Do it
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One of our club members managed a 2h56 last week - 1.8km laps in the park(!). It can be done!
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25 April for my sub 3 hour attempt. Zurich City Marathon is now a virtual marathon, You need to load some app and it records the distance run. I have a great route planned, with feed stops every 5km
My training is going incredibly well, so long as I get the nutrition right, I am feeling really confident
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I think you’ll hit your target pretty easily Matt, as long as nothing goes wrong. You seem to be fired up on every platform - short runs, rides indoor and out, long runs, rowing etc etc. As long as you have the pre requisite speed, which you do now, a nice big engine and conditioned legs, then i don’t think sub-3 is too much of a stretch. Apologies if that sounds very wrong from other’s perspective, maybe it’s my accidental bias being a naturally ok runner.
I keep battling with myself on a sub 3 attempt. I’ve had it in the back of my mind for the past few months to go out and do one off the bat, for no real reason. I don’t know why i want to do it. Probably part ego, part curiousity. But i don’t know if it’ll derail my training for a few weeks, which i don’t need right now, for no actual gain.
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Are you shooting for a 2:59 or aiming a little higher?
As @gingerbongo has said bar any disaster this is well working your grasp
I’ve been known for being over ambitious in the past. I feel that I am running really efficiently in the 4:00-4:10/km range. With this in mind, I feel that 2:55 is a good target. I think I could go faster, however, I would risk blowing up, so will probably play it safe at for the first 30km and then see what is left towards the end
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Probably wise!
Over the past 6 months, Running has been my primary focus. I have been pretty visible on Zwift, but this has been a bit of fun, but not really a training focus. It’s running where I am putting all the structure, and have seen huge gains. I have also “fallen in love” with running.
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Sorry to hear about your injury @hillwall - but, you are not alone! I hope it resolves itself and you can give it another go.
I have only just found this thread and a few things struck me. First, the Tanda equation was a fit to runners who were doing a ‘standard’ form of marathon training. Whilst different approaches have worked for me, and for others too, there are things you might want to consider (although you probably already have!) that either cut the risk of injury or boredom and also improve the chances of success. I guess the first thing is that I would tend to try and have a ramp in training intensity during the training period rather than keeping the intensity flat. Ramps give you a bit of a cut-back for some recovery from niggles and also ensure that before the end of the training block you are training more intensely than your target time (to offset the easier training at the start). The link to my training, below, shows some ramps I implemented at the start of this year. Second, I would suggest making your runs a bit longer and slower to reduce the damage a bit - but, that is just my experience, others my have different views. As a 3 hour marathon runner I would hesitate to do sub 5min per km day-in-day-out. I think your test had a good chance of success - but, who knows until you try again. My son-in-law did a similar test with his father (late forties) running ~20km per day on a treadmill and he knocked-out a sub-2:44 (PB) in 2019 at VMLM. In terms of prediction accuracy, it is clear that some people over-achieve and some under-achieve for the same intensity training. Once you know that level of outperformance the equation is very good indeed at predicting the relative improvement. We do have a better equation which accounts for some of the systematic deviations for faster runners - and I will implement that equation once I have the necessary agreements in place. There will ALWAYS be some error, that is the nature of noisy biological systems. The critical thing is that if your Tanda improves, you will almost certainly perform better. Anyway, sorry about the injury - recover rapidly - and then get back to running!
By the way, anyone who wants to see my struggle to get fit again (I am 54) and back to sub 2:50 shape my training is visible on crplots. I am just about in 3 hour shape now, but I still have some way to go. There will always be faster, older runners who do less training and know better than me - that’s just life…
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Thanks for the reply @ChristofSchwiening. I’ve repeatedly come back to your calculator over the years as I agree with the overall point of it. I work with big(ish) data myself and so am used to finding insights from data and sometimes reasonably simple rules.
In terms of my actual training this time around, I know that the Tanda work was created with standard marathon training but I do like to do things a bit differently and was just really interested to see if I could keep everything almost identical and still get results. It was actually quite hard to keep to the same schedule each day as some days I felt better than others and some days (with 3 children under 6yo) it was hard to actually find an hour to run.
The biggest issue for me was not having any markers for progress - I had not had any speed sessions / shorter races to see improvements with nor any outdoor runs to see if my treadmill pace translated to on the road pace. 8 weeks is a long time to wait when you have no real feedback as to whether what you are doing is working. I wasn’t too worried about endurance since I have a decent endurance background so I think that would have been fine
I also didn’t do any bike training (or swimming) which would obviously affect things - my PB of 3:06 was from quite low run mileage (maybe 30 miles/week) but when I was cycling > 100 miles/week and swimming twice a week as well.
However, I think I will come back to this again, albeit allowing myself some marker runs - hopefully this would give me confidence in where I am and also to cross reference with other calculators to see if I am over/under performing. I felt like I was in good enough shape and strangely I did quite enjoy the same training every day - I got to pick some good TV series and watch them in relative peace.
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The ‘marker’ runs - or, some kind of higher intensity (near race) efforts - are useful from a number of perspectives. Clearly they do give reassurance that training is working, but I think I now have enough data to trust the running metrics that I collect from sub-maximal efforts. I think the really important aspect, for me at least, is generating the necessary ‘robustness’ that comes from higher intensities. I guess it is the muscle damage that generates DOMS and subsequently leads to greater protection. Since I run outdoors I can replace that by including progressively more faster running at the end of each run. On a treadmill I guess that requires a conscious plan. I do worry a bit that my own focus on mileage and average pace does result in quite a lot of on-going fatigue which simply doesn’t allow me - without a taper - to run quickly (at least without there being someone to race against). The parkruns were good for that, in particular the approach of starting from the back and gradually working my way through the field whilst periodically slowing to chat with people. That kind of effort is, for me, hard to replicate without others.
It sounds like you have your hands full already with the kids - 3 under 6 takes a lot of time. I don’t think I was doing any purposeful exercise at that point - I was just getting fat and progressive less healthy. I think it was when my daughter joined the school triathlon club that I started to exercise. I then joined an athletics club and spent years doing standard training and trying to get fit, only to get injured again and again. In the end the most important thing, I guess, was avoiding injury whilst adding more training stress! Good luck, and can I recommend The Bridge?
2:56:30
Pacing was very poor 1:23:42 first half
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Good effort still Matt, always likely to have a bit of drift in the second half and it’s a learning game but still a sub 3.
Better to try for a faster time than regret it and finish thinking you could have gone faster.
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Still a sub 3 whichever way you dress it.
Pacing over longer stuff is all ways difficult.
If you go bang on pace, there’s no margin for error.
Too fast, you might blow up.
Too slow, you might not be able to pick it up
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Nice job at the sub 3. I think you’ve got a fair bit more in you than that with how you’ve been running recently. What do you feel caused the fatigue from just after half way? What did you use fuelling wise out of interest? Weather (strava seems to indicate fairly optimal?)? Shoes (did you really use Hoka’s?)?
I know dropping to well over 90min pace for the second half must be disappointing, but the key thing is probably to identify reasons why you think that might have happened. Doing it virtually is possibly one of those. The “hurt” that comes in the second half of a marathon has got to be hard to fight with no other competitors or supporters.
ETA - I’m definitely a believer now in building into a marathon. I had a goal at Malaga of not running a single km below 4:00 in the first 10k. That kept things nice and steady early on, allowed to to grow into the effort, and then I picked it up. Too many bad experiences of going out at perfect world pace…only one way things can go. Accelerating for the middle 20km was really motivating
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I was actually trying to do a sub 2;50. First 10km felt brilliant, my HR was around 155bpm, and I was running at 3:55. Next 10km also went really well, dropped pace a little to around 4:00/km. I had setup a feed stop which I passed at km 7 and km 14, grabbed a gel and a small (275ml) bottle of flat coke. At 21km we had a another feed station. I changed bottles, but forgot to grab and gels, this meant that I had to do the next 10km with just 750ml fluid and no food, the running surface for much of this section was gravel track and a couple of short sharp hills, this knocked a bit off my pace, but was still feeling pretty strong. At km 31 I passed the feed station again, and took some time to refil bottles (helpers were supposed to have done this while I was running). I grabbed 2 gels and 550ml fluid and a cup of water. After the stop (approx 30s) I struggled to run at the pace I was at just a few minutes earlier. I wouldn’t describe it as painful, I was able to maintain 4:30/km and it felt really sustainable, but I just couldn’t get back to 4m/km pace. I ran out of fluids after 5km and took my last gel with 6km to go.
In total I had 4 gels, 1.5L flat coke and 750ml water. The course had 175m elevation and was 75% tarmac 25% trail. Weather at start was 14 degrees and 22 at end, there was no wind. I was wearing Nike Alpha Fly’s
I think that I could go much faster with specific marathon training: I’ve been doing Ultra’s, however the intensity on an Ultra is much lower so far more energy comes from fat burning. Also I eat loads on an Ultra. The training I have been doing, zone 2 runs up to 25km, lack the intensity of a marathon run, and don’t need much fueling.
My legs feel pretty good today, and I am not feeling fatigued, which is probably an indication that I didn’t push myself physically too hard
Now I have got the 3hr marathon out of the way, I have no plans to try another until the autumn, but certainly feel that I have a sub 2h50m in me. I feel that in a properly organised Marathon, with feed stops every 5km, I would be in a better position.
I now have 9 weeks until Lanzarote, I think I need to work on some longer sessions and make sure that my fuelling is properly sorted.
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Final point, I am really pleased that I have done a sub 3 hour marathon at the same time as balancing training on the bike. This was confirmation that I am strong on both the bike and the run
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Cracking effort @Matthew_Spooner.
Bit late to the conversation but the first thing to say is congratulations, in particular in view of how much cycling you are also doing…
For your next attempt along with nutrition I would look at your pace judgement which I believe is far more crucial to success. Reading what you said it looks like you were running at 4.30 (or 30s per km extra) for the last 12 k which is 6mins extra. I suspect the last couple of k were maybe slower but hopefully you get my drift. In a way it is the beauty of the marathon distance every mile or km beyond 20m/32k gets progressively harder and with it that hoped for time disappears.
I did London once and went a minute too quick at 32k and that minute and more evaporated over the remainder of the race until I was hanging on at the end.
So if you want to go sub 2:50 I would look at that first 10k and then try and get yourself to 30K in a position where you can really fight for that wished for time. The skill is in being to hold yourself back when, as you say yourself, you feel so good at the start.
Good luck 
ps: I really want to see what @funkster can do too based on his training.
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@Sparky All I want is 2:59:59
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