How safe is a 1:25 half to a sub 3 marathon?

giver of minus-one wrote:

Another giver of +1 wrote:

Depends if you've done marathon training or not. Lots of 20+ milers, mid week long runs, consistent good mileage. If so, 1:20 should be safe. But when I ran 1:21, only ran 3:08 in the marathon.

If you did lots of convention marathon training with a 1:21 half and only got 3:08, that's a massive failure. It means the conventional training doesn't work for you or you have nutrition problems.

Did you do fast finish long runs? The lots of 20+ milers advise is out of date IMO. I think the Hansen's are on to something. Overall mileage is more important IMO.

Nutrition is huge too. Try something like taking 6 GUs during the race.

No, I didn't do marathon training. My suggestion of lots of 20 milers etc is what I feel you need to do. When I ran 1.21, 3.08 I was doing 5k training with intervals, races, mileage of 40 a week and a long run of 12 to 14 miles. Only did 2 longer runs before the marathon, 18 and 20 but it wasn't enough for a good marathon.

It was a warm day. Went through the half in 91 feeling very comfortable and hit the wall pretty bad about 22 miles.

impressive half to full wrote:

GavinNewsome wrote:

I skew towards longer stuff and when I first broke 3 hours I was a 1:26 pr.

When I set my lifetime best of 2:39 my half was 1:17:49.

How much training? miles per week?

When I did the 1:17:49 to 2:39 I had been training for a long while already, and I spent a good solid year around 95-100 on normal weeks with a week in the 60s for recovery here or there.

You didn't ask but here was a standard week:

M - 12 @ 6:53 in the am

T - 10.6 @ 6:36 w/ 3T in 17:07, 2T in 11:29, 1T in 5:41 in the am, 5.5 @ 6:51 in the PM

W - 6.1 7:32 in the am, 5 @ 7:42 in the PM

T - 13.3 @ 6:39/middle 7 @ 6:15 in the AM, 5 @ 6:58 in the PM

F - 6.6 @ 7:46

S - 20 @ 6:38 w/ last 8 @ 6:01

S - 6.5 @ 7:42

Takes a lot of miles to only lose 5 minutes off you half time.