Forums >Racing>The Art of Racing..
Right on Hereford...
what's a good effort? I don't want to feel like shit the whole way through, but maybe that's just racing?
I agree with you for the most part Mikey...but its hard to practice for a marathon unless you are a Marathon Maniac. Maybe going by effort makes sense for a 5k,10k, maybe a half. But for a marathon? Its a mystery. You taper a little, eat well, and you have a ton of energy as you toe the start line. You start out at an easy effort, but with a faster pace than you can hang with for the whole race. But you dont know it if youre just paying attention to effort! It feels like an easy effort, but since you can't practice a Marathon very often, you really have no idea that its too fast until later. Then you bomb at mile 20 and hobble the rest of the way. I base my race goals off previous races and previous workouts. I just ran 1:23 in a half. Im going to try Grandmas this summer with a goal at 2:55. I'm not going to toe the eye blindly and go by effort. Im going to use my Garmin to make sure I don't go faster than 6:40 for the first 15-20. Even if 6:10 feels really easy. If Ive got some in the tank at 20-22, Ill drop the pace then. I don't think Ill have anything in the tank.
Runners run
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- Many of us are undertrained for the distance
Prince of Fatness
Thanks everyone, great advice. It just pisses me off to no end to train and train and train, put in the time and effort and then race day comes and I screw it up.
Not at it at all.
Don't beat yourself up too much over this. The first mile on that course is straight downhill plus you have the big crowd full of adrenaline pulling you along. I've run this race 6 years in a row and I am now finally getting it close. For me the solution is pretty much what mikey said, effort. Not all races are the same but for this race my focus is on running that first mile with a real easy effort. This year was the closest I came to getting it right. My first mile split was only 8 seconds faster than my race pace. I think the first time I ran that course it was something ridiculous like over a minute faster.
- Many of us don't run enough miles to know our bodies well enough to know what pace we can sustain
Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose; it's how drunk you get. -- Homer Simpson
What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles, Miles of Trials. How could they be expected to understand that? -John Parker