Sub-3:10 Marathon After Years Off?

Need more background. meet us at Wakefield for the Marathon in Sept.for further discussion,etc.

A UP Wannabe

you're talking about 8 - 9 months. sure you can be ready.

how old are you?

I'm 22. I haven't seriously trained or raced since September of 2005. About a month before I was injured/quit, I ran a 10-mile race in 67 min. (The RunningTimes calculator gave an "equivalncy" of 3:09 for the marathon). I was running about 40-50 mpw that summer. I'm not really interested in shorter races (10k and under) as my main focus anymore. I will only have about four hours of obligations per day, and so will have ridiculous amounts of free time to fill with training (meaning higher mileage is not out of the question).

The injury I had was an ITB problem, which the doctor believed was due to my trail training.

Trail Runner,

I think you will be able to do with a couple months of solid training. You'll get lots of training advice here. The one thing I will add is to keep the ITB issue from coming back, make sure you get in a lot of quality core work and especially work on strengthening your side stabilizers (i.e. hips). It doesn't matter how you do it, just make sure your hips are strong so your ITB doesn't have to pick up the slack.

I seriously doubt it was from trail running. Usually you would expect it if you ran on only one side of the street all the time (slanted pavement).

good luck.

get a foam roller. best tool to work on the ITB.

I'd like to work up to a pretty high mileage. Not only because it will help my performance, but because I honestly like logging a lot of miles on the road/trail.

What is a decent weekly mileage goal for the end of my base-mileage phase? Is it safe to work up to the 80-100 region after so long off? (Taking, of course, several months to get there)

Thanks

That's an awful lot of build-up in a short time.

Be careful. 70 MPW should get you to your goal.

Monthly you could go, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and hold 70 MPW for 3 to 4 months, and get in a taper the last month.

80-100 is too much if your time frame is only 8 months.

Thanks for the advice. In the past I have gone from 25-30 mpw (when I was racing middle distance races) to about 60 mpw in about 2 months without trouble. (Besides the ITB, which I've dealt with even at low mileage, my other injuries were non-running related). It just seems to me that taking 5 months to get to 70 is too long. Using the good-old 10% rule (which I know is flexible) it should only take me 10 weeks to work from 30 to 70. Even adding a week or two, that's only about 3 months.

During this base-building, I don't plan on doing any anaerobic or particularly intense workouts. Am I taking an excessive risk of injury if I build up over 10-12 weeks to 70 mpw? Has anyone else done the same?

Have you ever run the Lake Superior Half Marathon Trail Run that takes place in September? I want to try that this year and am wondering how tough the course is. I think you can reach your goal taking into account your age and training. Good Luck. MM