Running with Jack

I was just looking at McMillan’s Running calculator. I entered my best half-marathon time of 1:48:12) which resulted in a proposed marathon finish time of 3:48:12 which is almost 45 minutes faster than my best marathon time.

Based on this HM time I should be running my long runs at an average pace between 5:44 to 6:21 per kilometer (9:13 to 10:13 per mile), which I do. I’ve been averaging around 6:00/K (9:39/M) or faster.

The average pace for my two marathons was 7:22/K (11:51/M) and 6:30/K (10:27). The average training pace for these marathons was 6:30/K and around 5:45/K, or in other words much faster than my actual marathon pace. With my last marathon I ran long runs up to 36K/22M twice, so an extra 6+ kilometers should have been a piece of cake.

This leaves me kind of puzzled and wondering why. Am I lacking endurance? Do I get nervous at races? Is it because I start too fast? Am I tapering too much? Too little? ??

So anyway this is what is running through my head as I get deeper into my Marathon III training.

When I was driving to work this morning I was pondering what my goal time for the marathon in March should be. I ran the half-marathon on the same course this past March with a time of 1:58:52, which was reasonable considering the lousy winter weather on that day. So I am going to plan on running in 4 hours and see if I can climb this mountain when I get to it. As I will be running less weekly mileage than with my past two marathons, I think I can apply for Superhero status if I pull it off.