Julie Steeby paced herself to a Boston qualifying time at this year's Bayshore Marathon. Running a Half Marathon is one great method for predicting your marathon pace.
The Safari program incorporates sporadic Pace Runs to practice your goal marathon pace. It can still be a challenge, especially for the first time marathoner, to determine goal marathon pace. The marathon distance is still an unknown. The good news is there are several methods that can be used to predict your marathon time, without actually running one.
Here is a great article Chris Crowell is passing along from the Running Times E-Newsletter...
As the fall marathon season approaches, it is important for you to nail down your best marathon pace. Improper pacing is the number one mistake that marathoners make so having a really good idea of what is a reasonable pace can make your marathon experience much more successful (and enjoyable!).Ways to Predict Your Best Marathon PaceRunners and coaches have found several ways to estimate your best marathon pace. Here are a few good ones:
1) Race a half-marathon. Take your half-marathon time and double it then add five minutes. This has long been a quick rule of thumb for predicting marathon time. Doubling your half-marathon time and adding seven minutes is a bit more realistic for most marathoners. Of course, you can always use one of the many race time calculators and charts available online and in many running books to also gauge the marathon time predicted by your half-marathon performance.
2) Perform eight to ten 800 meter repeats. Run each repeat in the minutes and seconds of your goal hours and minutes of your upcoming marathon. Take equal recovery jog between each. For example, if you want to run three hours and thirty minutes for your marathon then run eight to ten 800 meter (2 laps of the track) repeats in 3 minutes and 30 seconds taking 3 minutes and 30 seconds jog between each. If you can perform this workout without having to strain to hit the time then this would predict that your marathon pace is reasonable. Special thanks to Bart Yasso for this “Yasso 800” workout.
3) Perform two to four marathon pace runs where you warm up then run for four to 10 miles at your goal marathon pace. If you can build up to an eight to 10 mile marathon pace run and not have to work exceedingly hard to maintain the pace, then your goal marathon pace is reasonable.
4) Run marathon pace at the end of a few long runs. If you can run the last four to eight miles of a long run at your goal marathon pace then your goal pace is reasonable. Do this on two to four long runs in the last couple of months before your marathon to get another gauge of whether your marathon pace is reasonable.All of these methods are good but most coaches and runners find that there is no one single best predictor. Rather, it is a good idea to use several of the predictors listed above to better determine your best marathon pace.
Greg McMillan is an exercise physiologist and certified USA Track and Field coach. He helps runners via his website http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/.
