Saturday, January 31, 2009

6:26

I’ve been kicking goals around in my head for a while and was inspired to write this after walking into my hotel room and seeing 6:26 on the clock. 6:26, you see, happens to be the pace required for a 20:00 5k, which I finally did in 2008. 40:00 10k is one of my long-term goals – sub-40 by 40 years old – and is, of course also 6:26 per mile or 4:00 per kilometer pace. I’m thinking about shorter distances lately because I finally got my BQ (3:15) and there aren’t a lot of nice round numbers I can hit in the marathon any time soon. 3:05 at 40 would let me side step the lottery for New York. Sub-3 is one I’ll probably never achieve.

So what is the longest distance for which I’ll ever be able to sustain 4 min/k pace? What does that translate to for other distances? Well, with a little time in the St Louis airport and some help from the McMilllan calculator, here’s what I came up with.


5k 8k 10k 10M HM Marathon
20:00 32:58 41:33 1:09:37 1:32:27 3:14:58

32:00 40:19 1:07:33 1:29:42 3:09:10


40:00 1:07:01 1:29:00 3:07:43



1:04:20 1:25:26 3:00:11



The diagonals represent 4 min/k. Where am I now and what row can I make it to? Well, my 1:29:48 gets me pretty close to 8k, which will be a nice goal for the St Patty’s 8k (in addition to the rematch with Fenty). I’ll have to stretch it to 10 miles before I can even think about trying to run a sub-3 marathon though. Funny enough, a 3:00 marathon is only worth about a 3:06 1000m, a pace that elites sustain for an entire marathon.

2 comments:

Adam said...

I also do some of my best analysis while sitting in airports. Flying Northwest most of the time gives me a lot of extra airport time. When are you going to start going longer...in the woods?

Greg said...

I'm currently planning to the the JFK 50 in November, but I might change my mind. I'm tantalizingly close to sub-40 10k shape and I might shoot for that this fall.