I’m going to start marathon training in a few weeks and I’m wondering if anyone out there has combined marathon training with completing streets. Both activities are already kinda nuts, putting them together sounds really hard. I’m mostly thinking about how much time I would have to spend planning routes out in advance. My city is a hopeless mess of disorganization, so I have to plan my routes with precision otherwise I’ll miss streets or be terribly inefficient. Trying to do that in combination with specific training runs in mind is going to make marathon training even harder than it already is.
Kind of. I did a rather impromptu virtual marathon last November on the strength of my pandemic running alone (~50 mi/wk of only CityStriding & lots of hills), without a real training plan other than a month of building up the distance of my weekend long run and a taper. We were still in lockdown so I did 13 2-mile laps around my neighborhood and my family set a ‘hydration table’ outside on the driveway and cheered me each time I came by and despite a hilly course, it was my second-fastest time of 3 attempts at the distance!
This year I’m anticipating running an October marathon (still yet to register…); started training on June 1. I do my workouts (anything with speed/intervals) at a track or other area where I can run uninterrupted and focus on form and effort, but I plan CityStrides routes for my recovery/GA/MLR runs where it’s just about getting miles on your legs and building up. Can’t tell you how it’s worked out yet!
Sounds like the perfect combination to me! If you want to complete your city you will have to plan and run every street anyway, so combining it with something that requires high mileage will just get you there faster
If your training plan has set distances you could even plan all your runs in one sitting and then just grab whatever route you need for a particular workout (this would help: Show planned routes in lifemap/cityview !). I’m not on a training plan, but I usually plan a week’s worth of routes in advance and load them on my watch, it doesn’t take that long. The hard part is probably actually finding the time for both marathon training mileage and CS overheads from having to get somewhere before you can even start your run.
Thanks. I’ve been wondering about what you suggest - doing streets running for the less technical aspects of training and having a simple repeatable route for more technical days. The thought of racking up miles without getting more streets is hard to swallow, but it’s also hard to imagine interval training while keeping to a planned route.
I’ve never used the embedded route planner to navigate (I export the result and use my watch to navigate) so I don’t know if it does tbt. The USP for using it is planning directly on the lifemap and being able to use the node hunter to check for completeness.
I am effectively doing this now. I complete new streets on easy runs and some tempo runs.
I never try to complete streets on when doing intervals, mainly because it is too distracting and/or dangerous to be crossing intersections at a fast pace.
For long runs, I will usually try to go through an area where I have never run, and complete some streets … but not do the systematic zigzagging required to complete new areas.
When looking for some challenge to make the long runs training less boring, i discovered citystrides, back in the starting days. It was real fun doing 30+k runs with some kind of goal.
Also the tempo block runs were done covering new streets.
I kept it with one marathon until now (2017), but i didn’t stop running with citystrides (obviously), Now it’s developed to a goal by itself, to complete city after city.
Doing exactly the same. My tempo runs are a route created with must nodes possible. Especially my long runs are one major node hunt. The route builder feature in that regard is genious. I create, download an import to my Garmin.
Others have discussed it already, but when I switch to “sessions” where I am doing intervals or specific pace work, the routes may not IGNORE CityStrides, but the routes get less complicated. I don’t usually struggle to keep those sessions interesting, so the route takes back seat to the workout goal.
The base mile days, however, can stay CS when pace or intervals are not that prominent.
and despite a hilly course, it was my second-fastest time of 3 attempts at the distance!