Quote Originally Posted by Mark Smith View Post
Hats off to you marathoners, that's a lot of Tarmac. Hearing tales of pain and woe and Mo is starting to get me exercised in every sense now. I'm running the Berlin marathon in September as I'm visiting friends there so thought 'why not?!' Any tips re training very much appreciated. Aiming for under 3:15 I think. Not sure what to aim for (half pb 1:23).

Like I say, well done folks
You should definitely aim for 3:00. Some of the pace converters suggest 2:53 but this would require a lot of dedicated training and a spot-on performance on the day (I can't find the pace converter I saw a few years ago which gave more conservative results, may have been called a VO2max converter ~ it agreed very closely with my times of HM 77 and Mar 2:48, although the marathon had more hills than Berlin. This would give you ~3:01).

Be sure to do some long flattish trail runs as early as possible, and fast road conditioning runs up to HM. If you're taking it very seriously then you'd do more longer road prep with fast finishes.