Half Ironman or full marathon - which is harder? (Page 2)

After 10 or 11 marathons and 5 or 6 HIMs (and 3 IMs), I still find the Marathon harder on the body. However, I think the HIM is a more complex tactical task, and I usually train more hours total for a HIM than I did when I was doing stand alone Marathon training.

Of course, it really depends on how well trained you are. That being said, I have half-assed a few 5+ even 6 hour marathons on little training. It hurt, but I was going very slow, almost too slow to really hurt yourself. 

I did a couple of HIMs that I wasn't well trained for this year. 5:45-5:53 of suffering!

I'm mostly echoing what has been said before, but I've got to agree: the marathon is harder. I find the training for a HIM more demanding time-wise than marathon training, but the races are quite different, especially in terms of recovery. And running is definitely my strength.

6 weeks ago I did a HIM that's billed as America's toughest, which took me around 6 hours, reflecting the severity of the course. I felt weary but not particularly stiff afterwards, was running again the next day, and 3 days later felt great on a 10-mile training run. 3 days ago I did a largely flat marathon, which took only half the time of the HIM. The next day it hurt to walk, and 3 days after the race my proudest achievement was to walk down the stairs relatively normally without holding onto the side. 

As another poster pointed out, weather often plays a bigger role in HIMs than in marathons, since tris are mostly in warmer months. That adds an opportunity for suffering that most marathons try to avoid.

That's how I feel.. cept the other way around. I wish I didn't have feet problems, but I do.

My fear with doing a marathon is not being able to walk after mile 20..

I know I can somehow get through 13 miles of an HIM run though...

No doubt....get an OLY under your belt....you  have NOTHING to be afraid of.

Logistically, yes, anything with swim in it is more challenging to fit in. (Bike too.)

But if you're doing it right, at similar intensity/volume comparable for HIM vs marathon, the marathon will be much harder physically. You're constantly pushing the boundary of your leg ligaments and muscles through the volume alone, and it's very easy to get injured. At the same time, if you're doing it right, you're running enough to cover the distance well, which usually means training on fatigued legs more often than not. The HIM training yes can be fatiguing, but it's a varied stress, whereas the marathon training is a real leg beatdown. 

For the folks who say the marathon's easier because they do the same run volume as they do for their HIM training - that's not a fair comparison. Your run volume will likely be over double what your HIM volume is if you're doing comparable volume for the marathon.

As a new Triathlete whose only done several sprints and one Oly, BUT I have done several Half Marathons- I can extrapolate my answer to the OP's question like this- I hurt worse and longer after any of my HMs than I did for any of these shorter Tris I did. I am gearing up for Disney Marathon in Jan, which would be my first, and I'm simply praying (and training appropriately) to MAKE IT START line uninjured. Based on my HMs of sub 2 hours (one was sub 1:50), I hope to have a decent race, but i know i'm going to pay for that for a week or so after.

After my Oly, I went home, mowed the lawn and had to spend a day at a water park later! I don't plan on "doing" Disney after that race.

But this is one reason why I, like many others, actually ENJOY Tris better- I had an older age grouper tell me in my first Tri over a year ago, that he used to be a big runner, but running got to be "to hard on his body". The triathlon "spread" helped him with that and he loves it. I do not believe  I will enjoy the training or the actual race in the marathon as much as I do the training and race of Tris. Plus, in Tris, we have all the cool "toys" and gadgets, bikes/ computers/watches/gear etc.!

That's me.  Training-wise, no problem doing the long runs for 2-3 hours, but ask me to do a 50 mile ride/8 mile run brick?  Now THAT is the hardest training I've ever done having only competed up to HIM distance.

Completing a marathon, yes, my legs hurt.  But completing the HIM, I felt like I barely crawled over that finish line.  A 56 mile ride/13 mile run felt harder on my legs than a 26 mile run.

Wow.  Amazing how different the experience can be among athletes.  I am completely the opposite.  I have done 11 marathons and one 70.3.  I think the marathon is physically harder but I find it way easier to race than a 70.3.  In a marathon I don't have to trasition and I don't have to change mindset, I just stick to a very simple plan and gut it out.  I get more out of my race effort in a marathon.

The 70.3 was so much more complex that mentally it was harder for me to make strategic moves that allowed me to translate effort into speed.  I recovered very quickly from a 70.3 but I found it way harder to perform well at a 70.3 when compared to a marathon.  This may be mostly my inexperience with the 70.3 but it has been my experience thus far.

Probably the fairest thing is to consider it from the perspective from those who are about equally  experienced with both HIMs and standalone marathons.

It's obviously going to be the case that a great marathoner who can't swim or bike to save his/her life is going to find a HIM much harder, and similarly, someone who has done a bunch of sprint/oly and some HIMs but no standalone marathon races is going to find the marathon harder.

Full marathon is wayyy physically harder on your body than the HIM. The full marathon will hobble you every time if you race it (not just easy-finish it without going all-out.)  

HIM is logistically tougher to train for given the SBR, but you can still kind of fake your way through the training, meaning that you can miss a fair number of long workouts and still do fine since the distances aren't so long for each.

For the full marathon, if you're not getting that weekly mileage and the long runs, I don't care how talented or natural you are at running - you're gonna take a beatdown on race day by mile 20-22. You can't fake your way through racing a marathon. 

To further prove this point, note that there are numerous high level pro triathletes who run sub 3hrs for the run portion of an IM. These guys and girls will readily throw down a 70.3 at the world-championship level even in the 8 weeks leading up to Kona, meaning they expect to be fully recovered from that effort by Kona. NONE of these athletes will race standalone marathons at any point in the year all-out - in fact, almost they won't even ENTER these standalone marathons, even for fun. The lone exception to this was Gwen Jorgeson, whose strength is running, and it was so unique that there were all sorts of speculations about her potential race day performance since so few top triathletes do this. (She ran really well.)  

26.2 raced hard is a real beatdown, even for pros. 70.3 isn't the same type of beatdown, and allows for faster recovery.