Noel Carrolls Marathon plan

hot to trot

Apologies if this is repeated . I posted this thread earlier but it didn't come up.

Has anyone trained for a marathon using this programme?
The long runs go up as far as 2hrs 30 mins. It is explained that even though this is a short time , the total time for that particular week is 8.5 hours which is a lot of mileage regardless of what pace you run at.It seems to be lots of medium and shorter length runs rather than short runs and a very long run. Done on a time basis so that would favour faster runners I reckon who would be training within an hour of their expected finishing time. But well adrift of a slower 10mm runner.

So it seems that it is a case of shorter runs but far more of them.
I would like to do 4-4.30 in my second marathon but am doubtful whether I would have the time to dedicate to a 5-6 day schedule. But I wondered how others got on with this ? and did they feel that they had adequate distance covered in the "shorter" long runs.

Running Bing

hot to trot wrote: »

Apologies if this is repeated . I posted this thread earlier but it didn't come up.

Has anyone trained for a marathon using this programme?
The long runs go up as far as 2hrs 30 mins. It is explained that even though this is a short time , the total time for that particular week is 8.5 hours which is a lot of mileage regardless of what pace you run at.It seems to be lots of medium and shorter length runs rather than short runs and a very long run. Done on a time basis so that would favour faster runners I reckon who would be training within an hour of their expected finishing time. But well adrift of a slower 10mm runner.

So it seems that it is a case of shorter runs but far more of them.
I would like to do 4-4.30 in my second marathon but am doubtful whether I would have the time to dedicate to a 5-6 day schedule. But I wondered how others got on with this ? and did they feel that they had adequate distance covered in the "shorter" long runs.

Jack Daniels does a similiar thing in his plan in that the long run is capped at 2 hours 30 minutes.


To be honest I always looked at it as something for more experienced runners.People doing long runs at 8 minutes a mile will get a lot of miles into 150 minutes but if your doing long runs at 10 or 11 minutes I would imagine there are better options out there (15 miles would be your longest run which is not long enough imo).


Im a relatively new runner myself and Im not very well up on marathons so feel free to ignore. I imagine some more experienced folk will have a more informed opinion to give:D

ZiggyStardust

I agree that i think 2.5hours is a bit short especially if you are thinking of coming in around 4h-4.5hrs.
Have a look at the Hal Higdon training plans which seem very popular.
For my first marathon I used the training plan on runrepublic.ie and since then have used a modified version of this one.
Alot of the training plans have distance down for the long run. One modification i did change was that I changed this to time. So this kind of links in with your prposed 2.5 hours. If I were you, I would do a run of over 3 hours, if not for time on your feet, for a phychological benifit.
Best of luck.

BenEadir

Hi,

I've been slowly building up from zero to 5k in 35 mins on a treadmill. I wanted to get to this basic level before hitting the road for some 'real' running.

My target is to commit to doing 4 x 10k's a year (which will motivate me to maintain a minimum level of fitness) and this year I'd like to do the Dublin City Marathon. I'm planning to start Hal Higdon's Novice 2 18 week programme starting on June22nd and between now and then build up to 8-10k at a comfortable level so I start the Hal Higdon programme at a reasonable level.

Is this a reasonable strategy? Is the Novice 2 programme ok to do your first marathon on? I looked at the novice 1 programme and it seems to be for those who just want to get around in 5-6 hours. I'm 40 and want to do the best time I can. The novice 2 programme just looks a better fit.

Any thoughts?

Ben

Peckham

That strategy makes sense. In preparing for marathon training plans, the first few weeks should look easily achieveable and shouldn't be that much different to what you're used to doing in weekly training.

If you feel comfortable with novice 2, then go for it. No reason why you necessarily need to use novice 1 if you feel it's going to hold you back.

Only other comment is - get off the treadmill and onto the road. Weather is good; no reason to be stuck indoors on the treadmill!

osnola ibax

Hey there, for what it's worth, your plan sounds very similar to mine, I've been running since jan and my plan is to consolidate over the next 7 weeks maybe doing 20 - 25 miles a week before starting the hh intermediate 1, doing that one because of the extra miles in the long runs, I've started an oul training log on boards too which is keeping me really interested

BenEadir

Thanks for the feedback Peckham.

Osnola, I wouldn't be able to commit to more than a 4 day regime this time but when I finish and go for it again next year I'll see if I can step it up a bit to intermdiate. Don't want to be too ambitious on my first attempt at a marathon.

Ben