7 miles w/ 2 at marathon pace

Today's training: 6.97 miles, 1:10:57 (10:10 min/mi), avg 143 bpm

Extremely slow, cautious warm-up with beginning with exruciately slow jogging interspersed with frequent walking breaks. Here are the splits

• 3.87 miles, 42:04 (10:52 min/mi), avg 132 bpm, very slow warm up with walk breaks
• 0.10 miles, 1:00 (10:00 min/mi), avg 146 bpm, did one lap around to see how close to 10 min/mi I could get and check my heart rate. Got it to the second!
• 1.00 miles, 9:05 (9:05 min/mi), avg 157 bpm, first marathon pace mile
• 1.00 miles, 9:01 (9:01 min/mi), avg 160 bpm, second marathon pace mile
• 1.00 miles, 9:46 (9:46 min/mi), avg 154 bpm, recovery -- assume the high bpm is recovering from marathon pace
  

I'm always surprised that my average pace seems to correspond with my average heart rate the same way my instantaneous heart rate/pace do. For example, this run has a mix of walking and running at different speeds, but I get 10:02 min/mi and 145 bpm just like my one lap today. I suppose this doesn't say anything more than heart rate varies linearly with your pace if you below your lactate thresholds, but nice to see nonetheless.

Yet another marathon pace prediction method. If you believe in this Maffetone stuff, my Maffetone heart rate is 146 bpm (180 - age). That happens the heart rate I ran 10:00 min/mi today. You can find a table here that says a Maffetone pace of 10:00 min/mi equates to a 3:47 marathon. McMillanrunning.com's running calculator says 3:42 based on my 10K, so that's pretty close. Hmm.

Weather for Sunday is high of 69, low of 54. Ugh. The average temp is 49 degrees for the date, so I'm feeling a little snakebit. Plus, every Sunday for the past month it's been cold. If I have to train in 18 degrees at least I should get to run the race in it! Weather is another reason not to be too agressive. My 10K was run with the temps in the 30's.

I guess I need to decide on some goals. 4 hours is my "comfortably" attainable goal, 3:55 is my realistically attainable goal, and 3:49:21 (one hour off my PR) is my dream goal. Here are the paces

• 4 hours is a 9:09 pace
• 3:55 is 8:58 pace. my plan is to work to keep my pace under 9:00 the whole time. might have to compensate for some hills and make sure I take advantage of the wind when it's at my back.
  
• 3:49:21 is 8:45 pace. The only way I see this happening is if I end up running 8:50 pace in my effort to stay under 9:00 and then have enough in the tank to run 8:29 min/mi for the last 10K. Supposedly I can do 8:29 for the whole race, so I guess it's possible.

That sound like a pretty good plan.