How do I move on with training after my first marathon at 37years old

Congrats on your first marathon! Take a week off. Run every other day for a week. Run normal for 2ish weeks without workouts. Then plan out next steps. You're going to need to decide what's important to you. Do you want to run 2 marathons/year or do you want to spend next spring focusing on shorter races?

Your 10k is stronger than your half and full so you have enough speed to improve there with another block of good mileage. You can also work on the 5k-half through next spring & lower your marathon potential for the fall. If you're happy then you can't really go wrong. You should keep improving for a bit with consistent 40ish mile weeks. If you can float so 50ish mile weeks like you did during marathon training, that'll only help.

You have a long journey ahead of you with plenty of improvements. Don't forget, you are 4 years younger then Bekele, who is the world's greatest runner, and he ran a WR of 2:01:41 when he was your age, so you are still young as a marathoner when you think about that

Listen to your body post-marathon. Don't resume hard training too soon. I vote for focusing on improving in the 10K to 10 mile range. Stick to 40-50 miles a week, but perhaps with less emphasis on a long run and more emphasis on tempo runs and the like. Good luck!

Congratulations!

Take it easy for a week or two and just keep running after that. Don't fall into that trap to sign up for a lot of races. Maybe you can sign up for a race series in your area where you live.
Plan the next Half Marathon in 3-5 month and another Marathon next spring.

Just keep training, not more miles. You need to build up your foundation. You will get faster but don't risk to do too much too soon and end up in injury like so many others.

Another thing is as you add in more workouts and higher volume of faster work (than Marathon pace), your paces on easy/recovery runs might get slower. Don't worry about that and focus on running comfortably so you can recover between workouts and your long run.

Welcome to getting sucked into the endless abyss of running ridiculously much. Here’s something others might forget to mention in their effusing positivity and encouragement:

Running or any cardio much more than ~3 hours/week has no benefit other than entertainment (like video games or masturbation or watching TV or being on LR), so make sure

1) you are truly enjoying running pointlessly long distances;

2) you are not compensating for something else in life, i.e., you truly can’t think of anything more valuable or more meaningful to do with that extra time (above the beneficial cardio limit) like spending it on career, family, friends, social work, or other complementary non-cardio athletic pursuits like weight training etc.

Thanks for all your helpful comments :)

I like the plan of concentrating on a half in spring and another Marathon in a year, don’t have the ambitions to race all the time.

I’m still very motivated to get my personal best running shape so I understood the tips like that:

keep running without worrying too much, getting in consistent miles will make me improve as I don’t have a good base with only running 4-5 months regularly.

I run 5 days a week. Am I Right if I go for 3 easy runs (trying to slow them down more as i ran the mostly at 75% heart rate instead of around 70%), 1 tempo/Intervall/Hill workout and 1 long run a week (how long should they be for half’s) or should I try to use the 5 days different?

Probably good to get another 16 week half plan and look for a race in 4-5 months time

Any input if it makes most sense to split training in

3 easy runs, 1 tempo/Intervall, 1 long run

if I run 5 times a week? Goal for now is to increase 10k - HM time

Did 22:45 on 5k this morning if it helps for anything

Dude what is wrong with you man. Seriously shut the f*** up.

Thanks for that reply lol..

Any more input on good trainingplans or training splits?

Yo man just to be clear i wrote that in response to @bah not you. Just a stupid post to make on a running forum lol.

I think you're well on your way. Just need to focus on being patient and consistent. String together solid weeks back to back, turn those into solid months back to back, and so on. If you start comparing 3-month blocks at a time, so long as you're consistent, you should start to notice gains in fitness and lower HR at the same paces.

Me personally, I made my biggest gains when I started running every day and around 70mpw+. Obviously, if you're doing 35-45 mpw now + 5 days a week, you should take a really long time to build up to that point, so go very gradually.

I found in my case that running every day simplified things a lot for me, I wasn't overthinking rest days or easy days or if I had to miss a day, I just simply started running every day and that became my life. It's actually amazing how much I limited myself mentally before that; when I made that jump to 7 days a week I felt like I jumped this mental hurdle where suddenly I could do anything. Aches and pains felt easier to overcome and I felt like training made me tougher (both physically + mentally).

You would also benefit from making a structure in your weekly training. A typical split is track intervals tuesday, tempo thursday, long-run Sunday. Though, with the marathon, a long-run is a given so it's almost not even a workout imo for marathoners. You'll have to tinker around and see what works best for you. In my case, I do LR1 on Tuesday, workouts on Thursday, fartlek/tempo on Saturday, and LR2 on Sunday. Of course, if you are running 7 days a week theres more flexibility here to fit more workouts and uptempo stuff in while still having rest days in between sessions.

Just keep going man. Running is a beautiful thing and go all in while you still can. If you love it, go after it man.

One more thing. Strength training is imperative, do NOT neglect it. I had some injury ridden years where I learned a lot of exercises due to rehab and countless hours of Youtube research. I learned so many damn exercises. The biggest helper to muscular pain that comes from running (95%+ of the time) is strength training. Making your muscles and tendons stronger better prepares them to handle whatever load it was that got you injured in the first place. Pre-hab beats rehab any day of the week. You don't need to squat your body weight, but you should be doing a lot of single-leg exercises (SL RDL, Bulgarian Split squat, SL box squat), hip stuff (SL Bridges, Copenhagen planks) and core (Dead Bug, Hollow Body Hold, Side Planks). Even 15-20 mins for 2 or 3 times a week is a great addition. Work your way up and get stronger via runner specific exercises like these.

Path to sub 3

1. Stay Healthy

2. 2x60min runs daily

3. Weekly Cycle; 90 min, 2hour, 3 hour

i misunderstood you’re response in the first way and thought you meant me (which would be okay, just not helpful 😂)

im really thankful for you’re response and the time you took to write it. Lots of important stuff in you’re response for me.

Running is a sport where you can think a lot and too much about stuff you could or should do.

i think the main thing I heard after only running a few months is to be consistent and get miles in while not getting injured.

thanks a lot for you’re response, really could take some things away from it :)

No problem dude. Also to your question, yes the 3 EZ + tempo/interval + LR is a good split for you. You'll make good progress on that if you stick to it for months on end. Maybe try and gradually bring up mileage and a 6th day (a 4th easy day, super low volume, can be just 3 miles).

If your focus is going to be on the marathon long term, I would also advise you to try not to fall into the trap of the slow long run. IMO that trains you to run long and slow, you should be making adaptations for your body so it knows it needs to go fast even when it goes long. Sunday long run is a good day to sneak in some longer intervals at close to race pace.

Thanks a lot again. Really great input for me as I’m in kind of „a lost space“ atm.

I trained for the marathon to finish it and to finish below 4 hours, I didn’t push me as hard as I probably could in the race as I was kind of scared to hit a wall later on. Also in training i did quite some easy long runs where I always asked myself if I shouldn’t add some tempo / race pace in it.

so now I’m trying to figure out my real current fitness state (which I haven’t during marathon build up as i only did what my traingsplan told me which was fine).

F.e i ran a 5k a few days ago in 22:44 which isn’t great of course but I’ve never ran more than 1km below 5:00 before.
so I guess I try to PR my 10k too the next days and work out my heart rate/fitness level to get a plan what I’m theoretically capable of in a HM /Marathon with the Humphrey calculator and train for these times as my „new goal and goal paces“ (before it was finishing and below 4 hours)

As a beginner it’s hard to not get lost between all the stuff you should do or shouldn’t do and find a way which works best.
especially if you’re someone like me who likes someone to tell me what to do and just grind it 😂

at least I know that just doing it consistently is always the top priority.

Great tip too.
i already realized that my muscles feel like a bigger problem than my heart rate in some harder efforts. I won’t underestimate that tip

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