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I disagree that you NEED a coach to do well at marathons. It's honestly not that hard to figure it out, but it does take time. Hearing from the many experienced folks on the forums is suepr valuable for teaching you a lot about what can work and what probably isn't a good idea, even if it isn't totally specific to your situation right now. ALthough I'd argue that reading a good marathon book + forums is a lot better.
I will STRONGLY argue in the case of the OP here, that it's absolutely, 100% NOT complicated. In fact, the OPs situation pretty describes a picture-perfect, 100% expected late-game meltdown from a typical first-time ambitious marathoner who thinks their decent triathlon cardio will carry them to the finish, and learns the hard way that training on 31mpw avg as well as starting the first half faster than the target "A" race pace, will invariably lead to walking a lot of the last third of the race.
You don't need a coaching degree to figure that out, and you don't need to know about his HR uncoupling - dude was walking well before the end - it doesn't matter what his HR was doing, his legs just couldn't handle the 26.2 mile race distance at pace. It's a picture perfect rookie first marathon, down to the "T", no mystery whatsoever.
The solution is simple, and as prescribed by most of the posters above - build to more overall mileage per week on a gradual training plan ,and start slower to target a negative split (which will almost invariably never happen.) Any coach worth their salt would nail these two points as by farrrrr the most significant factors to improve a LOT.
The OP can start looking for pricey coaches once they've done the basics (he hasn't even read a 'real' marathon training book, clearly), has started to plateau at his physical performance, and start needing to pay close attention to the finer details of training to squeeze out that last 5%.
At this point though, it's all about FOREST, not trees.
Yes, this is pretty much the best summary of the entire issue. It's not rocket science and even non-coaches like the ST audience can nail this type of advice (the horror!) I agree with NUFCrichard who noted that he has a solid vdot of 52 at 5k and he has the capacity to go much faster with adequate training (volume and pacing) but did not nail it on race day at all.
I started running when I was 40 and have never been able to personally bring my mileage up enough to have close to equal vdots across the short and long distances. I'm a fast twitch guy and my mile/5K times were always better than my distance vdots. Daniel's says that with appropriate training, read-appropriate VOLUME, that you will get close to equal performance along a vdot effort. I didn't achieve equality at all- 5:23 mile time at age 47 with a full year of speedwork (vdot=55) and 3:16 marathon (vdot 49) at age 45 with only a few years of volume-40>70mpw. Still low, but I'm an old guy.
And we're not even talking about all the other things (besides pacing) that can cause a blow up on race day-nutrition/hydration/weather etc. You never get to decouple when you are bonked. Don't pay for a coach-learn for yourself. Read Daniel's book and get feedback from runners. You can learn a lot, as I did.
It also doesn't mean that I don't still remember those marathoners running past me at mile 22 of my first marathon at VCM as I was walking back towards town...Oh, yeah, I lived the OP's lesson as have many of us here in the back seat...