Sunday, March 05, 2006
Long Run Pacing
How do you figure out your pacing for a distance you've never ran? In my head, I had the notion of 10 minute miles for doing the 100k race, which would give me a finish time around 10h:20m. Then, I discovered the course record pace is 9:16 min/mile for 9h:36m, so I'm starting to re-think what my race pace will be. I have been training at roughly a 9:30 pace for my long runs (I did 31.24 miles yesterday at an average of 9:25), with some tempo runs as fast as 7:15 for 5 miles.
I really am struggling with the whole concept of pace over the distance. I do feel confident that I can hold a steady pace over time, for example I ran the first 5.5 miles yesterday at 9:23 and the last 5.5 at 9:43 with 20 miles in between, but the trick is at what pace to start at? The hilly nature of the course makes it tougher to guess-timate so I have this feeling that the first 25k loop of the course will be the only way to know. I plan to run with my Garmin(assuming the 205 has shipped by then) for as long as the battery will last.
Ok, this is a rambling brain dump. Time to wrap it up until I've got some more concrete thinking on this done.
D.
I really am struggling with the whole concept of pace over the distance. I do feel confident that I can hold a steady pace over time, for example I ran the first 5.5 miles yesterday at 9:23 and the last 5.5 at 9:43 with 20 miles in between, but the trick is at what pace to start at? The hilly nature of the course makes it tougher to guess-timate so I have this feeling that the first 25k loop of the course will be the only way to know. I plan to run with my Garmin(assuming the 205 has shipped by then) for as long as the battery will last.
Ok, this is a rambling brain dump. Time to wrap it up until I've got some more concrete thinking on this done.
D.
