Racing 2 marathons, 3 months apart. Critique my Training Plan.

When training for the second race, err on the side of being under trained. Once you get back in shape, it is very easy to try to out do your previous build-up and get hurt. Just stay healthy, hit the big workouts and long runs and you will do great. Don't worry about faster speed work. It is too easy to get injured doing track work during a marathon training cycle and the benefits are minimal. You really only have time to get back into shape and sharpen your specific endurance.

Yeah, like you I have a previous PR of 2:46 from Boston and went for almost two years before I ran my next one. (not close to 4 years like you, but fairly long between marathons too). I then ran 2:42 and 2:37 within 3 months of each other. (14 weeks to be exact).

My training for those weeks

-Took 3-4 days off after the first marathon. Then ran 4-5 miles for a couple of days before taking Saturday and Sunday off.

-Ran a 4-6mi tempo (half-marathon pace) pretty much every week. Some weeks they were broken into 2x3, or 3x2, but volume was the same.

-Ran 10-12 @ GMP every other week or so.

-Weekly mileage was 80-100 for weeks 2-12 before the taper.

The exceptions were weeks 7-9 (73,62,53) as I tapered slightly for a half-marathon in week 8 and needed a couple of extra days to recover from it.

-Long runs mostly in the 14-17 mile range. The only exception was a 22-miler with 16@GMP, and a 20-miler with 10@GMP.

-Only VO2max session was 10x800 in 2:33 with 1min/200jog about 2.5 weeks out.

If I had to do something similar again I would have taken an extra week easy after my first marathon and skip the half-marathon in the middle. Otherwise the mileage level, one tempo a week, and one 15-18 mile long run with some MP in there seem to work well for me.

Good luck Collin. Utah Valley has a nice elevation loss too so you should have a good shot at running at least mid-2:40s there as long as you stay healthy.

Listen to Precious Roy...

Definitely err on the conservative side. Staying healthy is the most important thing you can do.

read this thread first - several stories of career ending lame moves like running too many marathons.

Cool, great info. Who is this, by the way? That's impressive to drop from 2:42 to 2:37 that soon after the first. And yeah, Utah Valley should be a good course for me. I think it changed recently, so it used to have a lot more rolls near the end, but now it's just a pretty gradual downhill almost the entire way.

been there, done that wrote:

Listen to Precious Roy...

Definitely err on the conservative side. Staying healthy is the most important thing you can do.

Thanks, and yeah, agreed. I've learned my lesson numerous times in the past about trying to train through things that I shouldn't (the major reason that I had nearly 4 years between marathons), so I'm definitely not going to overextend myself this time around!

I'll keep in mind that I may not need weekly speedwork in this 8 week plan, but I do think that speed is close to becoming the limiting factor for me right now. When I ran a 2:52 and 2:53 in 2009, I was in low-mid 16s 5k shape and just kind of hanging on in the marathon, whereas right now, I'm not positive that I could definitely break 17, even on a fair flat course at sea level. With that in mind though, 17-flat should still be enough to get me to sub-2:45, but probably not much faster. Maybe I need a season focused on shorter stuff after this marathon?

I don't think we've ever actually met, but have a mutual friend in Dave P. I know who you are because I read Dave's blog pretty regularly and the TWSS blog semi-regularly. (I put the puzzle pieces together when I saw your post, as running 2:50:00.1 is kind of a brutal/memorable story). I ran on the team for a couple of years and graduated with Dave, there aren't that many of us post-collegiates still training hard so he could probably figure it out for you in a minute or two if you ask him.

I have to agree with Precious Roy.

I have never run two marathons that close together.

But erring on the conservative side seems the best way to go.

Art

http://fitatfifty-art.blogspot.com/

Another JHU Grad wrote:

I don't think we've ever actually met, but have a mutual friend in Dave P. I know who you are because I read Dave's blog pretty regularly and the TWSS blog semi-regularly. (I put the puzzle pieces together when I saw your post, as running 2:50:00.1 is kind of a brutal/memorable story). I ran on the team for a couple of years and graduated with Dave, there aren't that many of us post-collegiates still training hard so he could probably figure it out for you in a minute or two if you ask him.

Ah, cool. I was going to say, I didn't know anyone from my time there with those exact numbers you mentioned. I'm definitely still bummed about that .1, but I know the fitness is there to run a little faster, so I'll put in some more work and get it done.

Hi. Thanks for sharing this. I am very interested in hearing what you decide to do with your training. I am in a similar boat as I had a mild URI prior to Boston this year and had an asthma attack at m14 and required a nebulizer treatment in the med tent. I was able to finish, but with the 30m nebulizer and my slower pace (GP+90s), I finished 45m after my goal time. I hate to waste the "A" race fitness I had developed and have Boston be my last marathon for the foreseeable future not only because of my poor performance, but also in light of everything else that happened 6m after I crossed the finish line. I am planning on doing a local marathon on June 15th. Any thoughts appreciated. Best of luck to you.

Leighloo and anyone else curious,

My thoughts so far are that I'm timing everything perfectly. I raced for the first time on March 2nd, ran the 2:50:00.1, and I've become convinced that being sick actually hurt me more than I realized (either that, or I've gotten into significantly better shape really quickly).

What I've done so far:

Marathon on March 2nd: 2:50:00.1, pretty darn sick for the race, starting so suspect that this hurt my time by a relatively significant margin.

Week of March 3rd off

Weeks of March 10th and 17th: extremely light, 45 miles total in those 14 days, raced a 16:44 5k in there (aided course, roughly 12 seconds faster than flat at sea level) which I was moderately dissatisfied with. Legs just didn't feel good in the race.

Week of March 24th: Bridge week to get things going again, 48 miles.

Week of March 31st: 86 miles. One semi-unfocused tempo style run instead of a specific workout on the week back, which I did on trails with wildly varying degrees of incline/decline to force myself to do it on effort rather than pace. Long run of 17.5 miles.

Week of April 7th: 78 miles. First real workout back was 12 miles: 9 at MP, followed by 3 at tempo. Pretty easy compared to most of my workouts, but wanted to not kill myself first focused workout back. On Saturday, did a trail marathon as my long run. This run had 7k' climb and a lot of technical trail, so while I only ran 4:00:26, I took 2nd out of 120 or so and became #7 fastest in the 14 year history. I wasn't out there to race hard, but it ended up going quite well without having to beat myself up at all.

Week of April 14th: 73 miles. Took it easy Sun/Mon with 5 and 6 to ensure proper recovery. Did a big workout of 17 miles on Thursday (treadmill, since my goal race is on a downhill course that is about the same speed as flat at sea level, and a properly calibrated treadmill at 0% at my altitude is also roughly similar to flat at sea level, just slightly slower based on my calculations), which included 14 at 6:20 average with 3 miles (9,10,13) at 6:00 flat. Was pretty hard, but didn't kill me. Long run of 18 on Saturday, mostly around 7:00 pace, but did 9 to 15 at about 6:20, obviously harder than marathon pace at altitude.

Week of April 21st: 95 miles. Probably the biggest week of the build-up. Workout was 10 miles of tempo on a track in quite windy conditions, split as 4 miles in 24:01, 3 minutes jog rest, 3 miles in 17:52, 2 minutes jog rest, 2 miles in 11:46, 1 minute jog rest, 1 mile in 5:37, with a few miles up, few miles down at 7:xx pace. Workout was pretty hard, but I was very in control. Long run was 20 miles, with the first 12 at 7:xx and 13-20 harder (5:57 to 6:20 for 13 to 18 at altitude, but at a slight decline of 1%, 6:30-ish on a slight uphill, and 6:59 for 20 on a steeper uphill. The last few miles of this were quite hard coming at the end of a 95 mile week.

Week of April 28th: 73 miles with a HUGE half marathon PR. No specific workout, but did 10 miles at 6:18 on Wednesday, which felt surprisingly easy. Took quite a few easy days throughout the week, especially Thursday/Friday, and managed to hit a 1:15:33 half marathon PR on Saturday, feeling relaxed and extremely in control, with a negative split. Race was 900' downhill, but at an average elevation of just over 5000', so it would be worth 1:14:2x on flat at sea level. Even without considering the altitude adjustment, this race was HUGE for me. My half marathon used to be my weakest PR in road racing (1:22:06 from 2010), and now it's my strongest.

Week of May 5th should be around 75 miles, will probably do a wave workout (18-ish miles alternating 6:00 with 6:30, now that I'm starting to lean towards 6:15 pace in June, rather than 6:20). This will be one of my hardest workouts of the entire build. Probably unlikely to do an additional long run this week, as I don't want to push my mileage too high immediately after the half. Started the week with a very easy 10 miles today, in which my legs felt excellent after yesterday's race.

Week of May 12th should be around 90 miles, with one big workout and one long run.

Week of May 19th should be around 85 miles, also with one big workout and one long run.

Week of May 26th will start the taper, should be around 60 miles.

Week of June 2nd is race week, will hit about 30 miles in the 6 days leading up to the race.

So far, I have been extremely consistent and have yet to take a day off since March 28th (the week before I got serious again). I have only really had one day in which my legs felt overly tired (a 14 mile run last Sunday, right after my 95 mile week and the day after my 20 mile run with a fast finish). I have done a good job of listening to my body, and, if I had to guess, I feel that I will peak perfectly for my June 8th marathon.

At this point, unless I get injured in the next month, anything that isn't a PR would be a complete trainwreck to me. I'm planning on pace the first half with a 2:43 in mind, and I will try to negative split from there. After running a comfortable 1:15-mid half marathon on a very similar profile course (900' drop, compared to 1800' in the marathon, at the same altitude), 2:43 should absolutely not be out of my reach. I'll try to remember to update this again in a few weeks once the major brunt of the training is out of the way.

I suppose that was pretty detailed already, but if you want to see even more specifically how my training has looked, every run I have done since November or so is up at http://collinanderson.fastrunningblog.com/

Used to post as Raptured, just post as Collin now. Just thought I'd bump this thread, as there was never any follow-up as to what happened. I got injured about a week after my half marathon PR and didn't get to race the 2nd full marathon. That said, I'm not convinced that it was a bad idea. I had a lingering hip issue that I wasn't being proactive about, and it just happened to flare up on me out of the blue. In any case, I missed almost all of summer, and barely got in any running for quite a few months, as it actually got quite bad. Plenty of my local running buddies are doing things similar to what I was trying to do, without injury, so it was probably just that my hip needed more proactive strengthening, especially in the 2nd training cycle.

I finally got to start running somewhat consistently in September, and started a long push in November for Phoenix this year. In my 14 weeks of focused training, 4 were in the 80s, 9 were in the 70s, and 1 was in the 50s (grad school took over my life that week). Down in Phoenix this weekend, I hit a new PR of 2:42:07 against a relatively strong headwind, so I think I dialed things in pretty well in training. The goal was 2:39:59, and I went out at about 2:39:00 pace (aiming for a 1 minute positive split, as the first half is downhill and about a minute faster than the second half), but gradually fell off the goal pace a little bit while trying to push it into the wind.

As a result of thinking I can probably go sub-2:40 under better conditions, I've decided to give this whole plan another go this year. Utah Valley is a fast course (at altitude, but downhill) and I don't think going under 2:40 there will require any adjustments from what I've been doing, except maybe hitting a couple more long runs with a fast finish, and ever-so-slightly increasing my mileage over the 8 big weeks that I will do in prep for Utah Valley (average around 80, probably). I'm also going to be a lot more proactive in keeping my hip healthy, by taking NSAIDs before big days (as I did through the last month of my Phoenix training in order to avoid a flare-up), doing PT exercises, and continuing to ski a lot, which really strengthens my hip. I guess we'll see what happens with take two!