Marathon Training Pushing The Limits

UPDATED
COMPARING THE TRAINING OF WORLD CLASS MARATHON RUNNERS
It is possible to get a clue to the type of training needed to maximise an athletes potential by comparing the training regimes of the three great Australian marathon runners Derek Clayton, Robert De Castella and Steve Moneghetti because they were of similar basic speed, around 54-56 seconds for 400m, and trained almost identically in terms of annual volume. Derek Clayton differed from the other two in that he ran consistently at what has been described as ‘nerve shatteringly fast’ speeds. He rarely ran hills and did virtually no interval or repetition running. De Castella and Moneghetti however trained almost identically except for Tuesday. De Castella was more inclined to do a threshold workout involving a longer fast run or long hill repeats while Moneghetti used a shorter fast MVO2 fartlek session. So while Clayton regularly ran long and fast, De Castella added at one high quality threshold session to his week but none of Moneghetti’s fast workouts exceed 20 to 22 minutes.
These are important differences because, despite having inferior times to Moneghetti over every distance from 3k to 21.1k, De Castella was the superior marathon runner in terms of time and results. When one considers that De Castella was able to run 2:07:50 for the marathon off a 10k of 28:04 and a half marathon of around 1:02 hr it suggest that Moneghetti’s 10k of 27:48 and a 21.1k time of 1:00:06hr should have formed the basis of a sub 2:06:30 hr marathon, yet his current PR is 2:08:16. Seen in these terms Clayton’s strength was even more amazing because he managed to run 2:08:34 hr off a PR of 28:45 MORE
Thur 7th
Easy sandhill run = 1.15
Fri 8th
Run/walk with niz on the nature trail
Sat
Big sandhills, atrocious weather very strong winds and heavy rain!
tried sprinting each sandhill and cruising the flats = 1.30
Evening
The weather cleared up to leave a lovely sunny wind free evening, cycled with Carole, Clive, Brian and Niz, went on one of Andy and Magots routes, out along the coastal path cycle route to Woodvale traffic lights, then straight across onto Rosemary lane for a mile before turning onto the Cheshire lines cycle path [ disused railway line] we then headed for the SHIP INN we had a couple of re hydrating pints before returning home along the canal tow path, FANTASTIC EVENING!
Sun 10th
sandhill 6 with Jon plus run down and back inc 8 x 120 m spints, max 14.1 mph = 1.14