I think you're best served by building mileage, possibly going higher than 40-45 that you're talking about, and doing some tempo runs. Races are good, on occasion. No more than one a month, max, though. Anything more than that, depends on your marathon training plan. The one I'm looking at using this year is 24 weeks, so that would leave about 3 months of base training to get up to the minimal starting mileage for the plan (going by your time frame).

I'm picking up this thread again because my marathon is not until October which gives me > 8 weeks before I start the 18-wk training plan. I was planning to just get back to 20-30 mile weeks before then and keep my runs under 6 miles. I want to just feel great with a 6 mile run and mentally look at that as a "short run". Is there an advantage to upping the long runs to 10 miles before I start Hal Higdons training schedule (I think that is the one I will mostly stick to)? I am also just getting back off of a 5 week recovery from arthroscopic surgery so I don't really want to push it. I am planning to resume some Tuesday speedwork and a weekly 5 mile hill run. Thanks and I love reading all of your different ideas. Sherry