Marathon pacing advice
8 watchers
22 Apr
7:25pm, 22 Apr 2024
2,766 posts
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RooA
Tim, I stuck a Heart Rate Monitor on and discovered my easy pace according to my heart was about 3 minutes per mile slower than what felt like a comfortable, natural pace. Yes, it was awful and awkward to slow down that much but my endurance has improved hugely and I can now run smoothly at the slower paces AND the pace I need to go has sped up a bit. I've also always been in the position where my longer race times have fallen short of the promise of my shorter distance times. Even 5K requires some endurance. Unfortunately it took me getting an achiles injury (overuse, from running too fucking fast for every single run) to make this change so I'm currently not able to get the raw speed to make the most of the improved endurance. 🙄 But yeah, I reckon you need to slow down to speed up. Going slower means you can do more miles in a week without feeling that burned out feeling too. I'm far from any kind of expert at marathoning though, but other posters on this thread are and I'm agreeing with them. 😆 I can just identify with the experience of what is actually the correct training pace feeling horrible and unnatural and say that in my experience that can change, it just takes patience and miles. |
22 Apr
9:06pm, 22 Apr 2024
4,201 posts
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tipsku
Another yes to auburnette's advice and the importance of aerobic conditioning at slower paces. I'm quite similar to her. My easy pace is around 9:30-10:00 m/m but the average pace in my last marathon yesterday was 7:52 m/m. When I started to run marathons, my easy pace and my MP pretty much overlapped. I think it was about 10:30 m/m for my first marathon and I ran my easy runs anywhere between 10 and 11 m/m depending on the hilliness of the course, sometimes even faster like 9:30. For reference, 10k race pace was 9 m/m back then, so 9:30 was definitely not easy! I didn't know any better and that's a typical mistake people make when they start training. Also, I think we were conditioned to run fast in school as the only things we ever did were sprints 50-100 m, 800 m or the odd Cooper test, 12 min of eyeballs out running. So most people wouldn't even know what easy pace should feel like because they've never run truly easy before. I didn't improve until I made an effort to slow down on my easy runs and then train faster only in specific sessions. When I trained for my first sub-4 effort, my easy runs were still around 10:30 but my MP was now 9 m/m and 10k pace 8 m/m so I had a good mix of paces in training but the bulk of it was in double digits. What RooA above describes is also what I went through when I began to train beginners. I needed to learn how to run at 11-13 m/m. It took some practice to get good at running slowly but it allowed me to increase mileage from 20 mpw to 40-50 mpw over a couple of years. My first marathon was a 4:33 and now I'm at 3:27. Running most of my training slower allowed me to race faster. |
22 Apr
9:27pm, 22 Apr 2024
8,746 posts
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Pothunter
If you’ve got anyone to run your long runs with then being able to chat comfortably is a good sign that your pace is slow enough. Obviously not for everyone but something to consider!
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25 Apr
1:59pm, 25 Apr 2024
7,125 posts
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Little Miss Happy
My long runs are usually around 60 secs/mile slower than marathon pace.
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