I'm a similar speed to you (slightly slower over 5k by 30s)


I think this "plan" is easy to write, but the execution will be difficult / impossible. 3x30min race pace over a 3 hour long run with two other hard runs during the week (one being an hour at just over 10k pace, the other being 30mins of long intervals at 5k pace) is a recipe for burnout and injury.


You won't actually be able to manage it, imho. - the only way you could manage this is if you have an enormous base already. You'll likely end up broken and struggling, which will be mentally fatiguing as well.


imho you're better off running a fast finish long run, 30min or so of tempo a week as part of a 90min run and then another 90min slow run.


The challenge with marathons is the months of dedicated prep, there is no shortcut to it. If you can't get the volume up, then it's better to run undercooked than over cooked.


Best of luck!! That marathon is nice, I've done it three times :)


Please report back with how the training / race went.

A lot of people use the term "burnout" and it means different things to different people.

What is your definition?

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I am also most worried about the very hard long run each week. I might follow your advice to change that into a fast finish long run....
Until now I have not been very injury prone, so hopefully it will stay that way - guess I will find out soon 😂

I think that it all comes down to how good your base is

In October, I ran 3:05 in Luzern (hilly) off the back of no specific marathon training, however, I had done the Transcontinental cycle race in July and come 3rd in my AG in IM Wales in September. I was aiming for sub 3, but realised after half distance that it wasn't going to happen, so backed off and really enjoyed the second half. I hadn't done any running at sub 3 marathon pace for over 6 months, but had a massive base.

Currently I am just about running 5k in 20mins, however, I would love to run Zurich Marathon on 21 April in under 2:50, I pulled a hamstring in December, just recovered from that, but slipped on an icy step on Monday and pulled a muscle in my glute - it's not bad, but just another week+ of no running.

Where are you based? I will be doing the CRUX run in Switzerland on March 2, its a 56k winter ultra with 2,300m elevation. I find that it is a fantastic run to kick start my season. I think that if you continue what you are doing and have the base fitness to throw in a long, low intensity ultra, you may be in good shape for a sub 3 in Milan

Agree with this -- current plan seems aggressive, especially once you're doing those 3 quality sessions/week. Are you still doing swim/bike training? I kind of reject the original premise that you have to train like this because you didn't have time to ramp up the mileage. This weekend would mark 11 weeks to your marathon. & you've already spent 4-5 weeks like this. 15 weeks would be plenty for a good marathon build. You could have spent the earlier weeks logging some base mileage, before getting into the marathon specific stuff. You still have 11 weeks. I would course correct & train like a marathoner. 18:45 is just in the range to put sub-3 on the table. It becomes a lot harder on low mileage. I don't think hammering a weekly 10x2min is the best for marathon training. 6x5min @ 5k should be impossible. The tempo stuff is fine. I like building from 30 to 60min total time around T. Can do those reps straight or broken. 3 hours w./ 3x30min + 20min feels like a race effort. Most are fine tapping out around 10-12 @ GMP in a 20-22 miler. I'll go up to 25k but am running 100mpw.

I would try to get to 5-6 runs/week if you're all in on this goal. Most of that can be easy. 2-3 1hr easy runs (can add in some strides), 1 medium long run (build to 80-90min), 1 threshold session (start with 30min, build to 60, ok to break up -- 10-12x1k on short rest), 1 long run (quality every other or every 3rd week). Mileage is usually the best indicator for marathon performance. I'd like you more in a 5k/10k with the current plan. I just don't see it working, trying to translate a 5k to marathon time on low mileage. Maybe it's feasible with a healthy dose of swimming/biking but I would still want to see more miles & specificity in the plan.

possibly when you are severely over trained and need a lot of rest to recover

Thanks for your insights. I'm not swimming/biking at the moment, so no synergies there. If I understand you correct you mean, that I should abandon this plan and instead ramp my mileage up quite aggressively, correct? In that case I would trade the risk of getting injured by too much intensity with the risk of getting injured by running too often....Maybe a compromise of running 4x per week with a long tempo run, a medium long run, an easy run and a fast finish long run could do the trick?

To go along with others without upping your milage no plan will "work". If you just want to finish then this will be fine but as you probably remember the marathon is painful! Assuming you can up your runs to 4-5 I would do one tempo, one medium-long, one long with MP, and as many easy runs as you can. I do not think (and I could be very wrong) you will see much return from VO2 intervals without a better base and that more tempo would be better because it does not beat you up as much. (again a coach or someone who knows more can correct my).

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*popcorn GIF*

In all seriousness, you still have 11 weeks to the marathon date. If I am reading this correctly you have already completed a month of running something like ~90, 60, and 60 min sessions each week. That's close to 30 miles. You can split those 30 miles up between 5-6 runs and increase your mileage each week by 10% to be up to 50-60-70 miles your last couple weeks (which is probably plenty in your case with your history). That's what I would do, but I also made the mistake of training too hard too quickly and now I am paying for it with my achilles.

It can be done for sure, I did exactly this back in the day in the time period you are talking about. I ran all of my training at race pace, often a little slower in the beginning, and faster in the end. But the goal was to have each run average my targeted race pace. Most weeks were about 40 miles give or take a few miles. I did do one 3 hour ride each week for endurance training without the pounding. Ran a PR well below what I thought I could do too..

I was your exact size, but 15lbs lighter, so perhaps you can work on that over the 11 weeks too. Each pound will be worth a good training session, so imagine if you got 10 more good sessions just pushing the plate back...A pound a week should be doable, at the very least a goal..

Have fun and dont freek out. Get in maybe two very long runs in there at race pace average and dial in a nutrition plan, and you should be good to go...

Please explain why you don't have enough "time". I find that it is quite often a code word for, "I am too lazy or disorganized to get the work done". Training for distance running is literally one of the least time consuming sports that exists. If you want to break 3 hours, then train 50-60 miles per week. That will take you at most about 8 hours. 99% of people have 8 hours a week of free time. Are you a resident in surgery or medicine working 80-100 hour per week? A young lawyer with crazy hours? If so, then forget a time goal and just enjoy the marathon. Otherwise, your best bet is to rethink the way you approach your day to day activities so that you can actually achieve your goals instead of trying to take shortcuts that almost always will set you up for failure.

The way I see it is:
Key workouts make it possible to achieve race goals.
General fitness workouts make it possible to achieve key workouts.


So....

Can you:
1) Do key workouts without general fitness workouts?
Maybe!
2) Use key workouts as preparation for other key workouts?
Maybe!

Will you get injured?
Pretty likely

Is this fun?
No.
It seems like you are eliminating the spontaneous and relaxing aspects of training.

Is this healthy?
No.
You are running a high risk of injury.
It probably won't be a ton of fun.

You will probably quit before or after you achieve your goal.

I was more worried about the increase in milage as opposed to training time because I thought that going from 20 to 60 miles per week with no significant intensity would not take me to a sub 3h marathon within 3 month. As I said before, maybe I should dial back intensity a bit and increase milage and go a middle way.

It's an interesting thought that doing only 3 days of running per week with high intensity has a better chance of getting you to a sub 3 marathon than 50-60 miles per week of running with less intensity. I don't have the answer but I would bet money on the 60 miles per week option.

That's the way I interpret it as well but recently I've heard people referring it to losing motivation because it's not exciting or interesting anymore.

If you have the time to run 6-7 days a week I would think you would have a better chance of going sub 3 with all easy runs then 1 long run with MP. 3 hours is a speedy marathon pace even if many on here can do it. And the more miles you have on your legs the less chance you will have of tiring out running at 6:50 pace. And if you do all but 1-2 runs easy, and I mean easy, you can still hit a tempo/vo2 workout during the week to pair with your long run with MP. Say you are able to run 7 days a week...
Monday: 5-6 miles easy
Tuesday: 5-6 miles easy
Wednesday: 10 total with tempo/VO2 intervals
Thursday: 4-6 miles EASY
Friday: 6-8 miles easy
Saturday: 6-8 miles easy
Sunday: 16-22 miles with 30 minutes MP adding 5 each week

That is a total of 53+ miles with most being easy which means you should be able to ramp up to that mileage if you take care of yourself and run your easy runs easy. I am not a run only guy and have found it is insanely easier to find time to run than juggling all 3. 10 hours a week running is like 65-80 miles a week depending on pace and 10 hours a week seems to be light work for many triathletes. So if you keep yourself in check you have time to get to this mileage and stay there and have a better chance at sub 3 than if you only ran 3 days a week. And this is for most people, of course there are outliers who can run little mileage and still run a fast marathon.

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Isn’t it pretty much the schedule for FIRST marathon training plan https://fellrnr.com/wiki/FIRST ? (First doesn’t mean first marathon, it’s an abbreviation)

It probably not going to work for everyone, but even here, on this forum there are people who mentioned getting good results from it? ( like sub 1:20 half or sum 2:55 full).

I’m actually doing such plan right now for a spring marathon, but for unrelated reasons. Work is pretty stressful and I’m recovering from a slow-burnout, so 5 hr/week is maximum that I can recover from right now.

I’m doing 3 hard runs (intervals, tempo, not very slow long run, like a 7:20 18-miler), 2 zwift sessions and 2 swims.

We will see how it goes.

I'm a pretty consistent 1:25-1:30 half marathoner that's about your height/weight and I ran 5 days a week with only 1 HM/Marathon paced run in the leadup to a marathon a few years back. I ran 3:00:XX. I don't think I needed any additional intensity to go faster; just a better pacing strategy since I ran the opening half in 1:26:XX. I was running about 30 miles a week 11 weeks out, so you have plenty of time to do a full build to 50-55 miles/week.

I think both high volume, low intensity and low volume, high intensity will work, but you're more likely to get injured doing the latter.

Definitely not advocating a quick ramp up of any sort because, I agree, you're just going to increase your injury risk. But 11 weeks, & 15-16 when you started, is still a lot of time to train like a marathoner. Spend the next 4-5 weeks adding more frequency/miles (all easy). I would cut the "speed" workout in favor of higher mileage. Then you would still have another 4-5 weeks to do a solid marathon specific block, but with more of a base. I just don't think it's feasible to try to run what your 5k projects out to off of a plan like this. If you have the time, try to add in some more miles. I'm generally seeing sub-3 off of 50-65mpw for runners with good endurance.

I have run a 2:49 on three runs per week on a similar plan, I was doing:

-Speedwork, 6 km warm up and bunch of 200-1200 m intervals at 3k-10 km race pace. 3 km cooldown. Idea of this workout was to work at paces much faster than marathon pace

-Tempo: built up to 20 km with 40 min steady in the middle. Often only 4:10/km.

-Long run: built up to 32 km with 2 x 6 km at race pace after 16 km easy (~4:50-5:10/km) But most weeks just easy the whole run.

6 x 5 min at 5 k race pace is very hard and risky. At 18:45 you will be doing 1300 m at that pace. Most running coaches prescribe no more than 800-1000 m intervals at 5km pace. I think even 800 m intervals are very hard.

Your 5km time is in theory sufficient for 3 hour but don't burnout or get injured.

Thanks for your feedback. It seems that the consensus of this discussion is that its risky but doable on 3 runs a week but that my particular plan has too much intensity in it. Going forward I will dial that back a little and try to squeeze as much running into my day as I can....will report back how it went.

Thanks for the encouragement....the weight is a good point. I am trying to lose a few pounds come race day. Currently there is ice and snow where I live but I could work in 2h of bike commute into my office days for endurance....

3:05 with no race pace training is a very respectable time. Thanks for pointing me to the CRUX run. Never heard of it before...I'm based in Zürich and now that I write this, I seem to remember that you too your shoulder out biking the Allmend trail...sounds like you're OK again...but could also very well be that my brain plays tricks 😉. Anyway, enjoy the Swiss winter for now. I'm happy that I have nice treadmill....