It seems the key to a successful marathon (or other distance race) is choosing the appropriate time goal. Choose too fast of a time and you're almost certainly going to blow up along the way (see my Austin effort ... rocking along for 15.5 miles then it was "game over"). Choose too slow of a goal and you'll finish wondering what you could have done had you made a more committed effort. The thing about marathons is that you can't go out and run another one the following week or month. I haven't perfected the art of choosing the proper pace but here are a few things I consider.
First, take a look at your recent race efforts. What were your times? How did you feel? Your most recent race can be a good indicated of your current fitness level.
Second, convert your recent race efforts to an equivalent marathon time using each of the following:
runbayou.com
attackpoint.org
mcmillanrunning.com
(there's also one at runnersworld.com and runworks.com)
These converters will give you a range of possible goal times for your
upcoming marathon.
I like to plug in a 5K, 10K, and half race to see what the converters think I can cover 26.2 miles in. If you're like me the trend you'll see is that your converted marathon time off your 5K race time is faster
than your marathon time for your 10K which is faster than your half. This suggests to me that I haven't built the proper endurance to trust the converted 5K time or 10K. The half is more reliable unless it was just a particularly bad day for some reason or it was far enough in the past that your fitness level was different. The converted half time may also reflect more endurance than I have trained for so it's probably not a bad idea to add 5 minutes to the converted half time.
This should offer some idea of how to arrive at a reasonable goal time for a marathon. The tricky part is that for a marathon all of this calculating is still very subjective. The converting tools don't take into account differences in terrain, weather, weight, nutrition, hydration, rest, mental outlook, etc. Any or all of these - and more - can come into play. But the converters can give you a frame of
reference.
>From there you can get a pace band to wear during the marathon to track your progress. I've gotten into trouble before when I have failed to
"stay in the mile." What I mean by that is just concentrating on running the current mile at the assigned pace. If you've set your goal pace correctly, this should almost always be do-able. There have been times when I start thinking about how much farther I have left to run. Worrying about how I feel now and worrying even more about how I'm going to feel later. This has led to thoughts of being overwhelmed and negativity. Before and after this year's Boston marathon I watched and read several interviews and comments by elite runners. I heard a few of them talk about the negative thoughts and the hard parts that inevitably come during a marathon. If the elites deal with this, is there any
reason to think a regular Joe like me isn't going to have to deal with the same challenge? Stay positive out on the course! This is always very important for me because I tend toward pessimism.
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