Marathon Topic #1: The importance of marathon pace

Marathon Topic #1: The importance of marathon pace

 

Throughout my 13 or so years of running, I have always been instructed on the importance of proper pacing. My high school coach always told me to take it easy for the first half, then blast the second half. Whenever I ran a personal best or finished high in big races, it was because of this strategy. Every distance event world record has been set with this strategy.

 

There are many reasons why you should approach your training and racing with even and negative split. Physiologically, when you go out too hard, lactic acid is produced faster than the body can recycle it. It is commonly thought that lactic acid is bad, but it is produced by the body all the time and used as a fuel source. However, the body can only work so fast and when more is produced by the muscles than can be used, it floods the blood stream and lowers your body’s pH. Since our body wants to maintain homeostasis, or equilibrium, it will force your body to slow down in order to protect itself.

 

So, when we train, we want to train at even pacing to allow the body to stay in homeostasis for as long as possible. I know that eventually the body is overwhelmed anyway and fatigue sets in, but with even pacing, that point is prolonged significantly.

 

A good rule of thumb is that for every 1 second you are fast in the first half of the marathon (per mile), you will lose 2 seconds per mile in the second half of the marathon. With this said, there is no such thing as having time in the bank, because you will always end up overdrawing.

 

Mentally, getting the pace engrained in your mind will help you keep pace early on. By doing your workouts at the prescribed pace, you learn what it feels like under a variety of conditions.  This will help in the early segments of the race when people are cheering like crazy, you feel amazing, and you think you are out for a Sunday long run. Because you have trained at pace, you will know if you are fast or slow and fix it immediately. When the race gets tough, you’ll still have your legs underneath you and people will be coming back to you in agony.

 

If you want to put time in the bank, do it with proper pacing and make those deposits during your training. In the end you’ll cash out a new PR, a
Boston qualifier, or the satisfaction of running the best race you absolutely could.