Sub 3Hr Marathon
2 lurkers |
313 watchers
17 Jan
7:53am, 17 Jan 2025
364 posts
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DT19
Chris, how long are your longest runs time wise? I think it's a very overlooked element that folk will peak at 20m and run it in 2.30. You then expect the body to run for 3 hours. I do 2-3 long runs of around 3 hours so a good 15 mins longer than my raceday time on feet. Also as you allude to, my first 5k in a mara is almost always my slowest. Negative splitting is a good way to go. Oo, i was sitting up until midnight watching crap tv and playing on phone. I resolved to turn things off and get settled at 10pm. It took work to adopt the new routine but came good eventually. My yearly sleep average is around 7.40 year on year. |
17 Jan
7:59am, 17 Jan 2025
750 posts
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OO61
Chris I used to struggle over the last 6 miles too, often getting severe stiffness in the quads. In general higher mileage and more marathons have fixed this for me, plus a bit of weight loss. Most of my long runs are easy (22 miles at 9:30 pace last Sunday) supplemented with speedwork. Running 3 or 4 marathons a years has also given more experience at running on feel. I'm a big fan of negative splits. The last 6 miles is often the strongest part of my race now- though it still goes wrong sometimes. Good luck 👍
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17 Jan
8:04am, 17 Jan 2025
751 posts
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OO61
I usually go off like a baby DT, before 11pm. Unfortunately I often wake up once or twice per night, and if it's after 4am I struggle to get back to sleep. Glad you found a strategy that works for you- 7:40 is fantastic!
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17 Jan
8:46am, 17 Jan 2025
8,108 posts
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Mark J 🇳🇿
@Chris do you do any mobility training at all? I found that just doing a simple 5 minute routine between 3 and 5 times a week really improved my form, which increased my stride length, which in turn made for slightly faster times? Time frame wise, this was over about a year. So it's not a quick win by any means. But like you I know I'm now realistically looking for marginal gains given age and amount of miles I can fit in over any given year.
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17 Jan
4:40pm, 17 Jan 2025
218 posts
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Alun
@Chris, for me it was all about building a base which I never really had when I previously attempted marathons (2008-2012), I also shed around a stone. Once I'd settled into running 7 days (and 50 miles) per week, it was only a small change to incorporate some marathon paced training: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays tend to be recovery runs of between 4 and 6 miles; Tuesdays and Thursdays are hills (autumn), road, grass or track intervals; Saturdays are either races (XC or track), parkrun (tempo or incorporating longer runs), hills (autumn), grass or track intervals; Sundays are either races or long runs. @DT19, I have the same issue with TV (not all of it is crap though) and phone activity but I'm often still awake at 1am...🙄 @Mark J 🇳🇿, mobility and core strength definitely helps but sadly my late nights make getting up in the morning and going through a 20 minutes quite tricky, hopefully I'll be able to resume this if I can get my sleep routine back on track. Lastly, the new generation carbon shoes help but I'm not sure that they're solely responsible for my improvements across all of the distances, my cross country performances have also improved and I've only been wearing the Dragonfly XC spikes for the last two seasons... |
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17 Jan
5:03pm, 17 Jan 2025
755 posts
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OO61
Good points @Alun Alun I forgot cross training (swimming for me), and of course super shoes, though I guess Chris has these...
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17 Jan
5:23pm, 17 Jan 2025
527 posts
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Charlesvdw
More easy miles is what worked for me.
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17 Jan
5:31pm, 17 Jan 2025
6,616 posts
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Windsor Wool
I don’t feel very comfy giving a 2:39 marathoner advice but @Chris how do you structure your long runs / MLRs? From the dim and distant I remember you doing p&d but have you moved on? As an experiment you could look at Jack Daniels for a change. Or the Nerurkar book if you really wanted to try something extreme - jeez some of the plans in there are unbelievable! Or, remember when Bournemouth AC was churning out all those great runners like Steve Way? Here are some of the sessions they did. bournemouthac.co.uk |
17 Jan
5:43pm, 17 Jan 2025
18,361 posts
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jdawayinamanger
I used to do my long runs a bit beyond the 2:30 advocated by Daniels, sometimes getting close to 3h (not over). If I wanted to devote my life to running I think I'd go for one of the full-on JD plans. |
17 Jan
6:15pm, 17 Jan 2025
7,775 posts
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Little Miss Happy
As many easy miles as I could manage without breaking did it for me. I also lost weight (not intentionally).
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