer to race day I'll do 20km with 16km at marathon pace. Getting your legs used to running at the pace you plan on racing at is really important, and it's amazing how they'll catch on. The first marathon I ran after incorporating the long marathon pace sessions was Philadelphia 2012.  In all my previous marathons I'd hit the wall pretty hard around 32km, but in that one my legs just kept on turning over at the pace they were trained at, and I had a great race. It's pretty far fetched to hope that race day magic will make your legs move at a pace they've not trained at.

Training slow and training fast are both key to racing well. Figure out how to balance they two and you'll set yourself up for success in your next race.

Running is a sport of simple truths, and on of the sayings that I often think of on race day is "you can't win the race in the first mile, but you sure can lose it." At this point in my training, just 4 weeks out from the biggest race I've ever done, I'm thinking of a similar thing- "you can't vastly improve your marathon in the last 4 weeks of training, but you sure can wreck it."

At this point, the bulk of the training is done. There's not a whole lot you can do to vastly improve your performance on race day by training harder. You probably have your last long run next weekend, and maybe a few more speed and tempo sessions, but the most important thing now is to play it safe, stay healthy, and get to the start line strong, fresh, and ready to make a withdrawal from the many hours you have put into the training bank.

My plan over the next few weeks is to sharpen things up with my race pace, and to work on thing specific to Boston's course. I have a few more Tuesday interval sessions on the schedule, but I'm thinking I may change them up a bit- head to the hills outside of town, jog up, and go down at marathon pace to simulate the feeling of the last 10km of the course- going downhill from Heartbreak Hill to the finish line. I also have a few more of my long Thursday marathon pace runs, and my plan for those is similar- start at or just below race pace for the first 2/3 on the run, make my way to a hilly section, and then hammer the pace on a long downhill.

The thing to keep in mind though is that I'm just doing a variation on the same training I've already been doing- I'm not going to do anything radically different, or try to ratchet up the pace in the hopes that it will carry over to race day, or try to cram in a few more weeks of big mileage. My plan is the sharpen up on the race specifics, and pay extra attention to what my body is telling me. The last thing I want at this point is to do something stupid and hurt myself.

Whether you're doing the Boston Marathon, or some other race, if you're getting close, don't do anything stupid. Play it safe, trust your training, get to the start line rested up and ready to go, and have fun!

I'm normally a morning runner- with all the stuff going on in life, I've found that if I don't get my runs in first thing in the morning, they have a tendency to not happen. On the weekends however, that changes. With my alarm clock going off at 4:45am on weekdays, there's no way I'm getting up that early on a Saturday or Sunday, so sometimes my Saturday or Sunday runs end up happening later in the day, which is what happened yesterday- I didn't go out until 3:40pm, and got home at 6:00 after 27.5km of hills and snowy country roads.

This morning I had a recovery paced 13km on the schedule, but when I woke up for that, my legs were feeling thrashed- 11hrs recovery after a tough run like I did yesterday just wasn't enough. That got me thinking- in order to really optimize training, I need to give though to when I do my runs.

Getting out for a pre-dawn run every day works, since I generally have a full day's recovery between runs, but when I start to mix up my schedule, I can end up with much less recovery time than necessary. It wouldn't have been as big a deal on a run like I had on the schedule for today where it was just slow and easy, but if I had a speed session scheduled, it would have been a disastrous training session.

When training for marathons, we often think of the training just as the running, but it's the recovery too, and not just the rest days. The amount of hours you get between runs is quite important.

Sometimes (often) life gets in the way and you've got to do what you've got to do, but if you have the luxury of planning the times of your runs, give some thought to hours of recovery- try to not schedule a tough morning run after a tough run the evening before (unless you're specifically working on running on tired legs). Those few extra hours you can give yourself to recover can make a big difference in your performance in your training session.