Running A Full Marathon with No Training

[Derek]

Am wondering if it's possible to do so as a recreational runner with no prior distance training. Say you want to clock 5 hours; that means each hour you'll need to cover 8km or so, which means 2km every 15 minutes. How achievable would it be?

[lips]

Not possible. (for me)

I'm quite a good runner, clocking 1:58 for 21km.

I definitely cannot go beyond 22km even though i have so many ET run during sispec days.

Are you doing?

[hermanchauw]

I heard there was a kber who did a marathon without running training. You can google it.

[Derek]

Not possible. (for me)

I'm quite a good runner, clocking 1:58 for 21km.

I definitely cannot go beyond 22km even though i have so many ET run during sispec days.

Are you doing?

if my colleague bets a $1,000.

[xarope]

5 hours? That's slightly faster than walking pace (say 6km/h), so yes, achievable.

Would you accomplish this comfortably? No.

No matter how fit you are, if you are doing an unfamiliar movement for an extended period of time, you will be sore.

[h]

is 5hrs the time to beat? or you just need to finish a marathon with no training?
if it's just finishing, unfit people do it all the time.

[hermanchauw]

if it's just finishing, unfit people do it all the time.

[kacie]

sounds like what i'm gonna be doing.

[Sufian]

Honestly, with training, I did 4h23min. That was my best effort. Measure from there.

[galapogos]

Honestly, with training, I did 4h23min. That was my best effort. Measure from there.

you suck!

[xarope]

Honestly, with training, I did 4h23min. That was my best effort. Measure from there.

you suck!

There's a big, thick line that can be drawn between the 1:30-2hour mark, and beyond. Most people would be able to comfortably run up to that mark (with varying degrees of competency), but past that you do need a strong LSD base and efficient running stride, otherwise muscular fatigue and soreness takes over; remember that even established marathoners say running a 10km/21km is completely different to running a marathon.

Nobody ever said a marathon was supposed to be comfortable

But let's break it down; say you can run 10mins at 12km/h pace, then walk 4km/h for 20mins; that gets you 3km+1.3km=4.3km/30mins=>8.6km/h. If you can do that 10 times, that gets you 43km in 5 hours.

If you walk 5km/h, then the equation becomes 3km+1.66km=4.66km/30mins=9.32km/h, so you only need to do that ~9 times to get to 42km => 4.5hour marathon.

You can break it down however you like, e.g. run 5mins@10k/h, walk 3mins@5k/h etc. But if you break the overall large goal of 42km into sections, you can see that it's "easily" doable, albeit not comfortable if you have never walked/run more than 2 hours before.

[Weib]

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic ... ydpg2.html
http://www.runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=5922