Half marathon pacing - the first three miles

[Deleted User]

Hey all,

I just wanted to give my own personal example of the importance of pacing the beginning of a half-marathon correctly. The wiki entry on HM pacing tells us that we should be pacing the first three miles conservatively, and ramping up to a steady goal pace around mile 4. 

Here mile splits for two half-marathons that I ran two months apart. The splits from the left are from the Santa Barbara Half Marathon (11/12/11), and the ones on the right are from 13.1 Los Angeles (1/15/12).

(Both courses have similar elevation gain)

My notes:

• I started the OS in October. I ran the SB half a month into the OS, and when I ran 13.1 LA, I was near exiting the OS. I kind of had a break from the OS over the holidays, so I don't think long-term fatigue was an issue here. If anything, I knew that I was much much fitter in January compared to November, as judging from the speed of my mile repeats and such in training.
• From the SB half (left), the first mile was a fast downhill. Effort-wise, it still felt really easy. There were rolling hills along the course, so my splits weren't exactly perfect, but point is I took the first three miles *easy* and ramped up to a steady effort from there. Also, there was a HUGEASS hill at around mile 11. Really sucked the energy out of me near the end . Otherwise, this was my half-marathon PR.
• From 13.1 LA (right), I decided that I would aim for another PR and go out a bit faster at the beginning (seeing that I was "fitter"). The first half of the course was along the beach (flat), and I decided that I would dip under 7:00 min/mi. I was steady, but I definitely did not start as easy as I should have. Felt okay for a while, but the wheels totally came off after mile 6. I remember running along this pancake-flat stretch of the beach at this point and thinking "Omg, I totally should have gone slower at the beginning." I *really* suffered in the last half of the race, whereas at the SB half I felt really strong throughout. Not a terrible performance, but I was stupid in my execution and blew my chances at running faster. 

My point is, I totally could have set a PR that day in January, but I really didn't have a well-defined goal pace. Instead, I stupidly assumed that because I was fitter and faster after the OS, I could just do my thing and just arbitrarily speed up to whatever felt sustainable. Bad idea. If I had just set a realistic goal pace and stuck with the pacing guidelines, I probably would have had a great day.

Herein lies an interesting problem. Given that our level of fitness is always changing (hopefully increasing in the long run...), how do we determine what's a good goal race pace? Looking at VDOT is the obvious answer, but I can imagine this might lead to difficulties if 1) our last VDOT run test was a while ago and 2) we have slightly different VDOT values for different distances. I have all this training data from my Garmin, and I'm trying to figure out how to SWAG a good half-marathon race pace. Any thoughts?

Brenda Ross

ya, get on the Monday night chat and ask the question to the coaches directly. They will give you the answer you are looking for. I am doing a half mary tomorrow and I just changed my VDot about 3 weeks ago so I was unsure of what pace I should go at. I got on the Monday night chat and posed the question to Coach P and got my answer. This race is a C race, so I am going to be running at my old Zone 3 paces.

Swanie

@ Anson- looking at your paces from SB...with an average pace of 7:05/mile your 1st three miles should have been closer to 7:20. You could have done even better with a more conservative start. No doubt you were carrying some residual fatigue into the LA race just coming off OS, your fitness was up but fatigue was up as well. As far as determining a proper race pace, you start with your Vdot (if you don't have a current Vdot then test for one in your training) then you use the paces built from the Vdot in your final few long runs to test the water. For instance, I am running Eugene Marathon on Sunday and need to average a 7:26 pace to BQ, my last 20 miler was at 5 seconds over race pace and my last 2 long runs (13 & 10 miles) were at 5 seconds under race pace to test that pace. Those paces felt good so I am comfortable using 7:26 as my race pace. The first 5-6 miles will be at 7:40 and then the remainder at 7:20.

Al Truscott

 here's my take on pacing, my head set when running a race, be it stand alone or triathlon. VDOT generated paces to me are general ballparks. I don't use a GPS watch during a race to modulate my speed or effort level. There are so many variables on race day, including weather, road surface, elevation changes (and when in the race they happen), size of the race (number of people, and how serious they are), my recent training, nutrition and general health, etc. that learning how to key into the inner sensation of effort are a better guide to controlling race pace.

I use two basic elements to guide my efforts in a race. First, is the training I've done. A good training plan focused on a specific race/distance will have prepared me to be able to race that distance at a known pace. Say it's a 10K, and I've been doing 3-4 miles worth of TP intervals @ 6:55 for at least 6 weeks. I know that I _should_ be able to do the race @ 6:54-7:00 min/mile; faster and I'll blow up, slower and I'll leave speed on the table. And, I have learned what that pace _feels_ like, especially if I have been successful at doing each interval at the same speed, which results in progressively harder effort with each interval - just like a race should feel.

Second, I try to translate that training on race day through my perceived exertion (RPE). Since I've done the race distance before, and have experienced both success and blow-up, I know what the sensations of each are at various points of the race. At the start, I have no trouble going fast enough; the hard part is reining in. At the end, it's reversed - convincing myself to maintain pace and increase effort is the real work.

For some people, a pace watch may be the best way to accoomplish this, as first a rein and then a whip. But once youve got some race experience, you should be able to fine-tune things and not be restricted by the numbers on your wrist. The only way to learn how to do that, IMO, is to gradually turn the pressure up throughout the course of the race distance, and learn (sometimes by failing, if necessary) just what the red line for you really is.

cgres123

My thoughts.

The guy who invented the Vdot, as far as I know, is Jack Daniels, PHD. In his book he describes Vdot , training paces, and has plans to run all distances.
His typical Phase one training is week 1 thru 6 and that is running 7 days a week for base building. He goes onto Phase 2 with 2-3 quality days of running,
like we do in EN. However, Daniels goes onto write outside of the quality days of running to run 3 - 4 easy days. Lots of running.

Here is my take on this Vdot as I have grown to understand it.

We test to achieve a Vdot number. Ok we earn that number. However to run that Vdot in a race is not practical because we swim and bike. We can train at
TP, and IP , Z4-Z-5 respectively and do well with it but as the distances grow MOST of us mere mortals do not hold our numbers while TRI training. That is why
you need to find your own sweet spot in RUN races by backing off on the Vdot by .5 - 2. Got a half mary your a 40 Vdot run at 38 - 39.5 i.e. your sweet spot.

The rest is about execution typically start below the Vdot number , your sweet spot, for a few miles then kick it up until about mile 9 at that point you will
know how you feel either maintain or empty yourself.

[Deleted User]

Thanks for all the input everyone!

I agree with Al's point that one shouldn't be too dialed into hitting the numbers on your watch. I think what happened during my 13.1 LA race is that I was so obsessed with hitting the "right" numbers that I didn't pay much attention to my RPE, and that ultimately that led to my blowing up halfway. I think my predisposition is to use my Garmin as a whip more often than a rein. I think what I need to start paying attention to in training is how to correlate RPE with pace at the beginning of a run when I'm fresh and rested. Once I get going at a steady clip and get dialed into a pace, I'm pretty good at holding it without worrying too much about what my watch says.

I'm taking this from a point of view of a stand-alone run. For a sprint/oly tri, I usually don't bother with putting on my Garmin. Just can't be bothered to wait around for 5 minutes in transition for my watch to pick up satellites . I might have a wristwatch to take mile splits, but other than that, I think I'm reasonably good at pacing myself through RPE now so that I don't have to stare at paces to hold me back. I think the fact that 1) I'm tired from getting off the bike and 2) I don't expect myself to break any run PRs (compared to a standalone run of the same distance) takes a lot of pressure off of me to run "fast", so I just don't feel the need to whip myself with a pace reading.