The Long Run

You should stop the watch during the breaks. A break will have the effect of increasing the average pace with lesser effort only when the run is anaerobic. Even then, it will be helpful only if you jog or walk, not if you stand still.

Thanks!

I've oftern wondered about that. I'm generally not taking the breaks because I need or want to but because the group I am running with is taking the break. When I let the clock run, at the end of the run I think to myself that I worked harder than that, but if I stopped the clock I wonder if I am just fooling myself. I like stopping the clock better.

Also, I've been wondering about speed. You have mentioned on a couple of occassions that my speed is fast enough but my endurance needs work, but when I put my age and miles into your Boston pace calculator it says I need a fast 5k time. Just curious what your thoughts are on this.

Thanks again for taking the time to read my posts.

Your last 5 K predicts about a 3:20 marathon off 70 miles a week and 3:30 off 40 miles a week. So your 5 K does need to improve a bit to get the Boston Qualifier. Nevertheless, your marathon is way off what your 5 K would predict, which is why I say you need endurance much more than the speed.

5 K is still a largely aerobic race. The reason a 5 K can be used as a fairly good predictor of your marathon potential - 5 K shows how fast you can go with your current aerobic capacity and biomechanics. Fuel storage is not an issue in a 5 K. So we say, assuming that you could perfect your fuel storage and maintain the same aerobic qualities and biomechanical efficiency, this is how fast you will run in the marathon. The good news is that while working on fuel storage, your aerobic capacity also grows. So your 5 K gets faster too, although not by the same margin as the marathon.

At this point, I believe even your 5 K is not limited so much by your mile speed as by the lack of the ability to maintain it. For an experiment to verify this, one day do a good warm-up and the run a mile all out on the track. Try busting out of the blocks fast enough to make it hurt after the first lap, and then just hang in there for the remaining three. What splits do you get?

Thanks again Sasha. I'll be running a 5k this weekend and maybe I'll be able to ease my worries about speed and start concentrating more on endurance. Either way it sounds like more miles on a regular basis will either improve my speed gradually or make it so I don't need more speed than what I have now.