I ran a 1:16:44 Half at 27.3 BMI

Awesome job! Can’t wait to follow along. You went from 2:52 to 2:43 in a few months? Impressive. What do you think helped you do that? I’m hoping to crack the 2:40s in the next year.

Some of us are just big midwesterners of German stock and are designed to work on farms, not run races.....I'm 6'1.5" and could never get under 175 when training very intensely in college.....always told I'm fat by the BMI charts........decided to run my first and only marathon at 32.......trained for 3 months and ran 3:35 weighing 215.

Woodstock45 wrote:

Not as heavy as you, but I've run 2.30 marathon while at 175 and 6'0 for a 24.3 BMI. I got down to 167 and was aiming for a 2:24 earlier this year before covid got all the races cancelled.

Man I hate this year... Keep up the training Woodstock!

I guesses correctly wrote:

Awesome job! Can’t wait to follow along. You went from 2:52 to 2:43 in a few months? Impressive. What do you think helped you do that? I’m hoping to crack the 2:40s in the next year.

I added cycling at a very moderate pace 4-5 times a week on my trainer. HR dropped across the board when running. I showed off my zwift setup here:

JohnNgugi wrote:

Some of us are just big midwesterners of German stock and are designed to work on farms, not run races.....I'm 6'1.5" and could never get under 175 when training very intensely in college.....always told I'm fat by the BMI charts........decided to run my first and only marathon at 32.......trained for 3 months and ran 3:35 weighing 215.

I just got on a scale that measures body fat, I'm 17.3 % today. I think the BMI is pretty accurate for me, about 25 should be sustainable.

Thanks dude, this is good stuff! Appreciate hearing about your experience.

Amazing and great to hear. This seems to be in line with lots of research on the surprising benefits of low hr aerobic work.

Peter Attia went low card and was able to get weight down even though he was a distance biker/swimmer before and couldn't lose weight on a high carb diet

http://50kzone.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-lost-weight-part-2-peter-attia-md.html

I went from 3:16 to 2:56 in the marathon after losing 23 lbs but we're talking 160 to 137 lbs at 5 ft 7. That's 1.99 second per mile per pound. But one cannot discount training and experience. So anywhere from 1 to 2 second/mi/lb would seem in line. More early, less later on.

As others stated the first few pounds really matter a lot but...the last ones are the icing on the cake for long distances (marathon really, nothing shorter).

If I had "just" lost 10 lbs I would have become faster but likely wouldn't have been able to "bring it home" i.e. run a negative split and crush miles 22-26.

Try to get to a BMI of 21-22 and your results in the full marathon will be phenomenal. For anything shorter a BMI of 23-24 will already give you outstanding results.

Every 4kg you lose you gain 10"/km. So if you go down to a distance runners weight from 86 kg you should go down to 70 kg . 16 kg down it means 40"/km faster. All those muscles you dont need them to go fast. So if you are able to run at 86 kg an half marathon at 3'38"/km this means that with a good distance runner body weight you can run an half marathon near 3'/km maybe 3'05/km. 3'08/km. So around 1:05 .

awesome thread. hope you stick around!

Jonathan Savage of fellrnr came up with a fun calculator that predicts, among other things, your time at different distances at different weights.

https://fellrnr.com/wiki/Running_Calculator

According to that calculator, a 1:16:44 HM @190lb would be good for a 1:11:32HM and a 2:29M @175lb. Dreaming lighter, it would be 1:06:12HM @160lb and a 1:00:53 @145. If you were able to get down to 142 pounds you should have a shot at breaking an hour.

Obviously a number of variables at play but I've found the calculator fun to play with. All you have to do is lose 50 pounds and you could hang with some of the time guys in the world! (Your time is weight-adjusted to a sub-59 HM at 139 lbs.) It definitely won't be easy, but even at 139 pounds, you would be heavier than most of the other runners at the front.

sqandrews wrote:

even at 139 pounds, you would be heavier than most of the other runners at the front.

As a "fatty" who doesn't understand how it could be possible to feel good under 160 at 6'2"...no one is telling me to go 20-30 pounds below my comfortable weight, and I have my inferior talent to thank. Phew. I see talent as a double-edged sword in that way...you're a "waste" of talent if you don't destroy your hormonal system to see how fast u can go

I'll keep expressing my power in Watts, not in Watts per kilogram, THANK you very much!

sqandrews wrote:

Jonathan Savage of fellrnr came up with a fun calculator that predicts, among other things, your time at different distances at different weights.

https://fellrnr.com/wiki/Running_Calculator

I've read quite a bit of fellrnr in the past, overall I like his mentality, a few things I'm not sold on. 15-25 lbs is totally doable with keeping my strength, but I have a hard time thinking I'll have gains after that. I'll check back once some weight is shed. Hope to have race results by September/ October.

jecht wrote:

I am 5'2'' and 135 and I can't hit those times (1:39, 3:24). I'd kill to get 1:30 or better and 3:20 or better.

To go 1:16:44 and probably 2:55 in the full is impressive.

To clarify, on the original post I said 2:55 but meant 2:43 (as that was his time). Last summer I had lost some motivation for training for a 1:30 half because of the Covid but regained it a little bit last fall. I'm hoping we can race this fall but I'm not holding my breath.

My BMI is around 25 but it needs to get better.

OP where you at? Any updates?

Not OP but I follow him on Strava. A few weeks back he just ran a 2:37.