u/230516

I ran my first marathon yesterday and I’m so happy with how it went. My only goal was to finish, but I told myself it would be a cherry on top if I ran sub 5 hours.

I finished yesterday in 4:58:11! Everything went as well as it could have. Fueling and hydrating was easy, the weather was perfect, and I felt really good until about mile 23 when my legs started to get tired but at that point I knew I could push to the finish line.

I honestly didn’t know if I’d even make it to the finish line. I posted in here two weeks ago, but I was originally supposed to run a marathon the first weekend of May but got the flu the day before the race. There happened to be another race near me yesterday (two weeks out from my original date) so I decided to sign up and try it even though every run between my original date and my new race date pretty much sucked.

Recovery has been ROUGH, I felt like I got hit by a truck yesterday but got a good nights sleep and am feeling much better today. Mostly I feel proud of myself and also so proud of anyone else completing their first marathon. No matter your time, this is HARD and such a huge accomplishment.

…but yesterday I got the flu. With a high fever and not being able to eat anything, I had to drop out of my race.

I was devastated but found that there’s another marathon in my city in exactly two weeks, so I signed up. My question is can I keep my fitness up enough to do it? I was on a beginner training plan with peak weeks being ~35 miles, but everything went well. I felt really good during my longest 18 and 20 mile runs. Will I be able to run a race two weeks after my original race date with such an extended taper and if so, does anyone have recommendations of how to keep my fitness up and how much I should be running?

Thanks in advance, and best of luck to everyone else in this sub!!

Hi everyone! I’m running my first marathon this Sunday. I’m feeling nervous because the expected high temp on my race day keeps climbing. It’s up to 74f, I think the highest I hit in training was around 68.

Based on my training runs, I was expecting to finish in around 4:45. Average HR on my longest runs (18 and 20 milers) has been in the low 160s and I’m very comfortable there, however I’m worried about my pace due to the heat. My course cutoff time is 6 hours. Any tips? Words of encouragement?