How do people honestly think they can respectable run a marathon off of less than 40 MPW

This is the first link that pops up if you google 'marathon training plan'

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-591--14227-0,00.html

If you visit the 'first time marathon' plan, cost $29, you will see this summary:

Weekly Routine:

3 days of rest, 3-4 days of running

Weekly Mileage:

13-23 miles

Long Runs:

start at 5 miles, peak at 10 miles

Speedwork:

strides, half marathon goal-pace runs (HMP)

What do you consider "respectable?"

kirkraz wrote:

What do you consider "respectable?"

sub 2

Obviously they have heard that story about how Tony Sandoval ran 2:14 in medical school off 35/week.

I did it

12/2005

2:48:36

Sunday 14 miles hilly 14

Tuesday 1hr @ close to MP 9

Thursday 8x 1k @ 10k-HMP 8

Saturday 10-15x200 @ 32-34 7

I felt great. I am not sure if 2:48 for a 39yr old man is considered "respectable" but I was pretty pleased

looks like that is from the half marathon plan, not full

It's the Amerikan way. How can I "get mine" without doing anything?

Are you referring to a 5k marathon or a 10k marathon?

record holder wrote:

Are you referring to a 5k marathon or a 10k marathon?

that may be the single dumbest post I've seen on LR. he was clearly talking about a 10k marathon

What makes you think that the people who are running less than 40mpw think that they'll be able to run a respectable marathon? I'd guess that most of these people know they aren't going to run a trials qualifier. The 40mpw crowd probably consists mostly of people who are running just to finish or who have modest time goals (i.e. not people who think they will run a respectable marathon).

I have had training buildups with mileage in the 30-40 range due to injuries and was able to pull out a half decent time (high 2:40 to low 2:50, masters). The question isn't really whether you can or can't run a respectable time on low mileage. The question really is why would you want to show up for a marathon with anything other than your best effort in training? The low mileage thing seems to come more from the folks who just like to participate in a marathon than from serious runners looking to run fast.

I think it's possible to run a decent low-mileage marathon if you have a good lifetime aerobic base built up and follow a schedule similar to the 2:48 poster above (only quality and long runs). I remember reading a Canova post where he said that elite marathoners nowadays can do more quality work and less mileage than past elites because they've reached the point where they get very little additional physiological development from simply doing easy runs and only do them in order to recover from their harder efforts. Obviously most of the people running 40 mpw for their buildup don't have the same aerobic development to fall back on though, so they'll flame out pretty hard.

Ask Sarah Stanley, the self promoting blowhard. She knows best!

No idea what is considered respectable by you; whatever it is, others probably will sneer at it.

I'm guessing you're in your late teens or early 20's. At some point, you might have other priorities in life (family, job, other interests, etc), and running 80 mile weeks becomes pretty difficult to fit in (not to mention the body doesn't recover as well in the late 30's as it did in the younger years).

I currently run 40 miles or so a week, and have run a few marathons in the 2:35 range off of that. In the past I ran 70-90 a week and could break 2:30, but those days are gone. Now when I get home from work I play with my kids, and when they go to bed, we get 1-2 hours of time to relax, read, do stuff around the house, etc. I get my runs in by running to and from work, with a long run on the weekend. I am fully aware that the marathon is as long as some of my shorter weeks if I miss a day or 2, and that's fine by me. It's just a sport, no need to get too worked up over it.

People CAN run a respectable marathon off of 40mpw even if they don't have a lifetime base. A bunch of years ago I started running and had no idea how many miles other people did but I ran from 30 to 40 typical and had a peak week in the 50's maybe. I used to run 3:0X routinely and even had a Boston marathon at 2:58 off of this kind of non-training. I had no idea what I was doing and thought I was running "a lot".

The sea yields to knowledge wrote:

Obviously they have heard that story about how Tony Sandoval ran 2:14 in medical school off 35/week.

It was more like 2:34 off of 35 miles a week. It was written in an article by Kenny Moore in Sports Illustrated.

AK-54 wrote:

The sea yields to knowledge wrote:

Obviously they have heard that story about how Tony Sandoval ran 2:14 in medical school off 35/week.

It was more like 2:34 off of 35 miles a week. It was written in an article by Kenny Moore in Sports Illustrated.

You would be incorrect sir.

AK-54 wrote:

The sea yields to knowledge wrote:

Obviously they have heard that story about how Tony Sandoval ran 2:14 in medical school off 35/week.

It was more like 2:34 off of 35 miles a week. It was written in an article by Kenny Moore in Sports Illustrated.

"Can you imagine? is a phrase that Sandoval can work into just about any conversation. "Can you imagine if I had really trained for that race?" for example, referring to a 2:14 marathon he ran in 1979, an outlandish performance given he was training only 35 miles a week during med school at Colorado."

Here's another source for the same story:

on page 2.

It would be good to go back to the original source, back in 1979 or 80. These are indeed credible articles, and he may well have done it (the first FIRSTer) but maybe like Pat Porter's mythic 4:00 mile at altitude (which he claimed in several articles).

Porter was a great runner, but don't think he ever officially broke 4 or 3:42 1500 at Sea Level, let alone at 7000 feet in Alamosa, CO. The story as I understood it: they had a park loop that was an "altitude" mile, actually short but to simulate a full mile at sea level.

Speaking of sub 4 min milers from Colorado former Buff Rick Musgrave ran 2:19 back in the early 80s, at altitude off a purported 40 miles a week.