On Saturday, we saw a post
that pointed out one of the commonest mistakes marathoners
make: thinking you should be able to hit your goal marathon
pace during all your long runs. It leads to the common
fear that you won’t be able to sustain the pace
in the actual 42.2 km race (a fear that’s misplaced,
and we’ll explain why in a minute).
As Glasgow-based run coach Dean Curran
(@deancurran_) explains, avoiding this mistake requires
an understanding of the difference between marathon pace
and marathon effort.
“The problem is, you’re not
running [your long runs] in race-day conditions,”
Curran explains. “You’re running under fatigue,
with no adrenaline and no taper, likely at the end of
a big training week. So, to hit marathon pace, you’ll
likely have to push a lot harder than you’ll need
to on the day. Which builds more fatigue, and is harder
to recover from.
“Marathon effort is the effort you would run at,
but adjusted for the fatigue of training. So the pace
will be slower, but the stimulus will be the same. These
[long runs] will be done at 15 to 30 seconds per kilometre
slower than your marathon pace–no harder than a
6 or 7 out of 10 effort.
“Marathon pace definitely has its place, once you
build closer to the race. But you don’t need to
be doing it all the time to race at that pace.”
As he points out, trying to hit
your marathon pace on all your long runs is an exercise
in futility. It’s likely to leave you exhausted,
and potentially injured.
Real-life examples
Let’s say you’re a 40-year-old male who’s
trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. The qualifying
time is three hours and five minutes; but you want a five-minute
cushion, for insurance. That means targeting three hours
flat, which is 4:15 per km. (Yes, it’s fast. No
one ever said qualifying for Boston was easy.)
So, with this as your goal race pace,
your long runs should be run at an average pace not exceeding
4:30 per km, and 4:45 is better target, to guard against
excessive fatigue. There’s plenty of time later
in your build to put some race-pace intervals into your
long run.
Similarly, for a 40-year-old woman, the
qualifying time is 3:35 (3:30, to be safe). That’s
4:59 per km. So your long runs should be at an average
pace of 5:31 to 5:14 per km.
This is assuming you have the experience
(and the results) to target that pace–which is a
topic for another story.
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