2:38 on 38mpw

tldr; run more.

Super impressive result on such low mileage. Are you very light? What's the inspiration for your training plan (which basically entails packing 50% of your volume and 100% of your intensity into your weekly long run)? I've never encountered such a program but it obviously works for you

That was a lot of information. Amazing that my story is nearly identical. I ran my 2nd marathon in 2:37 on 35 MPW. I never did well with high mileage. I actually ran Marine Corps with the Brojos, or at least for about 15 miles anyway.

If you're legit and not running this race hopped on some kind of dope... try to do 2:38 and the bonk will hit you well before 20 miles, then the rest of the race will be a bad time. You might need more than 3 hours to finish if you don't DNF.

Someone thinking 2:38 should be cruising at about 60-65 mpw for months before they start a training plan. Unless you're leaving out a ton of cross training you are not doing nearly enough volume.

(Inb4 he comes back in 16 weeks and claims he ran 2:37:30 and felt great in the final mile.)

It sounds like he already ran the 2:38.....though his post was super long and I don't blame you for not reading it all.

I overtrained in 2018 and it took a long time to come back. Effing sucked. Took a lot of years to both recover and figure out how to train effectively without burning out. Eventually, in 2023, ran a few seconds under 2:35 on very similar mileage (like 460 miles total in a 12 week build) and followed it up with a 2:31 this year having run ~580 miles in the 12 weeks leading up to the race. As a younger man I had run 71 for 13.1 and 15 flat for 5k, so obviously have some talent at my disposal but nothing crazy.

The line "I strongly believe that the faster you race on minimal training, the easier it is to overtrain when you decide to train more seriously." definitely resonates with me given that I can run well on low mileage with highly specific training, and that I've overtrained and suffered the consequences. Eventually I bet you could add a second threshold workout per week, or maybe shift to a 2 week cycle and try to do 3 workouts in that space instead of two. Recovery is key.

Could he also have had a soccer/other sport background that served as a lifetime base? Running 2:38 off of 38-40 mpw is wild. Or he simply could be very gifted.

1. Your age?
2. When did you start running?
3. Did you run in high school? 5k time?
4. Did you run in college? 5k time?

I will bet the honest answer is you ran in college, because very few people just start running in adulthood and run a 1:10half in their 2nd yr of running (as per the “recent running” summary you listed in your post).

So with that covered, people that want to run their best marathon shouldn’t follow your advice of 45 mile marathon peak mileage/with longest run being 18miles. You ran 2:38 not because of a good training methodology, but rather that you were a gifted college runner and carry that high level of talent in your system.

You could have just titled it "2:38"

You don't get extra credit for doing less.

Just to be sure you mean marathon not 800?

Not always a fan of these threads. Congrats on the time & staying healthy & motivated in training. Nobody should read this & think a 2:38 is achievable on less than 40mpw. That's not feasible for most runners targeting that kind of a time. It's achievable on less than 40mpw if your potential is a lot better. 15-low & 1:10 align decently well. With more training, you could target mid-2:20s.

He probably ran way more than his stated averaged while training for that marathon, ran far less immediately before and/or after, and is giving us a yearly average that lumps all of those periods together.

But really, this thread is just a carefully crafted 3/10, better than 0/10 only because it was carefully crafted.

> Are you very light? What's the inspiration for your training plan (which basically entails packing 50% of your volume and 100% of your intensity into your weekly long run)?

I'm actually 15 pounds above when I ran the 1:10 HM. And even then I didn't think I was "elite athlete" lean. I will be trying to slowly lose the weight over the next year. I have put on some upper body muscle mass that I'm okay with parting with as I chase PR's for a period of my life.

For the one workout a week thing, I felt like I needed workouts that stressed my muscles, as that felt like a weak point in my other marathons. I probably had the aerobic fitness to be running 2:45's or low 2:40's for some of them, but especially my posterior chain and all my running muscles in general were breaking down before I got to the finish. For one of them I was doing the "easy threshold" training and felt confident in sub-2:40 then, but my body suddenly failed at mile 18. So I took the opposite approach and wanted to get a huge muscular stimulus on a weekly basis. And I knew I'd need a long time to recover so I didn't even try to do anything significant the rest of the week.

> I ran my 2nd marathon in 2:37 on 35 MPW. I never did well with high mileage.

Nice man. People like us do exist!

> If you're legit and not running this race hopped on some kind of dope... try to do 2:38 and the bonk will hit you well before 20 miles

Not doping. I already ran it. 2:38 is in the books. But in a way you are exactly right, as I tried sub 2:40 in one of the other marathons I ran and blew up before mile 20. I attribute the difference to doing the long runs with hard tempos and weight training to shore up my posterior chain.

> Eventually I bet you could add a second threshold workout per week, or maybe shift to a 2 week cycle and try to do 3 workouts in that space instead of two.

2 week cycle is smart. Those are good suggestions. I definitely hope to build up to a more normal training routine. Just gonna really take my time with it this time around. I want to keep good records of what I'm doing so I can be sure that the training is increasing. But I think it's also smart to just skip or downgrade workouts when I feel like it. If my performance progress stalls AND the records show I've been skipping so much that my training isn't increasing anymore, then I'd figure out which days I want to force. I want to feel really fresh at least every 3 weeks or so, as assurance that I'm not accumulating fatigue and heading toward overtraining. I can't purposely have tired legs for weeks on end like some people do. Maybe in a few years I can get there.

> Could he also have had a soccer/other sport background that served as a lifetime base? Running 2:38 off of 38-40 mpw is wild. Or he simply could be very gifted.

My youth running career had some great results off low mileage - I was recruited to div 1 NCAA etc. Just another story of "showed a ton of potential and then crashed and burned." I'm sure there are a lot of people like me but they never get back to running as an adult. TONS of talented high schoolers get destroyed in college.

> I will bet the honest answer is you ran in college

I had written up my youth career but deleted it because the post was getting so long already. Here you go:

In HS I ran 48.9 400m, 1:53 800m, 4:21 1600m, 9:43 3200m, 14:59 3mi, 15:46 5k. I took summer breaks and winter breaks off and did about 30mpw in-season. So the XC times (3mi and 5k) were from ~3 months of training after coming back from summer break. Since winter break is much shorter than summer, I'd start track in better shape than XC. 1:53 800m was at the start of my junior year (February?) but then some health issues prevented me from ever improving that (continued throughout Sr year). 9:43 3200m was a sit-and-kick race as a sophomore -- I was probably good for ~9:30 in a time trial type race as a sophomore. 48.9 400m was my Sr year when I had health issues (low energy), but I could still manage sprint training, so I shifted to focusing on the 400m. If I hit the weight room and did proper sprint training for 4 years, I think I could've been a lot better at 400m. Obviously I could've been a lot better at 800m-5k if I ran year-round and built mileage.

I ran my freshman year in college, promptly overtrained and burned out. Never ran a PR in college, though I did have some sick workouts. It'd be fair to say I got in better shape but missed the chance to prove it in a race. My youth career obviously shows a ton of potential (or at least it shows a similar ability to run good, but not elite, races on low mileage). As far as not mentioning years of training establishing a huge aerobic base, that's not the case. As I truthfully said, the 1:10 HM and low 15's 5k's were my best distance PR's. I'm 38 now, so I was 33 in 2019. The majority of my 20's was no exercise at all. Without training, I thought it'd be easy to run a 1:30 HM at one point and after 8mi or so I had to walk the rest of the way in complete agony. So a touch of training does make a huge difference. In my early 30's I started training regularly to head toward the 1:10 HM.

> You could have just titled it "2:38"
You don't get extra credit for doing less.

Not going for EC. Obviously we are the minority but the fact is people like me exist and we overtrain very easily. Normal training guidelines are bad for us. When you're really motivated and feeling good it's hard to hold back and trust that you're building fitness. So I just wanted to share for my people.

To keep yapping: consider the marathon vs the tour de france. A one day event vs a multiday event. Even though the marathon is an endurance event, it's very different in nature than a multiday endurance event. Some people are a lot better at one than the other.

So say I'm a 10/10 genetically for running a fast single race, but I'm a 3/10 genetically for running fast every day for two weeks. Compare to someone else who is 3/10 for a single day event, but 10/10 multi-day. I'm gonna run a faster marathon because that's what I'm better at. And that faster marathon time is going to "dictate" faster training paces than them. But I'm worse at performing day after day than they are!

This is the predicament that I think people like me are in. We train light and overperform, and instead of saying "wow that training was so effective for me! let's keep doing it!" we say "wow I did so well even though I didn't even train properly. let's take this seriously and train properly now!" Boom, overtraining.

> Nobody should read this & think a 2:38 is achievable on less than 40mpw. That's not feasible for most runners targeting that kind of a time.

100% agree. Not general advice here. I'm hoping to help people like me or, outside of being helpful, just sharing an unusual training log. Next year is Chicago and CIM. I don't want to think of a specific goal time but yes I should make a huge leap if everything goes well and blow by the 1:10 HM. It'll be exciting to tread new ground at that point.

As a former D3 guy who used to run 75-85mpw and now struggles to fit 30mpw into regular adult life I will say this thread was really encouraging to me so thank you for sharing. I love seeing the progression from week 1 to 16 and think your testimony would be really interesting for any former college runner who knows they are past their prime but wonders what they could get in the marathon with significantly less input than their glory days.

Also props to you for doing your easy runs at 8:30-9:00 pace when you can run 6:00 for the marathon. That is a very rare combo as most of us take our easy days way too fast.

I hate you, I did a 20 week cycle for my 2nd ever marathon and had to average 80ish miles and peak at 105 mpw to hit 2:35

A 20mpw guy ran 2:13 at CIM. This coming of an injury, used to run more miles.

I'm a low mileage guy too.

I ran multiple sub 3:15 marathons at age 46-48 running three times a week averaging 25-30 mpw in my three months of marathon training.

I slowly and carefully upped my mileage to 40mpw (running 4 times a week - more was not possible with my job and being a father of 3 children) and ran sub3 at age 50.

It doesn't surprise me at all that someone younger and far more talented can run 2:28 on 38mpw.

Thanks for the extra context, you sound legit. Not troll, sorry if I came off like that. Very impressive times and progression.

No shame in bonking a 1/2 if you had no prior experience...walking during longer races sucks, I've been there before!

Thank you OP for the thorough post. It sounds to me somewhat similar to Luis del Aguila's phylosophy, although he prescribes one "controlled intensity" day (usually on a Saturday) and one easy long run (usually on a Sunday)

Apologies for hijacking this thread, but the OP's claims and those of a years'-old thread of a similar vein -- guy ran a 2:30 marathon off really low mileage -- have always left me wondering about my marathon training.

Last three year of marathons (only run my hometown one), I can't break 2:55: 1) 2:55:33; 2) 2:55:27; 3) 2:55:27

Mid-40s male with no high school or collegiate running experience, but I did play football and soccer not to a high level in high school. Mileage first three marathon builds averaged in the 60s, with peak weeks in the high 80s. First build had two weeks in the 80s, second had three weeks in the 80s. Typical week was:

Monday: Easy (sometimes double)

Tuesday: Interval session (10x800, 20x400, etc.)

Wednesday: Easy (sometimes double)

Thursday: Workout (tempo, etc.)

Friday: Easy (sometimes double)

Saturday: Long run (typically some variant of 2 or 3 miles warm up, 5 or 6 x2 miles with float, 2 miles cool down

Sunday: Off if at a 60 or 70 mile week, easy if 80 mile week

Wanting to finally break 2:55 this year, I decided to push the miles upward.

5 weeks at 50 miles, 4 weeks at 60 miles, two weeks at 70 miles, one week at 48 (ran every day I was able; was traveling overseas for work, and two transatlantics plus time change ate into that total); two weeks at 80 miles, this last two weeks I broke 90 for the first time and then 93

My most recent long run was 20.33 miles with the following:

-2-mile warm up (8:21; 8:03)

-2 miles at pace (6:04; 5:59)

-2 miles at pace (6:08; 6:03)

-1-mile float (8:15)-stuck at light crossing street

-2 miles at pace (6:10; 6:17)

-1-mile float (7:47)

-2 miles at pace (6:11; 6:11)

-1-mile float (8:08)

-2 miles at pace (6:09; 6:12)

-1-mile float (7:29)

-1 mile at pace (6:13)

-2.50-mile cooldown (8:30)

My most recent interval session:

-2-mile warm-up (8:30)

-2 miles at pace (5:49; 5:56)

-1-mile float (7:46)

-3 miles at pace (5:56; 5:59; 6:10)

-1-mile float (7:31)

-2 miles at pace (6:09, 6:09)

-1.5-mile cool down (8:03)

Best I can tell, my training paces are indicative of a 2:50 or 2:49 marathon. But I keep failing. Is it possible too much mileage is my issue?