Overtrained? and 4 weeks 'til the marathon

Can you give us your last 6-8 weeks of training? Prs, goal for this race? Maybe there could be things that can be done to salvage your marathon based on what is going on, how strong you are etc.

But probably just a few easy days and strides then back to basics for a couple of weeks...

If you are following a written plan then take least a minimum of two/three days off in a row of doing nothing to recharge the batteries. Pick up on the schedule like nothing changes, don't backtrack. Once you start running workouts again skip all the easy days and rest those days instead.

You feeling worn out might be a great sign that you did all the training very well. Now, you can ride out the last part with confidence knowing you put in a lot of hard work.

This final stage is also known as sharpening where you focus on your weak areas.

Maybe your weak area is marathon pace? So, focus on that only.

I agree that taking it easy in the short-term is the way to go. You'll have to figure out what "easy" is. It sounds like the 10k PR & 6 x 1 were a bit too much, and overcooked you. I've had something very similar happen after a couple 5k PRS, with additional track workouts when everything was clicking great... until it suddenly wasn't, and I think it was overtraining.

Here's the Overtraining Recovery "forumula" from "Healthy Intelligent Training", a book by Keith Livingstone about the Lydiard training method. You might want to pick up the book, as I'm pulling from page 231 in the "More on Overtraining" chapter.

1.) Recovery week

2.) Big Aerobic Volume stimulus weekend

3.) Small VO2max stimulus (ex: 3000m track race) and Aerobic stimulus (long run)

4.) Aerobic Recovery Week

I have found that very very easy jogging for several days in a row (entire week) worked even better than taking complete rest. I don't know exactly why, but I think it is an example of what many people have called the restorative abilities of aerobic running (Lydiard, Van Aaken, Maffetone, etc..) By jogging, I mean slow - like between 9-10:30 pace, when I was in 15:50 5k shape. After a few of these, I felt like picking up the pace. Don't. Commit to an entire week of recovery, and you just might salvage your race.

Take a week off and start to build up your training again. Took me a while to figure this out for the marathon, but I actually do really well when I train hard for a few months and about a month before I slack off and then start to build up again.

Thanks folks. I'm going to try and jog a few miles per day through the end of this week and pick back up next week.

I've been running around 85 miles per week for the last 5 weeks. Before that I've averaged around 70 since November.

I've been doing 2 - 3 quality workouts per week. One tempo (4-10 miles), one interval and a long run.

I've been training for about a year (after a 5 year break post college). Recently I've run a 32:29 (aided) 10k and a 1:14:04 (unaided, Jan. 1st) half. I was hoping for low 2:30's for a marathon on April 20th.