Can't translate shorter races to marathon

Your running style = economy

Your 10k is worth 1:34 & 3:16. Mileage is a good place to start. Look at your workouts too. Focus on getting in more volume at 7:00-7:30 pace. I'm sure you can go to the track and run a lot faster than that but that's not translating to the longer stuff. Instead of short speed workouts, do reps at 7:00 pace on short rest. Do tempo efforts @ 7:30 pace in your long runs. Make sure you're fueling right in training/racing if you're running positive splits at the half or full.

Why do you care? If 35 is a good number for you and you can finish an occasional marathon, great. Don't mess with it.

What are some examples of representative marathon training for you:

-- average week (day breakdown; workout type, distance, pace)

-- peak weak (day breakdown ...)

-- key workouts (type, distance, pace)

-- key long runs (distance, pace + note whether you incorporate any workout miles/quality or just all easy)

+ A few other issues wouldn't explain the discrepancy between your 10k and marathon times overall, but they might affect how you respond to more mileage (in case that's the fix): In spite of your busy schedule, can you get a pretty solid 8 hrs of sleep each night? Is your nutrition pretty good overall?

If you ran 4.1 miles a week would you expect to run a good 5k?

This is similar to running 35mi a week and expecting to run a good marathon.

Run more.

Alan.

Increase volume a bit during your marathon training cycle so you peak at around 50-60 and average around 40-45 or so. It's not that much more and will help a lot. Also work in tempo runs, as someone above said 7:00-7:30 pace. Throw in a few miles at MP in a couple of your long runs.

Thirty five miles a week is very, very, low for marathon training. I'm impressed you did 3:52 off of It. If you want to be faster, yeah, run more.

Appreciate the feedback! Sounds like mostly insufficient training. Mostly I run easy for nearly all runs, started running 1 tempo run per week at 7:30 min/mile pace of 20-40 min at that pace with warm up cool down but only got a handfull 5 or so in during block. Run long run on weekend 16-20 mi and 5-6 mi easy runs to fill in the gaps trying to run 5 days per week and maybe 3 mi recovery run first run after long run. I also did run a few of the long runs at marathon pace last 5-8 mi this year.

Sounds like try to get to 50-60 mi peak would be reasonable to see improvement.

Have another question on fatigue, So I used to get fairly tired at 25 mpw and now 35 - 40 mpw is more that threshold. Will that bar continue to raise i.e. if I keep at it will 50 mpw someday feel like 25 mpw used to in terms of fatigue. - Trying to calculate benefit/cost as the fatigue of training does have a downside.

Older than you at 63 but hit that same ceiling. Changed my training and hit 3:43. Increased mileage so that max week was 50. I also slowed down on my easy runs. It may sound counter intuitive but I had a good friend who was a 3:30 marathoner and she was running her easy runs slower than I was. I think it helped for a number of reasons, not the least of which I was able to handle the increased mileage without being too beat up.

I disagree, his 10k may be worth 3:30. 3:16 is more like around 40 min for 10k.

I think your base is good, lots of easy mileage. And then you added some faster work.

Your 10k is clearly better than your marathon time, could weight be an issue ? The longer the distance, the more important weight becomes.

On a side note, 35 mpw is what I have run for my most recent marathon (3:04 PR at age 48)

Previous marathons were more like 26-30 mpw, running 3:13 a few times.

You're already doing quite some mileage (admittedly not by LRC standards), and your marathon time is not very impressive, so I think you be more gifted towards shorter distances

Check your pulse everyday when you wake up. It's a good way to be sure you're still alive but what you're looking to see is if it's 10% or more above normal for three days in a row. If it is you've likely been overdoing something and should ease up for a bit. If it's not you most likely are fine. I got this from Lydiard and I like it because feelings of fatigue can come and go and sometimes mean you're pushing your running too much and need to cut back but also could be a temporary thing that will go away as you adjust to the bigger load.

Another thing you might consider is to run twice on one day and then do very little the next. There was a Scotsman in the 60s who did 2:13 for the marathon and won the London to Brighton ultra, 53 miles, and said afterward that he'd run more miles that day than he usually did in a week. He also said he'd learnt the value of running every other day but also mentioned running three times a day. The value of the every other day thing was recovery.

So let's say you had a couple days when you got 12-13 miles in with two runs a day and third day when you got your 16 in. You're at 40 and if you did 2-3 miles on three or four other days (the Scotsman did that rather than take an entire day off) you'd be doing a lot more mileage than you are now and could still have day completely off if you want one.

As I've gone this far, I will tell you that long ago I read of a study done on female British marathon runners and their training trying to isolate the variable that best predicted fast racing. It turned out to be the TOTAL NUMBER of runs taken during the prep period, not the total miles though that was the second best predictor. If you do something along the lines of what I suggest you'll be covering both of those bases.

Of course I don't know what your life is like and the idea of running twice on a couple days may seem too much. It does usually require some discipline and adjustment to get yourself to that. But once you get into that routine it becomes automatic and much easier. And it's just an idea I'm tossing out here for you to consider. If it's going to make your life and running semi miserable it's probably not worthwhile. But as I said, I am kind of impressed with 3:52 on the miles you did and want to give you something to think about.

Race times from shorter distances don't translate very well to the marathon unless you substantially increase your mileage, aerobic fitness and endurance. Double your mileage. Do lots of very long aerobic tempo runs. Do longer long-runs.

Fatigue in mileage buildup, especially pushing back the threshold at which it sets in is a *good* thing. It will help you build endurance, which will prevent you from fading as much at the end of your race. You seem to have a reasonable plan. Follow it and see where it leads you.

Those performance equivalency calculators are ridiculous. They were created in the 80s by Reigel, and if I'm not mistaken, they were based on studying elites. His formula of multiplying a race time by 2.085 (as the distance doubles) suggests so anyway. Not to mention that this figure is standard across all distances, which seems incredibly reductive, considering that as the distance gets longer, more variables are introduced e.g. nutrition, biomechanical breakdown, etc.

I saw that Slate recently created their own formula based on a cross-sectional study that included both recreational runners and elites. The formula is 2.19. This seems to be closer to the mark.

So for a 1:40 Half Marathon runner, their projected time in the Marathon would be 3:39. Compare this with Riegel's, which predicts a 3:28.

Not sure the math or physiology holds up, Alan but I appreciate your thoughtful analysis

Still to be clear a 10000m runner does ~ the same mileage as a half marathoner (50-150miles/ week)and the 800runner does perhaps 1/2 the weekly mileage of a 5000m runner (~30-50/ week) vs (60-100) for the 5000m runner

A reasonable approach for the op then would be to run the 30 miles/ week at 8’/mile as steady runs then add in 20x 400 1:45 w 75s rest mid week

Closer to the 3:40 marathon race goal the training runs would be ~7:40 or so and the 400 reps ~1:40 w 1:20 rest

The supplemental work would be kettlebell, stairs (walking) and possibly a walk on rolling hills

Perhaps some suffering to be expected after 18-20 miles but runners routinely suffer in those later miles whatever their training load.

Simply 35mpw won't cut it for marathon.

This. I ran more miles and was a little faster than you, but also had trouble translating my speed into the marathon. Switching to more consistent miles, more long tempo runs, and almost no speedy track reps was the key to finally cracking the code.