just curious to hear whether your stand alone marathon time has improved after completing an IM distance race. Last year, after doing a couple of 1/2 Irons, I did a 1/2 marathon and smoked my pr by about 12 minutes and I felt really strong throughout. I just finished IMKY and plan on doing a 1/2 Iron distance race in Nov and follow that up with a marathon mid Jan. Will the stand alone marathon feel pretty easy for me? I’m guessing it will but I want to hear from some of you ST’ers about what you’ve experienced.
I just did IM Lou (my first) and have a hard time imagining the “run” I did in the marathon portion having any positive influence on my stand alone marathon. I will be interested to know what others say.
I hear ya, my run for IMKY was pretty slow. I ran to each aid station and walked through each of them, but I figure the endurance built up for the Ironman would be a non-issue for a stand-alone marathon and all I would have to be concerned about is speed ( at least that’s what I 'm hoping to hear)
I’ve found in the past that just “doing” a marathon became easier; we used to jog one out each year just for fun.
Racing one does not change.
I think maybe in terms of mental preparedness but I’m not sure I fully understand the question. Right now I’ve done one IM in which my marathon split was actually a PR for me but that was based off of having done only one previous marathon and not really training properly for it…so my n=1 and a weak “1” at that…
Right now I am training for a stand-alone marathon and the training is utterly different than my run training for IM. For my stand alone marathon, I’m running 3x as much as I did in my IM training. I’m only riding my bike once per week and easy at that (I have zero power pretty much on this recovery day). I am hoping to PR for the marathon by about 45 minutes…my training thus far indicates that this is a totally reasonable expectation…I’m not sure the IM had much to do with it other than I approach things of this nature in a very different, more methodical and much more serious way than I did for my first marathon. I learned a lot training for IM and now that I am pretending to be a runner, I’m learning even more.
If you are thinking that you will do an IM and then 6-8 weeks later do a stand-alone marathon I would caution you. Here in Chicago that is pretty popular - - particularly among first-time IMers. They do Wisconsin and then 6 weeks or so later they do Chicago. I’ve never ever heard of anyone having a “good marathon” who took this approach. I don’t know if it is because they were burned out and slacked off their training between the two events or were still fatigued from the IM…but I don’t know of a single person whose done it well. My tri coach in fact thinks and IM and a marathon should not occur in the same year…I agree. I did Canada in 2008 and no way could I be devoting as much mental strength / enthusiasm to my stand alone marathon training had I done a bunch of tris earlier this year. - - In fact I did only one, a sprint as well as a sprint distance duathlon. Rest of it has been just running.
did a marathon pr last year(in my 13th or so stand alone marathon) two months after my 1st and only ironman. i attribute the pr entirely to my training for the ironman. those long training days in preparation for the ironman made the 3 hours i was out there on the course for the stand alone marathon seem like nothing. so pysically i think i was in the best shape to do one at the time and mentally youre so much stronger after training for and doing an ironman. my marathon seemed almost “easy” if thats at all possible, i just kept telling myself “only 90 minutes left” versus the ironman when i was spent and had yet to start the marathon.
Given how many other marathons you had under your belt, I’m guessing running is strength…and clearly you recover quickly. Maybe the answer is “no” for the less experienced runners and “Possibly” for the more experienced. As an aside, my 5K PR earlier this year was almost entirely off of bike training…But I’m gunning to break that with just run training…
I would think that one’s standalone marathon time would only get slower with IM training. Time that would otherwise be spent running or in recovery now has to be spread out across three sports (plus recovery). Perhaps if you had a really slow 1st marathon, then took up tri and got in better shape, and then did another standalone marathon your time would improve - but assuming a runner took up tri, standalone run times would suffer.
I would agree. Tri added about 25 minutes to the marathon, 10minutes to the half, and 5 minutes to the 10k. That’s from going from a pure runner to tri and losing most of the speedwork sessions.
hmm i guess in about a majority of these sorts of questions the answer is, it depends.
@spirogeek - if you wouldnt mind posting your prior times - were you a 3:00 marathoner (ie very fast - at least relative to me 
)
i am coming in from approximately the same angle as the OP - i have done one standalone marathon, which i did in 3:50 (if i remember) - richmond 2007. it was pretty cold and windy, some hills.
contrast that to my IM Looey marathon of 4:05. 15 minutes slower after 8 hours of busting my ass. not too shabby. no, i wont be qualifying for kona any time soon but it sure seems like my performance is jumping up quite a bit.
im doing duke half (triathlon) in 3 weeks - i plan to cruise it at B or C pace (WTF that means), then do city of oaks marathon approx 4 weeks after that. my guess is that even if i cruise it, i will still PR it. which is exactly what i plan to do.
10 weeks after that im going to try my first ultra - 50k frosty 50. again, not planning on running it hard. i am really enjoying building tons of running base, which will leave me to focus a bit more on biking when the weather is decent.
I’m beginning to think that the answer depends on how good a marathon runner you were before the switch to triathlon/IM training. If your standalone marathon time is 2:30 or so, I could see that the decrease in run training for IM training would not help pr’ing a s.a. marathon. But what if you had 4 mths or so to focus on speedwork and focus less on endurance…would it get you to your next pr?
For me, my marathon is 4hrs (only done once a couple of yrs ago) and can’t help but think that I should be able to smash that time this Jan after all the endurance I have now built up from IMKY training.
Fall 1999 Toronto Marathon 4:26
10 Ironmans later
Fall 2008 Toronto Marathon 3:15
I think it helped-
.
IM MOO - 3:50 was mary part of the IM (10:4x total time)
Dallas marathon 4 months later - 3:10
Stand alone mary PR before that was 3:38ish. I did about 5 marys and 1 IM before the MOO/Dallas year. I was 36 years old.
It helped - focused on tempo and speedwork in that four months.
2:42 became 3:07 for standalone marathoning.
1:10 became 1:20 for the half.
32:00 became 37:00 for the 10.
On the other hand my 50mile time dropped by almost 80 minutes and my cycling improved dramatically. I know its the extreme end going from pure hard core runner to tri but it just shows the effect of speedwork and the focus of pure running. Overall, my fitness improved and I’ve had a lot more fun.
A stand alone marathon is never going to feel easy, if it does you’re doing it wrong.
I did a bunch of marathons before I started triathlon. I’m not built for running so it was hard to really get my fitness past a certain point from running alone because I don’t recover that well from hard runs . A couple of years putting in time biking and swimming as well as running and I took 27 minutes off my PR. 3:53 down to 3:26 entirely due to increased fitness
Oh I think your time should improve considerably. I don’t think I could get my speed back as I’m much more of a cyclist now than a runner but my new slower marathoning is much more comfortable and I feel much better doing it. I think IM training only really hampers the quickest of people who have forgone the specific speedwork and time investment involved with running for the other benefits of triathlon training.
Not an expert in the subject matter, but I would think there is very little correlation (or benefit) on open marathon running times and IM marathon. The reason I say that is due to the approach one would take when preparing for an open marathon versus the approach you take when preparing for an IM marathon. I do a lot more speed work when training for an open marathon than do for IM marathon training. For open marathons I generally do 16 week buildup and will do weekly speed sessions. For IM marathon I will do a 20 week buildup, with the first 12 to 14 weeks not having any speed work. So, I think IM marathon will certainly help on the endurance end of the scale, but will not do anything (or very little) on the speed end of the scale.
I think maybe in terms of mental preparedness but I’m not sure I fully understand the question. Right now I’ve done one IM in which my marathon split was actually a PR for me but that was based off of having done only one previous marathon and not really training properly for it…so my n=1 and a weak “1” at that…
Right now I am training for a stand-alone marathon and the training is utterly different than my run training for IM. For my stand alone marathon, I’m running 3x as much as I did in my IM training. I’m only riding my bike once per week and easy at that (I have zero power pretty much on this recovery day). I am hoping to PR for the marathon by about 45 minutes…my training thus far indicates that this is a totally reasonable expectation…I’m not sure the IM had much to do with it other than I approach things of this nature in a very different, more methodical and much more serious way than I did for my first marathon. I learned a lot training for IM and now that I am pretending to be a runner, I’m learning even more.
If you are thinking that you will do an IM and then 6-8 weeks later do a stand-alone marathon I would caution you. Here in Chicago that is pretty popular - - particularly among first-time IMers. They do Wisconsin and then 6 weeks or so later they do Chicago. I’ve never ever heard of anyone having a “good marathon” who took this approach. I don’t know if it is because they were burned out and slacked off their training between the two events or were still fatigued from the IM…but I don’t know of a single person whose done it well. My tri coach in fact thinks and IM and a marathon should not occur in the same year…I agree. I did Canada in 2008 and no way could I be devoting as much mental strength / enthusiasm to my stand alone marathon training had I done a bunch of tris earlier this year. - - In fact I did only one, a sprint as well as a sprint distance duathlon. Rest of it has been just running.
I am unsure about the OP question.
I raced IM Malaysia in 07 and raced my best marathon to date 21 days later( 3.32 ) in the same climate I will add.
For what it’s worth my standalone marathon’s with no proximity to IM have yielded 3.34 and 3.35 respectively.
I would agree with your coach though that if you really want to do well in either an IM or a Marathon , they should be spaced at least 6-9 months apart in my personal / unprofessional opinion.
I have found though that marathon training is very, mentally taxing ,when you are accustomed to IM training and the ability to bounce between disciplines.
As to whether the marathon training has benefitted the run segment of IM , I would not disagree , but I would argue that there is a smarter way to train to run better off the bike than doing more run training.
Terry
I’m with the others. I came from a running background (nothing fast, 2:49 marathon PR, mid 16 5K) but decent. Was slower when I tackled another marathon (3:07 and 5K 17:54 - age 37 then) after IM training. Now, I focus primarily on cycling and having a blast. Still haven’t peaked there after time trialing, road racing, cyclocross, etc. So much more diverse and competitive vs. the “participatory” running events.