Back in high school I ran track and cross country, doing well enough to get some decent states finishes, but not enough to make me want to pursue a real collegiate career. As best as I can remember, my PR's are XC 3 Mile: 16:12, 3200: 9:51, 1600: 4:36, 800: 1:58, 400: 53 high. I got pretty frustrated with running after switching coaches in high school (more of a personality than training issue) and ended up taking about two years off.
I now run club for my school, and the club is large and has some pretty elite guys on it, with some nearing 2:30 for the marathon. I had set myself a goal about a year ago to qualify for the 2025 Boston Marathon, and I've been dedicated to that. I followed a 16 week program that the captains of the club put together, and I was pretty happy/satisfied with the plan, gearing up for a marathon in about two weeks. Unfortunately it became the training block from hell, getting insanely (high fever, near bedridden) sick 4 times in 6 weeks, causing me to miss long runs and workouts. Despite that, I still tried to follow the training closely, leading me to do a 14 mile long run, miss two long runs back to back, then hit an 18, then an 18, then a 22.5 with a big MP block in back to back weeks. This had me peaking at a little over 50 miles a week, with the sickness weeks putting me down into the low 30s sometimes, which is pretty pretty low for marathon training.
I think the 22.5 did me in, and I hurt my knee and left achilles to the point of swelling and limping for multiple days. With my scheduled marathon so close, and me not being able to get a proper run in for over a week, I'm just deciding to call it and do another training block for an August marathon.
I was aiming for as close to a 2:50 as possible, some of my recent workouts look like:
7 Mile Tempo @ 5:50
22.5 Mile LR, 18 @ 6:20 avg (in super shoes)
10 x 1k repeat, 90s rest 3:27 cut down to 3:17
I'm a little bummed to be throwing away this fitness frankly, but it is what it is and I'm mentally feeling completely up for a new training block. I bought Advanced Marathoning, and was looking into the 18/55 training plan, although I was seeing some other people say that the 55 MPW plan was more geared at 3-3:30 marathoners, so I'm wondering if I'm better off going for the 18/55-70 plan, even though it will put me nearly 20 miles per week higher than I ran this past block. Is this ridiculous? Am I better off peaking at 55 similarly to this past block to try to avoid injury? I see a lot of people recommending Hanson's, and I'm sure it works, but from what I've read the plan seems really different from what I'm used to, and the 16 mile peak long run is a little worrying to me.
Any guidance? I'm 21 weeks out from my target marathon, and currently just swimming and gymming until my knee gets back to 100%. Any guidance or input on training plans would be super helpful, I'd like to target sub 2:50 this time around but I'd prioritize getting a BQ if I felt like I was burning out on harder training.
Thanks!