Eliud Kipchoge Training: A Typical Saturday
The Sweat Elite team spent the month of August 2017 training alongside Eliud Kipchoge and his training group, in the lead up to the Berlin Marathon (September 24) where Eliud Kipchoge will attempt to officially break the Marathon World Record. Eliud Kipchoge is the man who ran 2:00:25 at the Nike Sub2 Project in early May 2017.
Eliud Kipchoge Training – A Typical Saturday
A saturday for Eliud Kipchoge involves a fartlek (or to them “speed”) workout in the morning, off the track and either the afternoon off, or a second easy run of 10-12km if they feel up for it.
6.10 AM: Fartlek (on trails/road)
There are 7 different fartlek workouts Eliud Kipchoge uses in his training.
- 10min reps with 2min rest. 4 x 10min is most common, sometimes they’ll do 5.
- 8mins reps with 2min rest. 6 x 8min is most common.
- 6min reps with 2min rest. 8 x 6min is most common.
- 4min reps with 2min rest. 10 x 4min is most common.
- 3min reps with 1min rest. 13 x 3min is most common, sometimes they’ll do 14-15.
- 2min reps with 1min rest. 17 x 2min is most common, sometimes they’ll do up to 20.
- 1min reps with 1min rest. 25 x 1min is most common, sometimes they’ll do up to 30.
The most common 3 used are:
- 4x10min reps (2min rest)
- 13x3min reps (1min rest)
- 25x1min reps (1min rest)
These seem to be used around double the amount the others are.
Paces in these workouts (during intervals) are difficult to report on, as the routes they use are hilly, so reps of course vary a lot in speed. but on the flat surfaces, it’s normally around 2:55/km pace for the 10min reps, down to 2:45/km for the 1min reps.
Warm up and cool downs for this workout aren’t very long at all – normally just 10mins, sometimes up to 15mins. This surprised us. It’s common in the western world to add on plenty of milage in your warm ups and cool downs (some do up to 30mins of running) but for Kipchoge, this was short and sharp.
On one particular workout we joined in with them (August 12th 2017 – 4x10min with 2min rest) the entire workout, start of warm up to end of cool down took under 1hr20mins. They jogged 2km in just under 10min, stretched for 2mins and got straight into it. At the end of the last rep, they walked for less than 2min before getting straight into their cool down.
PM: Usually they’ll rest and not run at all in the afternoons on Saturday, but sometimes when they’re preparing for a big race, they might run 10-12km in the afternoon, fairly easily for them (around 4:30-5:00/km average), so just a recovery jog.
[This is an excerpt from the Eliud Kipchoge Edition – a 33 page e-book on the training on Eliud Kipchoge]
