If you were in a situation where you were pretty much tied to only being able to get 4 hours of combined training on Saturday and Sunday (assume your rest day is during the week) and training for a marathon what would you do?
How would you split it up? Half and half for two moderate long runs?
One 3 hour run and one 1 hour Run? Something else entirely?
2.5 hr long run
45 min shakeout the next day
Use the extra 45 minutes for foam rolling and stretching
I'd consider myself lucky if I had that much time
Dude, that's pretty much the time that most people have.
Earlier in the cycle you could do roughly a one hour run on Saturday and a two hour run on Sunday (depending on your speed, that's a 7-9 mile run on Saturday and a 14-18 mile run on Sunday.
At peak mileage in the cycle, you would only need about a 1.5 hour run max on Saturday and 2.5 or so on Sunday. This would actually even be too much. An hour or a bit more on Sat would be sufficient, but it would depend how the rest of your week was structured.
Maybe 'only' having 4 hours was the wrong choice of words, but with 3 hours a common recommendation for the 'max' long run I felt like the balance was weird. This isn't my first marathon and I don't plan on doing much mileage build up - rather just running long relatively consistently while of my build up will be in the amount of quality at other points during the week.
1 hour just seems/feels like an empty effort. I can get well over 10 in on Saturday and then do 18 on Sunday for instance if I split it 1.5 and 2.5.
Yeah I'd say on high weeks you can do 3 hours (20ish miles at your speed I believe) and then an hour on Sunday. For a marathon more than an hour on Sunday is not really needed, the long run is really plenty of endurance work.
If you really want to do more then do a mid-distance on Wednesday of 12 miles or so.
Sounds like a lot of time to me. Saturday i ran 6 miles in 45 minutes or so and Sunday did 21 in about 2 1/2 hours.