Forums >Racing>2015 Boston Marathon Thread
Will do. For 3:00 you can use the 2:59:50 one above... that got me my first sub-3. Yes, I explicitly put in a 10-second cushion. My first try at a sub-40 10K got me exactly 40:00.00. Doh!
No problem. If people post their goal times I'm happy to make a bunch. You can use them or not.
Can you build in a bathroom break between miles 8 and 10 into our 2:59:40 band? 30-40 seconds should be enough.
No Talent Drips
Bob...i'd be interested in what a band for 2:49 looks like; fella has to have goals... Thanks a bunch.
Dei Gratia
Here's Bui's 2:49:58.
2:55 2:57 3:00 Thank you very much sir.
2:55
2:57
3:00
Thank you very much sir.
+1
goal is 2:55 but a backup plan cant hurt, much appreciated for the offer B!
I'm interested to know your approach for grading / handicapping the miles. Sounds like you've had great success with it, and just intellectually curious.
Noted. Not going to spread a minute across those splits...looks less negative than what I'm hoping for...
Staying at a co-workers house at 2 mile marker down route 135 and will be running in second wave first corral. Do you think I will able to walk up 135 to the start after the elite women start and get into my corral somehow after first wave goes? I would think I could stay to the side but not sure. Thanks
Walk up a little earlier and hang with us at the GLRR bus. Get in the team pic and roll on down to the start with us.
Although I qualified at 3:07, I would appreciate a 3:20 bracelet bhearn! Thanks in advance.
2018 Goals
Figure out the achilles thing...... and THEN try to get running regularly again.
No racing goals
Hi, bhearn:
May I please have a 3:25 and a 3:30 pace band? Many thanks!
So probably a dumb question, but what do you do to the wristbands so that they stay on during the whole race?
I'll try to make those bands today.
To make it stay on, I print it out, cover it with clear packing tape, then the morning of the race, attach it to my wrist with more clear packing tape.
Got it thanks. Now I just need to decide what time to use.
It's really pretty simple: the idea is just to take the first half easy, pick it up a bit at the half, run solid through the hills, and kick in from the top of Heartbreak. Those last 5 miles can be very, very fast. But a lot of people are really hurting there because they took the first half too fast, and when they get through the hills and to the big downhill, they discover that their quads are shot.
I started with some topography-adjusted splits, from a website that I'm sure no longer exists. The problem with just trying to run a locally optimal race is that it ignores the global course profile. So I took those, put them in a spreadsheet, and adjusted them for a slight negative split, with all the speed backloaded to the last 5 mies. Specifically, for goal X with desired negative split Y (I typically use about 30 seconds here), I first scale the splits for a goal time of X + Y, then rescale them for even first / second half splits, then finally take off the time Y I added, all from the last 5 miles.
Yes, I have had good luck. My first year at Boston (2005) I used a standard pace band, and did a standard Boston newbie blowup, missing my time by more than half an hour. Very, very painful. In 2006 I got smarter, ran a 2-minute positive split, pretty typical for a Boston run reasonably well. Since then I've adopted the above strategy and run negative splits every year, with three PRs. Really this is the easy way to run the course. There's nothing like the feeling of flying by everyone else in the last few miles. If you get to the top of Heartbreak and discover that you just don't have it in you to turn up the speed... well imagine how you'd feel then if you'd already used even more effort to get there, as almost everyone does. If you misestimate what you're capable of, this approach minimizes the damage.
MTA Oh yeah -- I also tweak the first few miles to be a bit slow, as you are jammed in anyway, and for marathons it's a good idea to get your warmup in during the race.
Keep in mind Bui ran New Beford in 1:18:36 that year, so he was likely in about 2:45-2:47 shape heading into Boston. 2 years later he ran 2:45 at Boston and 2:43 at Chicago.
The closer your goal is to to the absolute limit of your fitness, the less margin for error there is. This is especially true at Boston, I think. There are two things you need to do to neg split Boston:
1.) pick a goal that you can definitely run,
THEN
2.) do what Bob says.
I've never done #1, ergo #2 has never mattered. Maybe this will be the year!
Runners run