Autumn marathon training - anyone?

London announcement is out

No event on normal course this year

Elite only event in laps round St James Park

2020 place holders get virtual race and deferral. Looks as if charity places, which cannot normally be deferred, will be deferrable (haven’t read all the FAQs yet, but it sounds pretty optimistic) so they don’t lose out on this years fundraising opportunity (because let’s face it, you won’t raise as much on a virtual)

Unsurprising that it’s off. Hope the deferral plan is as generous as it looks at first glance

I've got a place in my backup now which is going ahead in a covid secure format. Having completed 1 1/2 marathon cycles I need to do an actual race so i can focus on something else for a bit.

London announcement imminent - hoping they don't make us actively defer, i would rather my place is passively rolled over so i can use the actual deferral request if i need it due to injury etc.

I have a place in a local marathon, which is still going ahead, in Sept. I won't be running it though as I can't be arsed, quite frankly - and I was only doing it for GFA qualification, which probably won't count for this year anyway.

If any MNer on this thread is desperate to run a marathon in Sept and finds theirs is pulled, message me. If transfers are allowed, I'm happy to hand over my place.

It's the Boston marathon in Lincs.

Brighton effectively cancelled this morning, some sort of event in the offing but it's not the mass marathon, maybe a virtual on the course in Milton Keynes style, or shorter events?

London will go the same way. I have a small lowkey backup race in mind which I think is likely to proceed, just confirming with the organisers...already up to 18 miles (for the second time!) and not letting another marathon cycle complete without doing a race.

Not tomorrow (still thinking about when they were meant to let us know)

Next week

There’s only 10 weeks now until the new date, and the last part of training is onerous as that’s when you need to be doing the really long runs

It would be really unfair to decide any later

Especially as all sorts of things like transport and accommodation are so much harder to deal with right now too

So I hope we get a proper answer tomorrow

I broke my foot 8 weeks ago, so am hoping it is cancelled! But if it isn’t, I’m up for it, though an woefully underprepared. But I should be sound by then, and I’ll just aim to get round (I’ll expect it’ll take an extra 60-90 minutes)

@CarrotPuff sorry to hear about Richmond although agree, it seemed inevitable.

I need to lose some weight too really - not helped by my breakfast of chocolate brioche - like you i am up to 16 miles and suffering runger!

Not feeling super enthused about London in October tbh, I have an ankle niggle which I didn't have for the last training cycle and I don't like the sound of socially distanced London. If it's no expo, no spectators I may end up pulling my defer card and doing a very small local marathon instead - wonder if they let you defer to 2022? 2021 may still be dicey and I think I would want a year off from marathons after so much time invested this year.

Richmond got postponed to Spring 2021. It was obvious it would be anyway. I was going to do 18 miles on Saturday so I'm glad i found out before then. Gutted I won't get to do a marathon this year, but hopefully I'll be in better shape in spring (read: lose some weight). I'll definitely do a half in October or November though if they do happen. Having built myself up to 16 miles a half marathon distance feels pretty easy now! Silver linings and all that...

They did say mass events might resume in October, so fx London goes ahead. From my understanding they will start dropping some distancing measures by then, although it does seem a bit too soon.

With Manchester cancelled this week, London must surely be next. Even if you assume that half of the people have deferred, they’d have to sort out mass temperature testing, masks on in the starting pens, staggered starts that would go on for hours, and tell crowds not to come. The negative publicity would undo all the goodwill they have.

More relieved than gutted about Manchester cancelling tbh. I hadn’t reached the tipping point in the mileage so don’t feel too invested.

Well, with what Boris said, is it going to be possible that London will run in October?

If public transport and enough hotels are open, then it might be workable. But it's still an awful lot of London to close, sucking in a lot of police/ambulance effort, and it disrupts the takings in loads of businesses. And they can hardly use a Nightingale as the race admin base (they'll have to post numbers to UK addresses and have a completely different pick up point for international?)

And anyone with symptoms or living in a lockdown area will have to be automatically deferred to the next race (even if silver bond, as smaller local charities might fund all their potential runners are under same local restriction)

But it still seems too big to be possible.

Interesting however that the next announcement is going to be next week. There is clearly good communication in the last 6 weeks or so between the government and the race organisers on the timetable for decision points.

I've never done Manchester; this year was supposed to be my first time.

Like you, I also PBd in a half in March and thought it boded well for Manchester in April...but then of course that came to nothing. Though I'm glad at least I have a half PB to show for this year.

45 minutes off your time is LOADS!! What was your PB before?!
I was hoping to PB this year and also bag myself a GFA qualifying place for London. Without a "proper" race and the chance of getting GFA, though, the idea of half-killing myself to run 3:40 isn't very tempting

Hi @TeaAndHobnobv- have you run many marathons before? I don't want to be the voice of doom, but unless the marathon distance is very comfortable for you, I wouldn't recommend running it this autumn.

Lots of research has been done on how hard training affects the immune system. Key findings in one major study found that running a marathon can make you up to six times more likely to catch the common cold - which arguably isn't something you want to do to your immune system during Covid:
www.seattlemarathon.org/running-and-the-immune-system

However, most studies have also found that moderately intense training (up to 10 miles for most people) can boost immunity. Sorry if this is something you already know; I don't mean to get preachy. But this is why I'm not running anything too long or at race effort at the moment, as I don't want to inadvertently raise my risk of Covid.

I'm not bothering to start marathon training as I honestly don't think the races will be on. I'm supposed to be doing the rescheduled Manchester marathon in October.
That said, I've been keeping up the 13ish mile runs in lockdown; just taking them more slowly and faffing around on trails rather than doing targeted MP runs on road.

I've done the 14 miles here as well, was really achy afterwards, and as if that was not enough I've done some strength training yesterday as well. So I'm super achy now... not sure how I gonna do my tempo run tomorrow!

I'm back into a marathon cycle but the only real differences are the long run is getting longer and my tempo run is getting longer. I don't think the race will happen but it's all good base building.

4 miles tempo and a 14 mile long run last week for me, I much prefer the long runs at this time of year!