Success in 2nd Half Bring on the Full
urbansmamma
Posts: 202 Member
Im so excited I completed my 2nd half and I shattered my PR by 22 minutes and finished at 2:13. I'm ready to start training for a full. What are your favorite training plans?
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Hal Higdon's are probably the most popular and many people have had success with these plans.0
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I was in pretty good shape when I started, so I used Hal Higdon's Intermediate Marathon I, although he recommends all first time marathon runners use one of his novice plans.
It was all distance work and no real speedwork, i.e., fartleks, intervals, hill workouts were all omitted. There were some workouts where you'll be running "race pace" for the marathon, but nothing faster.
During most of his plans, I think you'll be running 24 miles / week at the minimum and close to 50 miles / week at the maximum, so it's very realistic in terms of workload.
If you're looking for others, I suggest looking at Runner's World's plans or Jeff Galloway's.0 -
Hal Higdon seems to be the man for people training on thier own.
I have been training for my first marathon with a marathon training class offered by a local running store. I highly recommend it if you can find one in your area. Training with a group has been fabulous. We motivate each other, keep each other accountable and keep each other company on those long runs. We also have coaches at every run and online for questions/guidance ect. I seriously can not recommend it enough. I thought I was going to hate every minuteof training - instead its been fun and I've made new friends.
Edit: local track clubs, and running organizations, meetup.com groups, and marathon organizers might also offer group training classes.0 -
All of these runners are right, but there's another option that I've used very successfully for the past year and a half. It's the Smartcoach from Runner's World. You can find the app for the smartphone or use the website and it's free. Put in a little data about yourself and your running habits and coming race and it spits out a plan for you. The app only goes for up to 16 weeks but the website goes much longer than that if you'd like.
Whatever plan you like, just pick one and stick to it. It's ok to change it up a bit if something happens (we do have lives outside of running, right?) but try hard to run the days you're supposed to run. Don't forget to strength train, that's really helpful to me and gives me lots more endurance, as well as working on my core.
Good luck!0 -
My first marathon is in a week, so I can't say if my plan has been a success, but I'm using a plan from Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning book. I did get a PR in a HM that I did as a goal/tuneup race a couple weeks ago.0
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I joined a Fleet Feet Training Team. We trained for 16 weeks. It was a great experience. Not cheap, but worth every dollar. I learned more that way, than from all the books I've read put together. It changes everything when there's a coach right there for me to bounce questions off of.
Good luck, good training, and enjoy.0 -
My first marathon time was 6.5 hours and I was not overweight at all - people 50 pounds heavier than me were flying past me at the end, but I didn't really follow a training schedule and kind of winged it. I had decent half marathon times before that so I figured I'd be ok, but it was a long miserable race because I was not prepared. I'll never do that again! I'm running a marathon again in December and I've been strictly following Hal Higdon's Novice 2 plan of running 4 days a week. At a recent half marathon tune up race I PR'd by 20 minutes with little effort. (Went from 2:26 to 2:06!!) Like someone else mentioned, there are many plans that will work, the key is to follow it consistently. If you miss a workout here and there though, you'll still be fine. I cannot overstate how many improvements I've made following his plan - effort is easier, speed is faster and endurance is much improved. Good luck!!0
