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I have trained for Kuala Lumpur 2013 marathon since April. The marathon is on 30th June. I have injured my heel in the training and I was out for 4 weeks in May. I have started training again last weekend with 7km, 10km and yesterday 12.5km. The heel feels fine, just needs more careful stretching before and after. Now I have exactly one month to prepare for the marathon. I have already run a marathon last year (Mt. Fuji) in November in 4:35.

I used to do one or two interval trainings, two long runs and two 60 min runs a week to prepare for the last marathon. I have ran the longest distance (almost 42km) about 3 weeks before marathon and then I reduced the distance until the marathon day. This worked well for me then. After marathon I just kept running 10km few times a week until April.

But what should I do now? My biggest concern is that my muscles and joints might not be ready for 42km. How should I prepare? I am definitely not fit enough to run as fast as last time, but I was thinking I should be able to run it in 5:30-5:45 with breaks.

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    Given the risk of getting caught in the race & shutting down pain signals from your body -> worse injuries, I would skip the race.
    – FredrikD
    May 31, 2013 at 12:30
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    I'm with FrederikD on this one. I personally consider 12 weeks to be barely sufficient for marathon training, and you missed a month completely which means you are fairly close to completely detrained. If you still want to attempt it, I would so something like run 10k, walk 2k. Between now and then, just get in mileage, and don't worry about any intervals.
    – JohnP ♦
    May 31, 2013 at 14:35
  • What was the longest run in the 2-3 weeks before the injury? What was the nature of the injury?
    – Sarge
    Jun 1, 2013 at 6:28
  • @Sarge 2 weeks before it was 15km, I was going to run 17-20km in the week when it happenned. I am not sure what is the correct word in English, I slipped on an oil patch -> too much stress on the heel, and it resulted in inflammation.
    – MartinTeeVarga
    Jun 2, 2013 at 2:26
  • @FredrikD I am afraid you are right. Please post it as an answer so I can accept it.
    – MartinTeeVarga
    Jun 2, 2013 at 2:28

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Given the risk of getting caught in the race & shutting down pain signals from your body -> worse injuries, I would skip the race.

For example, see this article. Even if it is a bit old (1992), it states that running as an exercise has a high frequency of injuries and one of the main causes is competition. Naturally, you can be injured in all sports and even without doing sports.

My own experience from competitive sports is once you are in the race/game etc., it is too easy to ignore normal signals regarding injuries and just focus on winning/completion.

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Run the half - don't run the marathon.

A base of 15km is not enough for a full and you'll cause more damage if you try. The heel inflamation is a signal from your body that you're doing too much too soon.

You should be able to run a pretty good half and then go back for the full next year.

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