Is it wise for me to do 4 half marathon time trials every 4 weeks, before a marathon. The first 2 being time trials the second 2 being tune-up races (that I still wanna race well)? I have a cutback week the week after every half. How much should I cut back? Anyone else structured their program like this before? Say, all out for me is 01:15, and marathon pace is 1:20. How fast could I expect to race these to peak for the Marathon well in the end.
Timetrialist wrote:
Is it wise for me to do 4 half marathon time trials every 4 weeks, before a marathon. The first 2 being time trials the second 2 being tune-up races (that I still wanna race well)? I have a cutback week the week after every half. How much should I cut back? Anyone else structured their program like this before? Say, all out for me is 01:15, and marathon pace is 1:20. How fast could I expect to race these to peak for the Marathon well in the end.
Yes, that seems super aggressive. One tune-up half 3 weeks to 8 weeks out. If you're closer to 8 weeks out, you can race it. If you're closer to 3 weeks then do it at marathon pace or marathon pace for 10 plus 3 "go" miles.
4 13 mile tempos are marathon pace in a build is on the upper end. Racing at a level faster than that is too much. Instead of doing those time trials do 8-10-12-14 @ M, spread out over your training block.
Personally would just do a 1/2 marathon TT or race at the start of the block to get my training paces for the cycle and another one 4-5 weeks out to finalize A/B goals for the marathon. Longer long runs (18-22) with speed built in are far more important
By my calculations that would = approximately 2 marathons