Marathon last 6 miles

Keeping hr down to 80% for first 13 miles, seems a bit low?

Interesting thread. I will add my 2 cents about running the marathon successfully. As others have mentioned, you may have hit your goal pace too early in the race. With the marathon especially, it's very easy to get overcooked early because you are feeling good.

It seems like a cliché but the race really does seem to start at mile 20 for the majority of people. Making sure you have paced adequately up until that point is important. You can feel great mile 10-20 and try to dip down on pace, but that can come back to bite you.

Keep at it and adjust accordingly and you will get it done! The unknowns about the marathon are what makes it so fun come race day.

If you are more speed than endurance oriented, how should you adjust your half marathon time to marathon time, add 15 mins instead of 10 mins?

You've no doubt heard the aphorism that the marathon is broken up into two halves: The first 20 miles and the last 10k. You learned that the hard way. Go out more easily. Finish with a negative split. You save so much more by not-dying in the final 3, 4, 5 miles than you do by "banking" few seconds per mile early on.

Half and 10k times indicate you are right on the edge of running sub-3:00. Not at all surprising you ran 3:03. I think you're going to need to peak at 65 to 70 miles a week to get there, and maybe over another year or two.

And, find a race where it is cool. You can run a lot faster when it's in the 50s than in the 70s.

eat bananas. Pound as many of those suckers as you can stomach in the early going. It'll slow you down enough to prevent overcooking the first 20 miles, and you'll be fueled up for the finish.

Bank = Bonk

You ran the middle miles too fast. 10 seconds might not seem like much, but if you had stayed on pace, you would likely have felt great over that last 10K. If you bank time, you almost always give it back, with interest.

Maybe just a little.

My max HR is 190 and I try to keep it below 155 for the first half (which works out to be 81.5% of max). I'm usually breaking into the 180s by 39k.

Sonic893:

I had almost the same result in running my first (and only) marathon at age 36. My goal was sub 3 and I finished in 3:03:33. The course was dead flat and temperature was perfect (50 degrees). I was running about 40-50 miles/week, upping it to 60-65 for a couple of weeks prior to the marathon. During the race, I slowly increased my pace through 20 miles and then hit the wall. I even stopped and walked backwards for a while until my wife, who was riding a bike along side, turned me around. My 10K PR at the time of the marathon was 35:24, which I later reduced to 34:33 (5:34 pace) a few months after the marathon. I had not run a half marathon prior to the marathon. I later had a half marathon PR of 1:18:46 (6:00 pace).

Here were my times / paces:

0-5 miles: 34:45 (6:55 pace)

5-10 miles: 34:05 (6:50 pace)

10-20 miles: 66:50 (6:47 pace)

20-finish: 47:53 (7:42 pace)

2 x 50mg Tramadol an hour before the start and before the mods delete this post yes its still legal to use in 2022 .Ban is only coming in 2024.

But the net result is more or less the same either way. With perfect pace judgement, a slightly faster time, but the difference is very small.

I wouldn't say that losing 4 minutes of time between 30-40k is insignificant. He at least gives himself a greater chance of maintaining 3 hour mara pace if he sticks to it throughout the middle of the race.

Also, you should never underestimate just how fast you can close in a marathon if you have just enough left, and you know you're on for the time you want. Once you start blowing out, you really blow out, because your incentive completely vanishes, and the pain no longer seems worth it.

But he went 4 minutes too fast in the first 30k didn't he? And he didn't die in the last 10k.

Finishing faster feels good. So does perfect pace all the way. Finishing slower feels bad.

But sometimes the conditions change. When I ran London in 2007 it was warm and sunny. I felt fine running 5.50s until 21 miles and the humidity seemed to be higher along the river Thames embankment. We all slowed down. There was a line of runners, as far as the eye could see all experiencing the same as me, a big slow down.

The net result is the same, you get more or less the finishing time you deserve according to your fitness.

Hitting regularly hills at the end of a long run will make you better for the end of Marathon.

You've already gotten some very good feedback, which I would second. There are a number of pieces to put together in a marathon, and different ways to put them together. As others have noted, unless you are a very endurance-oriented runner (without much speed), those are not such fast half marathon and 10k times for a person aiming for 3 hours. A helpful fellow runner who was much more experienced told me, when I first started running track workouts with his group, that I should focus on improving at 5k for a while, and this would translate to marathon gains. The idea is that the pace you ran in this recent marathon will become a lower % of your max, so will take less out of you and you'll have more left in the tank for the last 10k. A few more thoughts: most people slow down some in the last 10k, even people running quite a bit faster than you - I would often be ~20-25 seconds per mile slower, and still flying by people. People that can run a really strong last 10k generally do great races, and the degree of negative splitting by the elites might be a bit lofty for us to aim for. Your "legs not strong enough" *could* be the issue, but I had very strong legs and still felt like I couldn't move them faster late in some marathons. Consider also hydration, electrolytes, calorie replacement, pacing, and tapering strategies. For training, I had about equal success with high mileage + track workouts vs. lower mileage but a bunch of long (e.g. 23 mile) long runs, so consider experimenting with different combinations. Given your PRs at the shorter races, though, I think this marathon was not the failure you think it was. Don't ignore that first observation: getting faster at shorter distances really can help!

Pacing is obviously the key, running conservatively (on goal pace, not quicker) through at least 30km. You can then think about picking it up.

That's easy to say, of course, because running on pace feels different from 25-30km than it does from 10-15km. You need to know what marathon pace feels like when you're fatigued. The thing that worked for me was regular marathon pace running at the end of every long run. I usually start with a little MP running at the beginning of a training block, say, 6km at the end of a 29km run, and then build up incrementally from there. The culmination is 32km with 25km at MP, but that's much later in the block. Again, the important part for me is this comes at the end of the run - anyone can hit MP in the middle of a long run, but practicing doing this at the end of the run hardens you a little more to the demands of the marathon. I'd also recommend doing one really long run in your build-up, around 39km at around MP+20s/km. If you now you can run 24 miles at a good pace, psychologically, you know you can always hang on for those last 3km.

Pikachu nailed it, you ran too fast/hard 10k - 30k. Remember that sage advice, the 2nd half of the marathon starts at the 20-mile mark.

I also wonder about your liquids and nutrition strategy, maybe you ran out of fuel as well.

In my two marathons I've been able to pick up the pace after 20 miles. Happily, I was WELL DONE (burnt toast in fact) by the time I tried to kick the last 300 meters or so, I didn't leave anything out there on the course. But who am I to give advice after only two marathons!? HA.

Good luck next time.

sub 3 (aka 2:59:59) is an obtainable goal through base training. all you really need to do is mileage runs with some strides at the end.

here is the workout i would do:

Mon: 1 hour jog + 4x100m strides

Tue: 1 hour jog on trails

Wed: 1.5 hour jog + 3x100m strides

Thur: 1 hour jog on trails

Fri: 1 hour jog + 4x100m strides

Sat: 2 hour jog + 2x100m strides

Sun: rest or 3 mile jog

once you reach the level where you can handle this schedule without being tired at the end, you can just increase your jogging speed ever so slightly so that it gets closer to maybe 7 minutes per mile. at this point, a sub 3 marathon would feel like a tempo run and would probably get pretty easy once your legs get into rhythm after the first 10km.

But those 200 meters at Hayward are glorious, are they not?