Should I ease off for a week or so? (marathon training)

Google overtraining. There are symptoms. It doesn’t sound like you’re overtraining to me.

Tired legs is not overtraining. How many miles per week are you running? That 20 miler might have been too much, especially if you are a low mileage runner.

But if you feel it necessary, take 2 or 3 easy days. That can be no running or just shorter easier runs. The better your fitness the quicker you will recover from hard efforts.

That's the thing - I am not running very high mileage. 35-40 miles per week.

Also, where it says 5:05/mile, it should say 5:05/km, haha.

Yeah...I know tired legs are a normal part of marathon training, but find it hard to determine how much is too much. Thanks! I am mainly concerned because it's been really hot, and I have not really been pace-adjusting to compensate for the heat, so wonder if I am working too hard.

IMO 20 miles is WAY too long of a run off of 35 - 40 mpw. It will take you awhile to recover from that effort which gets impacts other training you could be doing. Take some easy days until your legs feel ready and get back to it.

Interesting, good to know...but isn't it bad not to train for the distance? This is similar to what I did last year, but maybe I should be running more miles per week...I guess it is scary to think about trying tno attempt 42.2 without at least hitting 30-32 km beforehand.

Anyways, thanks for the opinion/advice!

your long run should be roughly a third of your weekly mileage, so a 20 miler should be done within a 60 mile week, but if that's too much mileage even like a 50 plus week, but it shouldnt be half of your total weekly mileage. you should be at about a 14 -16 miler with that mileage imo. You should be doing 20 milers in marathon training but get used to a few at 16 and then bump up your mileage a bit. usually with overtaring, you will get hurt, sick, extreme fatigue, see no improvements, not recovering properly, and have restless sleep, to name a few symptoms.

I run 23 minutes 5 k in training and aim for 3.45 marathon, not this year, but in 2020, I already run 45 miles aweek planning to expand that to 90 miles/w before my marathon and has never run further than a half marathon, so ..

I guess we will see who reach the goaltime first.

junit86 wrote:

Interesting, good to know...but isn't it bad not to train for the distance? This is similar to what I did last year, but maybe I should be running more miles per week...I guess it is scary to think about trying tno attempt 42.2 without at least hitting 30-32 km beforehand.

Anyways, thanks for the opinion/advice!

It is bad to NOT train for the distance. Running 35mpw isn't training for a marathon. Not good training anyway.

What you are doing is training 1 day a week and recovering the other 6.

Some will argue but that is my opinion.

joho wrote:

What you are doing is training 1 day a week and recovering the other 6.

Some will argue but that is my opinion.

+1

So anyone who is going to attempt a marathon should be running more than 35-40? I did this last year, without injury, and ran a marathon in under 4 hours/in the top quartile of my category. I obviously agree that the evidence shows that running more is better, but I don't know if it is fair to say you're "not training for a marathon", period, at this level. I think the amount of effort I had to put in was respectable, if not ideal. Not trying to argue, but feels a bit bad to have someone say I "didn't train" to do my marathon last year - it certainly felt like I did.

junit86 wrote:

So anyone who is going to attempt a marathon should be running more than 35-40? I did this last year, without injury, and ran a marathon in under 4 hours/in the top quartile of my category. I obviously agree that the evidence shows that running more is better, but I don't know if it is fair to say you're "not training for a marathon", period, at this level. I think the amount of effort I had to put in was respectable, if not ideal. Not trying to argue, but feels a bit bad to have someone say I "didn't train" to do my marathon last year - it certainly felt like I did.

You CAN train for a marathon at 35-40 mpw. (Remember, there are a lot of elitists here... whether they are elite or not. Mostly not.)

HOWEVER... There are limits to what you can do at that mileage. You can finish (even under 4 hours if your overall fitness is high enough). You might even see some improvement, depending on your running age. (Eventually, you will need more to continue to improve.)

That 20 mile long run is a somewhat different issue. For low mileage/just finish training plans, you will still see a lot of 20 milers, but they are mostly to get you used to being on your feet for so long (not encouraging adaptation and improvement). The body does learn to recover more quickly, but it takes a while and a lot of miles for it to make that happen. Since you haven't yet done that yet, that 20 miler is a doozy, and as someone said, you're spending most of the next week just recovering. So those long runs have to stay 2 weeks apart.

As far as over training... Listen to our body. If you're feeling sluggish try getting more sleep and make sure you're getting enough food (many people tend to under-eat). Health food, too. Most people tend to eat garbage when they're training. But real over-training takes a massive effort, and you're far, far away from that. Fatigued legs are common, and some plans (Hansons) are specifically designed to make you tired. But not all, so you might need to give yourself an extra day between hard efforts.

And make sure your fatigue isn't causing your gait to change. You made it through once without getting injured. Not mess with that.