Maybe, maybe not. You won't know until you try. But here's my experience:
I ran sub-14 shortly college (was a miler in college). Similar training profile (16-mile long runs at 6:00 pace, 10-mile tempos in the low 50s). Kept running semi-seriously for longer than you did, so didn't add weight. Decided to run a marathon in my mid-30s, and put in a decent four-month training block. Ran a 1:12 half in prep. Thought I was fit enough for 2:32 in the race (so lots of similarities), went out conservatively on 2:36-2:37 pace and stayed on pace for 20 miles feeling easy, but my legs exploded and I hobbled in for a 2:45.
Moral of the story: getting sufficient aerobic fitness back was doable (though not trivial: I did work pretty hard in training for a bit), but that wasn't enough to prepare my legs for the pounding. Now, you'll be younger than I was, and it's also possible your stride will be more suited for the marathon. I always had a noticeably bouncy middle-distance stride, and was a low-mileage guy, so was never going to be able to translate my fitness and shorter distances to "equivalent" times in the marathon.
I think it is definitely doable. That says, I think it matters a lot whether that 14:00 5k was off of 50 flat 400 speed vs. 55 400 speed. 14 is obviously rolling but 5k to marathon translations are very tenuous.
If I was in your shoes I would spend 2-3 months of 5k cycle, 3-4 months of HM and then launch a marathon cycle more calibrated to real fitness.
1) You ran "about 14:00" in college? Who says something like that? There is no "about." You ran a time. What was it?
Maybe he wants to stay anonymous. Does it matter if it was 13:58 or 14:04 or 14:06?
Exactly.
I'm inclined to think that it would be rather easy, requiring not much more than boosting mileage and losing weight. (Whether the added weight was primarily fat, muscle, or water doesn't make much difference to me. It just means that you should run more gently, perhaps on significantly softer surfaces, until you get close to a good running weight.)
OP, if you put on 5 lb of muscle and 10pounds of fat, but stayed aerobically healthy, 232 is pretty conservative (given a decent course/weather).
In fact, I'd structure your year like this
12 weeks: get in shape to train
next 12 Weeks: get in shape to run a decent half marathon
Next 2-4 weeks: Recover
Next 12-16 weeks: marathon cycle.
maybe that means your average mileage per phase goes like this, 45/60/40/70. If you lose half the weight, I'd put your HM at 111 and your marathon at 230:00
"About 14:00" is fast...even if it was 1415-1420.
Wrong to ignore my correct comments.
Not all 5,000 meter guys (from 10 years ago no less) can do a decent marathon. The guy did long runs of 16 miles 10 years ago, and now you want him to bump it up to 70 MPW by fall? Good luck!
OP, you go train for the marathon in November or December and run it. Prove me wrong. Use me as motivation if you like. I'm rooting for you!
I think this should be relatively easy. I think if you stayed healthy and progressed that you should be able to hit 220 or so with super shoes. People with your talent progress quickly, and you're at peak age for running.
What I would do is break up the year into 3, 4-month chunks.
1-4: Focus on getting up to 70 mpw or so. Time spent on your feet running is more important than anything. No big workouts or anything. Get your routine down. Start strides right away. Don't underestimate how long it'll take you to get comfortable with turnover. After 10 weeks or so pick a few races. Start with a 5k then a 5 mile and 10k. I'd expect high 15s for 5k with no problem.
5-8: Take a two week break at the start. If the races went well, up the miles to 80 or so. Do your long runs, longer workouts. Keep racing and doing your strides. I'd expect low-15s here for 5k. You should be at goal weight by this point.
9-12: Take a two week break. Now get into the marathon training. Think 90 mpw or more if you can handle it. Really focus on the long efforts. I'd think you'd be 24:30 or so for 5M, and 1:06 or so for the half. Taper for the last few weeks before your race.
I think this should be relatively easy. I think if you stayed healthy and progressed that you should be able to hit 220 or so with super shoes. People with your talent progress quickly, and you're at peak age for running.
What I would do is break up the year into 3, 4-month chunks.
1-4: Focus on getting up to 70 mpw or so. Time spent on your feet running is more important than anything. No big workouts or anything. Get your routine down. Start strides right away. Don't underestimate how long it'll take you to get comfortable with turnover. After 10 weeks or so pick a few races. Start with a 5k then a 5 mile and 10k. I'd expect high 15s for 5k with no problem.
5-8: Take a two week break at the start. If the races went well, up the miles to 80 or so. Do your long runs, longer workouts. Keep racing and doing your strides. I'd expect low-15s here for 5k. You should be at goal weight by this point.
9-12: Take a two week break. Now get into the marathon training. Think 90 mpw or more if you can handle it. Really focus on the long efforts. I'd think you'd be 24:30 or so for 5M, and 1:06 or so for the half. Taper for the last few weeks before your race.
I think the real risk is the transition here from 5-8 to 9-12. I would wager a healthy sum this dude can get to low to mid 15s (or faster) in 5-8 months but I would not bet on them converting even a sub 15 5k into a 1:06 HM. To me some good targets would be:
I ran 14:50 in college and my first marathon like 3 years later (on 30 mpw was) 2:45 and it was the worst I’ve ever felt in my life lmao. Granted the longest run I’d ever done before hand was 18 miles. The last 5 miles felt longer than the whole race.
When did Flagpole get so salty? Plus, Flagpole never ran near 2:32 so take his guidance with a grain of salt. He definitely didn't even approach 17:00 let alone 14:00.
So I am in my early 30s and ran about 14:00 in college. I have always run some but not much the last 10 years, but I've been doing runs of 5-8 miles pretty regularly the last year, like 3-5 runs per week, many weeks doing a longer run of 9-11 miles. I am about 20 lbs heavier than I was in college (mostly muscle as I have lifted weights a lot since then) and haven't really done much for running workouts, but I recently did a bit of a fitness test to see where I'm at and reason my threshold pace is about 6:15/mile right now.
I have been thinking of running a marathon and trying to give a decent performance for awhile now, and I've been thinking of shooting for 2:32:xx by November or December of this year. My plan would be to just run more consistently start doing actual workouts again, and stop lifting to lose some excess weight, see how things go. Wondering what people here think about this plan and goal... When I was at my best I could cruise 6:00 pace for 16 mile long runs and it was only a medium effort, like a solid day but nowhere near all out. Also would do 10 mile tempo runs in practice averaging in the low 5:20s on a somewhat hilly route. Is averaging 5:49/mile for a marathon doable by end of 2023?
What was this 'fitness test' in which you 'guess your Threshold to be 6:15 pace'?
Ignore everything you did 10 years ago. It does not matter.
2:32 is 5:48 pace.
6:15 pace is under 2:44.
If you can really rev the miles up I will say 2:45 is possible, but sub 3:00 more likely.
Maybe he wants to stay anonymous. Does it matter if it was 13:58 or 14:04 or 14:06?
Exactly.
I'm inclined to think that it would be rather easy, requiring not much more than boosting mileage and losing weight. (Whether the added weight was primarily fat, muscle, or water doesn't make much difference to me. It just means that you should run more gently, perhaps on significantly softer surfaces, until you get close to a good running weight.)
I want to add that I strongly disagree with those who believe that you should first focus on 5k or 10k training, followed by HM training, followed by marathon training. If your goal is to run a decent marathon within a year, and you're already in your thirties, you should focus on marathon training from the start. For me, that means first increasing overall mileage and reducing weight as much as possible without significant injury or illness, after which you can eventually move to incorporating some significantly longer runs, followed by threshold training, VO2max training, and a bit of repetition training. I realize that some others, including Daniels, reverse much of this cycle by moving from repetitions to VO2max to threshold training, and I think that's doable, but not at the expense of delaying mileage increases and weight loss. In fact, I think that fast repetitions are especially problematic without first establishing a decent mileage base and getting fairly close to marathon racing weight.
In my own case, after a few years in the 2:18 to 2:20 range, I did very little running between the ages of about 32 to 40. When I started back at 40 with the goal of at least qualifying for the Olympic trials again (the trials standard had softened considerably, to 2:22), I went straight to twice-a-day training, first at an extremely slow pace on soft surfaces, then gradually increasing my "cruising speed" while quickly moving up to about 100 miles/week. (That would have been more difficult to do if I had gained a lot of weight during my thirties.) After one year (during which I ran about 5,000 miles), I was able to run in the high 2:20s (that is, somewhere between 2:25 and 2:30), but it never did feel the same as it had a decade earlier, and I realized that it just wasn't very fun to run at a pace that now felt awkwardly slow. (I do believe that I could have run faster on a point-to-point course, especially one with a substantial net downhill (e.g., Cal Int'l) or a good chance of a prevailing tailwinds (e.g., Grandma's), but I've never approved of that approach to "improving.") Considering that I had only been back to running for a year, perhaps I left a few minutes on the table, but I knew that the same training would have resulted in considerably faster times when I was younger, and I had no desire to get into age-group competition, so I quit the marathon experiment, recognizing that age really isn't just a number, and instead focused more on other parts of life.
So I am in my early 30s and ran about 14:00 in college. I have always run some but not much the last 10 years, but I've been doing runs of 5-8 miles pretty regularly the last year, like 3-5 runs per week, many weeks doing a longer run of 9-11 miles. I am about 20 lbs heavier than I was in college (mostly muscle as I have lifted weights a lot since then) and haven't really done much for running workouts, but I recently did a bit of a fitness test to see where I'm at and reason my threshold pace is about 6:15/mile right now.
I have been thinking of running a marathon and trying to give a decent performance for awhile now, and I've been thinking of shooting for 2:32:xx by November or December of this year. My plan would be to just run more consistently start doing actual workouts again, and stop lifting to lose some excess weight, see how things go. Wondering what people here think about this plan and goal... When I was at my best I could cruise 6:00 pace for 16 mile long runs and it was only a medium effort, like a solid day but nowhere near all out. Also would do 10 mile tempo runs in practice averaging in the low 5:20s on a somewhat hilly route. Is averaging 5:49/mile for a marathon doable by end of 2023?
What was this 'fitness test' in which you 'guess your Threshold to be 6:15 pace'?
Ignore everything you did 10 years ago. It does not matter.
2:32 is 5:48 pace.
6:15 pace is under 2:44.
If you can really rev the miles up I will say 2:45 is possible, but sub 3:00 more likely.
Alan
He ran 4:30/mi for a 5K and you think 5:48 or almost a minute + 20 is not likely? Age is an asset in the marathon. It's easier to develop your aerobic system at 32 than it is at 22.
Yes definitely possible. I ran 14:30 5k, just outside 30 for 10k and 66 min half marathon. Stopped competing in 2009. Ran 2 - 3 times a week for fitness until 2019. Started training more seriously but still only about 40-50 miles per week max. Ran 2:34 age 40 after about 1 year of training after running 32:20 10k. The marathon was in terrible conditions (windy day in a socially distanced marathon round an airfield).
One year later ran 2:25 off about 50-60 miles average per week (max week was 80) after improving 10k to 31:15.
Of course ten years ago matters! If the OP said he ran 1600 ten years ago, stayed in decent shape, and wanted to run 232, this would be a completely different thread.
To Avocado's number: I think you have a point about your training thoughts. The 5k/HM/Marathon progression simply allows the OP to have intermediate goals that align with increasing miles.
So I am in my early 30s and ran about 14:00 in college. I have always run some but not much the last 10 years, but I've been doing runs of 5-8 miles pretty regularly the last year, like 3-5 runs per week, many weeks doing a longer run of 9-11 miles. I am about 20 lbs heavier than I was in college (mostly muscle as I have lifted weights a lot since then) and haven't really done much for running workouts, but I recently did a bit of a fitness test to see where I'm at and reason my threshold pace is about 6:15/mile right now.
I have been thinking of running a marathon and trying to give a decent performance for awhile now, and I've been thinking of shooting for 2:32:xx by November or December of this year. My plan would be to just run more consistently start doing actual workouts again, and stop lifting to lose some excess weight, see how things go. Wondering what people here think about this plan and goal... When I was at my best I could cruise 6:00 pace for 16 mile long runs and it was only a medium effort, like a solid day but nowhere near all out. Also would do 10 mile tempo runs in practice averaging in the low 5:20s on a somewhat hilly route. Is averaging 5:49/mile for a marathon doable by end of 2023?
1) You ran "about 14:00" in college? Who says something like that? There is no "about." You ran a time. What was it?
2) Your 20 pounds of extra weight is likely 5 pounds of muscle IF you have actually been lifting (but the "about 14:00" comment has me wondering) and 15 pounds of fat. Don't kid yourself.
3) So, you want to predict a marathon based on a 5,000 PR (that we don't even really know what it is) from 10 years ago and what appears to have been a long run back then of 16 miles? Have you ever run further than 16 miles? You know you've got 10.2 more miles to go after that, right?
4) Your 10-mile tempo runs from 10 years ago mean nothing. You are older. You are fatter. You don't really have any experience with running a race even close to the marathon distance (or so it seems), and you are making some pretty big assumptions on your ability to handle both the training and the race itself.
5) Knowing that the marathon is usually at least a disappointment if not a disaster the first time out, that you weren't specific with your 5,000 time from 10 years ago and you are older and fatter without much running recently, I'm going to say no, you have no chance to run that time in 2023 for the marathon.
Good luck though.
Been posting regularly on these boards since about 2005, so I feel like I have the authority to say this post is absolute garbage, and Flagpole, if this post is representative of who you are, you are garbage also. The whole point of letsrun is for runners to come together and talk about running, brainstorm, analyze, discuss, encourage, give constructive feedback, etc. Sure there are troll threads and name-calling over politics, whatever, but the above post is completely antithetical to what this place is supposed to be and frankly makes you look like some crotchety old psycho. You don't even know anything about the OP and then go on to write nothing but negative BS based on nothing but your own shet attitude. If this is really all you have to offer, get off the internet. Letting you know too that if I see another post like this from you I'll write the Brojos from my personal email requesting your suspension. We don't need crap like this here.
Don't mean to get off topic to what the OP asked, but this post stood out to me in a way different from any other post I've seen on this board. Get a grip.
It's unfortunate to go on LetsRun and then come across people like Flagpole who are just incredibly mean to random people online for no reason.
OP, I am happy you are trying to get back into it. I think if you find momentum in training, stay healthy, and drop down closer to ideal race weight, then you can definitely hit your goal. Probably try to target one of the faster fall marathons, e.g., Chicago, Indy, or CIM.
It's unfortunate to go on LetsRun and then come across people like Flagpole who are just incredibly mean to random people online for no reason.
OP, I am happy you are trying to get back into it. I think if you find momentum in training, stay healthy, and drop down closer to ideal race weight, then you can definitely hit your goal. Probably try to target one of the faster fall marathons, e.g., Chicago, Indy, or CIM.
Good luck!
I will defend Flagpole only in one respect here. The OP is not going to be able to do it. He has the talent BUT what kind of a person would seriously be asking you people if they could do it? Exactly the kind of person who cannot do it. I cannot begin to relate to how WEAK some of you are. Only a WEAK person would seriously ask you people whether they could do this or that…