Pacing
I love the lighter days! This morning the sun woke me up at 5.30, before my alarm went off, so I caught the earlier bus to the gym. That let me fit in a long run that I won't be able to do at the weekend rather than the scheduled 5 miler. I think there will be definite advantages to getting my marathon training done over summer!
First of all the good. I did a 9.1 mile run today and ran it at an almost even 9 minute mile pace throughout. I don't have anything really to measure my pace by as I run (no fancy GPS system... yet!), I just decide how long I'm going to run (today around 80 minutes) and then measure how far I went on the internet when I get back to work out my pace. I know I do pretty much even or slightly negative splits by recording the time I turn round (weekdays I tend to run up the canal for half my target time and then turn round and run back the same route), and I have a rough idea of distance, but never anything exact to judge whether I need to speed up or slow down. I really just go by effort rather than an actual target pace, and I can usually sustain the same pace for the full distance (or at least each half takes me the same amount of time, within 30 seconds or so).
Which leads me to a question. Every training programme I've ever seen says that the long runs should be at an easy pace up to 1:30 per mile slower than target marathon pace. Well, I do find my 9 minute miles relatively easy on runs between 9 and 12 miles. Not EASY, but sustainable and relatively comfortable. But my target marathon pace is around 8:30 per mile, which seems pretty close to the pace I'm already running at. (By comparison, my pace in my last 10k was 7:41, so 8:30 seems achievable for the longer distance).
So do I slow down on those long runs in an attempt to make them even easier, even though I'm showing no ill effects to date by running them at what I perceive to be a fairly easy pace? Will I naturally slow down as my long runs get longer? Or do I keep on running them at this pace and adjust my target marathon pace so that it's a bit faster than my current aim? (hint - I'm not sure at all about the last one of those options - my target pace would be GFA if I could sustain it all the way round which is a challenging enough target as it is!)
By way of comparison, I ran my training runs for my last half marathon at about 10 minute miles and managed 8:51 on the day. It will be interesting to see what I do in my next one now my training runs are almost as fast as the race pace I ran that day.
To be honest, it might be a bit of a pointless question, because at the moment I have few real ways to measure my pace on my outdoor runs. I run at the speed I run and I take it from there. But I have some runs on the schedule at "marathon pace" and it would be useful to know what that might be if I run them on the treadmill where I can set it more accurately!
First of all the good. I did a 9.1 mile run today and ran it at an almost even 9 minute mile pace throughout. I don't have anything really to measure my pace by as I run (no fancy GPS system... yet!), I just decide how long I'm going to run (today around 80 minutes) and then measure how far I went on the internet when I get back to work out my pace. I know I do pretty much even or slightly negative splits by recording the time I turn round (weekdays I tend to run up the canal for half my target time and then turn round and run back the same route), and I have a rough idea of distance, but never anything exact to judge whether I need to speed up or slow down. I really just go by effort rather than an actual target pace, and I can usually sustain the same pace for the full distance (or at least each half takes me the same amount of time, within 30 seconds or so).
Which leads me to a question. Every training programme I've ever seen says that the long runs should be at an easy pace up to 1:30 per mile slower than target marathon pace. Well, I do find my 9 minute miles relatively easy on runs between 9 and 12 miles. Not EASY, but sustainable and relatively comfortable. But my target marathon pace is around 8:30 per mile, which seems pretty close to the pace I'm already running at. (By comparison, my pace in my last 10k was 7:41, so 8:30 seems achievable for the longer distance).
So do I slow down on those long runs in an attempt to make them even easier, even though I'm showing no ill effects to date by running them at what I perceive to be a fairly easy pace? Will I naturally slow down as my long runs get longer? Or do I keep on running them at this pace and adjust my target marathon pace so that it's a bit faster than my current aim? (hint - I'm not sure at all about the last one of those options - my target pace would be GFA if I could sustain it all the way round which is a challenging enough target as it is!)
By way of comparison, I ran my training runs for my last half marathon at about 10 minute miles and managed 8:51 on the day. It will be interesting to see what I do in my next one now my training runs are almost as fast as the race pace I ran that day.
To be honest, it might be a bit of a pointless question, because at the moment I have few real ways to measure my pace on my outdoor runs. I run at the speed I run and I take it from there. But I have some runs on the schedule at "marathon pace" and it would be useful to know what that might be if I run them on the treadmill where I can set it more accurately!
posted by YP at 7:37 PM
1 Comments:
Okay, I guess I will de-lurk.
I am training for a half marathon this year. It is one that I ran last year, but would like to improve my time. Currently, I am running about 10 min miles.
Reading some of the training mistakes, one of the things they talk about is never doing any speedwork, then expecting to do signifigantly better on a race day, which if you have not trained your body for that, makes sense.
I do notice that I am running my longer runs at a faster pace than I did in the beginning of my training. I do also notice that I tend to run faster outdoors than on a treadmill. I don't know what it is, but that's what I find.
One thing I am going to try to incorporate into some of my shorter runs (the 5-6 milers) is some speed work - warming up for 15 minutes, then doing 6-8 repeats of 2 minutes hard, one minute easy. I don't very easily speed up a long run, but I figured this would be something I could do without burning myself out or killing myself.
I also tend to run in the morning, because I start out slower in the am. In the afternoon, if I am feeling good, I start out too fast and end up overstressing myself.
Hope this gives you some ideas.
~a
Post a Comment
<< Home