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Thursday, November 20, 2014

Goal Marathon Pace

I started out this marathon training thing with a goal of qualifying for the 2016 Boston Marathon.  For my age group this means that I need to run better than a 3:40 marathon.  For all practical purposes let's say this means a 3:39 finish time which is 8:21 pace.

That still is my goal, but if I'm honest, I have had a few other loftier goals floating around in my head:

Lofty thought 1: Marathon PR
My current PR for the marathon is 3:30:20 (8:01 pace) ran in Chicago in 2006.  My goal for this race was to qualify for Boston which I did.

For all practical purposes, let's say a Marathon PR goal is 3:29 or 7:58 pace (even though I would take a 3:30:19!)

Lofty thought 2: Run a marathon at what I keep calling my default pace - 7:17

This would be a 3:10:57 marathon which is a huge PR jump.

Lofty thought 3: Run a marathon in what the Runner's World Race Predictor tool says based on my 5K time of 19:10.

This would be a 3:03:50 marathon at 7:01 pace.  I would probably shit myself if I pulled that off.

Obviously, this is a wide range of paces from 7:01 - 8:21.  I will likely narrow this down a few weeks into my actual training plan but has been fun to consider.

Until I firm up my plans, I think I will use 7:45 as my MP for my training runs and see how that goes.

2 comments:

  1. When my "default pace" was 7:00/mile and I could do 1/2s at that pace, my marathon times were from 3:17-3:25 generally. If that helps! I was always told I should run 3:10. Tell it to the legs ;) I think you can do 3:20 or better. That's just me! :)

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    1. This is helpful! Thanks for the vote of confidence :)

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