My Marathon Pace

Only two weeks until my first marathon. I just got back from my tapering long run of 14 miles. My plan was to run this one at about a 9:30 pace and see how that felt as I make a final "dial in" for a marathon pace. Even with my Garmin, I set out a bit quick but tried to throttle back some. I ran at 9:20 pace for the 14 miles and still felt very good. This route consisted of about 10 miles of paved roads and 4 miles of slushy dirt roads. It also had quite a few small hills due to all the usual creek crossings.

Okay, now to dial in the marathon pace. Being an engineer, gadget enthusiast, and avid running data logger, I am fairly sure of my marathon race pace at this point. For my last several half-marathons, I always ran faster than planned. For this marathon, I am going to set a "planned pace" of 9:50 per mile. There is a good chance to run it a little quicker since there are no hills on the race course and since there will be the race atmosphere. So, I have those two positives on my side. On the negative side, there's still a possibility of a potty break and even a leg strain. If I average out those pros/cons, maybe the overall 9:50 pace will work...which leads to a total time of 4 hours 18 minutes.

So, my planned finish time continues to change. When I signed up for the marathon several months ago, I estimated a realistic finish time of 4:40. Believe me, I will still be very satisfied with that time. But now, as we're only two weeks away, I am shooting for 4:18. What a difference these months have made!