I’m just looking for some reassurance. I’m training for Portland, 10/4. I have a 3:19 PR, but that was 3 kids and 11 years ago. I took last year off of fulls, so my most recent full was Chicago 2024. Unfortunately, I was dealing with a terrible bout of plantar fasciitis and had to take an entire month off of running (I just biked), and missed my 18, 19, and 20 mile long runs— even though I did do correspondingly timed bike rides. I stayed just under 4 hours, but was honestly happy to complete it at all. 

So my most recent fully trained marathon was 2023, when I ran NYC. I ran a 3:32, and was reasonably happy with it, overall. 

In any case, I think I’ve got more miles under my belt this year than any year since college. However, this training block, I’ve really tried to work on controlling my HR and doing my easy miles actually easy. I’m 38 and in the last couple years have started to notice I just don’t recover like I used to. Trying to stay zone 2 means I spend a lot of time in the 8:40s/mile (KS summers haven’t helped). But I’ve spent a lot of years training at 7-7:30– even 7:45ish for recovery, in the past. I never much focused on heart rate, and I’m almost certain I was always pretty frustrated by that pace and likely pushed too hard. However, it did give me more confidence going into race day. In college, I ran the 800-3000, so I’ve always focused on a pretty reasonable amount of speed; and this training block has me really nervous. 

I dropped in my long run today, 19 miles w/ splits and HR from Strava and the overall time and then a couple screen shots from 2023 and my 19 miler overall that year. I have worked 2 speed days into each week, but it’s always 5k/10k pace mixed with jog recovery, etc. so I rarely get to lock in and actually sprint— let alone do something like a 10k all out.  I guess I’m just not as confident as I’ve been in the past. I am hoping to go under 3:30 again, but I’m worried that the slower miles might not be preparing me as well. Do you think sub 3:30 is a reasonable goal, even if I’ve trained for that/close to that a lot faster in the past? TIA! 

What can I realistically shoot for?