Episode 54: Listen in on a Coaching Call About Running a Sub-3 Marathon
The Strength Running Podcast
Jason Fitzgerald
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s no easy feat to run a marathon under three hours. It’s faster than the fastest Boston Qualifying time of 3:05 (for young men) and according to one analysis, only 4% of men and just 1% of women achieve this level of performance.
An article from LiveStrong notes that:
“the nonprofit organization RunTri used the times of 230,251 finishers in 25 races to determine that in the 2011-2012 marathon season the average time for any person, regardless of gender or age, was 4 hours, 24 minutes and 0 seconds.”
I’m not familiar with either of these sources so we should be careful with the results. Let’s take them with a big grain of salt.
But still, they underscore the general idea that a sub-3 marathon is really hard! And especially for women, who weren’t born with many of the biological “tools” that aid performance (higher muscle mass, more testosterone, etc.).
So this coaching call was particularly exciting for me. Lindsey has a 3:14 personal best but that wasn’t under ideal conditions – in other words, she knows a lot of improvement is possible.
In this conversation, we discuss her training background, past race performances, and the training upgrades required to make her sub-3 marathon dream a reality.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ready, set go. |
| 0:04.7 | This is episode number 54, a behind the scenes coaching call, |
| 0:08.1 | listen in as I help Lindsay plan for a sub three-hour marathon. The strength running podcast is back. |
| 0:20.0 | This is your host, Jason, and I'm glad to The Strength Running Podcast is back. |
| 0:23.0 | This is your host, Jason, and I'm glad to be back. |
| 0:25.0 | You're in for a real treat today. |
| 0:27.0 | I'm bringing back a very popular type of show, |
| 0:30.0 | a behind-the-scenes coaching call. |
| 0:32.0 | You'll see that we did this in episodes six, nine, |
| 0:35.8 | and 24. So if you miss those definitely go back. They're a little bit different. |
| 0:39.8 | And we are going to do it again today with team strength running member Lindsay. |
| 0:45.0 | Before we start, I do just want to thank all of you guys. |
| 0:48.0 | I just noticed that we got a surge of reviews and iTunes with titles like No Need for my Radio anymore and my |
| 0:55.9 | favorite running podcast. I hope you aren't just trying to get on my good side |
| 0:59.5 | but no I really do appreciate all the reviews, |
| 1:03.0 | the ratings, and all the goodwill. |
| 1:04.6 | If you keep listening, I'll keep publishing episodes. |
| 1:07.8 | All right, let's move on to the topic of today's show. |
| 1:10.8 | I'm helping a fairly advanced female runner improve her marathon |
| 1:14.8 | somewhat substantially. Lindsey is hoping to break three hours for 26.2 miles and |
| 1:20.4 | as we all know that ain't easy so I'm going to be asking her a lot of |
| 1:24.9 | questions about her background, her training history, other race performances, |
... |
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