Need help determining race pace

VanderTuig1976

Hi,

I really need help setting a goal pace for a half marathon I will be running in August. FWIW, I have run both a half and a full within the last year. In both, I focused on completing vs. a time goal.

This time around, I want to set a time goal. I am running the same half that I did last year. The course is hilly and last year I made the mistake of going out way too fast and burning out early in the race. Despite all of the hill training I did, I got scared and walked the hills, lol. I know if I had properly paced myself in the beginning I could have done so much better (finished in 2:35).

During training, I have been comfortably doing my long runs at ~10 minute pace. This feels "easy" and when I try to slow it down, I wind up adding just a few seconds on to my pace. This makes me think that this is the appropriate long run pace for me.

Since long runs should be anywhere from 30-90 seconds longer than race pace, should I start doing my pace runs at 9:30? This seems a little aggressive to me but maybe not.... My next pace run is only 3 miles so I suppose I could try to sustain 9:30 and go from there.

Any advice or recommendations is greatly appreciated!

Crystal

5512bf

A 10:00 pace is a 2:11 half marathon, which would kill your previous time. I'd look at your longest run of the training and look at your mile splits. If you ran a 11-12 mile long run and maintained that 10:00 pace throughout without stopping or rest and it felt easy, then yes i'd shoot for that 9:30 pace. If your last several miles of that long run the pace started to slow or you had issues with finishing it, you might be a little more conservative and stick to that 10:00 pace until you get to 8-10 miles. If you feel great at that point then you could start to open it up a bit see what kind of time you could post.

MobyCarp

Something that I didn't appreciate until after I reflected on my half marathon results is the concept of the lactic threshold pace (T pace in Jack Daniels terminology). This is the pace that you can sustain for about an hour before the lactic acid accumulation in your muscles catches up to you and you are compelled to slow down. In 20-20 hindsight, I think I edged closer to T than I should in several half marathons, resulting in my being compelled to slow down after mile 9, which is about an hour for me at T.

If you want to finish the half quickly *and* in good shape, it's not about a pace you can sustain for 3 miles. It's about a pace you can sustain for (in your case) 2 hours. A 10 minute mile probably works for you. A 9:30 mile may work for you. If 9:30 seems too aggressive, split the difference and aim for 9:45. That would allow for the possibility that your 10 minute pace on long runs is actually a bit faster than you should be doing long runs. (n.b. - I have no idea what your paces really should be, but I've seen runners who are fine through 8 or 10 miles have problems at 12 or 13 because they were running faster than they should. From the outside, I could not tell for the first 8 miles that these people were really running too fast.)

In addition to the physiology, psychology is huge in distance running. You want to be running a pace that you really believe you can sustain, and if you make a mistake you want to get back to that pace after some reasonable recovery. This is part of why we do speed training workouts that might be something like 3 x 2 miles at T with 3 minutes recovery; that trains the body to run fast, physiologically improves cardio endurance, and trains the mind to believe that when you slow down it's just a recovery period. I credit interval training for my mental ability to get back to running in the last 3 miles of Boston, after I was physiologically compelled to start taking walking breaks at 23.5 miles. The walking breaks weren't permanent failure; they were recovery periods.

VanderTuig1976

5512bf wrote: »

A 10:00 pace is a 2:11 half marathon, which would kill your previous time. I'd look at your longest run of the training and look at your mile splits. If you ran a 11-12 mile long run and maintained that 10:00 pace throughout without stopping or rest and it felt easy, then yes i'd shoot for that 9:30 pace. If your last several miles of that long run the pace started to slow or you had issues with finishing it, you might be a little more conservative and stick to that 10:00 pace until you get to 8-10 miles. If you feel great at that point then you could start to open it up a bit see what kind of time you could post.

Yeah, this year I should definitely PR, lol! Great advice - thanks! I'll try the 10 min. mile pace on my long run this weekend and see how I do:)

VanderTuig1976

MobyCarp wrote: »

Something that I didn't appreciate until after I reflected on my half marathon results is the concept of the lactic threshold pace (T pace in Jack Daniels terminology). This is the pace that you can sustain for about an hour before the lactic acid accumulation in your muscles catches up to you and you are compelled to slow down. In 20-20 hindsight, I think I edged closer to T than I should in several half marathons, resulting in my being compelled to slow down after mile 9, which is about an hour for me at T.

If you want to finish the half quickly *and* in good shape, it's not about a pace you can sustain for 3 miles. It's about a pace you can sustain for (in your case) 2 hours. A 10 minute mile probably works for you. A 9:30 mile may work for you. If 9:30 seems too aggressive, split the difference and aim for 9:45. That would allow for the possibility that your 10 minute pace on long runs is actually a bit faster than you should be doing long runs. (n.b. - I have no idea what your paces really should be, but I've seen runners who are fine through 8 or 10 miles have problems at 12 or 13 because they were running faster than they should. From the outside, I could not tell for the first 8 miles that these people were really running too fast.)

In addition to the physiology, psychology is huge in distance running. You want to be running a pace that you really believe you can sustain, and if you make a mistake you want to get back to that pace after some reasonable recovery. This is part of why we do speed training workouts that might be something like 3 x 2 miles at T with 3 minutes recovery; that trains the body to run fast, physiologically improves cardio endurance, and trains the mind to believe that when you slow down it's just a recovery period. I credit interval training for my mental ability to get back to running in the last 3 miles of Boston, after I was physiologically compelled to start taking walking breaks at 23.5 miles. The walking breaks weren't permanent failure; they were recovery periods.

I know what you mean about T pace. During training and even when I was running the marathon, I got to a point where I knew if I slowed down and I wouldn't be able to pick back up;) I appreciate you pointing this out as I hadn't thought about doing any T training workouts as part of my training - will definitely do so now!

STrooper

My two cents worth.

If 10:00/mile feels comfortable at 10 miles (and if that is consistent over that distance), in the absence of other data, holding that for another 3.1 miles is probably realistic. You probably can't go out at an 8:45 pace and expect to "hang-on" at the end if it is that "hilly" unless you've practiced at it (though I note that in Daniels' book, 8:45/mile might be close to your T-pace from what you describe). But you might be able to go out at 9:30 and still feel like you've finished strongly and could have gone faster.

For me, fast-finish long runs (where I am running at a 15K pace over the last several miles) seem to have the most psychological benefit in addition to physiological stimulus. If I've managed my energy usage well up to the last 5K, those fast finish runs have imprinted what I can do and sustain over the final distance when muscle fatigue is just beginning to settle in. My "easy pace" is around 10:00/mile in warmer, more humid weather.

But everyone's experience and training is different and the course can play a huge role in how you do. For example:

I ran three marathons in early 2015 before I hurt my hip training for the third marathon. I limped through the last marathon and a 10-mile race after that before I took a month off to recover. As I began to rebuild the mileage in the early summer of 2015, I ran a 5K race to see how things felt. Later in the fall I ran a 4K race and an HM to assess my progress without pushing too hard. Everything seemed to work with little pain.

I started training for my next marathon in November 2015 when the healing seemed complete.

In my most recent HM (June 2016), I knew the hills in the last two miles would be the challenge even if I didn't have to walk to promote an active recovery (multiple rises and then flattening/drops before the next climb. Previously, this race ran a different route that had a mile-long climb at the end with an average grade of 4% and a stretch at an 8% grade). Even on flatter courses in 2014, I had not broken through 2:00:00 at the HM distance.

But I had other shorter races this past spring that indicated that a sub-2:00:00 HM was possible and even likely (a 5K @ 24:11, a 10K @ 52:56 on an extremely crowded course, and a 10-miler @ 1:26:02 on a hilly course) even though my easy pace was still around 10:00/mile. And I had run a marathon less than two months before (the "easiest" marathon I had ever run on a hilly course where I finished really strong, just missed a PR even though I wasn't trying for one, and had a good time running the marathon. I know, I'm a sick puppy if I had a good time running a marathon). So, for me, averaging around 8:45/mile in humid weather in the HM was a doable goal to bank some time on the hill climb at the end (which began in earnest at mile 11.5).

And up to mile 11, I was holding an 8:46 pace. Then came the climb in stages (a series of climbs and then short drops). I ran miles 12 and 13 at a 9:56 and 10:02 pace, respectively, before I sprinted to the end at a 7:22/mile pace. The net effect was that I "gave up" 2:28 over the last two miles because of the climb given my average pace up to that point. But compared to my average easy-paced long runs, my final pace of 9:01/mile with the hill climbs felt really good.

For comparison purposes, I went back and looked at what the last three miles of the last marathon looked like. I ran those last three miles in 9:41, 9:44, and 8:55, respectively. Seems like my end of race "kick" is about 7:22/mile because I ran that last 0.2 miles in the marathon at 7:22/mile, as well. But knowing the level of exertion that I can sustain at the end from those fast finish runs has really helped a lot on race day for both distances.