Low mileage marathon advice

The best advice I can give you is to listen to some posters who will share their experience with you, and ignore JS or any anonymous poster saying JS is a great coach.

My advice, only run 3 days per week and make them marathon specific like 8-12 miles @ 70-80% maxHR, or 5x2000m @ Marathon pace. Then, on the days "off" cross train @<= 80% maxHR in whatever form you prefer. Also, doing fast (almost all out) but short strides (60-200m) with full (2-3 min) rest is important for you to tolerate any amount of mileage. Some people need a few per week and some need them after every easy run (usually the fast twitch type of runner.

Think of things this way: training below your aerobic threshold (roughly 80% maxHR) increases your potential at the marathon, and training between there and your MLSS or Lactate Threshold (roughly 90% maxHR) allows you to use your potential. So those 8-12 miles steady or 5x2k near marathon effort should turn into 10x1000m @ half marathon effort or a 4-5 mile tempo near half marathon effort once you "peak" for your racing.

Also, a long run is definitely important for a marathon, but that could be one of your running workouts, such as an easy 18 miler or a long run with marathon pace sprinkled in.

Just follow Parker Valbys plan.

Yes, I love low mileage marathons. My favorite is the 5k marathon.

Marathon Handbook and Hal Higdon offer some great lower milage training plans for marathons. Those could be some good places to start looking

A marathon is 26.2 miles. Period. There are Half Marathons and Ultra Marathons. But a Marathon is a marathon - 26.2 miles. A 5k is a Five Kilometer run, not a marathon.

Don't worry about weekly mileage.

Run/cross train as much as you are able to during the week, and on the weekend do a long run where your goal is just to get time on your feet. Start with 90 minutes and increase it every week until you get up to 3 or 4 hours. The pace isn't important, the point is just to keep yourself running for a long time. Take water and nutrition with you on these runs.

If you are looking for an effective way to cross train, I recommend using a rowing machine, doing sessions of 5-12 km.

m x-train

t 10-15 steady

w

t 2wu, 6-12@mp, 2cd

f

s 15-20 miles, easy or progression, maybe with last 4 at m-pace

s

35-51 mpw

Why low mileage? Why so many injuries in college? Do you have time for more mileage but feel like you may not be able to do it because of risk of injury?

You didn't specifically say this, but it's sort of implied, are you sure the mileage is what left you injured in HS and college? My point isn't that you need to double your previous mileage just to run a marathon. But if you are capable of running more while staying healthy to not give up on that as a goal to help train adequately for a full marathon.

Thanks for the replies, they are giving me things to consider

I guess I could focus on mileage and not worry about doing workouts? I am more leaning towards supplementing with cross training so I can do some workouts throughout the summer. I feel more “durable” now so I’m not too concerned about injury but I don’t want to overdo it since I haven’t been running that much

feeling more durable -- that's great! Enjoy your training, whatever/wherever you prefer. And if you get some strides and Bakken-style threshold stuff in there it should be easy enough to not cut into your mileage much.

JS is one of the world's very best coaches when it comes to reach great results on low mileage.Hire him and you will improve fast.Good luck.

Hanson marathon method

can you go sub3 on this program?

Hanson marathon

I think these are good questions. Try to get to the root cause of the injuries -- deficiencies/form/too many hard workouts/etc. Mileage will catch up to you at some point in the marathon, especially going after something around 3 hours which usually requires 50-60+ miles/week. You could train reasonably well running 4-5 times/week and adding in some biking/swimming. You might be surprised that you can handle more mileage in a marathon build, without the intensity of shorter/faster workouts. Take your easy days easy but try to run at least 40-45min, if not 1hr+. 1 (true) threshold workout/week. Good volume there but something like 10-12 x 1k w./ short rest should feel a lot different from 5 x 1k @ VO2. Include a weekly long run & bounce quality @ GMP in it every other week. Something like 1.5 workouts/week should keep you healthy. But I wouldn't give up on the mileage stuff without trying to figure out how to make yourself more durable,

Agreed on all points except for the 60-200m reps being done nearly all-out. For marathon training, nearly all-out sprints shouldn’t be necessary and instead as much training time as tolerable should be spent working on the aerobic threshold at high volumes

Also important is to never neglect hilly road courses for your workouts and easy runs! Nearly every marathon has hills, so don’t avoid them.

If I were to try to run a marathon off only 3 runs per week, I guess a typical week would probably always include one 'speed' workout (probably alternating every week between something based on running around VO2 max pace and something around 5k-10k pace), one easy run (maybe 60-90 minutes), and then one day alternating every week between a long run and a more traditional tempo run (a continuous effort around half marathon effort). Ideally the tempo and long runs would get longer as you progress, and once you know you can handle a fairly long distance, start adding some marathon pace effort in the long runs. On the other days I would cross train at an easy to moderate aerobic effort for at least an hour, ideally with some activity that uses similar movements to running (in reality, I would probably bike because I enjoy that). I would also try to do some running specific strength training/plyometrcis twice per week.