Need advice for Overall Improvement...Marathon on Dec. 6th (Read 810 times)

Everyone's advice seems right on, I would listen. Becareful with running the long LRs too early. They can wear you down, injure you when you least expect it. Maybe go get Hal Higdon's Int I/II plan and start 12 weeks out. Your LR would be shorter for awhile, which is probably a really good thing since you need to put some focus on pace runs during the week.

Ben...or anyone else: Have you seen that NOVA program about 12 people (was it?) trying to run a marathon in 40 weeks from scratch? It was such an interesting program; I was just about to "coach" a group of beginning runners and I sent the site to them to watch. I remember there was a guy who used to run XC for college (I though, or could be high school) and, because he was very busy with family issue and work, missed some of the earlier long runs... I believe he ended up running the fastest time among this group. There IS such thing as talent and, Ben, you obviously seem to have one. It is, however, not that amazing or surprising to train for the marathon as you do. I always share an example of my wife's first marathon; she was quite busy at the time and also she didn't quite have that obsession to run that much. I gave her a program where she would run a super long run on every weekend (we went by time so she started from somewhere around 1:40, working up to 3-hour run 4 weeks before the marathon) with twice, maybe three times, somewhere around 2~3 mile easy jog. So she was doing something like 25MPW with about 80% of them run over the weekend in one shot. Over the years with my experience (running wise, that is!), it seems more women seem to be able to do that kind of thing than men--skip lots of days and yet do "point workout" well. I think one of the things would be their temperament. They don't seem to dash out the door like a bat out of hell! If they get tired, they slow down or even walk. Whereas, men tend to hang on to the pace above their head and then die 3/4 of way into the long run. Sounds familiar? ;o) If your immediate goal is to just finish the marathon and perhaps test the water (with your potential), as most of the previous posters seem to agree, trying out to do 27~30 miles would probably not do much good for you except for satisfying your ego. You've already gone far enough with, seemingly, plenty left in the tank, knowing you could have gone 26 miles. What more do you want to check? Of course, you still have 10 more weeks to go (my wife in fact did TOTAL of 10 weeks preparation) so now the trick is to maintain your condition AND motivation. I feel a lot of program is far too long and, while they are enthusiastic and work hard in the beginning, their motivation goes south after about 2 months and they are barely hanging in there in the final 4 weeks when they should be tapering and feeling like; "Man, I can't wait to run more!" Instead, they'd go like; "Man, we still have to keep on running another 4 weeks? I've had it by now...!" With that in mind, it may even pay for you to take a few weeks down ("down" I mean, cut back your training a notch) and get back to the routine in, say, mid to late October. Then you'll try out a few 20-miler and perhaps one 23 or something like that as the final dress-rehearsal. If you absolutely want to, go as far as 25. Don't do it any closer than 3 weeks before the actual marathon, though. As for "going after some fast time", I'd strongly recommend including some form of hill/step resistance training. One of the best ways to work on your speed/strength. If you don't want to/don't have time to do a lot of running during the week, just do a long run on weekend and one hill session during the mid-week; throw some jogging here and there for recovery. This young girl I coached 2 years ago to run her first marathon; she did just that; one long run on weekend and hill training on Wednesday. She played softball, she played vollyball; and jogged a couple of times during the week... She wanted to do 4-hour marathon (as everybody else). She did 3:41. I believe hills contributed a lot. In real life, probably 90% of us never find out what our "talent" or potential might be. They just go through life as "ordinary" and think nothing of it. Only about 3% decide to challenge things like trying to run a marathon. But even then, now with average time of the marathon getting down to about 4:30, many think "4-hours" as a decent goal. I've seen many young healthy people training for the marathon and say, "Oh, I want to run 4-hours" with NO idea why 4 at all--probably you hear it all the time and know someone who's done a 4-hour marathon, thinking it's "something you still need to work hard at but not that hard in order to achieve." They simply "settle" for this relatively easily attainable goal of 4-hours... I'm not trying to put them down AT ALL. In fact, I'm the one who always get teary eyes, watching some old lady staggering the finish line in 6-hours or something, absolutely ecstatic... Out of those who realize their "talent", probably only 10% of them actually fulfill their potential. You see other running message board, many, and unfortunately many young kids, talk about "talent" or "gene". The only way we can realize what "talent" we possess is to work intelligently and systematically for 3~5 years. Only then, you can probably say if you have it or not. But in most cases, by then, those who don't have "talent" would be far advanced than those with great talent but never worked hard at it. Then they'll turn around and say, "Well, it's not cool to work your butt off..." Lately, I've been training like a mad man; almost every day, twice a day...(10~13 times a week) The only motivation behind this is; I want to show young athletes--particularly the ones I'm working with--some, whatever you want to call it, work ethic by actually doing it myself (instead of telling them). Hopefully, some talented one could see it and start to work their butt off as well. Then I'll be content...