I'm a similar speed to you (slightly slower over 5k by 30s)


I think this "plan" is easy to write, but the execution will be difficult / impossible. 3x30min race pace over a 3 hour long run with two other hard runs during the week (one being an hour at just over 10k pace, the other being 30mins of long intervals at 5k pace) is a recipe for burnout and injury.


You won't actually be able to manage it, imho. - the only way you could manage this is if you have an enormous base already. You'll likely end up broken and struggling, which will be mentally fatiguing as well.


imho you're better off running a fast finish long run, 30min or so of tempo a week as part of a 90min run and then another 90min slow run.


The challenge with marathons is the months of dedicated prep, there is no shortcut to it. If you can't get the volume up, then it's better to run undercooked than over cooked.


Best of luck!! That marathon is nice, I've done it three times :)


Please report back with how the training / race went.

A lot of people use the term "burnout" and it means different things to different people.

What is your definition?

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I am also most worried about the very hard long run each week. I might follow your advice to change that into a fast finish long run....
Until now I have not been very injury prone, so hopefully it will stay that way - guess I will find out soon 😂

I think that it all comes down to how good your base is

In October, I ran 3:05 in Luzern (hilly) off the back of no specific marathon training, however, I had done the Transcontinental cycle race in July and come 3rd in my AG in IM Wales in September. I was aiming for sub 3, but realised after half distance that it wasn't going to happen, so backed off and really enjoyed the second half. I hadn't done any running at sub 3 marathon pace for over 6 months, but had a massive base.

Currently I am just about running 5k in 20mins, however, I would love to run Zurich Marathon on 21 April in under 2:50, I pulled a hamstring in December, just recovered from that, but slipped on an icy step on Monday and pulled a muscle in my glute - it's not bad, but just another week+ of no running.

Where are you based? I will be doing the CRUX run in Switzerland on March 2, its a 56k winter ultra with 2,300m elevation. I find that it is a fantastic run to kick start my season. I think that if you continue what you are doing and have the base fitness to throw in a long, low intensity ultra, you may be in good shape for a sub 3 in Milan

Agree with this -- current plan seems aggressive, especially once you're doing those 3 quality sessions/week. Are you still doing swim/bike training? I kind of reject the original premise that you have to train like this because you didn't have time to ramp up the mileage. This weekend would mark 11 weeks to your marathon. & you've already spent 4-5 weeks like this. 15 weeks would be plenty for a good marathon build. You could have spent the earlier weeks logging some base mileage, before getting into the marathon specific stuff. You still have 11 weeks. I would course correct & train like a marathoner. 18:45 is just in the range to put sub-3 on the table. It becomes a lot harder on low mileage. I don't think hammering a weekly 10x2min is the best for marathon training. 6x5min @ 5k should be impossible. The tempo stuff is fine. I like building from 30 to 60min total time around T. Can do those reps straight or broken. 3 hours w./ 3x30min + 20min feels like a race effort. Most are fine tapping out around 10-12 @ GMP in a 20-22 miler. I'll go up to 25k but am running 100mpw.

I would try to get to 5-6 runs/week if you're all in on this goal. Most of that can be easy. 2-3 1hr easy runs (can add in some strides), 1 medium long run (build to 80-90min), 1 threshold session (start with 30min, build to 60, ok to break up -- 10-12x1k on short rest), 1 long run (quality every other or every 3rd week). Mileage is usually the best indicator for marathon performance. I'd like you more in a 5k/10k with the current plan. I just don't see it working, trying to translate a 5k to marathon time on low mileage. Maybe it's feasible with a healthy dose of swimming/biking but I would still want to see more miles & specificity in the plan.

possibly when you are severely over trained and need a lot of rest to recover

Thanks for your insights. I'm not swimming/biking at the moment, so no synergies there. If I understand you correct you mean, that I should abandon this plan and instead ramp my mileage up quite aggressively, correct? In that case I would trade the risk of getting injured by too much intensity with the risk of getting injured by running too often....Maybe a compromise of running 4x per week with a long tempo run, a medium long run, an easy run and a fast finish long run could do the trick?

To go along with others without upping your milage no plan will "work". If you just want to finish then this will be fine but as you probably remember the marathon is painful! Assuming you can up your runs to 4-5 I would do one tempo, one medium-long, one long with MP, and as many easy runs as you can. I do not think (and I could be very wrong) you will see much return from VO2 intervals without a better base and that more tempo would be better because it does not beat you up as much. (again a coach or someone who knows more can correct my).

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*popcorn GIF*

In all seriousness, you still have 11 weeks to the marathon date. If I am reading this correctly you have already completed a month of running something like ~90, 60, and 60 min sessions each week. That's close to 30 miles. You can split those 30 miles up between 5-6 runs and increase your mileage each week by 10% to be up to 50-60-70 miles your last couple weeks (which is probably plenty in your case with your history). That's what I would do, but I also made the mistake of training too hard too quickly and now I am paying for it with my achilles.

It can be done for sure, I did exactly this back in the day in the time period you are talking about. I ran all of my training at race pace, often a little slower in the beginning, and faster in the end. But the goal was to have each run average my targeted race pace. Most weeks were about 40 miles give or take a few miles. I did do one 3 hour ride each week for endurance training without the pounding. Ran a PR well below what I thought I could do too..

I was your exact size, but 15lbs lighter, so perhaps you can work on that over the 11 weeks too. Each pound will be worth a good training session, so imagine if you got 10 more good sessions just pushing the plate back...A pound a week should be doable, at the very least a goal..

Have fun and dont freek out. Get in maybe two very long runs in there at race pace average and dial in a nutrition plan, and you should be good to go...

Please explain why you don't have enough "time". I find that it is quite often a code word for, "I am too lazy or disorganized to get the work done". Training for distance running is literally one of the least time consuming sports that exists. If you want to break 3 hours, then train 50-60 miles per week. That will take you at most about 8 hours. 99% of people have 8 hours a week of free time. Are you a resident in surgery or medicine working 80-100 hour per week? A young lawyer with crazy hours? If so, then forget a time goal and just enjoy the marathon. Otherwise, your best bet is to rethink the way you approach your day to day activities so that you can actually achieve your goals instead of trying to take shortcuts that almost always will set you up for failure.

The way I see it is:
Key workouts make it possible to achieve race goals.
General fitness workouts make it possible to achieve key workouts.


So....

Can you:
1) Do key workouts without general fitness workouts?
Maybe!
2) Use key workouts as preparation for other key workouts?
Maybe!

Will you get injured?
Pretty likely

Is this fun?
No.
It seems like you are eliminating the spontaneous and relaxing aspects of training.

Is this healthy?
No.
You are running a high risk of injury.
It probably won't be a ton of fun.

You will probably quit before or after you achieve your goal.

I was more worried about the increase in milage as opposed to training time because I thought that going from 20 to 60 miles per week with no significant intensity would not take me to a sub 3h marathon within 3 month. As I said before, maybe I should dial back intensity a bit and increase milage and go a middle way.

It's an interesting thought that doing only 3 days of running per week with high intensity has a better chance of getting you to a sub 3 marathon than 50-60 miles per week of running with less intensity. I don't have the answer but I would bet money on the 60 miles per week option.

That's the way I interpret it as well but recently I've heard people referring it to losing motivation because it's not exciting or interesting anymore.

If you have the time to run 6-7 days a week I would think you would have a better chance of going sub 3 with all easy runs then 1 long run with MP. 3 hours is a speedy marathon pace even if many on here can do it. And the more miles you have on your legs the less chance you will have of tiring out running at 6:50 pace. And if you do all but 1-2 runs easy, and I mean easy, you can still hit a tempo/vo2 workout during the week to pair with your long run with MP. Say you are able to run 7 days a week...
Monday: 5-6 miles easy
Tuesday: 5-6 miles easy
Wednesday: 10 total with tempo/VO2 intervals
Thursday: 4-6 miles EASY
Friday: 6-8 miles easy
Saturday: 6-8 miles easy
Sunday: 16-22 miles with 30 minutes MP adding 5 each week

That is a total of 53+ miles with most being easy which means you should be able to ramp up to that mileage if you take care of yourself and run your easy runs easy. I am not a run only guy and have found it is insanely easier to find time to run than juggling all 3. 10 hours a week running is like 65-80 miles a week depending on pace and 10 hours a week seems to be light work for many triathletes. So if you keep yourself in check you have time to get to this mileage and stay there and have a better chance at sub 3 than if you only ran 3 days a week. And this is for most people, of course there are outliers who can run little mileage and still run a fast marathon.

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Isn’t it pretty much the schedule for FIRST marathon training plan https://fellrnr.com/wiki/FIRST ? (First doesn’t mean first marathon, it’s an abbreviation)

It probably not going to work for everyone, but even here, on this forum there are people who mentioned getting good results from it? ( like sub 1:20 half or sum 2:55 full).

I’m actually doing such plan right now for a spring marathon, but for unrelated reasons. Work is pretty stressful and I’m recovering from a slow-burnout, so 5 hr/week is maximum that I can recover from right now.

I’m doing 3 hard runs (intervals, tempo, not very slow long run, like a 7:20 18-miler), 2 zwift sessions and 2 swims.

We will see how it goes.

I'm a pretty consistent 1:25-1:30 half marathoner that's about your height/weight and I ran 5 days a week with only 1 HM/Marathon paced run in the leadup to a marathon a few years back. I ran 3:00:XX. I don't think I needed any additional intensity to go faster; just a better pacing strategy since I ran the opening half in 1:26:XX. I was running about 30 miles a week 11 weeks out, so you have plenty of time to do a full build to 50-55 miles/week.

I think both high volume, low intensity and low volume, high intensity will work, but you're more likely to get injured doing the latter.

Definitely not advocating a quick ramp up of any sort because, I agree, you're just going to increase your injury risk. But 11 weeks, & 15-16 when you started, is still a lot of time to train like a marathoner. Spend the next 4-5 weeks adding more frequency/miles (all easy). I would cut the "speed" workout in favor of higher mileage. Then you would still have another 4-5 weeks to do a solid marathon specific block, but with more of a base. I just don't think it's feasible to try to run what your 5k projects out to off of a plan like this. If you have the time, try to add in some more miles. I'm generally seeing sub-3 off of 50-65mpw for runners with good endurance.

I have run a 2:49 on three runs per week on a similar plan, I was doing:

-Speedwork, 6 km warm up and bunch of 200-1200 m intervals at 3k-10 km race pace. 3 km cooldown. Idea of this workout was to work at paces much faster than marathon pace

-Tempo: built up to 20 km with 40 min steady in the middle. Often only 4:10/km.

-Long run: built up to 32 km with 2 x 6 km at race pace after 16 km easy (~4:50-5:10/km) But most weeks just easy the whole run.

6 x 5 min at 5 k race pace is very hard and risky. At 18:45 you will be doing 1300 m at that pace. Most running coaches prescribe no more than 800-1000 m intervals at 5km pace. I think even 800 m intervals are very hard.

Your 5km time is in theory sufficient for 3 hour but don't burnout or get injured.

Thanks for your feedback. It seems that the consensus of this discussion is that its risky but doable on 3 runs a week but that my particular plan has too much intensity in it. Going forward I will dial that back a little and try to squeeze as much running into my day as I can....will report back how it went.

Thanks for the encouragement....the weight is a good point. I am trying to lose a few pounds come race day. Currently there is ice and snow where I live but I could work in 2h of bike commute into my office days for endurance....

3:05 with no race pace training is a very respectable time. Thanks for pointing me to the CRUX run. Never heard of it before...I'm based in Zürich and now that I write this, I seem to remember that you too your shoulder out biking the Allmend trail...sounds like you're OK again...but could also very well be that my brain plays tricks 😉. Anyway, enjoy the Swiss winter for now. I'm happy that I have nice treadmill....

CRUX is brilliant fun, with a longer and shorter distance, if you are concerned about such a long run a month before your marathon. Its really convenient for Zurich, about 20 mins on the train to Kollbrunn and it starts at the station. The finish at Schmerikon is really close to the station and around 20-30 mins back to Zurich HB

I came off my TT bike in 2021 and had a grade 3 AC Joint separation, no ligaments in either shoulder now, but everything seems to work, and I can blame that on my poor swim form

Cons: "This plan is for someone already pretty much trained up to the marathon level."


It seems similar enough but there are 2 cross training days that add a bit of overall volume. & the plan assumes that you're a well trained runner. My guess is that most people doing this kind of a plan do not run to their potential in the marathon. There aren't shortcuts in distance running. If you want to take your 5k & run the marathon it projects out to, this isn't going to work unless you have years of good mileage under your belt.

Was the 2:49 in line with your 5k-half? Were you well trained heading into the 3 run/week build? Were you still swimming/biking?

Good question. Honestly...it wasn't, I ran a 16:52 four weeks before which seemed to indicate potential for a sub 2:45, however, 2:45 pace was feeling way too hard in training. I was also swimming and biking at reduced volumes.

Yeah not trying to put you on blast or anything. 2:49 is still a great time. Supports what I'm trying to get at. Your marathon potential is higher than that. When I first broke 17:00, I ran a 2:42 after that. It wasn't on 3 runs/week. I wouldn't have run 2:42. Now I feel like I can maintain what my current run fitness is, with full triathlon training. I ran a lot of running PBs in 2022, with a lot less running. But that wasn't because I trained less or added in more quality. It's because I had built up a good engine & had a decade of 3k-4k miles/year. I was running 4-5 times/week (instead of 7-10), and I was swimming/biking 8-10 times/week.

I just think it's a tall order for OP to hold the 5k projected marathon pace on 3 quality runs/week & no other activities. I would rather see, like someone else mentioned, 5-6 runs/week, with all of them mostly easy. 1 mid-week threshold session with good volume. 1 ez medium long run. 1 long run, with quality every other or every 3rd week. The overall miles are going to carry you in a marathon -- not attempting to do impossible 5k workouts.

Yeah, I totally agree. On paper, the more mileage we can absorb, the better running we can do.

Unfortunately, for many of us (in my case, a mediocre club swimmer that learned how to bike and run with hack techniques in both disciplines) the high mileage can be problematic regarding injuries.

So a 3 run per week with specific workouts is a reasonable compromise that can balance performance with injury risk.

Hi Slowtwitch,

bumping my own thread with a quick recap on how it went.....long story short: I failed (and felt quite miserable, actually) and hit the wall at only 20 miles in and came in at 3:16 with lots of walking the final miles. My failure was mainly muscular, as I was still running at a very constant heart rate but just could not move the legs any faster.....

With regards to training and as many of you have pointed out: I was not able to complete this 3 run a week plan, as during the later weeks of the plan the workouts were just too hard, which likely was a telltale of my lacking fitness back then. About 7 weeks out I switched my approach and started to run 4-5 times per week hitting 45-55 mile weeks with one tempo run and fast finishing long runs. This worked quite well and I gained a lot of confidence in being able to go sub 3h with a 22 mile long run with the second half at race pace that I could finish well. Two weeks out from the marathon however, I started to feel a deep fatigue in my legs. Quads and calfs were very sore and my easy pace heart rate started to increase by a few bpm but since I have been quite tiered the whole build I wasn't too concerned and kept running. Sticking to my plan at that stage probably was the biggest mistake, as I could not recover until race day even with almost no running for 7 days. On raceday my legst were still trashed. I refused to give up on sub 3 even though I knew I would hit the wall in hope of a miracle recovery....didn't happen ;-)

I won't have time to go for another sub3 in fall but will try to keep some of that run speed and try again next spring....until then happy training to you all.

Best,
U

3:16 with “a load of walking” is pretty impressive - you must have been going a hell of a pace before the wheels fell off!

Yeah keep at it OP. 3:16 with walking shows a ton of room for improvement. How was the weather? That could've also played a role with pacing. Did you run Boston or something else? Boston ended up being warm. Most people I know who ran blew up.

"Miserably?"

Get over yourself, please. Or take it to LetsRun

3:16 is still impressive - to most people, anyway

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

....sorry, this was not to imply that 3:16 is a bad time, what I wanted to express was that I felt really miserable and was hurting a lot reaching the finish line.

That's different, sorry

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Without reading this whole thread. I designed a training plan back in early January for my daughter and based on running 3 days a week since she does yoga everyday and is a doctor with a very demanding schedule. Her 1/2 trail marathon is April 27th, not her first but first in 10 years. She only wants to finish and her 10 mile times are great. I think she will PR when her other half was at the San Francisco Marathon.

I'm sorry you didn't meet your goal. This was an interesting, and fun, read though - thanks for sharing and updating.

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disclaimer: PhD not MD

I'm not condoning the original plan, but the move to bump up mileage 7 weeks out was probably a bad choice. It was pretty predictable that workouts such as "3h total run time with 3x30 min at race pace followed by 20 min above race pace" would be difficult, incredibly difficult for someone running <5h week. The plan you initially followed did little to enhance long aerobic base, what some may call fat burning capacity. These workouts were hard because you had little aerobic base. Without the ability to run 3h at an easy pace comfortably you'll never be able to do a 3h long workout with fast stuff in it, let alone 2h of fast stuff.

Increasing the volume was the right move, but 7 weeks before an event isn't long enough to reap the true benefits of volume increases. It's why you rarely see (serious) "6 week marathon" plans. The other factor is doing speed work before building a base. You built up a capacity to generate lactate and a strong anaerobic system (a high VlaMax) without a strong aerobic base. Then you tried to build the aerobic base on top of that, presumably at a fairly high pace. I'm guessing if we did lactate testing most of those easy runs would have still been significantly lactate producing. That's great, sometimes. Just not for 7 weeks before a race. The reason you see most plans build aerobic base then anaerobic speed is exactly this. The anaerobic work is done in service of continuing to build the aerobic system, not the other way around.

Tl;dr - It's better to show up under-trained than under-recovered.

Can I ask what changed in your life to allow the extra runs? If you had the time, why not just do it right from the start?

Good effort, a 3:16 is still pretty good considering you had to walk/jog/shuffle for 6 miles.

We have all messed up a good build cycle by not giving the body enough recovery to absorb the training load. Hindsight is always 20/20, but obviously it would have been better to dial back the workouts and just run easy once you got the fatigue building up too much two weeks out.

Thanks for chiming in. I think you are spot on in your analysis... I simply overestimated my ability and thought I could get away with running less and compensating by pace, when I realized that it didn't work I was able to squeeze in more running by getting up earlier which likely also took a toll on recovery over time...I will try again next spring and will do a 16 week build with 4 weeks of 80k per week of easy running before picking up the speed....
Lets see
U

Thanks for posting. My first thought was what others were saying, 3:16 and you failed! But I get what you are saying after reading on.

I think your post and follow up and plan adjustment will help others make a better informed decision. Keep at it! I think you will definitely pull this off.

Congrats on good training! Sorry for the slight overtraining at the end and good luck next time.

My personal experience with the 3 hard runs per week was weird. I did a half-marathon cycle, but the final race had heavy rain and 40F. Finished slow 1:29, but I’m not sure how much faster I could’ve been with more less ok weather.

Then I did a full marathon cycle on 3 runs. Marathon was postponed due to winter storm to a date when I’m on vacation in Europe.

So, I really cannot say if 3 runs a week works for me or not :) But I can say that I didn’t really like the experience. I enjoyed running 6 days a week 55-70 mph (but mostly slow) much more.

Yep all you can do is learn from it. Personally I don't like viewing it in terms of XX week builds or distinct cycles. The best time to start training was yesterday, the second best time is today. Even if you view it as a 16 week build you won't regret going into that phase as fit as possible.

A marathon is 99.9% aerobic, it's important to keep that in mind during training. Until you start getting to a bit more below 3h the finishing time of runners can be predicted with surprising accuracy by training volume and BMI. At least for the faster AG's the typical BQ runner is >60 mpw.

There's really no shortcuts (other than genetics). I'd wager that a training plan of nothing more than a year of 80mpw at self selected pace would result in better outcomes than even the best 16 week program that comes from after a low mileage base.

Or maybe he should be allowed to quantify his performance. One man's PR at 3:16 is another man's miserable failure. I "ran" a miserable 3:14 at Boston on my only attempt and I can say the walking, trudging, leg cramps were as miserable as I have ever been.
I sensed absolutely zero arrogance in his post that needed to be censured. Fast people have a right to fail and say they failed miserably.

I tried something very similar once and ran out of gas around 16 miles. I just think that when you are trying to run 26, then more is more is more. I've never been faster than when I managed to get in 340 hours one year and I was not even doing speedwork.

My go-to quote comes from Bill Rogers. He said that when he could get his mileage up to 140 miles per week and hold it for the time necessary, he knew he was ready to go.

Now, he was a elite but talked about doing this and getting injured, so my takeaway is ---more is more more, as long as you don't injure yourself.

With running it always depends on training history and what can be handled from an injury prevention standpoint, but if doing any kind of periodization of training over a season the origins of that has always been training from general to specific. The "build an aerobic base" thing has come from examples of training for shorter events where the general part is more volume based and the specific is speed/higher intensity. For long distance it's the opposite.

An aerobic base can also be several things. Even most VO2max work is over 90% aerobic and when you mention anaerobic work/speed I doubt anyone training for long distance do true anaerobic sets(this means really short work and long passive rest segments generally). Someone's anaerobic system can still be too strong for long distance from too much intensity, but for a lot of people that can be pushed back in a few months or less. Anaerobic capacity can also be pushed too high by doing too much intensity close to a long race so it makes less sense doing intensity/speed work too far removed from the specific requirements of the event in the lead up before taper.

Of course there are always exceptions based on individual physiology and one has to be careful when doing speed work on the run.

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A 3:16 when the goal is sub 3 is a pretty epic ‘kaboom’. Depending on his age, it might even be almost a min per mile too slow to be able to qualify and register for Boston.

Failed miserably, depending on context, is totally a fair self assessment here.

Two weeks out from the marathon however, I started to feel a deep fatigue in my legs. Quads and calfs were very sore and my easy pace heart rate started to increase by a few bpm but since I have been quite tiered the whole build I wasn't too concerned and kept running.//

Here is where you lost you chance at your goal, not in the race, your pace, or anything else you did during race week. It seems very plain and simple to me, just dont get yourself in that state again, and if you do, then do whatever you can to get out of it immediately. There was really nothing wrong with your plan, and I feel you would have succeeded or been very close except for this thing you let go on during the last few weeks. Dont try and blame it on mileage, race tactics, or any other easy thing to grab, it is right there in front of you, screaming at you...


Its ok that you upped your mileage and some paces, but you just have to pay attention to what your body tells you afterwards, and be ready to punt if that is the best way forward...

7 days no running before the race... did you bike at least? should have just done easy miles instead of 0 running

Kudos for a good effort.

I agreed, the week you felt the deep fatigue, you would have been better off just going into recovery mode. We have all screwed a good build cycle by not giving the body enough time to repair itself from the accumulated load.

Yeah these are some strange responses... 16 minutes off target is 23sec/km. That's more than the difference between my open marathon pace and IM marathon pace, which feels way slower.

FWIW, 12 years or so ago I totally blew up in a marathon, hit the halfway mark at maybe 1:28 or so, finished in 3:09 completely disgusted with myself. Now I'd be thrilled to finish, period. So I can see both sides on this one.

For the OP, yeah, didn't work out like they wanted but also worth remembering that some people follow all the right guidelines, do the traditional buildups with the high mileage, etc., and still blow up toward the end. Marathons are weird that way.

You're sure you weren't bonking after 20 miles? I wonder this has not been discussed yet in this thread (or I missed it).