Has anyone done a full marathon 3 weeks before an IM (and still had a decent IM)?
Most of what I’ve read tells me it’s a bad idea, and I’ve never raced two long distance races that close together before, but this years a little different: I’ve had a broken leg for the past 2 months and I think my usual spring Marathon will be out of the question (accounting for rehab time).
My IM is definitely #1 focus. I would love to go sub 10. But I would also like to qualify for Boston and go <3:00 for a marathon this year.
Has anyone backed up a sub3 marathon with a sub 10IM over such a short period of time?
I was under the impression (and it may be totally wrong) that if you run a sub-3:10 marathon in the IM, you’ll qualify for Boston. Kill two birds with one stone. No problem, right? He, he.
If you were one of my clients I would be smacking you on the back of the head now!! Unless you have superb recovery ability this is really not a good idea - my advice skip the marathon and concentrate on the IM - but it is your call.
Yep, 3:10 is the qualifying time. I just want to see the 2:XX. I ran a 2:50 a few years back but I haven’t been close to that in a while. So, I have a real hankering to get back there. It’s kind of crazy looking at how atrophied my leg is right now but then again, I haven’t been this motivated to train in quite some time either.
Thanks to others for the advice. Maybe I’ll shoot for a PR in the half-marathon instead.
I’m all for racing, but this is certainly a baaaad idea. First of all, if you see 2:XX as your marathon time, you’ll see 5:xx as your Ironman marathon run split :-(. …and I think you just said that you can’t do a spring marathon due to a broken leg? So you will miss lots of base training, then you want to go sub 10 in an Ironmman and sub 3 in marathon and place the marathon 3 weeks before the Ironman? Now, unless, you are already a 2:40 marathoner and a 9:00 Ironman dude (in which case 2:59 and 9:59 would be easy training pace), then you are smoking something and likely have unrealistic expectations.
Being a serious marathon runner, converting to the IronMan distances as of right now (hence me reading this site now), I feel that I can offer some solid advice on your running.
How well you recover from your marathon will be based almost 100% on how well you prepared for it. Most people run a marathon just to finish it and a much smaller portion train to race the marathon. If you have trained well enough that you feel you can not only finish the marathon but run extremely strong in it (based off your training), you will recover quickly. Other factors that will help in your recovery is how well you hydrated and took care of yourself immediately following/during the marathon (24 - 36 hours after). Getting out for a walk and making sure you are rehydrated/nutritionally replenished will help your case to recover as well.
There are plenty of examples of people that run races within a week of their marathons. They prepared properly and were able to do so. Many who just run the marathon to finish it would not even dream of running a race a week or two after the marathon because they are still feeling it.
I am not sure of your training level but if you honestly believe if you have properly prepared for the marathon, you should be plenty recovered to do a DECENT effort at the IM. Looking to have a great day 3 weeks down the road is not as likely. To me it is all about having fun and enjoying the competition. If you want to excell at both events, I wouldn’t advise it.
RunnerX, come back to us after you have done an Ironman. No way this guy will be ready to do a fast Ironman 3 weeks later…and looking at the big picture, if this guy is a 2:5x runner with a broken leg, he will kill himself to simply break 3. And to break 3, he will need a 10 day taper, which means he starts tapering for his Ironman 4.5 weeks out, losing some really high volume bike training from 5 weeks out to 3 weeks out. So now not only does his run split get lamer in the Ironman, but he’s potentially losing some bike and swim training and perhaps going slower in those sports.
Never said the op could do a fast IronMan after a marathon 3 weeks before. I said there should be no reason if they are properly trained and took care of themselves that they couldn’t have a DECENT IM.
Having a fast IM would be out of the cards most likely, as I stated.
The IM is definitely priority #1. I’ve never been sub 10 for an IM but I have been sub 3 for a marathon, so I’m thinking, based on the advice that I won’t go for the double.
It may be a better idea to do an early season Marathon in 08 to get my Boston qual.
Trigeek76
Have you done an Ironman before? What race are you doing the Ironman at? What is your half Ironman time? What is your olympic tri time? How many years have your biked and swam for? What is your 1500m/2000m/3800m swim time?
Just wanting to guage if sub 10 is a realistic goal. There are guys a dime a dozen who think that they can go under 10 cause they are reasonably fast at short events such as a marathon. This tendancy is actually even more prevelant in reasonably quick runners. The Ironman marathon can humble the local run stud in a hurry. As a point of reference, I’ve gone under 3 hours 11 times, and I’ve raced between 10:20 and 10:45 12 times (14 Ironmans…none on “fast courses”, 14 marathons none on “fast courses” either…)
