Hi All -
Looking for some (probably fairly obvious) training advice. I've been a very casual runner for the last 10 years or so (maybe 30-50 miles/month), and 5 months ago decided to run my first marathon. Right before I started my marathon training plan, for fun I ran an all-out mile of 5:45 (just to see how fast I could do it). Using the pace calculators (which I know don't work that well), this predicted a marathon time of 3:03. Of course I knew I had no chance of that, but figured I'd finish around 3:30. I did a 18-week training plan totaling about 550 miles, and ended up finishing in 3:49 (which, to be honest, was pretty consistent with what I expected given that most of my long training runs were around that pace). So, after I take some time off I'd like to take another crack at the marathon distance, and I'm wondering what I should do to address the fact that (at least comparing my mile to marathon time) I seem to seriously lack endurance. Should I just go on lots of long (15+ mile) runs on the weekends? Speedwork and hills? Does it make sense to base build (say, 40-ish long slow miles per week) for 6 months before starting another 18 week training schedule? I know the obvious answer is that I just need to run more (and I plan to), but thought I'd see if anyone had any ideas about a smart way to go about this.
Thanks.