Why wouldn't you keep running at pre-marathon race-day training level? (Read 749 times)

Okay, so I've never trained for a marathon. But I was wondering... It seems to me that most marathon training programs include a fairly significant build-up in milage and distance of long runs, peaking a few weeks before the actual event, and then tapering for the race. My understanding is that, after a week or two of hobbling around most runners, if they're going to continue running, then go back to their pre-marathon build-up level of milage and training, or at least something pretty close to it. I am thinking that in general, people who have run many marathons follow this pattern as well. (Feel free to correct me if this is wrong!) I was wondering... if you've already gone to all that trouble to build up to a marathon level and you know you'll eventually want to run another one, why wouldn't you just want to keep your running at the pre-race levels? Why would an experienced marathoner keep a base of, say, 35 MPW with a 12 mile long run, and then build up to 55 MPW with a 20+ mile long run, and then, after the race is done, go back to 35 MPW? Would it just be the time committment involved, or is there a physiological reason not to continue to train at that level? I am comparing this to my experience with training for a half-marathon. I've been running a little over a year, and ran my first HM in October. Since then I've kept pretty close to the amount of running I did before the race, and, now that I'm looking at a 14 mile trail race next weekend, I feel much better prepared for it than I did for my HM. What I mean is, I feel that staying at my pre-race day training level has done me good and my running is better than it was entering the HM a little over a month ago. Is the half-marathon training base that much different from the marathon training base? I can see that the time committment would be roughly twice as much, and can understand that as a reason not to keep the miles up. But it seems to me that we can get used to an incredible amount of exercise as part of "normal" life, and if being almost race-ready has a large competitive advantage, why don't more people do it? From my perspective, it seems like constantly going up and down in milage would be harder on the body than maintaining a high level if you're properly adjusted to it. What do y'all think?

In getting ready for a marathon, a lot of people are pushing their mileage to levels that they can't physically sustain for long stretches without burning out. You can do this for a couple of months when you are getting ready for a 26.2 mile race, but you need to scale it back to more sustainable levels for long stretches of time in between marathons to maximize long term improvement, stay injury free, and keep the fire burning inside. Also, for a lot of average runners, their long run makes up a big chunk of their weekly mileage and--for the same reasons as above--they can't maintain a 20 mile long run year round simply because this beats them up too much. So, for example, just by dropping your long run from 18-20 down to 10-14 there's a big drop in weekly mileage.

I think that, all things being equal, the average person could maintain long runs of 20+ miles. However, there are increased chances for injury, especially for someone who is relatively new to running, or longer distances. Additionally, it takes a lot of time out of your week to run 75 miles (for most of us, at least). Even at, say, 8 minutes per, you're looking at 10 hours of the week spent running. Not many people are able to sacrifice the time. I know that I was pretty tempted to just maintain my mileage levels after my marathon, but I found that mentally, I needed to sort of drop it back.

Thanks y'all! I appreciate the feedback.

Is that like taking a couple deep breaths before diving to the bottom of the swimming pool?

Exactly. You are about to launch on a big ramp up of milage and you need to make sure your body is as fresh as can be.