Does not take that much to run 2:25

wait until you are 49 and try that 2:25. Enjoy your youth

Yeah, but that depends on talent level. You clearly have a fair bit of talent. Maybe not as much as some, but alot more than most.

Well yes...that would be more impressive (I'm mid 20s)

Maybe, time will tell

You are very good. For how many years are you running?

Roughly 4 years with 3 years of proper training.

What are your PBs OP? Running doesn't have to be overly complicated. Decent mileage. 2-3 workouts/week. Good result.

I would say that you did a healthy amount of quality & got away with that because of your mileage. Seems like you responded well to that. It's not like you weren't working hard. You jammed in a lot of quality.

& to that point, don't demean other runners. 2:25 is a time that 99.9% of marathoners never run & is a time that most still wouldn't run, even with optimized training/years of high mileage. It's a time where talent enters into the equation. Some people could run 100-120mpw & not break 2:30. Everyone's different. Enjoy your result. Try to raise up others instead of framing it like this. If your 5k/10k & down indicates more potential at the marathon then what? Maybe more mileage could get you to an even better time. If you're interested in that then get to work instead of saying look at what I did & I didn't even try. You tried & you can run a lot faster.

Last year: 5k 16:10 and 10k 33:30
This year: 73 min half and 2:25 marathon (74 first half and 71 second half)

I improved a lot this past year.

Not trying to demean at all. I think some nuance was lost with my attempt to be concise in my original post. I meant that 2:25 took a lot less than I thought it would. I also think that people expect fast times require ridiculously hard training. I have done more volume in the past and was running a lot worse than doing more 'moderate' training now. I also wanted to give an example of what a realistic training block looks like, since often times people just say 'run 100 mi per week'.

So I take all of your points/criticism...of course I tried very hard. The workouts/race were tough. I have also read a bunch of training logs on this website and wanted to contribute.

I know marathoners ranging from 2:10 all the way up to 5h+, everyone is working hard and I respect anyone who tries to run competitively (i.e. getting as fast as possible).

Fair enough. Would still say your moderate training has as much quality, if not more, as someone running 100+mpw. Your training allows for more quality because you're cutting out mileage. Also saying you've done more volume in the past works against the takeaway to some extent. Prior higher mileage had an impact on this result. Someone probably won't get as much out of their training if they're only doing low volume & have never had higher blocks or have never done a ton of cross training to supplement. Plus you still had 7 weeks @ 76mpw avg./90 peak. Kind of makes sense that a little less mileage, but still good mileage, a lot of quality, + staying healthy, got you to a good result.

Still wondering about the result tho. Downhill marathon? Something a little off with those PBs. 16:10/33:30/73 half look much more in line with 2:35-2:40.

CIM

So NERunner you think volume is the best way to improve in my case?

I am doing a 5/10k block first half of 2026 to get my PRs to match my marathon PR, then a Fall marathon block.

Then run faster.

That's the plan

You make it seem like it wasn’t that hard to run 2:25 then why didn’t you run faster this time? 2:25 isn’t really fast enough to be cocky.

You were like 140th place at CIM and beat by a 40 year old woman

Hey, I agree with you. I want to be faster.

If that’s all you have then don’t say it didn’t take that much. You hit your limit. Be better.

Well yeah...it's my limit right now. Isn't that the whole point of training? To increase your limit...