Ever since my pace fell apart in the second half of the Wineglass Marathon, I've been trying to narrow down the range of paces that I can currently sustain over 26 miles. Plugging my PR half marathon time of 1:46:34 into one of those race times predictors, I get the following chart of predicted vs. actual race times, which are quite accurate for the shorter races. But, the predicted marathon time is clearly an outlier (predicted time of 3:42:11 vs. my actual PR time of 4:22:06). But, what does that mean? Is it an outlier because these predictors just are not accurate at longer distances? Or, is it an outlier because my training just has not yet gotten me to my current potential? I definitely like the latter explanation better! Runners like Ed Whitlock, who was the first person over 70 to run a sub-3:00 marathon, show what my theoretical potential is, especially given that I still have quite a few more years to go before joining that age group. :)
Closely related to what pace I can currently sustain over the course of a marathon (and how far this pace is from that needed for my BQ) is what pace at which I should currently be training, especially for the weekly long runs, so as to be able to sustain my BQ pace for the upcoming March marathon. This topic has been, naturally, well discussed within the RunYourBQ online community--on pacing in general and on the benefits of slow paces for base runs. Likewise, Runner's World has many articles on this topic, e.g., "Easy does it."
Here's the multi-race pace chart I'd previously shown, in my MCM race report. The main revelation for me from that race was that an even pace at the fastest speed I can sustain for a particular set of race conditions should yield the best results.
My "modern" PR (4:22) was run at the March 2013 Rock 'n' Roll USA, where I was able to sustain a ~9:30 pace through around Mile 21. For MCM, I ran at around a 9:45-10:00 pace, and I was able to sustain that pretty much the entire way, with an overall slightly negative split. But for the rather crowded MCM course, especially through the early miles, I probably would have had a new PR. Given these two race results, no wonder my Wineglass effort, running the first half at a few seconds faster than my BQ goal marathon pace (GMP), turned out to be a mini disaster! My training for Wineglass just wasn't enough for sustaining that kind of pace for the entire race.
So, one of the main lessons I took away from Wineglass is that I need to do more miles in my long runs at or faster than my GMP. In training for Wineglass, I did most of the long runs at about 60-90 sec. slower than GMP, which was what I'd considered to be my LSD (long slow distance) pace. In hindsight, I think that pace was too slow. In training for the March marathon, I've modified my long run paces as follows: Front half warm-up miles (or half + 1 if the run is of odd miles) at GMP plus ~30 sec; rest of the miles at GMP, except for the last two miles, which are at GMP minus 15-30 sec. So far, at the mid-point of the current training cycle, with long runs at 18 miles, I've been able to run at these modified paces. I think just as important, though, if not more so, is that I'm gaining confidence in being able to shift into a faster gear towards the latter part of a run (or race)--and, to sustain it.
I don't disagree with "go slow to run fast." There's much research behind it. But, in some cases, maybe one needs to go fast to run fast!
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