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What pace to run half in prep for marathon?
Hi All,
I'm hoping for a bit of advice on a half marathon I have this coming weekend as part of my marathon training.
As part of my training plan, my long run this week was either 18 miles or a half marathon at marathon pace. I opted for the half marathon option. The plan says to run this at my intended marathon pace as race day prep.
That makes perfect sense to confirm that I'm on track for my aim and I'll use the same gear, gels etc to mimic race day. My question comes around the pacing. My marathon pace is based on a 10k I did back at the beginning of January and using the Jack Daniels calculator to plot out what I should be aiming for roughly.
However, I've had 2 months of solid training now so I'm thinking I will have made fitness gains in the intervening months. I'm 8 weeks out from the marathon now so this will likely be the last chance I could get to run hard in a race so I'm thinking would there be any benefit in running this as a true race to get a real idea of where I'm at as opposed to running it at a pace based on my race time from January? If I'm in better shape than I was in January and this half bears that out then I can adjust my marathon time, if not then I stay on track with my current aim.
Or would running this hard have a negative impact on my upcoming weeks of training and not be worth it? Next week is a cut back week anyway so I'm already intending to run less mileage anyway.
Grateful for any thoughts!
I'm hoping for a bit of advice on a half marathon I have this coming weekend as part of my marathon training.
As part of my training plan, my long run this week was either 18 miles or a half marathon at marathon pace. I opted for the half marathon option. The plan says to run this at my intended marathon pace as race day prep.
That makes perfect sense to confirm that I'm on track for my aim and I'll use the same gear, gels etc to mimic race day. My question comes around the pacing. My marathon pace is based on a 10k I did back at the beginning of January and using the Jack Daniels calculator to plot out what I should be aiming for roughly.
However, I've had 2 months of solid training now so I'm thinking I will have made fitness gains in the intervening months. I'm 8 weeks out from the marathon now so this will likely be the last chance I could get to run hard in a race so I'm thinking would there be any benefit in running this as a true race to get a real idea of where I'm at as opposed to running it at a pace based on my race time from January? If I'm in better shape than I was in January and this half bears that out then I can adjust my marathon time, if not then I stay on track with my current aim.
Or would running this hard have a negative impact on my upcoming weeks of training and not be worth it? Next week is a cut back week anyway so I'm already intending to run less mileage anyway.
Grateful for any thoughts!
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Comments
I always advise anyone I'm coaching for marathons to race their half marathon races and without any taper except maybe a rest day before the race. I would expect them to PB without too much effort and that PB is used to calculate marathon pace for race day.