McMillan's "new" paces (Read 604 times)

I never look at McMillan's recommended training paces, but I do use his calculator for comparing performaces at different distances. Have those numbers changed?

Put in my PRs to compare to what I did then, and current fitness to compare to what I do now.  Most of it is more or less reasonable, except that I would never use the faster part of the easy run spectrum.  But not that even at my easy run pace...6:XX/mi....there is nearly a full minute window there.  IMHO it is a bit too quick.  I got 6:22-7:16.  6:22 is getting into the range I only use in a progression run on the way to something else...I wouldn't do that on an easy day.  OTOH 7:16 is rare for me to run except if I'm pretty beat up or just warming up.

 

I liked the old numbers better...I'm afraid these may have a newb pushing too hard because they are still "in range".  And they tend to try to run too hard already.

Agree - the ranges are really wide.  I would not think about the lower end of the range for that specific workout, but neither would I run at the slow end either.  Somewhere around 60% in is where most of my running occurs.

 

His assertion was for 4 and 5 hours there's not much difference, so you should add those times.  Think of how many more people you'd have to hide from. Much funnier.

 

 

really , the line for lazy, undertrained runner starts 5 minutes slower than I am At that point in time.  the rest of those slobs clearly aren't trying.  Surprised you don't know that.

When someone says "assertion" they mean that the speaker "asserted" which is very close to "stated." I don't think he was even close to stating that. I think the point was, once a person is out there racing 4-5 hours (I take this to include ultras), the race pace begins to move closer to easy training pace.

When I ran 4:05 for the marathon, my training paces were like 9:00-9:30 minute miles (i.e., almost overlapping with race pace). When I ran 3:14 this Fall, my easy pace was like 8:20-8:30 (i.e., over a minute slower than race pace).

MTA: McMillan is fun for comparing and predicting race times, but I am not going to use that calculator for my training paces.

I don't think it's necessarily true that everyone racing for 4-5 hours will be at their easy pace. 

Me neither!

(By the way, that jerk McMillan thinks they converge somewhere around 5 hrs. What an elitist prick.)

By the by, this train of conversation got me wondering what's the longest amount of time I've ever run and since the RA log is so completely awesome I was able to get that information in three clicks: Training Log ---> Workouts ---> Duration (sort descending).

Anyway, I noticed not too far down the list was this one run where my average pace was 11:30 and couldn't figure out why that would have been so I clicked on  it to see what that was all about. One of my favorite runs of all time:

day 3, leg 1.

From mr. pickwicks in stowe, up the quiet path and mountain road to the toll road (7 mi / 55:35), toll road to the summit (4.5 mi / 53 min / 3200 ft gain total), some steep ass gnarly hiking trail 1.1 mi of technical scramble down the back of mt. Mansfield to the ccc road then 2+ mi screaming downhill on rocky fire road to underhill state park.

Got to the parking area at underhill all delirious and almost ran past the cars until I saw Evan. Stopped and said, "hey what's up I just ran here from Stowe," then started laughing hysterically at how funny that sounded. A guy getting into a nearby car was looking at us with a strange amazement.

Fell down in the grass and looked up at the sky for a few minutes.

A full half.

 

Nope. What I said was that between 4 and 5 hours race pace gets close to easy training pace. But if you want to keep pretending I look down on slower runners, be my guest.

wow.  I really do not care what you think of slower runners but I do think you took that entirely more seriously than I meant it.

You asserted easy pace and marathon pace is the same for a 4-5 hour marathon runner. Which I disagree with per my original post BUT

then Ennay said that they disagree and that a well trained marathon runner will have a slower easy pace than marathon pace even if slower (which I agree with)

Then someone joked that a 5 hour marathon and well trained is an oxymoron--- and it amused me, and at 5 hours it amused me, but even more so at 4, which is part of your original easy run/marathon pace convergence.   I was being funny. Well, funny to me. Not to anyone else. That's pretty normal.

Hey, McMillan says an easy pace for a 4 hour marathoner might be faster than marathon pace, too.  He's much smarter and better educated on running than I am.  I don't find it insulting.

But I do know it does not work for me and I ran much slower when I ran close to race pace all the time.  Daniels take on thing works much better and I would encourage it to other slower runners, having been at the exact same place of over 5 hour marathons in the past.   And to me, if easy pace isn't race pace for ME, it isn't for other runners of my speed necessarily either.

FWIW, my easy pace is about 2min/mi faster than my average pace in marathon (about 13%) (7.6hr). "Easy" runs are on flat, easy surfaces. Most races are hilly trails, and this had about 3500ft of up and respective down. A pace table based on mile splits for that marathon has a variation of about 50% depending on whether going up, down, trail, road. I believe their pace table is derived from actual data of the fast folks (1st 10 through). And this is why I don't use pace tables.