Hey!
I'm planning to run a marathon in three weeks (nov 5) and trying to figure out what pace to shoot for. I have not run a road race for more than a year, so I have little to go on.
I set out on a specific long run today to try and figure out paces. The workout went as follows:
1,5 k warmup
10k @ 4:14 per km, 1k easy
10k @ 4:09 per km, 1k easy
10k @ 4:02 per km, 1,5k cooldown shufle
The first set of tens was really comfortable. The second was also fairly comfortable, but i definitely had some fatigue setting in (and bouts of hard head wind did not help). The last 10k felt OK for the first 5, but the last 2 were really quite miserable.
I had a week of approximately 55k running (including a threshold workout) and 2 hours cycling (also threshold workout) in the legs. But I felt quite fresh at the start.
What would be a reasonable race-pace for the marathon?
Some background:
I've run consistently for two years (with some periods off because of minor injuries). Since April, I've been averaging about 80-90 k per week, with some weeks at 120 but some considerably less and about 2-5 hours cycling.
I have not done much marathon specific work lately. Usually run my threshold workouts at around 3:40-3:55 per km.
Thanks for the advice!