I finished reading Advanced Marathoning last night, and I'm curious about others who have trained for marathons. The training plans in the book schedule tune-up races. Does anyone typically do that during their marathon training? I'm still a pretty novice runner myself, and I know an all-out HM will require at least several days of recovery, so at least on the surface tune-up races seem like they could be counterproductive.
On the other hand, I do follow the book's logic that a tune-up race has psychological benefits and also tells you where you are and if your training is working.
I've read
Advanced Marathoning by Pfitzinger, but I don't have it quite committed to memory as other books. I think from the responses you can see a wide variety of responses. I think it's critical to understand where the author or coach is coming from when working in mid-training plan races. What is the intent? Is the intent an "A" like effort on a shorter distance race to get an idea where fitness is, or possibly the mental demands of racing, or working on racing strategy? Or is the intent of the race to work in a "B" like effort where you're going through the motions on what would be considered a very hard training run effort, but not quite an "A" level effort? If it's a "B" race and the intent is not to go all out, is that something you can do?
For me, I've tried "B" races before where the intent wasn't to give an all out effort but rather treat it as a training run. It doesn't work most of the time. Most of the time for me, I have intentions of giving a training run effort and then doing an "A" level effort. And that'll certainly mess with the intent of the race in the plan as per the author's goal. In my later years of racing experience, I am now more capable of seeing the forest through the trees and holding back when that's the intent of a "B" race day. But that hasn't always been the case. So be honest with yourself, and don't put yourself in that "B" race situation if you can't treat the race like the author intended.
My philosophy for "B" racing is balance. For every "B" race that occurs, that's less focused training that I'm completing. Conversely, as you mentioned there are mental gains, strategy gains, fitness determination, etc. with "B" races. So I think there's a time and a place for them. I wouldn't put "B" races too early in the plan. They wouldn't serve as a good judge of current fitness, and since you have so much time before the "A" race they could be mentally damaging (depending on how you deal with a reality check, or fail to realize how much more gains you may see before race day). But I also wouldn't put races too late in the plan, or too close to the "A" race itself. You want enough time to recover properly and keep the peak aimed at "A" race day. For a marathon, I like to see "B" races somewhere in that 6-8 weeks from race day window.
I've done marathon training cycles where I've not done any "B" races. I've sometimes been "successful" and sometimes "failed" on my "A" race day.
I've done marathon training cycles where I've done 1-2 "B" races. I've sometimes been "successful" and sometimes "failed" on my "A" race day.
I've done marathon training cycles where I've done several "B" races. I almost exclusively don't do well on my "A" race day. I've learned that this doesn't work well for me.
Find what works for you over time, and find a training plan/coach that aligns with that strategy.
The last thing I'll say is this. We mostly all run for fun. We don't get paid to do it. So if you find racing fun and that's what you want to do more of, then all the power to you. Go do it. Find what gives you joy in the sport. I've been running consistently for almost 10 years now. I've done 53 races total. So that's just about 5 races per year. And that includes five years of doing Dopey and doing four races consecutively. So sometimes I wonder whether I didn't race enough during some of the earlier years, and other times I wonder if I had raced more/trained less would I be in the same position I am now 10 years later. Of the 53 races I've done, 26 of them were PRs. So I didn't have a ton of quantity, but I had a lot of quality.
