Big Workouts before marathon goal race

That is crazy, unless you completely taper and recover for a month after. Try 20 or 23 with last 10 or so at marathon pace.

(good one if this was a troll attempt)

I have had some reasonable success with this method as a masters runner. I always do 3 X 23 in the same time as my marathon goal time. It is not that hard and has not required me to recover more then 2 days with a hard track workout the third day. 35-40 seconds per mile slower is quite a bit of buffer.

It is much easier, in my opinion, then doing a marathon race pace for 26.2K as you see one of the elite teams do prior.

26.2k at goal marathon pace.

You misunderstood. It was 23 in the goal time, not at goal pace. If you can do that in training, you need to pick a faster goal.

Not crazy in the least wrote:

It is much easier, in my opinion, then doing a marathon race pace for 26.2K as you see one of the elite teams do prior.

I tend to agree with this statement.

Maybe it's because I haven't done the "10 miles easy, then 10 miles at MP" workout, but that just seems more difficult than the 23 at marathon goal time workout.

Yep. Misread that. Thanks for the edumacation. I though 23 at goal pace sounded a little crazy.I still like the 10-11 EZ, 10 at goal pace workout. I take too long to recover from anything over 21 (I don't know why its 21, but 21 is recoverable and 22 is a disaster).

edumacator wrote:

You misunderstood. It was 23 in the goal time, not at goal pace. If you can do that in training, you need to pick a faster goal.

Pete Pfitzinger says "22 miles in goal time." I've found this to be pretty accurate, assuming the same relative weather conditions and terrain.

23 is close enough, perhaps a better test if you want to be surer of the state of your training.

Yeah I've heard if you can run 22 miles in goal time fairly comfortably you are ready.

Races Like a Girl wrote:

assuming the same relative weather conditions and terrain.

I certainly won't have that, unless Chicago happens to be 95 degrees and high humidity.

In your last long run of 18 or more, throw in a really crushing 10k portion at about the 8 mile mark.

A training partner did this to me once unannounced and I was cursing him the entire time.

Then three weeks later I ran the best marathon of my life. Maybe coicidence, maybe not.

[/quote]

I certainly won't have that, unless Chicago happens to be 95 degrees and high humidity.[/quote]

Which would be ridiculous! (Not that I'm still bitter or anything.)

i think that 22-23 in goal time isnt a great predictor. looking back over my log i did that pretty easily in the last 2 races but i screwed up my race and missed my goal by a few minutes each time.

13 at goal pace towards the end of a 20 miler is a better indicator, and a much harder workout in my opinion.