How do the last few miles of a well executed marathon feel

Kelvin Kiptum seemed like he was fine.

Nowhere near the painful intensity of a hard anaerobic race. It's a different type of discomfort. Mentally and physically exhausted. It's honestly not that bad if you hit it right. Picking off carnage, running slightly negative splits.

Only ran 5 marathons but had the gamut of experiences. In the first couple, I was toast at 20 miles or so and the last few miles were a torturous walk/jog. Never want to experience that again. It took me until my 4th marathon to do one without walking and finish strong, and probably helped that the course was flatter than my first 3 marathons.

As to your question, even if you run well, it's still going to hurt but you'll know that you still have something in the tank, but just aren't sure when to use it all. You will feel better and more confident than your bad marathons, but don't want to go off too early and risk blowing up. You basically want to focus on keeping an even pace and maintaining fueling without emptying the tank. It's basically a matter of using a bit more effort to maintain the same pace but not ALL your effort. Not until the last 2 or 3 miles can you really be assured that you aren't going to bonk and can start increasing your effort to induce heavy breathing. Heck I've sped up at mile 23, had to slow down at mile 24, and then felt good enough to go hard from mile 25 onwards.

The best way I can describe a "good" feeling at the end of a marathon is you feel like you can actually manage your pace and effort rather than holding on. When those last couple miles come along, you feel confident that you can increase effort and breathing without bonking. It's amazing but rare.

at 23 miles a friend said, "just 3 miles to go!" And I was like "damn that's far." But I was picking up the pace and felt strong. At the end I was very emotional. If I hadn't picked up the pace, I feel like I could've gone another 3-4 miles.

The way I explain it -

Running a 5k is like the aerobic equivalent of doing a heavy squat, with enough weight so that you hit failure after 4-5 reps. For most of the race you're close to your cardiovascular system feels like its at its peak, at you have to hold that for 5-10 minutes. Paced properly, your couldn't even have gone another minute at that pace.

Running a marathon is the equivalent of doing bodyweight squats until failure. Starts really easy, gradually gets harder, and by the last 20-30 reps your legs feel shaky and you're unsure if you can keep going. That's sort of how my legs feel in the last 4-5 miles of a marathon. You're still running at your goal pace, but its painful, and you feel like your legs could just collapse at any second, or your could hit a wall at any second

I've had three good ones (luckily, my last three) that have gone a bit differently in these stages:
- Most recent: muscularly, legs were hurting starting around 22.5. Last few were just pushing to muster the most pace I could out of them; which was about 10 seconds/mile slower than the rest, but still a PR
- Two ago: had a hamstring cramp that was my main limiting factor. Other than that it wasn't so much "hard" since I couldn't push as much as I wanted to
- Three ago: the last couple miles felt similar to the end of a hard tempo where you're starting to hurt, but if you dig you can get through it. This was likely because I left some time on the table in this one; but still a good race since I hit my main goal (OTQ)

Like everything hurts, you're ready to be done, but somehow you just keep managing to hold pace.

You're really just running on momentum.

Even if properly trained and well executed, the last four or 5 miles are brutal. I’ve run 11 marathons, I’ve tried to run every single one of them fast (for me).

I would say I successfully trained for and executed three of those. One of them being a 2:58 that I ran at 49 years old. That’s my PB. Last 4 miles still sucked ass.

I think I ran a total of 15 marathons and the very best feeling came in Stockholm marathon( then a tough course with Western bridge twice) one year and I felt unexpected strong at the end and finished with a strong fast lap in the Stockholm Stadium Arena. My best time of 2.22.09 ....( the funny thing I ran the exact time 2:22:09 some year before there but much more tired in the end) . 🇸🇪🧙‍♂️🇸🇪

I'll also add to my response to comment on the mental side as well.

When marathons aren't going well, it can lead to some really dark moments. It's pretty tough to be at mile 18 knowing you aren't going to hit your goal, are hurting, and still have xx minutes left of running (whatever xx is based on your pace). And is tough spending this time knowing all you put into it and how you'll have to wait 4-6 months to give it another shot.

But on the other hand, it's such a great feeling when you're past mile 20 in a marathon, feel decent, and are able to put your foot on the gas the last few miles.

The feeling of a good marathon during the last few miles is a great confidence builder. Too bad we can't bottle it.

Imagine you're in your car breaking with worn-out break pads. That's how it feels.

In my third marathon, I qualified for Boston with a 3:08. This was back before everyone was on social media posting about getting a BQ and you just needed to break 3:10 to get a spot. That time was well within my fitness level and the last 5-6 miles just felt like a hard tempo run. When I next tried to break 3 hrs, I had several races where I bonked and was doing the death shuffle for the last 5-6 miles. When I finally broke 3 hrs, it was the same feeling as the BQ race. Last few miles were a really hard tempo effort.

From there, I got down to 2:47 before old age set in. My best two races were my PR and a 2:48 on a very windy day. In both races, the last few miles felt like the last mile of a 5k race. I was breathing as hard as I could almost close to your breathing on the last interval of a hard workout. But instead of getting to a point were I couldn't sustain and had to back off, I was able to sustain it and actually felt like I could pick up the pace and even chased down another masters running in the last 800m of the 2:48 race. My legs were responsive but pretty much numb. My quads were burning but it wasn't any sort of pain that made me want to stop. All in all, it was actually a great feeling to be going all out effort wise and to have my legs aching but still being in control and not feeling any need to back off. That is what is so magical about the marathon. You put in all the work and transform yourself to be able to do something that most everyone else cannot fathom doing.

I've run 23 marathons, the good ones with at most 1 or 2 minutes' positive split. The best one, my only slight negative split for 2:33:32 at Valencia, a couple of years ago (at 52yo).

The concentration levels were high for most of the second half of the race, but extremely narrowly focused - really just on my feet/stride, not much apart from that. I was mentally on the edge and made a mistake to sit in a group between 33 and 35k - I didn't think I could run around the group to maintain the pace I'd been running. Seeing my 35k split was slow I broke away and sped up. Physically everything was good/manageable, but at 40k my right hamstring tightened and it felt like I was restricted on that side for the final run in. The finish could not come quickly enough, the last couple of kms dragged on, I remember the 800/600m to go signs... 35k->40k 17:55 (fastest 5k split of my race); 40k->42.2k 7:50 [last 7.2k are slightly downhill].

After the finish, there was a long walk to the bag drop. Halfway along I had to stop and spent at least 15 minutes trying to figure out if I needed to check in with the first aid tent - I felt terrible, but it passed.

If you've got your pace right, the last few miles are OK assuming your body has the conditioning. You've got to keep your mind on-side (or maybe out of the way).

I've gotten a ton of good responses here. This might be my favorite thread I've created on this website. It certainly doesn't make me less nervous about my marathon tho haha.

Agreed. Only two marathons so far for me. The first ended in a long painful shuffle because I was going way too fast the first half. The second one, I held goal pace for 20 miles and almost felt too good at the end. It felt great, though, both running below my goal pace and passing so many others.

I've only run one marathon, but it was a good one. The way I would describe the last 4 miles was that it took a singular concentration to just barely hold on to the pace... I slowed by just a couple seconds per mile over my average pace. By 2 miles to go, I had resolved to simply maintain my pace to the finish. First reply is accurate - by that point I felt like I could have started dramatically slowing down at any minute.

Well executed marathon? Same as a poorly executed marathon.

Dead.