April 2012

[marathondan]

Hats - I'm really sensitive about temperature, and will take my hat off as soon as I feel too hot. So for me I don't think a hat is the way to go. Although if we have any more hot days in the next two weeks I could give it a try.

Pace - hmm, not sure about that. For the last three marathons I've followed a carefully planned pace to get me to a target finish time, and hit it within a couple of minutes. The difference here is that I don't know if I'm capable of finishing in that time. I just looked back at my logs for 2009, the last time I ran in anything resembling normal dress (the year of the tutu). I finished in 3:57, and apart from one bad run at 4:14 pace, my last long runs were completed at 3:55, 3:54, 3:57, 3:57, 3:54, 3:55 and 3:59 pace. Startlingly consistent. So the fact that most of my long runs have been coming in around the 4:10 mark this year suggests that I'll be lucky to hit sub 4, let alone 3:45. YET... long runs are supposed to be 30-90 sec slower than race pace. Is the converse true - that race pace should be 30-90 sec faster than training pace? That scrap of information is all I have to hang on to. One thing's for certain - I've never, ever, planned to start slow and get faster, and if that is indeed the way to go for me then I think I need to leave that experiment for another year.