Half-Marathon time versus potential Marathon time on same mileage

"but will that conversion stand up to relatively low mileage(around 60 p/week)? "

Unlikely.

All things are possible, but if you have a weakness is pure endurance/fat metabolism, it will show itself in a marathon where as you may not see it in your half.

What was your mile splits for your half?

FutureMarathoner wrote:

My goal is mid 2:20's. Do you suggest that I increase my weekly mileage or will keeping it close to what it was for half still produce a decent result over the full 26.2 mile distance?

Yes, increase your mileage.

Mileage is not the key factor for a successful marathon, the right taper is.You can't train the metabolism with high mileage as many suggest, you gotta find a way to bring the glycogen stores to the max before race day.

Do a longer tempo run 3-4 days before the race, keep it easy for the last couple of days and eat, eat, eat.

Also important is to start easy as it takes some time till you burn the fuel efficiently, running the first 10k in 33min takes more glycogen then running the same pace from KM 10 to KM 20.

And i'm not generally against higher mileage, it might help you to improve running economy and threshold and make you a better runner in general but it's not gonna make you specifically a better marathoner.

As I understand it, one of the big differences between half-marathon and marathon training is this: half marathons don't require you to develop your ability to burn fat--unless you're running your HMs slower than two hours. Marathons DO require you to train your fat-burning ability, and the more time you're racing beyond two hours, the more this is true. It's VERY true for somebody looking to break 3 hours, and extremely true for somebody hoping to break 4 hours. Triathletes know how important fat-burning is. Noakes treats this in LORE OF RUNNING.

Fat burning is developed by running long and relatively slowly, and WITHOUT consuming any carbs before or during the run. Greg McMillan covers this in his post about "two kinds of long runs."

Half marathons don't require long slow runs, although if you hammer every long run (15-18 miles) you'll peak too early. But marathons do. Again, it depends how fast you are, or how slow. A two-hour-and-twenty minute race is marginal, but it still requires that you increase your ability to store glycogen and your ability, simultaneously, to burn fat.

Were I in your shoes, I'd make two modifications to my half marathon training.

1) If my HM long runs were 15-18 miles, I'd alternate those with slower 20-22 milers in the buildup period, and during most of the long runs I'd avoid carbs before and during the runs

2) I'd make some of those 15-18 milers into marathon pace runs. I'd run 16, for example, like this: 4 w/up, 10 @ MP, 2 w/dn.

this thread just took a nose dive.

timmins wrote:

All things are possible, but if you have a weakness is pure endurance/fat metabolism, it will show itself in a marathon where as you may not see it in your half.

What was your mile splits for your half?

Splits were as follows:

5:12, 5:14, 5:16, 5:23, 5:17, 5:20, 5:21, 5:14, 5:17, 5:18, 5:20, 5:13, 5:13

Also my longest run in the 2 months leading up to the race was 15 miles @ 6:42 p/mi. Next longest was 12 miles.

lemons4u wrote:

this thread just took a nose dive.

Why? Fat burning/glycogen sparing are the fuel issues which are key in the marathon. This guy has got to increase his mileage if he hopes to run 2:2_?

FutureMarathoner wrote:

Splits were as follows:

5:12, 5:14, 5:16, 5:23, 5:17, 5:20, 5:21, 5:14, 5:17, 5:18, 5:20, 5:13, 5:13

Also my longest run in the 2 months leading up to the race was 15 miles @ 6:42 p/mi. Next longest was 12 miles.

Splits look even, lil fast up front, but made up for it at the tail.

Do you need to run 20 mile long runs for a good marathon? Probably not, off of the same training with a couple of 16 milers or 2:00 long runs, you can probably run 2:24ish.

Bump the long run/daily mileage and it would probably bring that time down, but there is no secret. Training hard equals fast races, but with a 1:08 u already knew that.

Good luck.

Damn man. You only ran one 15-mile run in your training for that HM? That's a pretty stout time by only running up to 12 mi otherwise. I'd say, you could probably keep all the other aspects of your training pretty similar and just start increasing the long run to include what kudzurunner wrote, and have that "linear" translation from your HM time to a marathon time. Because, really, you didn't train for that HM as well as you could have if you want to get down to it. If you start intelligently increasing your long runs AND adding in some more mileage on other days (assuming your body handles it well) then you've got some good marathoning in you, I think.

If you have the time in your schedule to increase your average weekly mileage, then somewhere in the 70-80 mpw range will most likely help. I suggest mixing road with trail running to minimize the pounding effects of the hard surfaces that sometimes increase the likelihood of injuries with more mileage. As far as long runs, if you have a three week cycle in the last few months leading up to your marathon of: week 1 - 20-miler @ 6:30 pace; week 2 - 17-miler with first 10 miles at 7:00 pace and final 7 miles at 5:40 pace and week 3 - race at various distances from 5k to 10-miles, you will get a good variety of a long steady stae run, marathon tempo at the end of a somewhat shorter run and a race to break things up. I was a 2:22 racer 30 Years ago and this worked pretty well. Did a similar plan in early 2007 and ran 2:51 at age 49 at Vermont City. Best wishes for steady, consistent training and a great marathon!

Thanks everyone for your assistance!