This week's schedule, race substitute -- Rest

Today's training: Rest
Weight: 171

This week's schedule

• Monday. Rest.
• Tuesday. VO2max 8 mi w/ 5x600m @ 5K jog 90sec in between
• Wednesday. Recovery 5 miles
• Thursday. Rest.
• Friday. Recovery + spd 4 mi w/ 6x100m strides
• Saturday. 8-10K race called for. Can't seem to find a race. Should I do a time trial at the track, some other kind of test or bag it? If I bag it should I rearrange the week's schedule since Wed-Fri seem geared to resting up for the race. I could probably run 10 miles Thursday and move Friday's recovery to Saturday.
  
• Sunday. Medium long run 16 miles. Again, 16 the day after a 10K seems crazy.

Race substitute. What to do on saturday is obviously the question. I can't find a race, so I should stop wasting energy on that. OK. If I don't do a race, what do I do? The first question I suppose is "why is there a race on the schedule?" Advanced Marathoning just refers to the psychological benefits of dealing with pre-race preparation, adversity, nerves, etc. and providing a benchmark for your training. I obviously can't the benefit of race experience without a race, but I could find a bench mark. One possibility is to use a time trial (20-24 laps around the track to get to 8-10K as fast as I can). I could also use a different test. I'm not really commited to the idea, but I'm toying with it. What I'd really like to know is what pace and heart rate I should run the marathon at.

First, there are various schemes to predict marathon times from other race times. Using my 10K that I ran in 47:21, http://mcmillanrunning.com/ says I should run the marathon at an 8:29 min/mi pace which seems rather scary to me, although it also says I should be doing my long runs at 8:59 - 9:59, which I'm doing with relative ease (although the great lake loop length mystery comes into play here).

How about another source? A book I got at the library called Lactate Threshold Training by Peter Janssen says a marathon is run at 94.3% of "V4" pace and a 10K is run at 104%. By the way, V4 comes from velocity at a lactate level of 4 mmol per liter, but is really a handle for the pace at anaerobic threshold, which typically occurs at 4 mmol per liter but can vary from 3 to 6 depending on the person. V4 doesn't really matter for my purpose since it gets factored out. Anyway, 7:38 min/mi * 104 / 94.3 = 8:35 min /mi. Hmm, another conspirator.

What does good old Bob Glover say? When I need common sense, I look to good old Coach Glover. The Competitive Runner's Handbook has a table with some goal marathon times and indicators of whether you can achieve them. The sub-3:45 marathon (8:34 pace) lists a 47:45 10K. Et tu Coach Glover?

8:34 pace? Still doesn't seem right. I'll probably end up shooting for something slower, but I'd still like to know my heart rate at a given pace. I'd also like to try to figure out my heart rate and pace at lactate threshold since you're supposed to run a marathon below this pace.

One approach for getting heart rate versus pace is just to run with a heart rate monitor and step up the pace 0.5 km/hr every 200 meters. This is essentially the Conconi test. Looking at the HR versus pace curve should also reveal a deflection that indicates (anaerobic?) threshold pace. Many consider 200 meters too short to get a stabilized heart rate at a given speed, however. Willem Minten's site suggests using 5 equally space speeds with 1200 meters per speed. (This is also used to develop a calibration factor versus pace chart for the foot pod.) Lactate Threshold Testing describes a similar protocol with between 800 and 1200 meters per speed depending on how fast the athlete is (shorter for slower athletes), but it also has 50 second walk breaks in between. The recovered heart rate is supposed to show a change at the anaerobic threshold. If I'm reading it correctly Minten's site suggests the recoveries can make the data more difficult to read and his favorite test doesn't include them.

Anyway, I guess I'll plan on jogging to the track (2 km) and doing 5 x 1200m at paces from an easy run to 5K (or near 5K) race pace: 9:30, 9:00, 8:30, 8:00, and 7:30 min/mi. Add another jog back and that gets to 10K total. Not a race, but a decent workout and I should be fresh for the 16 miles on Sunday. I might need to shift the 7:30 a little faster though (maybe 7:20) to make sure I get well past the anaerobic threshold. In reality of course, I can't control my pace quite that well.

What does this translate to on the track? 9:30 min/mi equals 2:21 min/400m or 1:10 min/200m. Since 1600m is about 1 mile than each 30 secs/mi faster is about 7.5 secs per 400m faster or 3.75 per 200m. I can just start at 2:20 or so per lap, which is a pretty natural pace (my 3 lap calibration run was 6:57 or 2:19 per lap), speed up 30 secs /mile using the watch and then just double check that I'm about 7-8 seconds faster per lap. On the last 1200m, I'll just go with what feels like a 5K race pace.

I didn't know what I was going to do when I started writing this. This thinking by writing stuff seems to work.