Just posted

People always complain about how crowded their gyms are in January. Funny thing is my running trails are always the most empty :)

I agree that people way overdo gels and water for shorter distances, but 18 miles is probably a bit high. Personally I’ll bring 1 gel and probably plant a water bottle for 12 miles.

I’ve seen people with full hydration vests for 4 mile runs though and have no idea what they are thinking.

That’s certainly a hot take. I understand the sentiment but would probably increase it to more like 4:00. Slower than this and the person was pretty undertrained and likely had a decent injury risk.

90% of people undertrain for the Marathon, and that’s very reflective in their finishing times. Running a 4:30 (obviously there are some age/sex/situational nuances there, but on average) simply means you didn’t put in the work.

Long run should cap out at about 20-22 miles but let’s use 18 as a bare minimum.

Long runs should also only be about 30-35% of your weekly mileage but for Marathon training you can probably push it to about 40% for a couple weeks.

That means bare minimum marathon training involves getting up to 45 miles a week (18 / 0.4). and I really stress minimum here. If you want to enjoy your day it should really be at least 60.

https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20807557/runners-with-more-training-miles-finish-marathons-faster/

Simply running the bare minimum safe mileage to train for a marathon gets an average finish time of 3:50.