A bit of advice needed

Whereisgalway

Hoping to run in my first marathon in Limerick in May. Been training steady for the last two months. 10kms on average been 51mins & 15kms in 1h 17mins & 21kms 1h.54mins and Ran 30 km today in 2h.50, (ran out of steam & fell apart on the last few km.) I'm a bit confused on what to do from here training wise. Should I be running faster? I'd love to finish a second sub 4hrs am I been unrealistic?

Thanks a million for any help n guidance

Coffee Fulled Runner

There's lots of plans available online. I found "my asics" useful when I was starting out.

Singer

Whereisgalway wrote: »

Hoping to run in my first marathon in Limerick in May. Been training steady for the last two months. 10kms on average been 51mins & 15kms in 1h 17mins & 21kms 1h.54mins and Ran 30 km today in 2h.50, (ran out of steam & fell apart on the last few km.) I'm a bit confused on what to do from here training wise. Should I be running faster? I'd love to finish a second sub 4hrs am I been unrealistic?

Thanks a million for any help n guidance

Hello there Whereisgalway!

The first thing you need to do is make a very large pot of tea, sit down and read the first post of last year's Dublin Marathon mentored novices thread:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057429723

Back already? Ok, so now you know that you need to follow one of the plans detailed in the intro

Doing 30k in 2:50 is basically running at slightly slower than marathon pace for a sub-4 marathon. You need to slow down your long runs, only a relatively small amount of running needs to be at marathon pace or faster. Given that you can already do 3/4 of a marathon at the desired pace, I think if you do everything detailed in the novices thread you will meet or exceed your expectations.

Answering the questions in the intro would help too (i.e. sporting background, weekly milage for the last while, etc.)

Best of luck with your training. I can only highly reccomend using boards.ie to help out with your first marathon, the novices thread was a fantastic resource for me, and even though there mightn't be a specific thread for Limerick training, you'll get some great advice from folks around here.

ger664

A recent 10K race Time ?

Firedance

Singer wrote: »

Hello there Whereisgalway!

The first thing you need to do is make a very large pot of tea, sit down and read the first post of last year's Dublin Marathon mentored novices thread:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057429723

Back already? Ok, so now you know that you need to follow one of the plans detailed in the intro

Doing 30k in 2:50 is basically running at slightly slower than marathon pace for a sub-4 marathon. You need to slow down your long runs, only a relatively small amount of running needs to be at marathon pace or faster. Given that you can already do 3/4 of a marathon at the desired pace, I think if you do everything detailed in the novices thread you will meet or exceed your expectations.

Answering the questions in the intro would help too (i.e. sporting background, weekly milage for the last while, etc.)

Best of luck with your training. I can only highly reccomend using boards.ie to help out with your first marathon, the novices thread was a fantastic resource for me, and even though there mightn't be a specific thread for Limerick training, you'll get some great advice from folks around here.

look at you giving the 'slow down your long runs' speech singer

+ 1 to this post OP, give us some details of recent races and your training to date too and lots of experienced runners will be happy to advise.

Whereisgalway

Done around 150km in January n 80 or so far this month. Fastest 10k was 51kms. Thanks for the advice abt slowing down

ThisRegard

You don't seem to be doing any short runs or speed work, the shortest you have there is a 10k. As the guys said, take a look at the variety of training programs out there and you'll see how they vary things. Plus it makes it a bit more interesting for yourself too when training.

Whereisgalway

I do 5 Astor soccer one evenin a week aswell, I half see this as my speed work day, lots of sprinting!!

ger664

Whereisgalway wrote: »

lastest 10k was 51

You probably could go faster the 51 in a race for 10K. That been said however 4:15 is a more realistic target time for the Marathon.

snaffled

I was in a fairly similar situation a few months ago, and ended up doing a 3.59. I have a post here on the boards with some of the things that I did in my first (and so far only) marathon that seemed to work for me. When I found myself running good times for 10km-21km, but really falling off in distances over that, I did the following. (As well as some of the great advice earlier in this thread about long runs and consistent runs)

Got a running watch (well, an Apple watch). I was treating the 21km like running a normal 10km, and then just trying really hard for the final half of the run. This worked for 21km, but I fell apart over the 21km distance. The watch - always set to show me the time per km - allowed me to manage my run much more effectively. I stayed within a slower time for the first 10km, and then managed to keep this time more stable for the rest of the run. I still slowed over the end of a long run, but nowhere near as much. Maybe some of this was psychological, but it still worked. When I first got the watch, I was looking at it every 250 metres probably to make sure of my time!

I thought much more seriously about hydration and fuel for the long runs. I bought a water bottle with strap so I didn't have to grip it when running, and put Gatorade in it instead of water. I also carried some energy chews that I had after about 20km. Occasionally I'd run with a banana & eat it slowly after about 15km.

There are lots of websites that estimate your marathon time (presuming you train for it!) based on what times you do over other shorter distances. It became about what do I need per km, not per run. I analysed what did I need to do in stages of the long run, rather than an overall time. It then became about just hitting my targets in the earlier part of the run, fueling, and preparing myself for the last 10km of whatever long run I was on. You know you can hit your targets for the first 21km, so your run really begins after that mark. The end of the run (for me at least) became the whole run. The rest was just preparation and hitting the timing marks.

Put yourself in a mental state of achieving your time. After asking everyone, and listening to their advice, I made my own time, and was completely bloody minded about going for it. Most people told me to aim for a 4:15-4:30 time, and said I was mad to really push for a sub 4 hour in my first marathon, given my times. But look, you must be mad to even consider a marathon, so what's an extra few degrees of madness to get a time you really want. Yes respect the marathon distance, but also its a challenge, so I figured - rise to it.

Based on your similar times to mine (and mine were closer to the actual marathon date, and the marathon itself was in high heat & humidity), a sub 4 hour is well within your grasp. Not easy, but achievable. Plan, prepare, and go for it would be my advice.

kookiebrew

My advice would be find a good training plan and stick to it religiously...

There's no reason you can't do a sub 4hr for your first marathon. I started back running March 2014, did a few half and 10ks over the summer, totalled about 460 miles in the yr and started into a training plan Jan 2015. Trained for 3:50 and came in 3:50:51 last May in limerick.

If your willing to put in the hard work you won't have a problem, I think the intervals and tempo runs are what really made the difference for me.

Will be doing limerick again this may and hope to see you do your sub 4 there too...

Whereisgalway

Ran 30km in 2h 40mins, delighted with myself 😀
Should be well under 4hours for da marathon

kookiebrew

Ive only run one marathon but I will say don't underestimate the final few miles, if you have a look at last years limerick marathon thread you will see how tough the race got coming in from raheen and around the north circular, the weather got warm and anyone I talked to afterwards said it was a real slog to finish. The hill at the Gaelic grounds got me, half way up my hamstring tightened up and didn't recover fully from it. Had to stop for a minute or two and try to stretch it out, thought my race was over. Lot to be said for stubbornness ��

ger664

I would ignore race calculators for your first marathon. They over estimate the time. For someone running their first marathon you will not have the Aerobic capacity to get the times the calculator spits out.

From experience I find the best estimator for first time marathon runners is 5 times your 10K time. As you have never raced a 10K I would suggest you do so in the coming weeks. This will give you a much better gauge then a 30K training run.

Being too aggressive on the day with your target time can make for a hard long slog over the last 6 miles.

That pace for the 30K is too fast for the level you are at. You need to run these runs at ~6:15 pace per KM

Whereisgalway

ger664 wrote: »

I would ignore race calculators for your first marathon. They over estimate the time. For someone running their first marathon you will not have the Aerobic capacity to get the times the calculator spits out.

From experience I find the best estimator for first time marathon runners is 5 times your 10K time. As you have never raced a 10K I would suggest you do so in the coming weeks. This will give you a much better gauge then a 30K training run.

Being too aggressive on the day with your target time can make for a hard long slog over the last 6 miles.

That pace for the 30K is too fast for the level you are at. You need to run these runs at ~6:15 pace per KM

Why would I need run it at 6.15 when I plan on running 30k @5.16 on race day? Surely I need to get my body ready for running distance at marathon pace. I don't plan on doing too many long runs at narration pace. Plenty of recovery between long runs is the key

ger664

Whereisgalway wrote: »

Why would I need run it at 6.15 when I plan on running 30k @5.16 on race day?

Whats the plan for the final 12.2K on race day ?

Coffee Fulled Runner

Whereisgalway wrote: »

Why would I need run it at 6.15 when I plan on running 30k @5.16 on race day? Surely I need to get my body ready for running distance at marathon pace. I don't plan on doing too many long runs at narration pace. Plenty of recovery between long runs is the key

I'm no expert but I think the idea of long runs is to get your body used to running over three hours or so. I believe the idea is to slowly use up your energy then try and run the last few kilometres at race pace. If you read through the Dublin marathon 2015 novice thread it's full of useful information that will help you. All the best.

kookiebrew

Running at marathon pace is a tempo run in the plan I'm doing, don't run more than 10 miles at this pace. Long runs are 30-40 secs slower per mile.

Most plans are designed by experts in the marathon field so I'm guessing there is a reason not to run long runs at goal pace.

jake1970

Whereisgalway wrote: »

Why would I need run it at 6.15 when I plan on running 30k @5.16 on race day? Surely I need to get my body ready for running distance at marathon pace. I don't plan on doing too many long runs at narration pace. Plenty of recovery between long runs is the key

Have a read of this post http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=96220748&postcount=1789 by Clearlier from the DCM 2015: Mentored Novices Thread. I see that Singer has already suggested that you have a read of that thread, thats very good advice.

Gavlor

ger664 wrote: »

Whats the plan for the final 12.2K on race day ?

Great question!!

El Caballo

Whereisgalway wrote: »

Why would I need run it at 6.15 when I plan on running 30k @5.16 on race day? Surely I need to get my body ready for running distance at marathon pace. I don't plan on doing too many long runs at narration pace. Plenty of recovery between long runs is the key

There are a few reasons

Improving stroke volume- training to improve the strength of your heart is a key element of running and easy running. Stroke volume is the amount of blood that our hearts can pump with a single beat, the volume of blood pumped will increase with intensity until it plateaus at roughly 60% of HRM (This is generally around easy pace). This is the point where our heart is almost pumping as much blood as it can with one contraction, as the intensity increases after this point, increases in stroke volume become incrementally smaller and offsets the cost/benefit of running faster because we are training harder but getting almost identical benefits.

Mitochondria- This is an important one because time and not pace is more important in developing mitochondria. Mitochondria are present inside the cells of our muscle fibres and are responsible for turning fuel into energy using oxygen. The more density of mitochondria we have, the more efficient we will become at using fat as fuel, increased glycogen stores and just more energy efficient as a whole which is crucial. The way to build mitochondrial density is by spending more time on your feet as it is more important than pace at creating this adaption. When we run too hard to often, we can't get the same volume of training in because the runs are faster which means they are faster and we also need to factor in more recovery time. Capillary density works on the same premise. There is more to this regarding muscle fiber type but I won't go into detail and make it more complicated than it already is.

Recovery- This is the holy grail. You simply won't recover from doing all your long runs at marathon pace. Our bodies hate stress, so much so that it quickly adapts to make sure we don't ever have to go through it again. This has a beautiful side effect of making us stronger when we do stress it. The problem is that there's only a certain amount that it will take before shutting up shop and saying no more. We lose fitness everytime we train, it's recovery where all the gains are made and if the recovery is too short or the efforts are too hard, we lose the benefits of training because we never let it take effect. The concept of training is to gently but consistently stress our body, not have huge stresses which need huge recovery.Finding the middle ground is key to success in running.


When we put these reasons all together, we get a double whammy effect where easy running gives huge benefits to the strength of our heart but we also have a knock on effect of being able to spend more time running which will help us develop mitochondrial density because we will not need as much time to recover. These runs will prepare your body for running a marathon because they employ the same mechanics as marathon running does.

There will come a point when diminishing returns will play a part and long/hard Marathon pace workouts will be needed every now and then but that's not something to worry about for a long time. This is the groundwork and should see you make big progress. Don't do all your runs at marathon pace, a few miles here and there at the end of a long run to get a feel for marathon pace on tired legs is ok.

Whereisgalway

Thanks a million for all the feedback, some great advice