me too: 2003 Boston, 2:49, age 47, averaged 35mpw over 14 weeks training. never more than 50mpw. 22 year running base of fitness then.
me too: 2003 Boston, 2:49, age 47, averaged 35mpw over 14 weeks training. never more than 50mpw. 22 year running base of fitness then.
Define "respectable".
How does someone else's marathon training affect you?
I couldn't run a "respectable" one when running 100mpw my best was 2.43 at age 24.
In my 40s off 30-35mpw I could run 2.57.
At least then I could use the excuse of lack of time to train for my "disrespectable" marathon.
At 24 I had no excuses except a distinct lack of talent.
mo'pak wrote:
At 24 I had no excuses except a distinct lack of talent.
You shouldn't feel bad - that's a perfectly reasonable excuse.
The problem isn't that some people don't want to run more, it's that they can't run more. I have trained for years and done all sorts of mileage from 80 mile weeks to 7 mile weeks. I run my best times and stay injury free when I am around 30-40 mile weeks. Because of the lower mileage, I try to do another few hours a week of xtraining like the eliptical.
When I was on some message boards that were mostly marathoners, I could see an increase in injuries as they would build up the long runs to 20 miles. If the first or second one didn't do it, the 3rd or 4th would surely have them sidelined for a little bit not knowing if they could even run the marathon they had been training for.
It is far better to take an extra recovery day during the week and stay healthy than try to fit in another 10 mile run that would help you very little anyway.
Last fall, I was going to try to break 3 hours and I had been avg 28 miles a week for about 4 months on 2 runs a week. I ran a 30k at 6:45 pace but ended up not running a marathon because I had too many other shorter races I wanted to do.
If you keep the intensity of your runs fairly hard, build up the long run to the 18-20 mile range, and do a few hours of xtraining like the stairmaster or eliptical, you should be able to run a good marathon.
sun-hour eliptical
mon-hour eliptical
tue-10 mile run medium effort
wed-hour eliptical
thu-7 mile fartlek
fri-off
sat 14-18 miles steady to hard
I suppose it depends on how you define "decent," but one reason people think it is because it has happened.
If you look at marathoners before WWII a lot of them did about 40 mpw on the belief that too much running was bad for your health. A friend of mine once raced Old Kelley when he, Kelley, was maybe 55. Kelley told him he'd been doing about 45 mpw at the time and, my friend said, "He said it in way that made it sound like he thought it was a lot." In Joe Henderson's "Road Racers and Their Training" Kelley says that he doesn't think he ever ran more than 45 miles in his life.
I had a college roommate who did 2:40 and 40 miles was a really big week for him and a post college roommate who once finished in the top ten at Boston on about 45. Both roommates agreed with me that they were each capable of running much faster if they'd trained more, but most people would regard either performance as pretty decent.
Peter Snell told me that once you've done the aerobic training that's developed your heart and cardio-vascular system fully that development really doesn't go away even for decades unless you "become totally sedentary." So it shouldn't be a surprise when a guy like Sandoval, who spent years running over 100 mpw, got a 2:10 and kept up some running, would be able to do 2:14 on 35.