How to get to sub 2:40 marathon?

70-80 is necessary. 80-100 is best. Check out some of the articles on the internet about Renato Canova's marathon training. The focus of the training is on marathon specific endurance. Big long workouts and long runs at 95% of marathon pace are the staples with a focus on recovering before the next big workout. Kind of different that the traditional notion that you do not want to do too big of a workout when training for the marathon because you want to be able to recover quickly in order to do two speed sessions a week and a long run. Interesting stuff.

If you can build up your weekly mileage closer to 100 you'll get there. It worked for me after years of mid-2:40's on ~80 MPW. Once I started peaking around 100 I did my next five marathons under 2:40.

Are you qualified for boston next year?

Thanks for the info so far guys. Could not find a formalized Renato Canova training program, just a lot of detail I would have to sift through on here. But I get the point. And I'd think I'd have to work my way up to close to 100 mile weeks.

Yes, I ran a marathon to keep a friend company earlier this year, a 3:02, and will use that time for Boston.

So you have already registered and been accepted right?

I think sub 240 will take some time at 80-100+ / week. I averaged around 75-85s peaking at 100 and ran a 246.

I will be at Boston next year shooting for something around low low 240s or better.

Correct. Registered and accepted. Thanks, so far seems like the consensus is 80+ miles per week.

Precious Roy wrote:

70-80 is necessary.

No, I did it on

Ran 2:35 a little while ago on second attempt, 12 weeks between 75-85 miles pre-taper on singles (6 or 7 runs/week). I'm a little older than you, not that fast (high 32 10K). This is enough running to give you the background to take on marathon workouts with 12-16 miles of race pace work. More's fine if you have time and can handle it, but not necessary for 2:39:59.

njtriguy wrote:

Correct. Registered and accepted. Thanks, so far seems like the consensus is 80+ miles per week.

70-80 mpw is not necessary for a sub-2:40 marathon. I've run 2:38 and my biggest week in that cycle was around 80 miles, and I only hit 70+ 3-4 times in the entire year leading up to the marathon. I averaged 55-60 miles for the 3-4 months prior to the race.

I'd like to do more mileage if I could ever stay healthy, but that is what I could handle so that is what I did. There is no stable relationship between the amount of training miles and a specific marathon time. It's different for everybody. If you can hit the 1:15:xx at Philly then sub-2:40 is a very reasonable goal for Boston.

In other words, if you're healthy and happy at 60-70 mpw, and that level of training helps you hit sub 1:16 (which predicts a sub-2:40), why change your approach?

I ran a 2:39 on an average of 60 miles per week. I emphasized a fairly hard long run (20-22 miles, building up the pace until the last 5-6 miles were at MP) and a hard 10K tempo as part of a 14 mile run every week. Some weeks I also did a moderate track workout. Other days were 4-5 miles or off. This got me to 2:39 with only a 1:16 half marathon PR and 16:30 5K PR.

I actually had tried running 70-75 miles per week for some earlier marathons, but had run substantially slower.

My experience is that a few big quality workouts is more important than total mileage. I'm sure if I could have run the same big workouts on on 80-85 miles per week I would have done even better -- but in practice trying to increase my mileage tended to make me either get injured or be too tired for the hard workouts. So don't listen to all of the people here who tell you that more mileage is necessary better. That is only true if you handle the mileage well.

sub240 wrote:

No, I did it on

There seems to be a bug in the letsrun forum that cuts off posts.

Anyway, I did sub 2:40 on

I give up - fix the forum

I ran 2:48 and 2:42 off of 85-100 miles per week. The difference in the training was before the 2:42 I focused on really big workouts. I was doing 2 workouts plus a long run before the 2:48, but the workouts were more of 5k/10k/half workouts (2x 3 miles at tempo, 6-8x 1000m at 5K, etc). I only did one workout and a long run before the 2:42, but the workouts were huge (3x 5 miles at MP, 5x 2 miles, 12 miles at MP). That made a huge difference.

I am hoping to go under 2:40 at Philly on Sunday, and I've only been doing about 70mpw this season, but again with emphasis on big workouts and quality long runs. I think mileage is good to have, but once you have a couple years of decent mileage under your belt, I think its importance is second to the quality and length of your workouts.

To the OP, if you want, I can send you my training plans, especially if I do break 2:40 this weekend. I create them myself and they take parts from Daniels, Pfitz, and Hansons, based on what I have found works best for me. Obviously they may not work perfectly for you, but you can at least see the kid of work you'll need.

Also, I should point out that for the longest time I was an 18+ minute 5Ker, but slowly improved to 16:00, and my first marathon was 3:18. Years of mileage and the big workouts got me to where I am now.

Sub240: are you trying to use a symbol? I noticed if you put the less than symbol it cuts the post off.

Sub240: the "less than" character and the "greater than" character are interpreted as HTML tags.

< wrote:

Sub240: the "less than" character and the "greater than" character are interpreted as HTML tags.

thanks guys. Yes, that's what it was.

I was doing it on less than 60mpw but w/ plenty of cycling, so if the OP wants to do that, this may work for him, too. However, I am reasonably talented.

And that I found that the HM x2 + 10min rule works well in that ballpark. So if the OP is able to run 1:15, he has a shot.

i did a 2:38 and change at chicago in 2011 off of much less than 80mpw. that was only a minute slower than my lifetime best -- which i did at philadelphia marathon.

i agree with the previous sentiment that harder longruns and quality workouts are much more important than high amounts of junk miles each week. I've appended what I did for the 3 months leading up to it just to give you an indication that it's doable. best of luck to you.

7/10/2011 - 7/16/2011 42.0 Tempo Run

7/17/2011 - 7/23/2011 38.5

7/24/2011 - 7/30/2011 55.3 Long Run, Long Run

7/31/2011 - 8/6/2011 17.0

8/7/2011 - 8/13/2011 54.9

8/14/2011 - 8/20/2011 60.0 Long Run, Tempo Run

8/21/2011 - 8/27/2011 69.0 Long Run, Tempo Run, Long Run

8/28/2011 - 9/3/2011 71.0 Steady State Run, Long Run

9/4/2011 - 9/10/2011 52.7 Steady State Run

9/11/2011 - 9/17/2011 50.5 Long Run, Mile Repeats

9/18/2011 - 9/24/2011 61.6 Long Run, Tempo Run

9/25/2011 - 10/1/2011 46.0 Long Run, Aerobic Capacity Intervals

10/2/2011 - 10/8/2011 29.0 Long Run, Marathon Pace Run

10/9/2011 - 10/15/2011 27.2 Competition

dustybuns wrote:

i agree with the previous sentiment that quality workouts are much more important than high amounts of junk miles

Word, bro. Crossfit style sprint repeats instead of slogging.

dustybuns...how old are you? What are your PRs at other distances? How long were your long runs? What pace?

I'm interested in your training. I've been trying to break 2:40. I've run 4 marathons with my best being 2:40:13. I've followed pfitz and have averaged 75 miles a week for 18 week training cycles. Looking to switch it up. I've been on pace for every one I've run only to lose it in the last 6-8 miles. I don't hit the wall - I just slowly lose pace.