Marathon Disaster - Thoughts?

Yep, I'd say so. Although I'd say that it also would allow you to get develop more aerobically as well.

I work as a dietitian and study inflammation a fair bit. There's a lot of weird things that happen to the body when in an inflammatory state. And overtraining/over reaching will get you there. It becomes very difficult for the body to reap benefits from training.

As an example, a few years ago I ran a 16:52 in February (off of decent mileage but pretty tame workouts). I decided to go all out and try to smash my pr of 16:31 at a 5k that November. I ran 60 mpw and increased number of weekly workouts to 2-3 (with 1 hard interval workout each week). Hardest I'd ever trained in my life, also I was extremely consistent. I get to the November 5K and what do I run? 16:52. Zero improvement.

I think that by backing off just a but you're going to improve more and also find running more enjoyable. Good luck!

One thing I didn’t see (sorry if I missed it) was race course and weather (temp, humidity, wind) differences or similarities in the two races. That could explain part of the variance in time.

Pretty sure I know who you are (initials BB?).

If so, I'll toss in my pretty unqualified advice: you need way more specificity, way less "gray zone". You are a mileage monster, but seeing your training block unfold every day was like, he's running too fast. Whatever plan you're on Pfitz or Hansons or whatever, you need your hard days hard and your easy days easy. Send your body clear as day signals.

It seemed like far too much of your training was in the 7:20 - 7:40 pace zone, which to me seems functionally usless for getting better at running 6:40 pace. You gotta slow way down on non workout days to let your body absorb the quality.

I feel like what happened today was you were probably overtrained but also your body wasn't comfortable handling 6:40 pace for much longer than an hour so it reverted back to what it had done so much of: 7:30 pace.

The good news is you now have a MONSTER base. You are ready to crack a good one, no doubt about it. Just remember: easy should be easy, hard should be hard.

Good luck!

If you arrive at the end of your build feeling trashed, like you did, you need more of a taper - dropping mileage earlier (starting 3 weeks out) and cutting back more.

The speedwork at the end of your training block was a mistake. It made your training less race-specific, added a new training stress and pushed your fitness in a new direction away from your goal race.

You're on Strava? For the Marathon easy mileage is king. Build it GRADUALLY over a 3 year and longer period. Next most important are 6 -10 mile Tempo runs, aiming for Marathon race pace. Next priority are long runs, 15 - 22 miles easy, initially, then do a few as progressions later. Only one long run every other week. Your body was NOT absorbing the ramped up training. After that fairly long taper, tells me you were way over trained!

Maybe the most frustrating thing about overtraining/overreaching is there's very few signs of it until race day. In fact, most people still see gains in fitness while doing it, especially relatively newer runners (as in less than a couple years of consistent training). So logically it only makes you're training correctly in the midst of it. But when you're finally ready to put the body through a significant test after a long buildup that has accumulated that stress over time, it doesn't respond the way you'd expect.

Two things, first, those fitness gains are real. So don't feel like you've wasted a training cycle, not in the least. Second, is there another marathon you could do in 8-10 weeks? This would give you 4 weeks to recover from your race, a couple weeks to sharpen up with a FEW workouts, and taper again. What you'd probably find is your mileage in the next couple of months would HALF of what you were doing before. You would recover from your overtraining/overreaching, still maintain your fitness, but simply eliminate your ability to overdo it again. Something to at least consider.

Not being able to keep your heart rate up at the end is a classic sign of bonking. What was your pre-race carbo loading protocol? 12 grams/kg 24hours prior.

Also, you taper milage not intensity.

Before blaming you're training. What was the weather like on race day? What was the due point and temp? Where did you train for this?

If you trained all summer at altitude (where it tends to be dry) or west coast of Mediterranean climate and the. Went to a humid climate this could 100% explain the outcome.

Next question is fueling. What did you take for fuel? How many calories and at what miles?

My guess is probably a little overtrained and not sufficiently recovered for race day

I think there's enough speed work in Pfitz as is and substituting out the medium long run was probably counter productive.

The 24 miler was a bit quick compared to GMP.

A proper 3 week taper would have helped to fully recover and strengthen for peak performance on race day.

I think this is the general takeaway here. Just did too much and didn't give myself the time to recover. I built fitness, but form was way off on raceday. Hopefully the work I did here serves me well in the next build once I recover.

I will still be getting a blood test this week, but that's only because my company has an incentive for this and it's free.

Thanks. Sounds like it is all-around a better deal for my current fitness. Do you think you were fitter during the November 5K? I hope it was not all lost coming from that mega build.

The race conditions were roughly 3-4% slower in this marathon. The Marach race had weather that was 50F with 90% RH at the start, and this was 63F and 90% RH at the start.

Thanks, and you're correct sir. I got the sense that this pyramidal training was not working due to some pretty small improvement over the block, but I chalked this up to fatigue build-up (that should have told me to back-off a bit).

I would say that this build was not all wasted like you said. I definitely know my paces were quite a bit quicker than at the end of my last build, and I improved. It just sucks that my form was so bad on race day, and I fell apart after 15 miles.

Regarding the speed work, I wanted to make my race pace feel easier, which is why it is at the end of the Pfitz plan. I recognized that this was a weekness of mine and decided to shore it up in the final days. Would you have still done speed work at the end, but just included less of it?

This is my sense as-well. My paces did get faster over the build, but the improvement was masked by all the built-up fatigue. I think that the fact that I did get faster despite the massive fatigue just proves that I gained fitness (albeit not very efficiently). This makes the race failure easier to take mentally, as the block was not a total waste of 18 weeks.

There is a marathon that I am looking at in January (Carlsbad Marathon), but they also have a great half marathon option.

I am thinking of taking 3 weeks easy, then sharpening up with an 8 week speed work build to make my race pace feel easier. This is because I am more of a slow twitch guy coming from 2 years of mainly cycling (anything below 6:30 min/mile feels tough on the legs). Does this sound like a good plan?

10 grams per kilo. I didn't bonk. I had 150 g of carb in the first 1.5 hours of the race, then lost the legs shortly thereafter.

I appreciate it. I was not even really pushing it on the 24-miler. It was a steady upper endurance pace. Once again, I think the proximity of the 24 miler pace to my 26.2 miler pace (with taper) shows that something went terribly wrong here. 2 week taper was not enough for me in this case.

I wonder whether a 3 week taper might have even gotten me through? Perhaps it would have saved my legs to mile 20, but I still think my overtraining would have caught up to me on the later miles.

Any chance you were dehydrated relative to your carb intake? The book "Roar" by Stacy Sims (which I mostly hate because it's basically a guide to how to have an eating disorder) does one good job in detailing how runners often respond to fatigue (or marathoning in general) by taking in carbs, which the body has to pull water from its stores to process, which hastens relative dehydration and fatigue. In changing/attending to this I noticed an improvement to the whole 'lead legs' phenomenon. Basically we often need fewer carbs than we think, and more water than we think.

People and books will give you TONS of advice. You have to see all that as "directional".
To get beyond "just OK" in the marathon, like significantly below 3:20 for a woman or 3 hrs for a man, you have to either do a lot of trial and error, or hire a really expensive coach.

If you choose to be your own coach, there are a couple things that you need to do to get to your best marathons:
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1. Do a lot of running and racing for a few years.
Half marathons. 10ks. Marathons. Etc. Just doing a lot of them will help you understand how your body responds best to different training and race day conditions, especially since you said you're new to the sport. After a lot of trial and error, I found for myself that I actually did MUCH better in marathons when I focused my training around 75 miles per week with a lot of speed and a short taper. Longer sustained periods of 90-100 mpw just left me never really feeling awesome, even after good a taper.
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2. Accept the fact that performances in the marathon have a huge random element
The macro approach of training right can put you in in a place to have your best chance at a great race, but it is always a crapshoot. I've heard so many anecdotal stories of people having a terrible sleep, didn't run for a week before the race, etc. etc. that didn't go to plan before having the race of her/his life. Inversely, there are even more stories like yours where the build up seems 100% text book and then the race is horrible. You just have to accept in marathons that there is a race day "magic" which just kinda happens or it doesn't. But, as you get more experience, you dial in what you need to consistently have 'thons that are "pretty good".

I hope this helps! Good luck.