Whenever I talk to people who are either training for or coaching runners to run a marathon, they all seem to be building up mileage until about 4-5 weeks before the race and then start to taper down to the race.
Shouldn’t we be hitting peak mileage (20-25+ mile LRs) something like 10-12 weeks out from the race, and then using that base fitness to start working in more race specific segments into those longer runs?
If you’re not doing runs of 22+ miles with 50-70% of that run at marathon pace in the final phase of your marathon prep, then you are just doing base training and cutting it too close to race time.