An acquaintance, upon learning that I planned to run a marathon, asked how long it was going to take me to complete it. I'm not even signed up yet and I certainly didn't want to publicize my goals this early.
I hemmed and hawed at bit but gave in and told her.
It's something that I've been thinking about for a while. There have been a few sleepless nights when I would wake up and then start doing race pace calculations.
As with any first timer, my real goal should be to simply finish. But, I want more than that.
I have been doing my long runs at around a 10:55 pace. I feel pretty comfortable at that pace and I feel I can continue at it for much further distances. If I ran that pace for the whole marathon, I would finish in 4:45:49. I'm hoping that's my worst case scenario but I would be pretty disappointed at anything more than 4:30:00. Heck, even Oprah finished a marathon in 4:29:20.
A 10:00 pace should be reasonably do-able (says a guy who has never run more than 13.1 miles). That would put me at 4:22:00.
Using the McMillan Running Calculator, I should be able to compete a marathon in 4:08:50 based upon my most recent half marathon result. That's a pace of 9:30 minutes per mile. I'd be very happy with that.
My ultimate goal, the one I didn't want to say out loud but did anyway, is 3:59:59.
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I thik your paces are pretty strong so far, but wait until you get to the 20 milers lol
ReplyDeleteWith the first marathon you should really look at it, as a 'to finish'. It's not all about keeping a pace, the mental part really starts at 20 miles!
I remember I was a little disappointed when I finised in 5:01... I kept thiking 2 little mins and it would have been 4:59! In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Well, not to me anymore...
Yeah, I have read a lot of horror stories about the last 6.2 miles and how 20 miles is really like the half way point.
ReplyDeleteI do respect the distance and, like you said, it should be about finishing. I'm probably going to regret publicizing these goals. ;-)