Help with marathon pace

Maybe I should not even reply as I'm not that knowledgable but I would suggest you would be better off running the half marathon if it's offered. I think many races will let you switch.

4 weeks is not enough time to get your mileage to where it should be. Sure you can finish the marathon but you will not be a happy camper after around mile 20. Your speed is not bad and you could have more fun, have a better chance at a fast time, and less risk of injury by running a half.

i agree with the previous poster that you don't have enough mileage to run a marathon well.

that said, based on your mileage and 7 mile time, you should shoot for 7:30 pace at best.

Agree with ^^above. Start out at 7:30 pace and if you're feeling good at 20, maybe you start to push it a bit.

My first marathon I was in the same boat as you. Relatively low mileage, maxing out @ 50, a few 20 milers, some tempos, etc... I wound up running 3:07, thats like 7:10 pace. My 5k PR at the time was about the same as yours.

Just start out easy. The first ten miles or so should feel EASY! If you do it this way, I bet the whole experience will be a lot more enjoyable.

Good luck.

The OP hasn't provided enough information to make a reasonable suggestion. Most relevant pieces of info are the time of the previous marathon and the relative level of fitness (5k times, mileage) when that marathon was done. Also, the pace of recent longest runs and how challenging they were.

In contrast to the previous poster I was once in similar (slightly faster) 5k shape, at similar mileage and went out at 8 min/mile pace and completely tanked.

Ability to extend short distance performances to marathon performances while training at relatively low mileage is hugely variable.

If you're 4 weeks out your best bet is to try out your desired marathon pace in a 15 miler. That'll give you a real sense of what is possible.

7:30 pace sounds reasonable. Your 5k PR and recent 7 mile race indicate that you may be able to run slightly faster; however, I would be conservative.

There are many that think that you must run 60-70 mpw in order to run a decent marathon. I am not one of them. I've run marathons in the 3:15 range on an avg. of 38 mpw with only a :14 positive split (Hanson plan with only 4 16 milers). I currently train at ~50mpw and hover around sub 3:00 for the marathon.

Mikey B wrote:

7:30 pace sounds reasonable. Your 5k PR and recent 7 mile race indicate that you may be able to run slightly faster; however, I would be conservative.

There are many that think that you must run 60-70 mpw in order to run a decent marathon. I am not one of them. I've run marathons in the 3:15 range on an avg. of 38 mpw with only a :14 positive split (Hanson plan with only 4 16 milers). I currently train at ~50mpw and hover around sub 3:00 for the marathon.

I'm not saying you *must* run 70mpw to run a decent marathon. I'm saying that there is a large variability among people about whether they can run a decent marathon (decent compared to personal performances at shorter distances) on lower mileage.

Unless the OP already knows what category he (she?) falls into (from previous marathon experience) it would be misleading to tell them they can certainly run 7:30's based on a high 19 5k. They might be able to. Or they might not be able to get anywhere close. You simply can't tell with the information provided.

Also, saying you can run 3:15 on 38 mpw is not at all relevant. It certainly is the case that some people can run marathons much faster than the average marathoner with little training. For instance I'm sure Geb could run 20 mpw for the next year and still go sub-2:30. That may be a decent marathon when compared to the average marathon finisher. But it wouldn't be decent for Geb.

If the game here is to predict marathon performance from shorter distances the typical table (e.g. McMillian's) are only accurate under the assumption that

you're well-trained for the each of the given events. 40mpw isn't well-trained for a marathon. Some folks may hit McMillian's 5k-->marathon predicted pace off 40mpw. But many won't. On the other hand many (most?) will at 70mpw.

What time did you do for the 1st?

ordersofmagnitude wrote:

[quote]:

On the other hand many (most?) will at 70mpw.

Do you have anything to back up the 70 mpw theory? What if someone averaged 65 mpw, how much time would they lose?

Do you have anything to back it up or did you pull it out of your ass?

I understand that predicting a marathon time off of a 5k time is not at all wise, especially without any prior marathon experience. I would have liked to have had a bit more information about his background (i.e. recent 1/2 marathon time, length of time running, etc.), but that was not provided. His 5k and other race time indicated that he had the speed for the marathon pace. His consistent 40-45 mpw with long runs indicated that he was putting in the work, but the volume may not be what is considered adequate for marathoning, by some. I provided a bit of insight from my personal experience. He can take it all in a make up his mind.

I still say go out at 7:30 pace, which a slightly slower than his race times predict, and see what happens. Rarely, do we get it right the first time around; however, he sounds like he is competitive, so providing advice to go out at 8:30 pace probably wouldn't be listened to anyway. Regardless, he will learn alot from his first marathon.

the posts above are good, here's my history leading up to 3:15 last December:

5k PR-20:15

50-55 miles per week for probably 12 o previous 15 weeks.

1/2 Marathon 5 weeks out 1:31:50

I was 44 yrs old at the time of the race and it was my 3rd marathon. I went out easy, about 7:50 pace the first 4 miles then 7:40 the next 4. I ran by feel after that. I was CONSERVATIVE due to my relative lack of experience and not caring how fast I ran other than getting a Boston time (3:20:59), I negative split big time (1:34 back half), had a blast, and learned a lot. So what worked for me was going out easy which dovetails with the above posters and mitigates some of the risk from going in with relatively low mileage and experience.

Which marathon are you running?

or wrote:

ordersofmagnitude wrote:

[quote]:

On the other hand many (most?) will at 70mpw.

Do you have anything to back up the 70 mpw theory? What if someone averaged 65 mpw, how much time would they lose?

Do you have anything to back it up or did you pull it out of your ass?

You've missed my point. I was just trying to pick a number that was sufficiently large that most people would likely (if they trained at that level) get in the ballpark of their potential best marathon performance. I was not saying there was anything magic about 70. Could've said 65. 80 would have worked fine too.

I think (hope) that we would all agree that 20mpw would have been too low. And I also hope we can all agree that past 100mpw the improvements (while they may be very important to some) are relatively small (minutes, not 10's of minutes). So that would have been unnecessarily high for the purposes of my point).

Daniels in DRF says he'd be comfortable with 70-150mpw as a range where most people would reach their marathon potential. Implying that 40 probably wasn't enough. Now I'd be the first to agree that JD isn't the end-all and be-all of running knowledge. But I'd also say that claiming that 70mpw is a sufficient for most folks to get in the ballpark of their potential isn't just pulling something out of my ass.

So if you're gonna make marathon predictions off a 5k time I'm gonna stand by my statement that at 40mpw you may be way off. But at 70mpw you've got a much better chance.

But all that is moot because this isn't the OP first marathon. He's already run one and if he'd just tell us about it we could all do a much better job of being helpful and less time filling space with pointless arguments.

First I want to thank you all for the responses. I really appreciate your input.

Here is some more information that might help you get a better idea of what I could run in my second marathon.

I'm a 27 year old male. My first marathon I ran a 3:43. That was in February and my 5k time then was 21 minutes. The longest training run I had done was a 30k (18.6 miles) and my mileage before that marathon was about 60-75 month. My goal in my first marathon was to finish and/or run sub 3:45.

Since then my mileage had been over 100-130 a month consistently since March. 5k time is down to mid-19s. I've run two easy 20 milers in 2:50 (75% Max HR). And several 13-17 mile easy to progressive runs. I live in Florida and have been running in the 90-100 degree heat/humidity.

I'll be running the Columbus, OH Marathon in October(I'm thinking the temp will be mid 40s).

I hope this info helps give an idea of what I should pace for the marathon.

Thanks again.

Thanks for the details. Sounds like you're fairly early in your life as a runner and are making big improvements fairly rapidly. Enjoy it. Likely you've got quite a bit of improvement ahead of you.

Your 21 min 5k fitness back in March in theory is worth a 3:25. Either you took the race fairly easy (a great idea the first time out) or your mileage was too low to see your marathon ability match up with your 5k times (almost certainly the case).

As your mileage has gone up since then you can probably expect to see your 5k times and your marathon times come closer to the standard conversions. A 19:25 is worth something like a 3:10. Last time out you were 18 minutes slower than the prediction. So that would put you somewhere in the 3:10-3:28 range for this one (assuming you run it at an equal effort). That's a big range of course (7:15-8 min/mile). Your 20 milers at 8:30 might give you some hint: did they feel really easy; much easier than the first 20 of the March marathon?

What you really need is a longer run at a pace close to marathon pace to give you a sense of where the tipping point between "i could do this all day" and "this is gonna get hard" falls. And in particular where that tipping point is after a couple hours. I'd recommend trying 15 at 7:30-7:45 after a couple miles warm-up. That'll tell you a lot and it's a great workout 4 weeks out.

By the end of that sorta workout you'll know whether another 11 miles is in the bag, a challenging goal or out of the question.

Or it may be that the experience on some of your long progressions already gives you some sense of how that sort of test run would play out.

Those are some great questions your raise. I've been running consistently for about 1 and a half years. I was completely under-trained for my first marathon. I ran 8:10-8:15 splits, very easily for 20 miles, then I struggled severely the last 10k. I think it came down to time-on-feet. My legs were shot.

A lot of the problem with effort is the heat/humidity here. The effort to run a 8:30 pace for 20 miles is exponentially more difficult when the temps are in the upper 80s vs. race day conditions in the 40s.

As you suggested, I plan on running 15 miles this weekend around 7:45, 7:30, after a warm up, to see how I feel. I think this is the best way to find a realistic pace. However, I feel like I could run a lot faster/longer even in temps in the 60s vs 80s.

Ironically, my Boston qualifier is 3:10. With my lack of marathon experience I don't think I can run 7:15's for 26 miles, realistically.

I was leaning toward running with a 3:20 pace group- or should I try to run faster?

...

However, I feel like I could run a lot faster/longer even in temps in the 60s vs 80s.

Ironically, my Boston qualifier is 3:10. With my lack of marathon experience I don't think I can run 7:15's for 26 miles, realistically.

I was leaning toward running with a 3:20 pace group- or should I try to run faster?

The heat is certainly a huge spoiler in terms of using your current workouts to predict a good marathon pace.

Given that the BQ would be a real risky goal there's no fixed time limit that would represent a logical goal. Personally I think lots of folks would be happy with a race that was a large PR and where the overall experience was good (not dying in the last 10k).

So if I were you I'd start out at 3:30 pace, ease down to 3:25 if it feels real easy and then plan to put the hammer down the last 10k and see how many folks you can pass.

That's not the best formula for the best possible time. But that 'best formula' involves having a very accurate assessment of your real best pace: which you aren't gonna have.

This formula gives you a good shot at having both a PR and a fun race, and a much smaller chance of having a really nasty last 10k. Even if you finish thinking "I could have gone much faster" that's fine. You know there will be other races and with more miles in the bank you'll be in a better position to know that the 3:10 is a reasonable goal next time.

You make some good points. If I'm not planning on qualifying for Boston there's no real need to kill myself early. I can always get faster if I feel good late in the race. Thanks for your suggestions/advice.

My second marathon was 3:18, an improvement from 3:33. I ran it off of 50-60 miles a week and a 5k pr of 19:59. I didn't do any track speedwork, just long MP and HMP intervals once a week. My hardest run was a 22 miler with last 6 at MP two weeks before race day. I think you could handle 7:30 pace then step it up a notch if you feel good after the first half.

Based on Chic Harley's post and my own experience, shoot for 3:30 and bring it home if you are feeling good at 20miles.

Obviously your mileage is too low to run at your optimum but you have plenty of youth left to build on it.

Run it and enjoy it.

Good luck.

Also.

It's always good to finish a Marathon thinking that you could have gone faster.Gives you the incentive to keep punishing yourself.Don't be afraid of finishing this one with a little gas left in the tank.It will make number 3 a lot more interesting.