support crew wrote:
Hell yes! While you're lying around wondering when your legs will allow you to descend the stairs again, it would be really useful if you could summarize what advice from this thread you tried, and you think was the most useful.
Good question. I'll go back through it. Really what I was looking for was anyone who had an outside view to point out "Hey dummy you're missing this thing." and also just to see how other people would schedule and write a training plan for those 12 weeks. I'm always fascinated to see how so many people can run a similar time but run their training so differently.
Smoove was very helpful with advice on how to build a progression of workouts involving marathon pace. Joseph McVeighs suggestion of alternating long runs is something I'm going to be doing going forward for the next few months over the winter. I completely agree with the being "greedy" part too. I know my limits and know when it's time to back off.
Stanton K brought up the good point of tempos with faster finishes. I didn't exactly do the faster finishes but I did add in some longer grinding tempo runs. Whipp made good points of more moderate running instead of fartleks, but I didn't want to change things too much. Maybe this next block. PrimoNumerUno referred to race day and I followed that advice. I didn't overtaper either.
AdrianMarriott brought up burning fat as fuel during the marathon. I definitely felt the last 4 miles get harder but I think I'm pretty efficient when it comes to fueling. I used the Maurten 320 drink and it did the job. I did start to include hard downhill running once a week based on the suggestion.
Sage always has good advice and it's a bummer he's running Houston instead of CIM.
Looking at my Half Marathon race result I did what everyone else probably does and plugged it into a calculator to see fitness.... It equates to 2:21:59 via McMillan and 2:21:11 via Jack Daniels. That made me worry but I also knew CIM would be better weather vs 68F 90% humidity like it was for the half marathon. I also was relying on running with a good pack the whole way and knew that would help. Doing the large majority of my workouts solo gave me the mental strength to be able to hold on to the pack since things felt so much easier.
The Turkey Trot did give me some confidence that I could really grind out a pace. 19:06 for four miles isn't setting the world on fire but for me anything under 4:50 feels fast.
I got a lot of insight from "Hoping I am wrong but..." who highlighted all of the insecurities I did have going into the race. It's something that we need to be cognizant of and respect the distance of the marathon.
I ended up just buying those small Dasani water bottles and using those at the tables. Speaking of, the tables were great. I got all my fuel except for the 10k table where someone had either knocked mine over or taken it. Those are my insights looking back!