Spring to Fall Marathon: Training?

Mama_Jag

I am sure some of you have been here before, it's a first for me.

In the past I have run a spring marathon and that is it for the year. This year I have one on 5/19 and am considering another on 9/22. Most training plans I am familiar with are about 4 months long, but I don't want to drop my mileage back quite as far as starting a new plan.

Any ideas on how to maintain fitness, keep decent mileage, and train for that fall race?

Thanks for any ideas!

scottb81

One thing you could do is pick up a copy of Pete Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning. He has a section in that book for people running Marathons fairly close together. Also, his easiest plan is pretty aggressive compared to most of the stock internet plans as it starts out the first week at 33 mi and peaks at 55 mi. The first week includes a 12 mi run so you won't have to worry about losing your hard earned fitness

In a nutshell he says you need to spend around 4 weeks after the first marathon recovering starting the first week running around 20 to 25 miles easy and over 4 weeks building back to around 55 mi (or whatever mileage you were running before the previous marathon). Then you an start a new plan.

His plan mentioned above is 17 weeks long. WIth 4 weeks recovery after the first one that is 21 weeks. SInce you only have 18 weeks between marathons you could modify the plan some and start at the fourth week sill allowing for a month of easy recovery running after the first marathon or just slowly merge recovery into his 17 week plan beginning at the second week. (You could do something like run his threshold runs at easy pace for the first couple of weeks.

Whatever you do, I highly recommend that book if you plan to continue running marathons and want to continue to improve without dropping mileage way down.

Mama_Jag

Thank you, this is exactly the type of help I was seeking. Reading reviews on amazon the book looks great, I think I will order it!