Emily's training blog

Hey Emily, so I assume Teren is advising you on your training and you put a lot of thought into your training. I have noticed that a lot of your easy miles are within 30 seconds of your marathon pace (6:30 vs 6:00). I was wondering if you do that because elites tend to have less distance between easy and hard paces, or if 6:30 is just plain easy for you, or what your thinking on your easy pace is. I have read in running books that easy pace is typically 1-2 minutes slower than marathon pace. Perhaps it is less for more talented, in shape elite runners. I don't presume to give you advice, since you have more running experience and talent than me, but I was wondering what your thoughts were on this.

I usually just go off feel on my easy days, but if I know the mile marks, I think I tend to get too competitve and start trying to negative split my runs. 6:30's usually feels pretty easy. The best way to get me to slow down is to take away my watch. Coach Shane always wanted our recovery days at least under 7 minute miles, but then again, we weren't marathon training; but that's probably where I got in the habit of running a fast pace on my recovery runs. I definitely don't want to get hurt, and I'm thinking that when my mileage gets around 80 that my legs will be too tired to run fast.

I appreciate any input. I'm definitely a rookie at this marathon thing!

It seems some of the more elites don't slow down tremendously for their easy runs. However, most of the people on the blog who have OTQ'ed do go quite slow for easy runs, these are guys who have run 2:20ish marathons but do most of their easy miles slower than you do yours. I think that your mileage is the most important component of training, followed by quality workouts as the second most important component. The pace on your easy runs is probably #10 or #20 on the list of important parts of training, and can do more harm than good. For instance, some easy runs are truly recovery days, and if you don't recover you haven't met the purpose of your workout for that day. I think I need to run slower just to be able to take my mileage without succumbing to injury. I would think for you perhaps the #1 goal should be to make it to the starting line healthy, and the #2 goal s/b to get an awesome time (if you're healthy, you should be sub 2:40). If you put the "awesome time" ahead of the "healthy" goal, then you may be less likely to reach either goal. So that's my ten cents on the subject. You are obviously the better runner than me, but sometimes another's point of view can help.