Just returned home from the Chicago Marathon. It marked the end to a very successful training campaign with lots of new knowledge and experiences. Race Day brought a new PR of 2:44 to myself and a fabulous training and racing partner, Marc Meunier.

 Based on the recommendation and August marathon success of Aerobic Power coach, Marc Meunier, I decided to “step it up one level” by incorporating weekday pace runs on a bi-weekly basis for much of the training program instead of waiting for the final 3-4 weeks prior to race day, where I have always made it a big part of the program in my weekly long runs. Consistently, a weekday marathon pace run would be a 4-6 mile effort at my goal pace. What I found to be very fascinating and supportive was that after a very short while the “pace” work became automatic, when it was pace time the legs felt like they were naturally responding to the target pace without to much effort or reliance on the garmin pace watch.   

Race day pacing can be challenging; you have adrenaline, you have rested legs and you have runners around you potentially running a little faster and sucking you along with them. We now have the luxury of Garmins to help keep us in line but even a Garmin can’t keep a runner correctly paced if they have no physical awareness of the correct pace. Secondly, what happens when you lose the pacing ability of the Garmin?

My experience in Chicago really tested the pacing as the many long bridges that the runners went under quickly shut down the pacing abilities of the device. And it happened right off the start, in the first mile where everyone will notoriously start TOO fast. As a result of the regular practice I tried to keep the blinders on and went through the first mile in 6:12, (3 seconds too fast), I will take that on the first mile any day.  When you have conditioned yourself well enough for the event and then dial yourself into the pace mentally and physically it creates an almost zen-like or natural feeling for the pace when running. A form of visualization where the goal is to feel like you have done it already bringing the race pace to a sub conscious level.

 As a coach I am always learning or confirming. I have read a lot about marathon pace work and long tempo runs and couldn’t figure out how someone could do an 8 mile tempo run when I have always viewed tempo work as threshold runs, or a 1 hour race pace effort broken into intervals. What I was reading and trying to draw from was long tempo runs that were essentially done at ½ to full marathon pace efforts and then possibly finishing with some tempo or threshold pace work. It turns out then that some of the great coaches/authors I was drawing from were using a greater variety of paces then I was interpreting and incorporating more ½ to full marathon race pace workouts. This past training cycle and recent racing experience has provided me with a better understanding and has broadened my approach to my own training and I believe allow me to provide better prescription and understanding to the athletes I work with.