How to re-focus after a poor marathon

Best idea on how to refocus? Stop running marathons for a while and target some actual distances that make you a better runner. Go and do a 5k training block, or 2 5k training blocks. Take a minute or more off of your 5k time then go back to the marathon and see how easy it is to smash your time.

What I do after a poor marathon is to put out a press piece a couple months later that I didn’t sleep for three days and didn’t kill the boy.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Are you from the US or from Europe? How early did you get to Copenhagen? Could just be that you weren't fully adjusted to the time change/didn't fully have your legs under you. Could just be a fueling issue. But you ran 3:17 after your 1:28. You lost a little fitness & came into this race with a slightly slower half (1:32) and ran slightly slower (3:19). That seems pretty normal to me & it looks like you could've run 3:17 again with slightly better pacing. 1:28 projects to sub-3:10 & 1:32 projects to 3:12 so there's still plenty of free time on the table.

It sounds like the build was good in terms of mileage & a lot of running around 7:15 pace. You could try to add in more threshold work around 6:50ish pace broken up instead of doing the 10 miler each week. You could also do what the above poster suggests and work on the shorter distances. It's hard to get a ton faster at the marathon if you don't get any faster. You could do marathon build after marathon build @ 60mpw & you'll eventually run 3:10ish. You could gain the speed to break 3 hours and do that in a year or two.

You dropped off by 5 mins in the second half of your second marathon. That's frustrating and not fun while you were doing it but it's not a disaster. You're still at the point of the learning curve where you can make big steps forward based on lessons learned.

Given your injury you may have gone off too quick? When it got tough you may not have had the mental resilience you needed? Maybe it was dehydration.

Have a break, let it sink in, do some stuff that's fun for now, not because you're training for something in the future, then go again. It's all good experience in the bank.

Take a break from marathons and focus cross country, 5k and 10k for a bit.

Read Julian's Goater book the art of running faster

I think he recommends

Cross country > marathon > Track > 10k as year round rotation...

60 mpw is kind of low for racing a marathon. Finishing one sure, but you fell off because of endurance. To run a better time you're going to need to increase mileage. I'd build up over the summer to prepare for a mid or late fall race.