A half 11 weeks before a full is not really a tune up race IMO. If you want to do both go ahead but do not expect to get anything meaningful (that you can use for the full) from the half. Too far out from your main race and too close to the marathon. Of course this all depends on how mich youve been running, how well you recover, how important the tune up race is for you.

^^^^^This.

That far out, treat the HIM as a hard training day.

---

ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

What about moving up the marathon? Depending on how far you're going to travel, 70.3s are fewer than marathons, which are in every medium sized city more or less.

I usually do a marathon in the spring and then a mid summer 70.3. 4 weeks was the quickest turn around time I've ever done and to do it i had to sacrifice one race at the expense of the other to do it - especially if you're looking to BQ. Even with what I'll call a "run heavy 70.3" build, I wasn't ready for the 70.3 when the time came.

This year, I've got 6 weeks between races - 1 week recovery, 4 for training and 1 for taper - and I'll still have to make prioritizations about how much cycling I want to do vs running in what will be a shared build phase.

If your calendar is set, try for the BQ and don't worry about your 70.3 time. Throw in cycling as a cross training, but the BQ means that running should be the priority.

The challenge is marathon shape and half ironman shape are totally different. If you race a marathon, it will take around a full week to recovery, and that is only two weeks from your half ironman and that is around taper time.

If you must.....

Not sure how talented you are a runner but I would focus on a marathon plan (give or take) to BQ but throw in some biking to "recover" during the marathon plan. The week after your marathon focus on recovering by biking/swimming at a light intensity but alot of volume, and the next two weeks leading into your half increase intensity on the bike and swim and run 4-5 times each week but only for like 3 miles at a time.

That is what I would do, I am sure I have done something like you mentioned, not ideal but whatever... enjoy.

Running is definitely my strength. I am a weak swimmer and average biker. I usually finish my marathons around 2 hours and 50 minutes without any real serious training. I am currently at about 34 miles of running a week at the moment and building to 50-60ish. I'll try to see if I can find a decent marathon a little earlier.

The half Ironman is really to test out my nutrition plan and to get used to some more of the "bumpiness" of competitive swimming. again

My full Ironman isn't until August 26th.

That is a strong marathon time, good idea on finding another marathon, I know that aint easy.

I always found nutrition dialing is a smaller factor on a HIM (almost a non factor), but much more important on the Full. Your nutrition on the half won't equate over to the Full.

Use the half to test your pacing/racing plan and fitness.

If you are a 2:50 marathoner and your only goal for the marathon is BQ then you can back off the pace and still BQ. I'm not sure of your age or gender so how much you can back off could vary significantly but at least 20-25sec/mile. This way you won't be quite as beat up from the marathon and recovery time will be shorter.

I will be 30 at the time of the marathon. The other option that I have is a half Ironman about 6 weeks before the full Ironman race. I think that might be pushing it close though.

I think 6 weeks seems pretty ideal, probably wouldn't do a full taper (or taper at all) for the HIM.