Stepping up marathon training to the next level

Few things:

1) your mileage looks to be around 65mpw give or take, and that should be sufficient but adding an additional 10mpw over the next few months would not hurt.

2) alternate the 22mile long run every other week with a longer progression run or marathon paced run of 15miles, as in 15miles at marathon pace. Or 15 miles progressing from easy run pace through M pace to HM pace and finally a mile or so at 10km pace. Hammer it.

3) more faster running: as in 6 x 1mile @ 10km pace; 3 x 2miles @ 10mile race pace. More lactate threshold paced running.

Work on tempo

Long run

Get tempo pace faster

Alternate 20-30 tempos with jack Daniels cruise intervals 3-5 x 1 mile or even 2 miles

Check out Sage Canaday doing 2 x 5 miles as tempos

Keep working on long run...out to 22-23—30 miles...

Not much more to it

Sub-3!?!? That’s sum nex leval sh!t brah.

Your goal time should be 2:53-2:56 imo.

Actually it looks really good to me. I think that you should ease back the length of the LR to 20, or lower. It is not in fashion now to do this but I would try 15, 17, 19, 21, then drop the pace down :10 / mi (4:20 over a marathon) and start the sequence over. This is from a guy that regularly ran 15 for a long run when base training (for 8 weeks) and then just built week-by-week to 17, 19, 21, 23 at 6:00 pace.

I was running 85 mpw during this time though and only ran 3 marathons the fastest being 2:34 as a 17-year-old, and 2:24 later. I felt that a 17-20 mile run tired me out too much when I was running just 50-60-70 mpw. Made me more tired than it was benefiting me I think. But I might have been running them too fast. It seems like you don't have that problem, lots of easy pace running FOUR days a week. Keep that up.

I was also training for the 1600/3200 and 5k XC -- 35 times a year. So I am not presenting my training as ideal (for the marathon), but it did net me a 2:34 marathon when I was in 4:30 / 9:35 / 15:37 shape for shorter distances.

If you did the 2nd half last time in 1:28, I think that it would be wise to shoot for a 1:27 + 1:28 = 2:55 marathon.

From your relative success at longer running and training, I'm guessing you are a guy who gets better as the distance gets longer. If this is the case, it wouldn't hurt to add some nice quick turnover stuff to your week. Even just 6-8 20-second strides at the end of a longer or easy run a couple times a week, focusing on quick cadence and good form, but never straining. You don't say what your intervals are, but mixing in some nice quick 200s from time to time would be a good idea.

If I'm wrong and you are someone who has no trouble popping off a 5K in 18:30 or who really likes running hard 400s, then disregard all the above.

the best way to elevate your marathon training is to train for another distance, like the 10k. sounds like you can easily get under 3 hours next time, so if you skip a season and a likely 2:55, maybe you'll run your next marathon a year from now in 2:45. at some point you'll need to work on your speed, and if you neglect it, it will eventually become an issue.

so for 10k training, not much changes anyway except you do more workouts around 3k to 10k pace and you skip the 22 milers.

Thanks all. The intervals sessions i mention in my 'average week' were added quite late in training but i have carried them on and intend to through training for the next one based on the responses. The sort of intervals sessions i am doing vary depending on club schedule and training partners but usually involve reps of varying distances from 400m to 2 miles, some sort of pyramid session or continuous hills. I will look to add some slightly longer intervals as well.

5k PB is in the low 18 mins and i do enjoy a 400m session - where i struggle more is at around the 10k distance. I am quite stocky which seems to help on the short stuff and doesnt hurt too much on the longer stuff. It is in between that i struggle the most!

I am a little wary about cutting back the long runs. I see so many other amateur runners at my club fall off a cliff at mile 18-22, i managed really consistent pacing without hitting any kind of wall and i chalk that down to the distance and amount of long runs i got in