I came across this article on the poduim runner website ( https://www.podiumrunner.com/training/marathon-training/how-to-run-a-227-marathon-at-age-59/ ) describing Tommy Hughes and his achievements and training tips, which are listed below. The article is worth a read and I totally agree with all his tips, they mirror a lot of my Golden Rules funnily enough.  What resonated with me was his weekly training which consisted of a 16k run in the morning and a similar distance in the afternoon , 6 times a week. He is the ultimate advocate of the consistent running , high distance mantra taught by Lydiard, Maffetone and, too some point, Matt Fitzgerald.

I have said this many times but it’s worth repeating again ‘ Double days unlock your running dreams‘.  Double days allow you to add distance without the threat of injury as you are breaking down your mileage by half, ultimately. Also by following the Maffetone method (using your heart rate as the dictator of your pace) you are normally running well within yourself and , as such, less likely to get injured.  I keep telling Bart’s this as he is continually pulling his hammy running  with his younger students on their track days. He needs to slow down, smell the roses and only test his dodgy hammy with a number on his chest after a good warm-up. Something about old dog and new tricks springs to mind with Bart’s !!

Anyway here are the tips of a sub 2:30 marathon runner,  in his sixties,  so they are worth reading and adjusting your training to accommodate, assuming you are a vintage runner , like my good self.

Run only as many miles as you can handle. In his 20s, Hughes pushed his training as high as 140 miles a week. That didn’t work. “I found that I was getting these little injuries all the time,” he remembers. Eventually, he settled on about 100 miles a week. In the last year, he’s been able to go higher—up around 120 miles a week. “I’m actually doing more miles now than when I was young,” he notes.

Do most of those runs at a modest pace. From Monday through Friday, Hughes runs twice a day, roughly 10 miles (or a little less) at a time. On these runs, he generally holds a steady “three-quarters effort,” and says he can’t stand running slower than that. He pegs his typical running pace at 6:30- to 7:00 minutes per mile. That’s about a minute-per-mile slower than his marathon race pace, so not a hard effort.

Go past 20 on long runs. Hughes generally follows a 12-week buildup for his marathons. During that period, he’ll run as long as 26 miles two to three times. He’ll also do several runs of 22 to 24 miles. He doesn’t push particularly hard on the long runs, but might run progressively faster the last three to five miles. (Note, at his training pace, none of these runs last longer than 3 hours).

Refine your focus. If there were a mantra to describe Hughes’s approach, it would be: Everything’s aimed at marathon performance. Even in his 20s, he never ran faster than 14:26 for 5000 meters. “I learned early that the marathon was my best event,” he says. “And once I did, I decided to put everything into building myself to a marathon peak.”

Skip the speedwork. But race often. Hughes does very little speedwork, fearful that the extra intensity might lead to injury. However, he races almost every weekend, either in a local Parkrun or a nearby road race. And when he goes to a start line, he goes all-out: “I love competing, and I always give one-hundred percent,” he says.

Use your races as marathon simulations. That said, he doesn’t run his weekend races on fresh legs. “I run 10 miles early on the morning of my races,” he says. “I want to be doing my races on fatigued legs, because that’s the best way to accustom them to the late miles of the marathon.”

Keep trying to improve your training regimen. Hughes has stuck with certain approaches most of his life—for example, the lack of track work. Otherwise, he’s always fiddling with what he calls his “training recipe,” hoping to find a new ingredient. He’s doing more foam-rolling of late, especially on his upper back and neck, which tend to get tight in marathons. He’s added a modest strength-building unit to his garage-gym, where he also practices rope-skipping and punching-bag sessions. A few years back, he started drinking a small glass of beet juice every day, and has become a big fan.

Carbo-load the hard way. Before his big Frankfurt Marathon effort last fall, Hughes followed the old-fashioned, extreme depletion-and-repletion system of carbo-loading. He ran a hard long run seven days before the marathon (“Bleeding out,” he called it), followed by three days of a high-protein, low-carb diet. Only after this glycogen-depletion stage did he switch to a high-carb diet. “It seemed to push my glycogen up higher than normal,” he observes.

Use a short stride. Hughes never had to work at this one. Short has always been natural for him. He ran Frankfurt with an average stride rate of 199 strides per minute. (It’s not genetic; his son used 174 strides/minute.) Hughes believes his short stride is an efficiency asset in the marathon, and also helps keep him injury-free.

Run even-pace marathons, or a slight negative-split. It’s the almost-universal strategy these days, and Hughes is definitely on board. He practices even-pace marathon racing. At Frankfurt, he ran 1:14:22 and 1:13:40. His son made the typical rookie mistake: He ran 1:12:54 and 1:18:36. Tommy caught him at 23 miles, patted him on the back, asked “You okay?”—then motored away.

Ride the 4% wave. Hughes, who is unsponsored, ran the Frankfurt Marathon in Nike Vaporfly NEXT% shoes. Why not? If you’re aiming for fast marathons these days, it’s what many do. “They seem to leave my legs less beaten up late in the race,” he notes, echoing what others have said.

Believe. The longer the distance you’re racing, the more important your confidence in mastering that distance. Hughes has always focused exclusively on the marathon. Over the years, he’s learned how to train for and race the distance. “I don’t want to sound too much like Eliud Kipchoge, but I believe in myself,” he says. “I believe I can run faster. I believe I can go under 2:27 at age 60.”

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