UKC

I ma planning on running my first ultra on 30th April next year. 65 or 85 km around Innsbruck.

I have the option to run the Rotterdam marathon with a friend 3 weeks before. I was thinking of using this as my final training run before winding down for the ultra. Is this too close together??? and will the training be compatible???

i.e. I will be training to run a lot faster for the marathon then the ultra. Should I aim to run the marathon in my fast pace, or should I treat it as a training run for the ultra and run my steady pace??

In reply to fenski:

I did a marathon 4 weeks before a 50 mile ultra this year. I used the marathon as my last long training run, and just ran it at a comfortable pace, maybe slightly faster than ultra pace, but not by much. It seemed to work out okay.

In reply to fenski:

You should be able to recover from a full marathon at "proper" marathon pace within three weeks without to much trouble, although this is of course age dependant - the younger you are, the easier it will be! Personally, I'd just go for it...

In reply to fenski:

The pace you run the marathon depends on whether you want a fast time in the marathon and a less fast time in the ultra, or the other way round. My club organises a marathon at the start of June, and we had quite a few runners this year treating it as a training run for the West Highland Way race a couple of weeks later.

In reply to tony:

I'm 38. My normal steady pace without pushing or specifically training is around 4:50/km for training runs up to half marathon, whilst my fast pace would be a around 4:20, so I was either planning on aiming for 3 hours 30 (4:58/km) or 3 hours 15 (4:37/km).

My ultra pace for the sections I can run I would expect to be much slower, around 5:30/km, so I'm just a bit concerned that the gap in pace is too big, and that I kill my legs for the ultra if I run my fast pace during the marathon. I presume that should only do a few short runs at ultra pace, in between the two events??

In reply to fenski:

Yep, friend of mine did the exact same three weeks ago for his first ultra (33 miles) on Saturday. He managed ok, and even ran the marathon distance of the course quicker than his race the three weeks previous (if that makes sense!?).

In reply to fenski:

I'd run it and fairly hard, but I wouldnt taper for it. I'd use it as a last long training run. I'd run at as close to race pace as I could, assuming a good build up and no injury concerns.

I only taper for 2-3 races a year.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

Thanks for the advice, sounds like it's doable. Just need to time my training so that it works out for both events.