2:33 first marathon... now what?

i say continue the training, even beef it up a bit. your marathon time is very good compared to your track pr's. Set you goals high, shoot for that olympic trails qualifier of 2:22, if you make it it will be something you remember for the rest of your life.

of course he meant 4:40 for 1600, just for you guys who are waiting to call him on it

Based off Purdy points your 4:40 3200m converts to about a 1:12-1:13 for the full marathon, so maybe you should set your goals a bit higher.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with the previous poster that your 2:33 is far more impressive than your track times. Try increasing the volume a bit and shoot for the trials qualifier.

well done!Now for the obligatory Letsrun slap in the face... Not to be a party pooper but I would say looking to break 2:30 is a bit more realistic versus trying for sub 2:22. From there you can go for 2:25 or below. I ran a similar time my first marathon and did it off less than 4 months of low mileage training as well. Shooting for a huge drop like 2:22 might prove a bit demoralizing if you don't get it. Going from a 5:50 pace to 5:23 is a HUGE drop. My plan is to get to 2:30 shape (5:45 pace)and then make a realistic assessment as to how much faster I might be able to go. Again, good job on the debut.

If you had the talent to run the next "big" barriers - 2:25, 2:22, sub-2:20 - then you would have run faster in high school even off of limited training or even in difficult circumstances (like altitude, living in Alaska, or Wyoming or something). Not criticizing you, but several of my teammates broke 10:00/4:40 as sophomores and I ran 4:35/9:50 ... so your recent race shows promise, and it should be a slam-dunk to break 2:30, but beyond that it is hard to predict.

Likely that improving will have to come from better training, more of it, or a longer consistent stretch of it. Because 2:33 in your first try is GOOD, unless you were running 15:30/32:30 recently. It is still good if you were, but my point is that it should be expected.

Purdy wrote:

Based off Purdy points your 4:40 3200m converts to about a 1:12-1:13 for the full marathon, so maybe you should set your goals a bit higher.

LOL! Post of the day.

I think you're being too pessimistic. As a high school miler, I barely broke 4:50, and did it just once in many attempts. As a collegiate 2-miler, I barely broke 10:00, and did it just twice (on very fast indoor tracks) despite many attempts. As a post-collegiate marathoner, I barely broke 2:40 in my first marathon, and didn't break 2:30 until my fourth marathon, but I eventually went well under 2:20 on multiple occasions on unaided courses.

Sure, talent is important, but for some of us, the talent doesn't manifest itself until we train long and hard.

I'm curious about the training background of the original poster. "Sporadic training" means different things to different people, and "four months of training" to one person is more like a year of training with a four-month build-up to someone else.

I'm also curious about which marathon he ran. A 2:33 debut at Steamtown, for example, is far less impressive than a 2:33 debut at this year's Grandma's Marathon (which, although run on an aided course, was apparently held under challenging weather conditions).

big time bs

Fair enough. But I would bet that you are the ONLY ONE in history with that story. "well under 2:20" means 2:16 to me and that is 5:11 pace for a full mile.

Really hard to believe that you could only muster 4:49 when you were really trying in high school.

Not criticizing, or being mean, but objectively I don't know why they kept you on your college team if you repeatedly failed to break 10:00.

We had a year where there were 4 guys under 4:30 for 1600 and one at 4:34. Another year altogether (with only one of the same guys) where we went 9:37 (senior), 9:52 (soph), 9:57 (soph), 9:58 (senior).

All the people I ever met that ran a sub-2:20 marathon showed the ability to do it early in life. i don't know how someone could train so haphazardly, yet still be in the sport, that they run just 10-15 seconds faster per mile for a 2 mile than a marathon just a few years later.

Also I always wonder when someone claims that it took "training long and hard". Why weren't you training hard in high school and college when you have facilities at your disposal, a full-time coach, and plenty of free time? Maybe you weren't training the maximum that you could but not even training hard? Why?

to whoever said "big time bs", 2:33 is only equal to 9:40 or so for the 3200 on equivalency scales so it doesn't seem farfetched for someone to run that time after running 10:00 in hs.

Some people don't train hard in HS because they have a shitty coach but they don't know it and they put their trust in that coach. Because the coach sucks and they do everything he says, they suck too.

A HS teammate of mine ran about 4:35 and 9:50 after "working hard" in HS running giving maximum effort to a stupid program that our coach gave us. He never made states or even won a league championship.

Thankfully for this dude, he believed he was better than that and he loved the sport so he stuck with it on his own after HS with the goal to run a marathon. During the next year and a half, with increased mileage and less intense intervals, he was able to lower his times at every distance and culminated with a 2:34 marathon debut.

Was that the stopping point? Hell no. With experience gained from the first marathon he went on to train for a second one. 6 months later he ran 2:31 in adverse weather conditions. Back to training. Dealt with injury and difficulty getting training in around the requirements of a job. Came back a year later with 2:28 which included stopping to take a dump enroute. A couple more years of training...2:24. Then 2:17 on an aided course. A couple years later 2:17 on a legal course. Another couple of years, then 2:14. Along the way, multiple times under 2:20 and several victories, qualified for the Trials a few times, and made a world championship team. Ultimately was probably good for a sub 2:12, but was limited by injuries the last few years of his career.

So as to where do you go next? I'd say 2:30 is a good next step. But don't set limits on how far you can eventually go. Had my teammate set an arbitrary limit on his talent (say at 2:30), he'd have been finished long before all the great things he did later on.

MD? Yes. Good preparation and consistent training with experience will do that for you.

Its not so cut and dried wrote:

Some people don't train hard in HS because they have a shitty coach but they don't know it and they put their trust in that coach. Because the coach sucks and they do everything he says, they suck too.

yep, it is always someone elses fault and everyone else uses drugs

oouuch wrote:

I just ran 2:33 in my first marathon off four months of training. I ran controlled the whole way for the most part. the last 10k was pretty tough but I wasn't keeling over when I finished or anything. What should I set a goal for now? How much should I expect to take off time wise from the first to second marathon. Before this marathon my p.r.'s were 10 minutes for the 3200 and 4:40 for the 3200, both in high school. I am now 24. I'd run sporadically since my high school days, but this is the first time I really trained since then.

What kind of running training/racing were you doing a year ago? Not "0" I'll bet.

Personally I'd recommend you concentrate on 5 and 10K racing wise. 2 marathons in your 1st year is plenty. You will be able to maintain a better training consistency as well (with the shorter racing). Don't increase anything quickly. You have 10 years ahead of you where you can steadily improve.

As usual, my top training book recommendation: "Running With Lydiard", written in 2000...

Keep in touch.

You've reached the pinnacle. Hang 'em up and go into coaching. This way you have a great positive memory and can retire with no injuries.

What's an aided course?

againtoo wrote:

Its not so cut and dried wrote:

Some people don't train hard in HS because they have a shitty coach but they don't know it and they put their trust in that coach. Because the coach sucks and they do everything he says, they suck too.

yep, it is always someone elses fault and everyone else uses drugs

Did I say that? I don't think so. A previous poster asked why someone who had coaching, facilities, and lots of free time would not train hard in high school, like it was the athlete's fault that they didn't train enough.

The answer which somehow you missed is that you can show up everyday, run your butt off doing everything your coach told you to do, think that you are training hard enough, and end up with weak times because the training is less than what you should have done but you didn't know any better. There is a shared responsibility between athlete and coach. The athlete ought to work his ass off and the coach ought to provide adequate workouts.

In our specific case we were happy with our coach even though we did not achieve what was probably possible. Our workouts were very hard but the mileage was very low. That was the way it was done back then. The only thing I can blame my former coach for is a 50 second improvement in the mile over 3 years.

The point is there are probably a lot of people whose times from HS are not impressive and who have lots of potential, not because the athlete was lazy but because the training given them was not enough to develop their potential. If more 4:40/9:50 type HS guys gave 10 years to the marathon I'd bet a lot of them would become sub 2:15 marathoners. Look at Brian Sell for god sakes.

Nacho wrote:

What's an aided course?

Point to point with a net downhill.

Thank you.

It sounds as though you're looking at this from the perspective of someone who had knowledgeable coaches and "plenty of free time" in high school and college? Not all of us did.

In my case, my high school track coach trained us with quarter-mile reps every day. The result for me? PRs of 2:06.7 for the half-mile, 4:49.1 for the mile, and about 11:30 for the two mile.

In college, the training program was better, but not outstanding. The result for me? PRs of 9:50-something for two miles and 33:01 for 10,000 meters.

As for having "plenty of free time" in college, I was an undergraduate at M.I.T., working to complete two degrees in four years, and also taking ROTC courses (which did not count for credit toward either degree) to satisfy the requirements of my ROTC scholarship and commissioning program. Not much free time, even before adding in cross-country and track. I certainly took my running seriously, but it was in the context of a life that was filled with sleep deprivation and academic stress.

Why was I kept on the team when I couldn't even break 10:00 for two miles most of the time? Maybe it's because M.I.T., being an academic institution rather than an athletic factory, didn't cut people from an athletic team just because they were slow. Besides, by M.I.T. standards, I wasn't really that slow. I was, in fact, one of the faster runners on the team.

Many years ago, a writer for Runner's World (which was a pretty respectable publication back then) remarked that there are potential 4-minute milers and sub-2:20 marathoners on every high school track team, but most will never get close to those levels, because they won't get the right training to produce such results. One can certainly quibble with the particulars of that assertion, but the basic point seems right to me. If you had the right coaching and running environment to maximize your potential, good for you (at least, if competitive running accomplishments are important to you), but many of us didn't have that early on. In my case, I simply learned about training on my own, and applied that knowledge -- imperfectly, to be sure -- to develop my running abilities over the years. And I surprised myself, as well as others, with the results.

Talent in distance running is an odd thing. Often, the only way to find out if you have any is to spend years training. Then, if things finally come together, and you start producing good results, people have a ready explanation: You had talent.