This question comes in from Conrad. He said after running the Washie 100 miler this year, he had a ruptured Baker’s cyst. He was advised to take 6 weeks off and then start training again. His training started up again in late August. He wants to know Is it still possible to run a sub 3 hour marathon before the end of the year?

Brad Brown: This question comes in from Conrad. He said after running the Washie 100 miler this year, he had a ruptured Baker’s cyst. He was advised to take 6 weeks off and then start training again. His training started up again in late August. He wants to know Is it still possible to run a sub 3 hour marathon before the end of the year?

Lindsey Parry: Any time you have taken off for an injury and particularly a reasonably serious running injury or a very painful one, you need to asses where you are when you start. There is plenty of time between now and a very late marathon, say early December, to run a fast sub 3 marathon.

Unfortunately of course, the later we go into the year the warmer the conditions become which is not ideal for running hard. If you can run and lay a nice base with what is left of September/October, that gives you November to build up. If you haven’t lost too much fitness you can run a decent marathon, but it really depends on where you are now.

Before running a sub 3 hour marathon, run a fast half

Probably the smarter move would be to spend 6 – 8 weeks getting yourself a nice little base and then spending 3 – 4 weeks getting nice and sharp and run a really fast half which will give you confidence to do a good sub 3 hour marathon late January.

It will still be a bit warm then I guess, but at least that is still reasonable timing before the 2015 Comrades Marathon. You can run nice and fast in the January, take a week or so off, build up for a week and then you can start building up your training again for the Comrades Marathon.