Friday, March 28, 2008

Time Trial

I ran a self imposed Time Trial today over a distance of 5 miles. The idea is you run the distance as fast as possible, no problem they say. It was hard but I felt great, did a negative split (faster second half than first half) and ran my fastest mile in the last mile. All in all a great run.

A great run, but yes, it was hard. Hard enough that I was wiped this afternoon and this evening I am dropping. This afternoon I had runners head (I call it), which is a syndrome I come down with after an especially hard run where my thinking gets very slow and I have to concentrate extra to do normal tasks. Hmmm....something to look into.

Back to the Time Trial, I did 5 miles in 42 min 14 sec. Based on that here are the times that the Runners World Training Calculator predicts I can complete various distances:


  • 5 km = 25:30
  • 10 km = 53:11
  • 10 miles = 1:28:03
  • Half Marathon = 1:57:14
  • Marathon = 4:04:26


I am happy to see that I am nearing my predicted goal of 4 hours for the Marathon. To get to the 4 hour mark I am going to have to put in some targeted tempo runs, speed runs, and weight training. I am doing a simple weight program that includes various squats, lunges, and core strengthening to help increase my power. Besides that, I need to keep my long runs within the optimal pace range which is about 10:23-11:42/mile.

I'll be running another Time Trial near the end of April to see if I have improved.

Today, while taking a look at the Cliff Shots (maker of Cliff Bars and Cliff Gel Shots) website I came across a pace band creator which I was playing with to see what pace/splits I would need to hit 4 hours. I need to run a consistent 9:09/mile (9 min 9 sec) for the entire 26.2 miles. You can play with it here at the Cliff Bar Pace Band page.

It is interesting that to hit the predicted time of 4 hr 4 min 26 sec, I would need to run a consistent 9:19/mile. So 10 seconds means 4 mins 26 sec over the span of a Marathon.

A funny thing I noticed was that 9:09/mile is my average pace over the 500+ miles I have run with the Nike +iPod. Hopefully on race day I can achieve my average ;-)

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