Letsrun here's your chance: Coach me!

Do yourself a favour and break that 4:00 1500 barrier too. You won't regret it. At your age, you can improve your speed. You could do a marathon season and a track season in the same year and they will reinforce each other.

First step is to cut down that commute.

The marathon is a long ways away, plenty of time to get ready. You've trained at a high level before so you know what it takes. I think you could take a month of just running easily as much as you feel like and listening to your body. Get up to running an hour+ every day with a longer run on the weekend. If you're feeling good then go cruise a little, but priority is just getting your aerobic base back together with some easy miles. Take lighter / shorter days as you need them. Find a way to fit running into your new routine.

June 8th is 18 weeks away from the marathon - a month and a half from now. By then I would hope you could be doing at least 70-80 mpw of easy running. Then you could look at introducing more marathon specific training.

Thanks for the advice. I'll focus on just getting runs in and listening to my body for now. When do you think I should encorporate core/other strength exercises into my routine?

An injured runner moving from 20 minutes a month in 4 months to 70 mpw in weeks is suicide. Most runners on this board can't handle more than 50 mpw. OP will break down before July.

This is Silly wrote:

An injured runner moving from 20 minutes a month in 4 months to 70 mpw in weeks is suicide. Most runners on this board can't handle more than 50 mpw. OP will break down before July.

I am open to the difference of opinion. Please share what you would do if you were in my position.

I'd also like to clarify that I did not take four months off due to injury. I was healthy from October-December. I just needed time off after training at a high level for 8 years, but now I'm ready to jump back on the horse again.

I got in another easy 20 today. Felt good other than glutes being very sore. Luckily I had time before work to get in a good static stretch post run.

Week 1

Monday: 20

Tuesday: 20

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Can you run more than 20 mins comfortably?

20 is not enough. 20 is the type of thing gallowalkers do. 30 is so much better, you actually challenge your aerobic system a bit.

justsomeoldcoach wrote:

Can you run more than 20 mins comfortably?

20 is not enough. 20 is the type of thing gallowalkers do. 30 is so much better, you actually challenge your aerobic system a bit.

I wouldn't say 20 is super difficult but it's by no means easy either. In fact a 20 minute run has never felt so hard in my life. I'm the type of person that takes a long time to get back into shape, so I'm fine with going short to get my body back in tune.

Train Me wrote:

Thanks for the advice. I'll focus on just getting runs in and listening to my body for now. When do you think I should encorporate core/other strength exercises into my routine?

For starters, I'm a big fan of Jay Johnson's Lunge Matrix as a warmup.

Why don't you just join a training group or team? It's a lot easier to run with people. You say that you're too shy, but you are happy to post stuff for the internet. This message board isn't really anonymous, you included all your PRs. Just saying.

In terms of coaching, I would say my first impression is that you could be an internet troll. My second impression is that your weekly mileage through college was terrible. Who coached you? Why were you running so little? That's just bad.

There's two basic approaches you can now take to running the marathon. You can build up your base mileage slowly to the level you were at before and then some, keeping things like workouts, strides, 400 meter repeats, stretching, core work, etc. When you add on a weekly long run, you can get mileage up to 70+ easily.

The other approach is to not do any of those things well and just run higher mileage. I heard a story about a coach who wouldn't let people do their first marathon until they had 2 straight years of over 5,000 miles under their belts. (That's 100 miles a week.) With your PRs and your clearly low mileage, you could run under 2:20 doing this, but a lot of people could do that with that much running.

While it's obviously an extreme, the point is that you should just replace everything with more mileage for a long time to train for a marathon. It's a different beast and real training is by nature a total time suck. If I were you, I'd run shorter road races for a while while you build up mileage over the course of a couple years. Of course, you could absolutely run a marathon in that time if you wanted, it wouldn't hurt your training all that much. But I wouldn't be doing 20 mile long runs and 10 mile tempo runs before you get to higher mileage, which is what marathoners will be doing.

The shy comment was meant to be sarcastic. I'll probably look into joining a club eventually, but I figured I'd try a letsrun community social experiment.I appreciate your advice. I know my mileage was on the lower end in college, but that's what worked for me for a while. I've also accepted the fact that I need to increase my volume to run a decent marathon.Your philosophy is sound, yet I'm looking for help along the way. So far I've been recommended to slowly build mileage until I can handle some longer runs, which is what I'm doing. Do you have any other suggestions for reestablishing my base and building towards long runs, workouts, etc.?Thanks again for the help, coach.

Easy 25 today. Didn't have time to stretch after the run before work unfortunately. Don't feel as sore this morning.

Week 1

Monday: 20

Tuesday: 20

Wednesday: 25

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Try the elliptical. Its great for cross training, keep it at 180bpm, try to find one with adjustable height and resistance.

Scandinavian Fellow wrote:

Try the elliptical. Its great for cross training, keep it at 180bpm, try to find one with adjustable height and resistance.

Okay, but to supplement what? I am healthy trying to build mileage. Thanks.

another easy 25' today. felt much better than the others...had a chance to try that matrix warmup that Tan and Slim recommended pre, and also to roll out and stretch post run.

Week 1

Monday: 20'

Tuesday: 20'

Wednesday: 25'

Thursday: 25'

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Scandinavian Fellow wrote:

Try the elliptical. Its great for cross training, keep it at 180bpm, try to find one with adjustable height and resistance.

I'd rather be garroted than use an elliptical but that's just me.

solid 30 today

Pre: lunge matrix

Post: rolled, stretched

Week 1

Monday: 20'

Tuesday: 20'

Wednesday: 25'

Thursday: 25'

Friday: 30'

Saturday:

Sunday:

Will create a log and start posting the link periodically. Anyone have any suggestions going into the weekend? For starters, I predict there will be large amounts of alcohol consumed.