So I’ve been training for a half marathon next weekend for the past few months, and have gotten much faster than I anticipated (largely because I actually have a training plan), and hope to run a 1:30 (par or mediocre or whatever for here, but makes me happy). While I haven’t actually done it yet, I’m confident I’ll hit the goal, or come very close.
Obviously, having a real training plan has given me the low-hanging fruit of ~40 seconds/mile from last year, and gains will be harder. But I’ve got several things going for me, including some weight I could lose (former rower and attempted powerlifter) and some “lifestyle” changes I can make (sleep etc.).
Is aiming for a 3:10:59 in June a realistic goal, if I’m willing to put in the miles?
If you run a 1:30 next weekend and continue your training until the marathon and go in fully prepared then you can do it. Mcmillan says a 1:30:00 HM equates to 3:09:49 marathon and 1:30:59 equates to 3:11:53. Good luck in your endeavor my friend.
If you run a 1:30 next weekend and continue your training until the marathon and go in fully prepared then you can do it. Mcmillan says a 1:30:00 HM equates to 3:09:49 marathon and 1:30:59 equates to 3:11:53. Good luck in your endeavor my friend.
Thanks for the reply and well-wishing.
My problem with McMillan’s race calculator is that shorter distance times have far too much sway on longer distance projections. My mile PR (clocked well before I started training on running) indicates I should comfortably be able to break 3 hours over 26.2, which is far off the reality of the situation.
The calculator is showing what the equivalent performance is at various distances. Its very accurate if you’re comparing like races. As you’ve stated, comparing a mile race and 26.2 mile race aren’t comparable. A half results would be more accurate as a predictor than a mile. Conversely, your mile time may be more accurate at predicting a 5k than your marathon.
I think you’ve got a great shot at 3:10 if you hit your half goal
I believe it is really realistic if you do the training.
half marathon *2 + 10 is definitively doable.
& with 6 months in between you can build a solid base.
I have a 1h29:30 or so half and a 3h15 marathon a month later. BUT I ran that 3h15 on run fitness mostly and did a very poor marathon training for various reasons. & also very poor run training after the 1/2 including a stupid injury on my feet while canoeing.
I hit the 1/2 in 1h35 and realized @ that moment the 2nd half would be tough and challenging due to lack of training.
Let us know how the 1/2 goes, then some more info will be learned and recommendations can be made. Until then … there is absolutely nothing in your post to go from other than to say a BQ marathon time is absolutely attainable if you are willing to put in the time/miles.
Yeah man, if you keep up the solid training I definitely think it’s within reach. Especially considering the amount of time you have to prepare. Someone also mentioned the half time x 2 + 10min and that’s been very accurate for me. I’ve done four marathons so far with a half 6 - 8wks before three of them with my times in the full being half x 2 plus 9:13, 10:01, and 9:48. Good luck, stay healthy, and let us know how it goes!
Thanks for the preliminary-ish advice, guys. I’d give more statistics/info, but there really isn’t any to be had (I’ve run a whopping 3 races in the last year). I’ll up the thread with more targeted questions come post-race.
1:30ish is a good time, and it should make you happy!!! go for it, if you get near your goal this weekend and recover quickly and are able to get back on it then it is absolutely possible.
all my faster marathons were based off a good build up to a 1/2 marathon. good luck
I qualified in my second marathon. My first one, I was just trying to finish. Had no idea how fast to go. Probably left a few minutes on the course, but I really enjoyed the race. The second race I had a better sense of goals, and was able to go a lot faster. I’m not saying that this is the only way to do it, but it worked well for me.
It really depends on your experience and the course conditions.
To put it in perspective, at age 30-33, I ran 70-100 miles per week, and ran HMs at 1:28, 1:27, and 1:25 leading up to marathons of 3:15, 3:20, and 3:30+. I was extremely well prepared using the Pfitiznger Advanced Marathoning plan (3x!), but continued to have a challenging time at the 26.2 distance. I did not, however, run the downhill marathons of CIM or St George, or ones on the East coast, and if you took my finishing placement in the same <5%AG in those fast downhill marathons, my projected times would have been 3:00-3:08. Conditions help a LOT.
I consider the Mcmillan calculators extremely aggressive for the marathon estimate. I’d say you need perfect conditions and preferably a downhill course with few/no uphills to make 3:10 if you’re doing 1:30 HMs on <70 mpw.
If it’s your first marathon, I would say keep your Mcmillan time goal as a “stretch” goal but don’t expect to realistically hit it at all. I was running 1:30-1:32 HMs at 45-55mpw and was still putting up 3:45-4:05 marathons on non-ideal courses.
My results aren’t that atypical as well if you ask a lot of “normal” runners (not a ton of talent) who race on non-downhill courses with temps above 50F. Although I do say that here on ST, there seem to be a ridiculous number of guys who can do sub3s on a ridiculously low number of miles per week - hopefully you’re one of them!
Your goal is ambitious. With an 85-min half speed, I see it as more realistic. I ran a 59-min. 10 miler and an 82-min half one season on 50-60 mpw and could not break 3 hours. In my second attempt at sub-3, I trained almost perfect (60-70 mpw) but a 15-mph headwind kept everyone 5-10 minutes off their goal (In a way I have always considered my 3:04 that day a 3-flat). 3:10 is pretty solid, and actually exceptional for a 90-min. half guy. 3:20-30 is more realistic. Good luck.
I’d say you can do it with the right training. One thing to remember about training calculators is that they tell you what you’d be if you were the same ability at all distances, which almost no one is. It has been my experience that very few people are actually the same for a half and a marathon, they are usually better at one or the other. I think this is mostly due to training, however, so there is hope. If you are naturally better at shorter distances - which it sounds like you are based on what you said about the mile - then it will be even more important for you to train specifically for the marathon. That will probably be risky in terms of injury or burnout, so keep that in mind. Specifically, you will probably need to make the following adjustments to your half marathon training (and I say this not knowing exactly what your training has been for the half)
1.Unless you are already running 80mpw or more, you will need to increase your mileage by 20mpw to realistically expect to run an equivalent marathon.
2.You will need to do longer runs from 18-24 miles
3.Most important, you will need to do tempo and/or cutdown runs aimed at the marathon. At a minimum, you should have two runs of 18 miles in your training cycle with one of them run evenly right around marathon pace and one of them run as a cutdown. The cutdown would be something like the first two miles at 7:50 pace going down by 5 seconds per mile every two miles to finish at 7:10 pace the last two miles. If you are running over 70mpw, these 18 milers should be more like 20-21. Let me note that these two runs are near the end of the training cycle - you start with much shorter ones, say 10 miles at 7:20 pace or 10 mile cutdown, and you work your way up. Ideally you’d have at least a couple 13’s and a couple 15’s also, but some of that depends on how long your cycle is. You should only do a long tempo/cutdown (15 or longer) every other week. One final thing about this - do not get sucked into doing a half marathon in place of one of these runs unless you are willing to run it at the correct pace, which means slower than half marathon pace. Most people can’t get themselves to do that and they go out to fast, which can wreck the marathon-specific value of it.
4.You may wind up reducing the amount of speedwork you do in orde to accomplish the first three items. I have found speedwork during marathon training to be a very individual matter, with different people with different needs.
Now, I am almost certain you will hear opposition to what I am suggesting. You’ll hear people saying they ran equivalent marathons to their half and they didn’t do this kind of training. You’ll hear people citing Galloway or Pftzinger or Jack Daniels, all of whom have at least somewhat different approaches. Those guys have coached far more people than me and are very well respected - I am sure their training programs work well and at least in Galloway’s case help avoid injury. I’ll simply say that those tempos/cutdowns give you more specificity of training for the marathon than just about any program out there. This is what the kenyans and others do, even though they often don’t specifically call it that, they just run two hours at 5 minute pace and call it a long run. certainly some people don’t feel they need to enter the marathon having run 15-20 miles repeatedly at race pace. Many of them even still race well, but most of them slow down at the end and just figure that’s the nature of the race.
Your goal is ambitious. With an 85-min half speed, I see it as more realistic. I ran a 59-min. 10 miler and an 82-min half one season on 50-60 mpw and could not break 3 hours. In my second attempt at sub-3, I trained almost perfect (60-70 mpw) but a 15-mph headwind kept everyone 5-10 minutes off their goal (In a way I have always considered my 3:04 that day a 3-flat). 3:10 is pretty solid, and actually exceptional for a 90-min. half guy. 3:20-30 is more realistic. Good luck.
If you are running an 85 minute half, you should be running significantly faster than 3:10 for a marathon.
To the OP- I did a sub 3:10 marathon in May, a couple months after doing a 1:29:07 half (which was a PR at the time). I think you’ll have to improve yourself to go from 1:30 to 3:10, but the amount of improvement is realistic. My suggestion would be to focus on the weight loss. This summer and fall I went through another training cycle, building up for a half marathon only this time. My training was absolutely awful, averaging only 40 miles/week with sleep going to around 6 hrs/week compared with 55-60mpw and 8+ for my previous marathon training cycle (we had our first baby, the little guy takes up a lot of time and sleep). At this most recent half marathon I ran a 1:26:30, over 2.5minutes better than my previous PR. The only thing I can contribute that to is losing 5lbs, which is about 3.5% of my body weight.
To the OP- I did a sub 3:10 marathon in May, a couple months after doing a 1:29:07 half (which was a PR at the time). I think you’ll have to improve yourself to go from 1:30 to 3:10, but the amount of improvement is realistic. My suggestion would be to focus on the weight loss. This summer and fall I went through another training cycle, building up for a half marathon only this time. My training was absolutely awful, averaging only 40 miles/week with sleep going to around 6 hrs/week compared with 55-60mpw and 8+ for my previous marathon training cycle (we had our first baby, the little guy takes up a lot of time and sleep). At this most recent half marathon I ran a 1:26:30, over 2.5minutes better than my previous PR. The only thing I can contribute that to is losing 5lbs, which is about 3.5% of my body weight.
I’m more than a little physiologically handicapped for distance running because of my tall build (I’m 6’7", 205 right now), which is ironic, because I’ve had huge advantages in every other sport I’ve participated in (basketball, swimming, water polo, rowing), so I know I’ll have to do the miles. I’ve settled at about 45mpw for this half cycle, and definitely feel comfy bumping that up 10-15mpw.
Of course the sleep thing might be tough… I’m a 1L law student, and have trouble forcing myself to get 6-6.5 hours a night. Can’t win 'em all!
My problem with McMillan’s race calculator is that shorter distance times have far too much sway on longer distance projections. My mile PR (clocked well before I started training on running) indicates I should comfortably be able to break 3 hours over 26.2, which is far off the reality of the situation.
Remember, it’s with the training you can do it. What it says from your mile time is that you have the basic building blocks to run that 3 hour marathon, you still have to train your body to do it. As things stand whilst you have the speed and VO2max to run fast enough, you cannot operate at a high enough proportion of that VO2max for the marathon to run the equivalent marathon time.
The training will let you run that equivalent time. In fact in the athletes I’ve seen with such big differences, cycling is actually an excellent way to build that difference, your limits are aerobic endurance and you can do a lot with that on the bike without the mileage limitation of running, so you can end up with a much higher amount of time training the aerobic parts.
I ran a 1:33 half on a very flat course and a 3:12 mary on a much hillier course. I don’t have great speed but can hold my pace. So there are variables but id say a 1:30 half you can do a 3:10. I’m hoping for a 3:10 thangsgiving morning!!