Running my race pace

I really like this article (How to kick-start your training.) from active.com on marathon training.  I am very interested in how to make sure I am training to be able to qualify for Boston and make my goal "race pace" a reality.  The best part is that as I read it there are several things that I have been doing in my training that he talks about in the article.

One of the best ways to improve your odds of running strong straight to the finish line is by running race pace in a pre-fatigued condition. The best workout for this training stimulus is a marathon-pace long run.
Run your goal marathon pace at the end of your long run. Here are three examples:

• 20 miles with the last 2 miles at marathon pace

• 20 miles with the last 5 miles at marathon pace

• 22 miles with the last 10 miles at marathon pace

Last week on my last long run I implemented this technique without really "knowing" it but figuring it could only help me train better.  The last 2 miles of my 22 miler I was under race pace.

Let's take a hypothetical runner whose goal is to run a 3:45 marathon—or 8:35 per-mile pace. If this runner is running 40 miles per week at the peak of her training, she could do up to 20 to 25 percent of her total volume at marathon pace—or 8 to 10 miles of marathon-pace running. Alternatively, if she was doing intervals at 5K pace and a tempo run, she should not do more than about 15 percent of her volume at these increased intensities.

I love this "hypothetical runner" because that is right around my goal and the mileage I'm running weekly.  Now I have to remember if 8-10 of my weekly miles are at my marathon pace.  I think I'm pretty close to that.   


I love this quote.  Today during my run I was tired, out of breath and very sweaty.  And tomorrow I'll probably be a little sore :)

Today's workout was speed work - mile intervals.  I did a mile warm up then my first interval at 7:19 pace.  Then jogged for a half mile.  Did my second interval at 7:13 pace.  Third at 7:08 pace and for my last one I decided to do 1.5 miles instead of 1 and I did it at a 7:00 pace.  Then I jogged another 2 miles to make it an even 9 :)