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Undertraining for a marathon
JayZed
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I'm signed up for the San Francisco marathon in four weeks as I'm going to be on a family holiday in the US, and I have massively undertrained for it, but really want to run it, so I'm looking for some advice about how to make the best of it.
Background: I've run three other marathons, all between 4.05 and 4.20, most recently Brighton in April. I had three easy weeks after that race, and intended to gradually ramp up the training again from the beginning of May. For various personal reasons, that hasn't happened. Over the past 8 weeks I've run an average of just 21km/13 miles per week, and my fitness has dropped off. I've managed to ramp things up over the past 10 days, and finally managed a long(ish) run yesterday - 27.5km/17 miles, with quite a lot of hills (370m ascent). It was well off my normal training pace and the last couple of miles were painful, but I'm feeling reasonably okay (just a little stiff) today.
Normally at this point I'd have three or four long runs under my belt and would be running 30km+ long runs at a decent pace, and I'd have one more long run before a three-week taper.
So, my plan is to run 3-4 times a week over the next two weeks including two more long runs, then taper over the final two weeks before the marathon. I won't be getting a PB but would like to keep it under 4.30. Does this sound sensible?
Background: I've run three other marathons, all between 4.05 and 4.20, most recently Brighton in April. I had three easy weeks after that race, and intended to gradually ramp up the training again from the beginning of May. For various personal reasons, that hasn't happened. Over the past 8 weeks I've run an average of just 21km/13 miles per week, and my fitness has dropped off. I've managed to ramp things up over the past 10 days, and finally managed a long(ish) run yesterday - 27.5km/17 miles, with quite a lot of hills (370m ascent). It was well off my normal training pace and the last couple of miles were painful, but I'm feeling reasonably okay (just a little stiff) today.
Normally at this point I'd have three or four long runs under my belt and would be running 30km+ long runs at a decent pace, and I'd have one more long run before a three-week taper.
So, my plan is to run 3-4 times a week over the next two weeks including two more long runs, then taper over the final two weeks before the marathon. I won't be getting a PB but would like to keep it under 4.30. Does this sound sensible?
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