Marathon training/peak week prior to race

Having no idea when you previously trained for marathons, just from examining your logs from the past year it looks like a problem could be your long runs are far too high of a percentage of your weekly mileage. In the past year the highest you've averaged for weekly mileage is less than 25. Doing an 18-20 mile run off that kind of low volume may be the source of why you get injured. It also appears one of the reasons your recent 20 mile race took so much out of you is due to very low volume leading up to it.

Now it's March and you're planning an early May marathon. By this point you should be averaging at a very minimum 35-40 miles/week and you're not anywhere close to that. You don't have the base to ramp up quickly, so building mileage at this point may be somewhat limited. Not knowing which Higdon plan you're using, but it's hard to believe any serious marathon plan would call for doing such a low amount of running this close to the race.

You may find it beneficial to run 6-7 days a week, 3-5 miles each day. Make one day a longer run and try to build to your 18 miler about 3 weeks out from the race. Unfortunately that only leaves you about 5 weeks or so to get there.

IMO, running a marathon needs more than a 12 week program, especially the first one. I think a proper build for a first marathon would be more like 26 weeks at a minimum. Building the stamina and endurance to get through a marathon is a process that should not be short-changed.

YMMV.

brynn - 2010-03-04 10:00 AM I wasn't using a marathon training plan in training for the 20-miler (I was using a plan my running partner created, and she has trained for and qualified for Boston so I trust her judgment!), so I kind of thought that I would just jump into a marathon training after the 20 miler. Also I will say that we did miss a few runs because of snow, insanely cold weather, being sick, traveling for the holidays, etc. The 20 miler wiped me out way more than I had expected, which is why for two weeks I've done basically nothing. I have been running 4 years and have completed several half marathons, 10Ks and duathlons. With the Hal Higdon novice plan, your weekly long run is about equal to the rest of your runs combined. The week of my 20 miler, the Higdon plan calls for total of 24 miles, so I really wasn't too far off from that. Here is the chart of the plan that I would be using, starting at the week it would be now (week 10). The last column is the total number of miles for the week. 3 / 7 / 4 / 15 / t 29 3 /7 /4 / 10/ t 24 3 /7 /4 /15 /t 29 4/ 6 /3/ 8 /t 21 4 /8/ 4 /16 /t 32 4 /8 /5/ 12/ t 29 4 /9 /5 /18/ t 36 5 /10/ 5 /20 /t 40 5 /8/ 4/ 12 /t 29 5 /9 /5 /14 /t 33 What have you found works best for your long runs as a percentage of your weekly miles? I guess at this point I just am going to have to do the best I can with what I've got, and maybe if I keep working hard I can try for a fall marathon and actually do a good job . Please believe me when I tell you that I am expecting my full marathon time to be no worse than my 20 mile time - you can read my race report about how horrendous the conditions of that race were. It's basically impossible to run in 6 inches of mud. I don't think my time had as much to do with my fitness level as it did with the difficulty of the terrain. I ran 15 miles through the snow in 3 hours in my training, so 20 miles in 6 hours is kind of ridiculous. Also if any of you want to friend me on Facebook you can see the pictures from the race to see the kind of conditions they were!

I like to keep my long run a no more than 1/3 ofweekly volume. So in a week when I do a 20 miler my weekly volume would not be less than 60 miles. For my first marathon I used a plan more similar to what you're using and the marathon ended up being a miserable experience. It seems for many people these kind of plans are only suitable for getting to the finish. There are always some exceptions, but I've seen poor results more often than not.

I think you will be able to get through this marathon. After you recover, immediately start training for a fall race so you can build properly and not get into this kind of predicament again.