We know that most (over 84%!) of the BQ respondents did speed work as part of their training, but what kind of speed work? Let’s find out:

 Some runners did 800 repeats, quite a few did mile repeats, but tempo runs was the most common workout with marathon pace runs But broadly speaking, the theme seems to be longer efforts. This makes sense to me for the length of a marathon effort improving the upper end of your aerobic ability seems keys. I’ll definitely be working these kind of efforts into my training.

 Want some inspiration? Here’s Meb on a 12 mile tempo run. Yours may be slightly slower.

Another note on the data is appropriate here. Many people who said they did speed work, didn’t tell us what kind, and people used different nomenclature for similar workouts. I lumped together workouts like “tempo run” with “lactate threshold runs” and 800 repeats with Yasso 800s. I realize there may be some difference here, and am open to doing this in a different way. Please comment with your thoughts.