Half Marathon to Marathon training questions...

Are your training logs up to date? Have you logged all your training there?

It depends.  What is your running background like ?  If this is your first HM, then I would say... but if you are a seasoned distance runner, than you may be able to do it.

My training logs are not totally complete but honestly they do have about 3/4 of my training logged in there.

This is my 1st Half Marathon. I am certainly not a seasoned distance runner. My longest run last year was 9 miles.

What you need to do is look at a FULL mary training plan... and then count 9 weeks back from the end of the plan... and see if you can pick up where that training plan is.

Looking at my old marathon plan, 2 months out (roughly 9 weeks) I was doing 10 mile and then 16 and 18 mile runs (walk/run for me).

What will be your longest run at 9 weeks out from the marathon? 13.1? That can probably work. Before my month with the 10-16-18 mile runs, my longest was 13.1.

Now I was also doing 3 runs during the week. Varying from 3-5 miles. What are your week day runs looking like?

Keep in mind that if you are prone to injury, you might want to look into doing a walk/run.

Great advice right there!!!!

Is it reasonable? NO. Can you do it if you really want to? Sure. What you may want to do before making any decision is to actually complete the HM first and see how you feel. You would need to jump right into the longer runs of a marathon program without much recovery from the HM. Or your could do the marathon with the intention of running OK for 15-18 miles, then just surviving to the finish. That can make for a long miserable experience though. Ideally for a marathon you would be running as many miles in a week for a few weeks as you ran the entire month of July. From where you are now that seems like too fast of a build.

That's what I was thinking ... take a look at those plans you could be in great shape for a half at that point while building to the marathon.

I would advise against going to the full in 8 wks.

The full is a MUCH bigger deal than the half. There's no way to really compare difficulty objectively, but I'd say at least 4x harder, if not more. I can crank through HMs week after week, fit in the training without much problem, and even tri-train and still get enough mileage to do HMs. The marathon - no way for me. Even though it's "just double" the distance, it gets exponentially harder once you're running on empty or cramping up.

The satisfaction you get from really training for a full is really what it's all about as well. To be honest, I do think anybody who can run an entire HM, even slowly, can finish a marathon. They can walk half or more of it, and still finish in 5+ hours without injury. You can take that route as well, but I think it's much more satisfying and a better training stimulus to really train for the full at least 12 weeks out. (14-18 preferred.)

My impression from your logs, honestly, is that you're going to need to kick things up a notch to be properly trained for the half next month.  You have only 4 1/2 productive weeks left to build before taking only a one-week taper.  If you've actually logged 3/4 of your training, then your preparation is marginal (esp. if your long run of 9 miles was last year).  Based on that, I'd say going on to a marathon with only 6 more productive weeks after that is...well, I'll just say pretty ambitious.

I'd suggest that you have to be prepared to lose some of that precious time between the two races to recovering from the half (based on your current preparation reflected in your logs)...unless you've got a significant amount of mileage not in your logs.  (Or unless you expect that you'll be walking a significant part of the half, which would minimize the need for recovery.)

If you want to go for it, my opinion is that you should definitely shift focus to the marathon right away, as others have already suggested.  I think I saw an 8-mile run in your logs in recent weeks:  You can probably build properly in time from that to the 18 miler (or two) that I'd always recommend as a minimum target long run (others may say 16 as a minimum...choose between them at your peril...personally, I aim for at least one 20 mile run before a mary).  But I'd look at the half as a training run, not as a race (whatever "race" means to you, anyhow)...try to minimize any excessive downtime due to recovery from doing the half significantly faster than your normal long training run pace.

You can do it, but you don't really have much margin for error in building your mileage...and you probably need to think about what emotional attachments you have (if any) to treating the half as an "A" race, rather than a long run for marathon training.

Thanks everyone for your honest feedback.

I know I should really keep my logs better up to date. I have been doing 2-3 runs during the week of 3-5 miles and a long run on the weekend. This past weekend it was 9 miles.

But, you I am a fairly new runner. I started running about 2 1/2 years ago but really just for Triathlons. I was pretty unmotivated for about 6 months and the Half Narathon training has finally kicked it back in for me.

I think I will hold off at this point...maybe pick a Marathon next year and just continue to enjoy the Half Mary trainibg and getting back into training in general.