Going for marathon PR; need advice on how best to progress

At 38, you dont have many more shots at PRing before age catches up with you. Increasing your mileage a lot wont help much, but upping it to 65-70 consistently will be helpful. Obviously make this increase gradual over a couple of months. 2:50 is doable but you must stay helathy. I would also suggest making sure you stay flexible. Maybe yoga or serious stretching after runs. I wouldn't change too much of what you are doing, it seems to be working and you dont want this taking over your life. Just keep it up.

I have had a 51 year old man that broke 3 hrs one year and then went onto run 2:50:00 this year. At 38 years of age br0ski has plenty of time to develop as a marathon runner.

You could probably benefit from consistently higher volume. For instance start by hitting 60mpw consistently, then 70. I ran my first marathon at age 37, hitting 2:49 on 60-70 mpw. Over the next 3 years, I cut 6 1/2 minutes off by consistently increasing mileage. Once over 40, I wasn't able to improve anymore.

br0ski wrote:At 38, you dont have many more shots at PRing before age catches up with you.

This simply isn't true, at least without more information. Did the OP start running two years ago? Or has he been at it for 20 years? This stuff is important, particularly as one gets older. I started running at 30, and was still PR-ing at 38+. If I started at 40, I am confident I would have followed a similar progression.

Age does catch up with all of us, but it's almost common knowledge that a late starter will improve for something like 6-8 years or even more regardless of what age they were when they began (unless you are very, very old). So instead of your dismissive stance, you should be asking how long the OP has been training to improve.

Not trying to disrespect you in any way - just making a point that is valid.

To the OP: If you've been at hard for 5+ years, it's possible diminishing returns (and yes, age) are starting to become hard realities. You would know - are you down to almost never PRing anymore, and when you do, it's a couple seconds at best? Some higher mileage will help, but only if you can handle it. Not everyone, particularly at almost 40, can just jump into 70+ mile weeks. If you think you can - do it. Slowly. Mileage increases are almost always going to be the most likely improvement factor for the average runner. Get the Pfitzinger book Advanced Marathoning. Its a great book for the serious sub-3 guy looking to move to 2:45 - 2:50. He has a plan that peaks at around 70 miles/week, but most weeks are 55-65, so it's doable in your position.

Start running some HMs for a year as you prepare for your goal. Try to work your way down to 1:20. Long honest tempos helped me get there. Also, one hour progression runs starting at 4:20/km or so and ending at 5k pace or faster. Good luck.

Thanks for all the advice so far. Easy - In response to your questions here is some additional info.Started running at 30, more seriously the last few years with a 3:18/3:09/3:03/2:59 marathon progression from 2011-2014. Still progressing - I have been able to PR races each year with most recent results being 35sec improvement in 5k, 2 min improvement in half and almost 4 min improvement in marathon. I don't run a ton of mileage - BQ'd on 30-35mpw and 50mpw for sub-3 - but a good amount of training up to 33% consists of "quality" speed/tempo/long run sessions. I'm never going to be averaging 80+ mile weeks but do think I can get up to 60-70mpw with a few peak weeks perhaps at 70-80 with a proper buildup. May have to sacrifice some quality to get there.

Thanks for the info - this is what I think: Drop the quality for a little while and just jog your way to 70 miles a week. Do two easy doubles a week to facilitate this and pad the mileage. Keep at it for a couple months (try three), then ease in the speedwork again. It will suck at first, but I think you will find your improved aerobic engine has allowed you to hold an honest pace for longer with less discomfort. That will, in turn, make your speedwork more productive. Your recovery between reps will improve. You won't tie up as quick - you might notice you can take a hard pace for a little longer. This all happened to me. At first after my high mileage period/no quality period it felt like a mistake. I ran a couple terrible 5ks. Then the benefits started to kick in. It takes a bit of time for the changes on a cellular level to become clear. To me, the main benefit was that I simply became able to tolerate the discomfort of hard paces for longer before trouble set in, both physically and mentally. And that was valuable to have.

Thanks Easy. I like your advice. I'll drop the quality for a while except for maybe some strides and get up to 60mpw, hold for a bit through the spring, and then try to get to 70 for the summer and fall.

Yeah, high volume isn't so hard on the body when you cut back on the tempos and speedwork, or cut them out altogether for a while. Also, I would suggest de-emphasizing the weekly long run when your volume gets high. I used to make the weekly long run the focus of my week, but once I was hitting 80-100, it wasn't so important anymore, and in fact, seemed like it was compromising the rest of the training week a little.

To give you some ideas of what times I hit at the shorter distances while marathon training for 2:43-2:49, I'd know I was ready when I could hit low 17/high 16 range for 5k and low 36/high 35 range for 10k with a lot of volume behind it.

As somone around the same mileage and times with similar aspirations I found all this info helpful!

I was wondering howd youd incorporate racing as you get closer to a goal attempt you describe? Three halfs too much leading into the last say twelve weeks? Two halfs and two ten ks? All races untapered?

Thsnks!

I guess everyone recovers differently, but I always found halfs to be awfully hard on the body. I destroyed what would have probably been a pretty good marathon by racing a half two weeks before, and then not being able to recover. The worst thing was that the half absolutely sucked as an event, but I had perfect conditions for the marathon. After that I tried to limit tuneup races to 10k or less with no taper.

Racing three halfs sounds like a lot. I agree that with the other poster that halfs take some time to recover from and can detract from other hard workouts. I would limit to one 16-20 weeks out as a fitness test and then another 5-7 weeks out to gauge how you're progressing. IMO anything 4 week or closer can ruin your marathon. If you run them incorporating some tempo, progression or fast finish long run then I think you can run them more frequently because they're another training run rather than an all out race.

All good thoughts.

I usually have raced things like back to back half in a week or a 30K and half to no crazy soarness. However, as I get a little more experience under my belt i'm questioning whether it's costing volume for a few weeks.

I did a ten miler in 64 flat about a month ago (so that's about 18 weeks out) so that says I guess that's a good benchmark.

I might stick to just two races in the last twelve weeks (half and ?). Thanks for your thoughts and good luck to you!

Age does catch up with all of us, but it's almost common knowledge that a late starter will improve for something like 6-8 years or even more regardless of what age they were when they began (unless you are very, very old)

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I would disagree with this. There are many other factors that would factor in to this and a blanket statement saying any late starter will improve for 6-8 years is false.

Considering his solid PBs in the marathon at that age I figured he had been at it for a few years. And I was not insinuating that he would never PR again. Simply that he maybe only had 3-5 more years before age factored in. I believe it was part of his question as to whether he could PR. I gave him advice quite similar to yours actually. Increase to 70 miles per week. Stay healthy (you said go slow to increase mileage) and I suggested focusing on flexibilty to prolong his career. It was not a dismissive stance, it was realistic.

br0ski wrote:I would disagree with this. There are many other factors that would factor in to this and a blanket statement saying any late starter will improve for 6-8 years is false.

Considering his solid PBs in the marathon at that age I figured he had been at it for a few years. And I was not insinuating that he would never PR again. Simply that he maybe only had 3-5 more years before age factored in. I believe it was part of his question as to whether he could PR. I gave him advice quite similar to yours actually. Increase to 70 miles per week. Stay healthy (you said go slow to increase mileage) and I suggested focusing on flexibilty to prolong his career. It was not a dismissive stance, it was realistic.

Realistic stance if he in fact has been at it for a few years, and I would agree as I pointed out in my original comment. That's why I asked for more info. It's a mistake to look at his PRs and compare to them to the average runner and find them impressive, concluding he must have been training pretty hard for a while already.

I smoked like a chimney for 16 years and quit at 30. I started running in the summer of 2000 and had a hilly 1:27 HM under my belt by February, maybe 8 months into the sport.

But I believe we are on the same page in general. I just felt more info was needed before offering relevant advice.