Re-thinking my Dopey training. Thoughts please?

[roomthreeseventeen]

I finished my second marathon this weekend in 5:10, which was a 40 minute PR. While I'm extremely happy with the improvement, I ended up doing the march of death after mile 20. I pretty much know what happened (went out WAY too fast, paid for it), but the fact that it happened when I had peaked at 60 miles, never skipped a run, had great weather, lots of rest, etc., makes me seriously doubt that I'm doing enough for Dopey when weather, sleep deprivation, etc. are all going to be much more pressing.

I'm running the NYC marathon on 11/3, so I'll have 7 or 8 solid weeks of training after that before I have to taper again. I already run at 5:30 AM, so I'm wondering what else I can do to make it possible for me to get through all four Dopey races, other than managing expectations. (My goal for the WDW marathon is to finish, but obviously it's very uncomfortable to run much slower than your normal running pace, ad I don't do a run/walk.)

 

[BuckeyeBama]

I would not change anything based on that result. Your 40 minute PR and the fact that you went out way too fast out of the gates could be enough by themselves to create the walk of death. It is a runner's axiom that for every 1 minute that you run too fast on the first half of a marathon, you will lose 2 minutes during the second half. If you go out WAY too fast, it can cost you much more than 2 - it can result in a non-finish.

Learn from this. Trust your training, but have a race plan and stick to it, even if you feel great at the beginning of the race.

You are doing great! Stay positive.

 

[paxsarah]

Trust your training. It sounds like you made some race-day errors, and paid for it, but didn't have any underlying issues. Last year at Space Coast, I will admit that my run volume going in was not what it could have been because I had been focusing on 70.3 training until 6 weeks prior, but I had a seriously fantastic long training run a couple of weeks out from the marathon and I thought I was ready to go. On race day, went out a little too fast and the wheels started to get wobbly around mile 16 and by mile 20 they had come completely off. I was shooting for a significant PR and ended up gritting my teeth to a 3 minute PR over my Goofy time earlier that year. In my case, there were training concerns as well, but in contrast when I ran Goofy, I did every workout (though I only peaked at 50 miles), took the half very easy and stopped for almost every single photo, started the full conservatively and let myself pick it up in the second half, and finished strong. Your training will put you where you need to be - and it's almost always better to go into a race slightly undertrained than overtrained. And you've learned a lot about race day execution. You will be more than ready.

 

[cewait]

Stay the course and you will do fine in both marathons.

Basically, you took off too fast and as noted above you paid the price. Consider the experience a learning experience and take that into NYM and have a great race. It's possible that NYM will help contain the speed with the up on the first mile. Your challenge will be to control yourself once back on firm ground.

Trust what you are doing and do not feel the need to cram more in at this point in time. We don't want to see you booted for the Disney.

Great job on the PR.