2h45 Marathon on low Milleage? pls Help

When he and I were rooming together I was doing 100 mile weeks and the weekend 15-20 mile run. I used to nag him endlessly to run more and do longer runs. The OT standard for the marathon in the previous trials had been 2:30 and I thought if it stayed the same he easily could have gotten it, or maybe even a faster standard, if he'd stop screwing around and really train.

So one Sunday in late January I was hanging out in the room after my 20 miler when he burst through the door in his running gear, flung himself onto his bed, and thrashed around cursing and moaning. When he was finally able to speak again he told me he'd taken my advice and done a 15 mile run which was "the worst experience of (his) life." He said he'd felt bad at the start. At 10 miles he thought that if he was doing his normal 12 he'd almost be done but now he still had 5 to go. At 12 he said all he could think about was how bad he felt and if he was in a marathon he'd still be less than halfway done.

We were getting ready for a marathon in a month. He told me he was seriously thinking of not running it and that he was maybe even going to quit the sport altogether. I stopped nagging him. He did run that marathon and stayed with the sport A couple years later, after we'd graduated, I ran 2:41 and beat him by a couple minutes. It was the only race I ever beat him in. He never ran another marathon or ever really raced seriously again.

I ran 2:33 on what was probably very close to 50 mpw. At the time I was a West Point cadet running on their marathon team which consisted of a mix of very talented runners and dropouts from their D1 track and cross country teams. I don't know that we ran "correctly" but we would do repeat mile intervals in the 4:50 min/mile to 5:00 min/mile range x 5, we would do a tempo run of 8 to 12 miles at 6:20 - 6:30 pace and a weekend longer run but at a much slower pace of 7:30 min/mile or so. My guess is that our mile intervals were faster than they should have been but looking at the paces you are running there is not much difference between your interval pace and your tempo pace and your regular day to day pace. The trend over time for Max VO2 you get off a Garmin GPS is probably reasonably accurate but the absolute value may be off. I think your harder days need to be harder and your easy days are probably already days off. To run a 2:45 you will need to be cruising at the race pace of 6:17/mile which requires that at least some of your weekly mileage is considerably faster. It is certainly possible to hit this target time on 50 miles/week but it does mean the quality of miles you run becomes more important

I've dealt with this problem a few times over the years. You have a lot of good info on training. I think another key is the race plan.

Knowing I did not have enough training in, I was pretty sure I was going to struggle at mile 20 if I went our too hard. Even if it felt really slow, I disciplined myself to hit the halfway mark right on my time goal. I then very carefully and gradually picked it up on the second half, with goal to even have something left for the last mile.

Twice it worked - like 2:44 and 2:43 with negative splits and a decent finish. Once I didn't make it, all sorts of stomach problems finished in 2:52.

Good point on pacing - unfortunately I was horrible at pacing when I was faster but then again all we had was Timex watches and your splits maybe every 5 miles. Even pacing won't make you go faster but it will help ensure you don't bonk or lose high chunks of time in the final miles. It is absolutely staggering how much time you can lose in a few bad miles

Need help? Run more. It’s a marathon, not a short sprint.

dantestruyve wrote:

For my last marathon period I ran 40-45 mpw and finished 2h53.

My nexy Marathon is 29 March. (in 7 weeks).

For the past 5 weeks i am running 55-60 mpw but my VO2max is staying stable and i'm feeling more tired and less fast than I Was. What should I do? Do a recovery week of 40mpw?

I would like to run 2h45 on my next marathon, can it be done on low milleage?

I feel like 50mpw on 5 days per week is my ideal ratio to recover well and put in some speed work.

Thanks in advance

You jumped up mileage too fast. You’re gonna stay tired.

Just run good workouts and stay in the 45-55 mpw zone once you actually recovery and get rested.

Focus on getting your 5k to 16:30, 10k 34:30’s, and half marathon to 1:14:45 and you’ll be able to run a 2:40.

Run 12-14 long run (or more) every weekend regardless of what distance you’re training for.

If that doesn’t work, you aren’t talented enough to run 2:45 on low mileage and probably need to run 60-70 mpw

I ran 2:34 on 50 mpw but ran 1:13:28 and 33:40 in the months before the race, so I probably underachieved in the marathon. My body doesn’t handle more than 55 mpw we’ll though.

Like you, I run 50-55 miles in 5 days typically. This sometimes includes a 22-miler in that count. It’s a big percentage of my overall mileage but I stay healthier if I get a few off days. I’ve tried many build ups and that’s the best for me.

Good luck.

Thank you everybody.

I'm going to stay at 50-60 mpw with one peak of 70.

I will consider to set my goal at sub 2h50 (which it's realistic) and after the race i will keep maintaining my mileage so I can run more mpw the next marathon cycle.

dantestruyve wrote:

For my last marathon period I ran 40-45 mpw and finished 2h53.

My nexy Marathon is 29 March. (in 7 weeks).

For the past 5 weeks i am running 55-60 mpw but my VO2max is staying stable and i'm feeling more tired and less fast than I Was. What should I do? Do a recovery week of 40mpw?

I would like to run 2h45 on my next marathon, can it be done on low milleage?

I feel like 50mpw on 5 days per week is my ideal ratio to recover well and put in some speed work.

Thanks in advance

Flat course ? Asphalt all the way ?

I highly recommend this

https://www.copacabanarunners.net/ipath.html

It's almost certainly the best way to prepare for a marathon on low mileage, three long days of which two are moderate workouts or races and one relaxed long run. Easy days really easy and short.

the ghost of benji durden's 80s beard wrote:

I highly recommend this

https://www.copacabanarunners.net/ipath.html

It's almost certainly the best way to prepare for a marathon on low mileage, three long days of which two are moderate workouts or races and one relaxed long run. Easy days really easy and short.

Good point. It reminds me of my other one time roommate who did 2:17 on 40-50 mpw trainingdone on three or four days of . He did two or three 10s in a week and a 20. Sometimes he'd do a fast 5 in place of the third 10 or not do anything. The 10 mile runs were usually run at race pace or a hair slower. The 20 was usually at about a 6:00 pace or at whatever pace the group he ran with was running.

Charlesvdw wrote:

dantestruyve wrote:

For my last marathon period I ran 40-45 mpw and finished 2h53.

My nexy Marathon is 29 March. (in 7 weeks).

For the past 5 weeks i am running 55-60 mpw but my VO2max is staying stable and i'm feeling more tired and less fast than I Was. What should I do? Do a recovery week of 40mpw?

I would like to run 2h45 on my next marathon, can it be done on low milleage?

I feel like 50mpw on 5 days per week is my ideal ratio to recover well and put in some speed work.

Thanks in advance

Flat course ? Asphalt all the way ?

is this a question? suggestion?

HRE wrote:

the ghost of benji durden's 80s beard wrote:

I highly recommend this

https://www.copacabanarunners.net/ipath.html

It's almost certainly the best way to prepare for a marathon on low mileage, three long days of which two are moderate workouts or races and one relaxed long run. Easy days really easy and short.

Good point. It reminds me of my other one time roommate who did 2:17 on 40-50 mpw trainingdone on three or four days of . He did two or three 10s in a week and a 20. Sometimes he'd do a fast 5 in place of the third 10 or not do anything. The 10 mile runs were usually run at race pace or a hair slower. The 20 was usually at about a 6:00 pace or at whatever pace the group he ran with was running.

Thanks!

Update:

Last weekend I ran a 17 min 5K in stormy wheather, with tired/heavy legs and had the feeling that i could go a little faster or even keep the pace a couple more kilometers. Looks like it's just the feeling of being less faster but not the reality i guess. So this makes me feel less worried.

Just out of curiosity...

- How long did he train like this before his 2:17 marathon?

- Did he run every other day, or did he have some weekly plan? (E.g. tuesday, thursday, saturday or just random when he had the time)

- Did he do any shorter distance races in preparation and if so, how often?

- Have you or anyone you know tried the same approach and how did that go?

Thanks in advance ;)

So many questions... wrote:

Just out of curiosity...

- How long did he train like this before his 2:17 marathon?

- Did he run every other day, or did he have some weekly plan? (E.g. tuesday, thursday, saturday or just random when he had the time)

- Did he do any shorter distance races in preparation and if so, how often?

- Have you or anyone you know tried the same approach and how did that go?

Thanks in advance ;)

This may get kind of long.

He was just horrible at getting himself out to train on his own. But if he'd agreed to meet someone for a run he would always show up and run. So the question of doing 3 or 4 runs a week usually came down to whether he could get anyone to run with him midweek and what with work schedules and travel to the location (he didn't have a car) he 'd maybe have someone to run with once or twice a week. In a good week he might get himself out to run on his own once a week or if it was a day when I was going later than I usually did he'd tag along with me. Those runs were almost always 10 miles. The weekend 20 was rarely a problem because we had lots of guys in our club who lived at various locations who always did a weekend 20 so he could latch onto a group.

So this was never really a plan. Ideally, he'd maybe get to 60 or 70 a week, 10 a day and 20 on Sunday. But that rarely happened. He had a stretch of time before I knew him when he got ten weeks like this in and ran 2:16. (Many years later he ran 2:15 at age 37 off of about 120 a week though oddly only managed 2:26 off of a stretch of 100 mile weeks when he'd have been in his late 20s.)

He didn't race all that much at shorter distances but certainly raced a lot more than most people do now. Ten miles might have been his best distance. He was just on one side of 48:00, can't recall anymore if it was just over or just under. We did a few weeks of racing in Finland one year, mostly all 3,000s, and he was consistently in the mid 8:00s.

Do I know of others who trained similarly? There was a Scotsman called Alaister Wood who had a best of 2:13 and won the London to Brighton at least once. He said he'd learned the value of training every other day. He'd do things like hard 12-15 mile runs, maybe 5:00 pace, and sessions like 60 x 220 but then just jog 2-3 miles the next day. After winning London to Brighton he said something like he'd run more miles that day than he normally did in a week. My old roommate did not do 2-3 mile runs on days between big runs.

BUT, if you read up on the history of long distance training and of marathon training particularly you'll find that the really old guys, the pre WWII bunch, Johnny Hayes, Les Pawson, Old Kelly (who lasted well beyond WWII) were normally running 3-4 days a week. The idea then was that running was actually bad for your health so you needed to limit how much of it you did. I read somewhere that Pawson would do one run a week at 10 miles, another at 15 miles, and one at 20 miles and that was it. I have a friend who raced against Old Kelly, who was till in good form, who told me before one race Kelly said he was in really good shape because he'd been running 45 miles a week. The way Kelly said that, my friend said, made it seem like Kelly considered that a lot of running. But he also did not run every day from what I can tell.

HRE wrote:

He didn't race all that much at shorter distances but certainly raced a lot more than most people do now. Ten miles might have been his best distance. He was just on one side of 48:00, can't recall anymore if it was just over or just under. We did a few weeks of racing in Finland one year, mostly all 3,000s, and he was consistently in the mid 8:00s.

Thanks a lot for the answer!

If I may ask a bit more about the racing part:

Do you have any idea how many races (and what distance) he did in the 12-16 weeks leading up to the 2:17 and did he still do his 20 mile run the week of a race?

Thanks again!

Side note: the reason I was asking more about this was because when I first started running about 8 years ago, I spent about 8 weeks running 1 hour steady/hard every other day (so 3 hours one week, 4 hours the next week and so on). I improved from a 21'10" 5K (without training) to 18'15" in those 8 weeks .

Then I joined a running club and started to run the 'standard' 6-7 runs a week with 2-3 interval workouts (45-65mpw). Over the next 2 years I improved to 15'35" (still my pb today), but I also had several injuries and my legs felt like crap more often than not.

I always wondered what would've happened if I'd just continued training every other day since I enjoyed it more and the risk of injury is lower. Seriously thinking about trying it out now...

Similar times to mine before i ran 2.43. 17.37 5k 36 flat 10k and my half was 1.18.10. Always struggled at speed work sessions but the half marathon gave me the boost needed.

Done on an average of 61 mpw. I would do 3 weeks of 65-70 and have a cut back week to recharge 45-50 mpw.

It can be done. Good luck

This happened more than 40 years ago so I may not be absolutely precise. But I believe the 20s stayed in right to the weekend before the race. This was the era when we did "The Diet," a long run a week ahead of the race to deplete your glycogen, then three days of no carbohydrates, a hard mid week run to further deplete, then stuffing yourself with carbs until race day.

I can't recall much about races. Again, he did not race as often as a lot of us did but a big part of that might have been not having a car. Also, he had a girlfriend who put limits on time away at weekends. I do recall a five mile race that he won by outkicking a guy who'd run in the previous Olympic Trials 1500. I think that was in the lead up to the 2:17 but won't swear to it. Sorry I can't give you more there.

Earlyboy wrote:

Similar times to mine before i ran 2.43. 17.37 5k 36 flat 10k and my half was 1.18.10. Always struggled at speed work sessions but the half marathon gave me the boost needed.

Done on an average of 61 mpw. I would do 3 weeks of 65-70 and have a cut back week to recharge 45-50 mpw.

It can be done. Good luck

This gives me hope!

Indeed similar times but I think you have more endurance (due to the miles).

I think, if I maintain the mpw, i will end up running 2h47. Keep you guys updated in few weeks, thanks!

HRE wrote:

This was the era when we did "The Diet," a long run a week ahead of the race to deplete your glycogen, then three days of no carbohydrates, a hard mid week run to further deplete, then stuffing yourself with carbs until race day.

Oh God!

I remember this.

track chick

Showing my age :/