RW Forum SIx – 3.30 – 4.00

Oirish - Brilliant!

Carl - fantastic well done. You may want to think about tweaking your 8:15 marathon pace a bit. 8:05 sound about right?

Well back in from the snow and rain with 20 miles under my belt and I didn't get lost once!

It was good fun dealing with the snow in my eyes, traffic doing 60 at me down country lanes (It's alright though because it was a sports car so obviously he was a reaaaaaallly good driver) and clinging to bushes as I navigated along a hedged embankment where the road had flooded, eat you heart out Indiana Jones.

Here are the splits:

1 @ 9:03

2-7 8:29, 8:43, 8:43, 8:39: 8:49 8:47

8-11 9:21(my Indie moment) 8:59 8:56 8:40

12-16 8:13 9:25 8:49 8:49 8:52

17-19 8:34 8:25 8:30

20 9:25

 I didn't realise how wet I was until I tried to get my running gear off, still I am really glad I did it, the weather was shocking when I started and it would of been easy to have made an excuse not to go out. Those few steps to the door are the hardest of the lot somedays.

Well done Ricky / Oirish - nice long runs there.

Carl - your plan sounds spot on. Re: MP - it's always a tough one. Looking at the splits on yesterday's run 8:05 looks very doable. Most of your 12 miles MP were sub 8:00 pace. I was tempted got say 7:55 and go for 3:29 but as you know the difference in 10 seconds a mile is huge when you've been running for 3 hours.... The truth is, an awful lot of how well we do in marathons is nothing to do with training. It's how strong we are to resist the urge to slow down and/or walk when our minds start telling us to stop. 

Ricky W wrote (see)

Carl - why don't you stick to ur plan of 8.15 pace but aim to run a negative split. If your feeling good at 16ish miles you could start to push the pace progressively until mile 20 try & hold it all the way to the line. Might be a more enjoyable experience than realising at 16miles 8.05 was too fast and the last 10 being hell on earth.....probably result in a similar time but a much nicer run. 

Ricky - I am definitely moving into territory unknown. My previous 2 attempts at the marathon were all about getting to the finish line and here I am grappling with the thought of trying to go faster than 8:15 pace. I never thought I would be here but goes to show what some very focussed training can do.

Spoons. wrote (see)

Carl - your plan sounds spot on. Re: MP - it's always a tough one. Looking at the splits on yesterday's run 8:05 looks very doable. Most of your 12 miles MP were sub 8:00 pace. I was tempted got say 7:55 and go for 3:29 but as you know the difference in 10 seconds a mile is huge when you've been running for 3 hours.... The truth is, an awful lot of how well we do in marathons is nothing to do with training. It's how strong we are to resist the urge to slow down and/or walk when our minds start telling us to stop. 

Spoons - I guess that setting out with 7:55 in mind could make for a very difficult race. I set out to run the HM at 8:00 min milng and ended up smashing that with 7:43 min/mile with a very strong finish. I have run 2 strong LSR's with 8 and 12 miles of Pace running. Average pace of the 5 blocks of 4 pace miles have been 8:10 ; 8:09; 8:15; 7:57; 7:54. And looking a little closer of the 20 pace miles, 17 of them were less than 8:10.
So this is telling me that I can probably go closer to 8:00 min miling than I had been thinking. But it is bringing me into another place where the mental side of things will be so important as closer to 8:00 min miling is going to be physically very demanding particularly if it is a warm day. 

I think I am going to adopt the 8:05 during training so that I get used to how it feels. If I am not sure coming upto race day I can always reevaluate and drop it a little. I might need to do this anyway if it is warm on the day.

And as you say on race day it is not the training that will get me round (it will help of course) but it will all be about how strong I am mentally.

I must be mad !!!!!

Good running by everyone.  

Over the weekend, I caught a glimpse of the weather forecast for today which was basically "-5, with gale force winds" which wasn't too appealing!  Therefore, I got an extra run in yesterday and I'm treating today as a rest day.

As a matter of interest, when people are talking about quite precise pacing targets how do you accurately run at such a pace over a long period?  I have a Garmin, but even with that my actual paces are very heavily dependent on the route profile etc.  I.E., I may run up a hill at 09:00 and find it hard, but then run down the other side at 07:30 and find it easy.

Big_G - if I'm trying to run a certain pace it will be the average of the whole run. As you say, going up a hill at the same pace could be difficult to acheive. When I run up hills I will try and put the same amount of effort in to when I'm running on the flat. This will obviously mean running slower up the hill. Putting in the same amount of effort on the downhill will also mean running faster than on the flat when putting the same effort in. I dont try and maintain the speed going up or down hills and at the end of the run the pace will generally average itself out to the pace I was targetting in that run so it's not something I think I need to worry about really. 

Carl - obviously we're all mad! Your plan sounds perfect. Get some miles in at 8:05 and see how it goes. You can always drop a bit nearer the time.

Carter - I would really focus on the half this week and also on not knackering out the legs too much. Therefore - On Tuesday I would do a tempo run - 4 miles at half marathon pace with a 1.5 mile w/u + c/d (7 miles in total). On Thursday I would do 3 x 1000m at half marathon pace (90 seconds recovery) with a 1.5 mile w/u + c/d (5 miles in total).

Cheers Spoons

Anyone else experiencing problems with text size. It seems to post okay but when typing it is tiny.

Carl - lots of people!

Spoons - good to know that it is not just me. I suppose RW will sort this out sometime then.

Carter - Do not fear. I am defo not setting out to try and crack the 3:30 barrier. I am not even thinking about this. Maybe 8:05 pace is too fast but to get under 3:30 I would have to run sub 8:00 min miles and that is not going to happen.

Like you I have put so much effort into this now that I do not want to blow it but so far Spoons has been right about most things so I am going to take on board his suggestion based on my recent results.

If I train at 8:05 during the next few weeks I can always drop it a little come race day if I am not feeling confident. That way if I am feeling really good I can go for it as I know what it feels like.

I am sure we will return to this before race day again.

Freezing tonight. Thank goodness it is a rest day as not sure I could go out in that. Hopefully it will be a little less windy tomorrow night.