Racing and marathon training (Page 2)

The longest run in the P-D plans is 22 miles, I believe.

If you're hitting 20-22 in training and still "fall apart the last 3-6 miles," it could be you're racing at a faster pace thanyour training  allows.

Agreed.  You're going out harder than you can handle.

Nutrition/"the wall" is also a potential.  Are you getting some calories in during miles 2-20?

It's all part of what I call The Tripod of Marathon Success (catchy, huh?): Proper training, proper pacing, and proper nutrition/hydration.

Actually, I think the wall is more related to proper pacing than it is nutrition.  All the food in the world won't help if you run beyond your abilities.

What they said ^^

Most of their plans also have at least 3 - 20+ runs in them as well as up to 15 mile mid-week runs in the same week (almost every week had a 10 - 15 mile mid-week run on top of the weekend LSD).  Those were the weeks I hit 69 miles for the week .... ugh!!

To get an idea, just go look at my log for the month of January this year.

X2

I raced every other week during my marathon training. No tapers, no recovery down time. One of the keys was getting out for an easy run the day after a race. Active recovery. I tended to push very hard in the races so the first mile or so of the easy recovery run could be a little painful, but then the muscles would start loosening up and I would finish feeling good. A quality session of stretching would follow the recovery run and I would be good to go for the rest of the running for that week.

Sometimes people wait several days for the soreness of a hard race to go away when they could possibly have benefitted from doing some active recovery.