Marathon Pace Practice
Posted on January 30th, 2018 by John Armstrong
This Sunday, Marathoners following our schedules will want to do the final chunk of their run at target Marathon pace.
I recommend getting up early, doing the easy bit of your run and then doing the Marathon pace section on the Regent’s Park 10K course.
The advantage of this is that you’ll be replicating race day as close as possible on a flat traffic-free route with water stations. This means you can really learn what marathon pace is meant to feel like and you can practice things like taking gels and drinking on the run. You could even drop off a water bottle or some Lucozade sport with a friendly marshal so you can replicate race day more exactly.
If you have marshaled (or just signed up to marshal) one of the 10K’s, you get free race entry to the rest of the series. So if you fancy running the 10K this weekend, you could sign up to marshal in March. You sign up to marshal via our calendar and then log in to our website and select “Enter 10K”. Do this (or pay in the usual way) before midday on the Friday before the race.
We don’t run at target Marathon pace every Sunday because it is very tiring. You need time to recover before trying this kind of session again. There will be a few runs with sections at target marathon pace throughout the schedule and they are a great way of monitoring progress. Don’t worry if you find them tiring and find yourself wondering how on earth you will ever manage to do the whole race at your target pace. They are meant to be hard work and you will be going into race day feeling fresh and with considerably more training under your belt.
