Will my half PR hold me back from my marathon goal?

Audio Transcript

Coach Hayley: Hey everyone. I am your community manager here at Runners Connect. I will be here with your daily podcast this week.

I hope you are all having great day and thanks for tuning into the show. We’d love to help you improve as runners. If you have a question do not hesitate, send it over. You can submit your question at runnersconnect.net/daily.

Today’s question is from Anika.

Anika: I’ve signed up for my first marathon at the end of February. I did a half this weekend. I hoped that I’ll be a little faster than I was 153.

I’m doing some speed work in training, but I think I need to focus on sustaining longer tempo runs rather than intervals.

How much have you found your half marathon time improves whilst training for the marathon distance?

I was hoping to aim at three hours and fifty in the marathon in February maybe that’s looking a little bit unlikely unless I can do a lot of work over the next few months.

Hayley: Hey Anika, that’s exciting you’re running your first marathon and well done on your half.

Looking at your current half time, I think that you’re looking at around three hours, fifty-five to four hours for the marathon.

However, I do think that there are plenty of gains to be made if you haven’t already included any longer tempos.

It depends on you as a runner, but for me, I found that in some marathon training cycles I’ve been able to almost double the half marathon time I run earlier on by the time the marathon came around.

You likely taper more for the marathon than you do for the half I imagine so you get a bit from that as well.

Whilst I’ll say isn’t impossible, you need to prepare for eventualities. Beginning some longer tempo runs will help you assess where you are at as you go along so that you can see if your marathon pace is likely to be achievable or if you need to adjust.

Adding in the longer tempo work can not only help you improve, it is also a great way to assess what your goal time should be.

Working towards the workouts like two times six miles at 10 to 15 seconds faster than marathon pace can be a great way to see if your time is achievable.

Obviously, the distance needs to be scaled to what you look to be running in your work out, but if you can do that, then there is a good chance that your goal is going to be okay.

You can start with some steady state runs.

These are runs that you complete at a pace you can keep up for two to two and a half hours. They are very comfortable, but not completely so. You know you’re working but you’re putting in control and can speak a sentence at a time.

I’d recommend starting off at about five or six miles of this pace and gradually increasing it as you work towards race day. Including one of these rounds every two weeks is fine.

You probably want to include some work around tempo pace every one to two weeks as well. This is slightly faster than the tempo pace and the pace you could keep up for around an hour.

You feel like you’re working, but you’re still fairly in control and can say three to four words at a time.

How you include this depends on you. Longer intervals work well. You can even do them by time for example, five by five minutes progressing to three times 10 minutes. Do this once in two weeks to keep some pace in there.

You can also make some great gains by adding in some faster pace work to your long runs. You can start to include [surges 00:04:08] such as six to eight times 90 seconds of 5k to 10k pace.

You can also make the long runs progressive, for example, you can run 14 to 16 miles with the last three miles at a gradually increasing pace, so you finish the last one hard.

I hope that gives you some thoughts on how you could save your training and improve that time. Your goal could be achievable, but it won’t be sensible to put all your eggs in one basket either.

Doing some of these longer paced efforts should help you assess how achievable that goal is. One thing I would say is always good to be conservative in the first half anyway.

You may wish to begin the race at three hours fifty-five to four pace on race day. In my experience and many others, that’s the best way to run a marathon.

In my first marathon, I was aiming for two hours forty-five and I ran at that pace for the first half, but I sped up considerably in second half to run two hours forty-three.

It is amazing what an active sprint can do so you don’t have to be dead on pace with first half anyway.

If you feel that three hours fifty-five to four was the best you could do on the day, there’s still going to be a great target and you can just keep on that pace.

Anika, that is some great question and thanks for asking. Best of luck with your marathon training.

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