Marathon?

JustWant2Run

_Waffle_ wrote: »

SuggaD wrote: »

How do people feel about the Hal Higdon plans? I am eyeing a marathon early next year. I plan to continue building my base (20-30 miles per week: easy, intervals, long) and use Higdon's Novice 2 plan, which has me starting beg. of December. My fear is that it never has you running the marathon distance prior to race day. I've always run the distance of my prior races beforehand. So for my recent 1/2 marathon for example, my training plan included multiple 12+ runs, 3 over 13.1, and topped out at 15.5. So on race day, 13.1 felt easy and I still had plenty of gas in the tank (ran a negative split) at the end when everyone else was fading.

I'm doing a 20 mile run tomorrow. This is going to be my longest run for the April marathon. I'll let you know April 4th how that goes. :laugh:

The benefit of running more than 3:30 isn't worth the injury risk. I took a full week off after the December marathon. Running the full 26.2 feels like you ran 3 half marathons back to back to back. Your training would come to a dead halt.

Yeah... Some say you shouldn't even run over 3:00 even if it's mean a 16mi long run and not getting a 20miler in. For the elites, 3:00 means they are getting 22-24 miles training runs.

I'm also running 20mi tomorrow... My longest run since October. It should take me exactly 3:00. My training plan has me running 4x 20mi before race day, but its not a beginner or first time marathoner plan.

kristinegift

_Waffle_ wrote: »

SuggaD wrote: »

How do people feel about the Hal Higdon plans? I am eyeing a marathon early next year. I plan to continue building my base (20-30 miles per week: easy, intervals, long) and use Higdon's Novice 2 plan, which has me starting beg. of December. My fear is that it never has you running the marathon distance prior to race day. I've always run the distance of my prior races beforehand. So for my recent 1/2 marathon for example, my training plan included multiple 12+ runs, 3 over 13.1, and topped out at 15.5. So on race day, 13.1 felt easy and I still had plenty of gas in the tank (ran a negative split) at the end when everyone else was fading.

I'm doing a 20 mile run tomorrow. This is going to be my longest run for the April marathon. I'll let you know April 4th how that goes. :laugh:

The benefit of running more than 3:30 isn't worth the injury risk. I took a full week off after the December marathon. Running the full 26.2 feels like you ran 3 half marathons back to back to back. Your training would come to a dead halt.

THIS. Running more than 3-3:30 hours takes too long to recover from to make it a worthwhile part of your training schedule. My last round of marathon training, my max run was 20 miles clocking in around 3:20. This time, the same distance should take right around 3 hours. I know some people who max out around 22 miles. Depends on how fast you are, I suppose!

glevinso

I certainly wouldn't attempt to run more than 20 miles in a marathon build if I was doing it on my own. It is just too difficult to recover from. And honestly by the time you get to the 20 mile day, you know full well you can do it. Novice runners might feel "better" about, say, running to 14 miles before doing a half, but 14 miles isn't going to simply BREAK you like a 26 mile run will.

My coach had me doing a 22 mile run at the peak of my build last year, but that was a 2:45 run for me. If this would have been longer than 3 hours I seriously doubt my coach would have wanted me to go that far. That 22 miler broke me a bit, but that was also 2 weeks out from the race and I had the time to recover from it. On race day, I beat myself into the ground running those 26.2 and it took me at least 3 weeks before I could conceivably run again with any sort of speed (I started running easy and short runs a week out from the race, but actual run efforts would wait for a while).

heybales

SuggaD wrote: »

How do people feel about the Hal Higdon plans? I am eyeing a marathon early next year. I plan to continue building my base (20-30 miles per week: easy, intervals, long) and use Higdon's Novice 2 plan, which has me starting beg. of December. My fear is that it never has you running the marathon distance prior to race day. I've always run the distance of my prior races beforehand. So for my recent 1/2 marathon for example, my training plan included multiple 12+ runs, 3 over 13.1, and topped out at 15.5. So on race day, 13.1 felt easy and I still had plenty of gas in the tank (ran a negative split) at the end when everyone else was fading.

Dittos to above
After a certain point, it's not about training the muscles anymore anyway to go the distance, or the pounding on the feet.
You can easily practice probably the biggest thing - proper pace.
Too fast and you'll hit the wall, too slow and despite feeling dead, you'll recognize you could have done a tad more.
Hence the benefit of doing shorter races at indeed race pace, and then seeing what the charts say the pace should be for a marathon. They are usually pretty decent.

If you have a HRM, even easier. Whatever the avg HR was on the shorter distance, make it lower for the marathon.

But you would never do a marathon race pace training, it would wipe you out for too many days of training, or you'd be done and not recover enough and wipe yourself out with injury anyway. Same as just doing the distance, not needed.

I've seen several references in studies to no benefit beyond 3 hrs, but more negatives.

If you need the confidence of foot time, this was in a training program years ago I still find useful.
Take your expected finish timed divided by 3. That much time will be done walking in total, but in 3 equal time segments.
The other 2/3's running at race pace. But in 2 equal time segments.
So if hoping for 9 min/miles, or 236 min total, or 79 min per 1/3.
25 min walk first.
80 min run.
25 min walk.
80 min run.
25 min walk.

There, just got foot time of 235 min, even if the pounding isn't equal, which is good. And ran race pace for almost 3 hrs total.
But this shouldn't wipe you out for 3-4 days, perhaps just a day recovery. Then easy run next day after.

SuggaD

Thanks everyone! I continue to learn a lot.