Forums >Running 101>Another question about Pfitz regarding paces
Hi guys,
Me again.. Sorry to bombard all of you with questions about the Pfitz plan. I have a copy of the book and have read through it but there are still some things that are a bit unclear to me. My next question is at what paces I should be running each of my workouts at - MP, GA, LT, etc.
I plugged in a recent 10K result from a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, which was 54:48. Using that result, I plugged it into McMillan and was given this:
MP: 9:49.
Recovery: 10:44 to 11:30
Long Runs 9:43 to 10:59
Easy Runs 9:40 to 10:35
Steady-State Runs 9:03 to 9:27
Tempo Runs 8:42 to 9:00
McMillan gives such a large range for each type of run and many overlap each other.. Would you guys mind helping me figure out what paces I should be running my GA and various workouts at? Thanks again for all your help.
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I keep asking these questions all the time and got many suggestions. However, I am still using the McMillan's suggestion paces for my training.
I am a beginner as well, but my philosophy is taking the pace I feel comfortable as the easy run pace. Tempo is hard enough to finish the required distance, such as 4 miles, but still have enough puff left to carry on longer if needed.
Overall, I listen to my body and adjust my pace to avoid injury. For example, 2 weeks ago after the Sunday long run, I felt my knees at the edge of injury stage, so last week especially Sunday I reduced my paces. This week the warning signal is gone, but I will still keep a slower pace for a while.
Regarding the calculator, I think it is more accurate if your race result is your full effort result. A full effort from my interpretation is that you were convinced that you were going to die if you kept running at that speed, but you survived. Is that what is called a full effort?
I believe all the pace suggestions are helping the runners not to get injury. After all, the Pfitz plan is rather structured, if you use your efforts for each run and don't get injured, then the paces are right for you.
I am also waiting for the experienced runners' comments.
5k - 20:56 (09/12), 7k - 28:40 (11/12), 10k trial - 43:08 (03/13), 42:05 (05/13), FM - 3:09:28 (05/13), HM - 1:28:20 (05/14), Failed 10K trial - 6:10/mi for 4mi (08/14), FM - 3:03 (09/14)
I also find most of McMillan's training paces too broad to be useful. (Speedwork excepted). But, I think that's because these paces will vary depending on things like how many mile a week you're running. So, I think it would be helpful to either make your log public or give more context - how much are you running now, how long is your long run, what are your current paces, etc.
Thank you for your reply. I don't really have a log going. I ran my first full a month ago and finished in 4:59x.. Not my proudest moment cause I had a goal that was at least half hour faster than that. I will be trying to meet this goal again.
I ran a half marathon about 1.5 months ago and finished in 1:56x.. So very similar pace to what I ran for my 10K a couple of weeks ago. At the peak of my last marathon training, I logged about 65mpw and averaged about 40 throughout the whole entire training. I didn't really follow any specific plan.. Just ran as much and as often as I could.
I currently run most of my runs at 9:10-9:40 pace and my long runs are around 9:40 - 10:20 pace. Granted, the last real LR I did was since my marathon a month ago was last week, which was 12 miles. My mileage has been all over the place since the marathon. Thanksgiving week, I think I ran 30 and last week.. I logged maybe 20.
Part of the "slush" in the paces is to account for having a good day, bad day, or something in-between. Another part varies depending on how far you'll be going (in, say, a tempo run of 20min v. 45min). The LR pace range factors in starting out more slowly and progressing to about MP+10% for the final few miles.
Another way to arrive at paces is to find the typical pace that is conversational for YOU, then plug various race times into MacMillan until it spits out your determined conversational pace as the middle of the "easy" range. Now look at the other specified pace ranges and go from there.
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
It looks to me like maybe you struggle with endurance and/or running consistently? I'm just trying to figure why you were a half an hour off your goal marathon time. (Other than that maybe you ran a half marathon a few weeks beforehand?) And, why your half marathon pace and 10K pace are the same.
I think you may want to start your long runs at the slower end of the range McMillan is giving you for the first third to half of the run and then maybe pick it up a bit towards the end. If endurance is your problem, then being able to hold a comfortable pace is going to be more important than how fast your run them.
For general aerobic pace, I usually shoot for something a little faster than my average run pace. So, I would try something betweenn what McMillan is calling steady state and easy - like in the 9:25-9:40 range. But if that feels too fast by all mean slow down. Again, I'm guessing for you it might be more important to get the runs in than to do them at a certain pace.
And for recovery runs, I use a "no faster than" pace rather than a goal pace for those. Pfitz plans are hard so I allow myself to run recovery runs so slow and easy that it's as if I didn't run that day.
I think the rest of the paces are based on race times, so I would just go by McMillan for those. I will say that I find it hard to hit race paces in training but you might not have that problem.
Good luck!
Part of the "slush" in the paces is to account for having a good day, bad day, or something in-between. Another part varies depending on how far you'll be going (in, say, a tempo run of 20min v. 45min). The LR pace range factors in starting out more slowly and progressing to about MP+10% for the final few miles. Another way to arrive at paces is to find the typical pace that is conversational for YOU, then plug various race times into MacMillan until it spits out your determined conversational pace as the middle of the "easy" range. Now look at the other specified pace ranges and go from there.
+1. Finding the right pace for some Pfitz workouts has been more art than science for me. As I said above, I have a hard time hitting the race pace ranges he gives for lactate threshold and intervals, so I almost always "fail" those workouts. But, I like to think I'm still getting some benefit from trying.
Try getting another data point to determine your current fitness. The recent 10k may or may not be an accurate assessment.
If you're up to it, try racing a 2 mile time trial on the track. Down and dirty way to get another piece of info to help piece together your current fitness.
My best PR, off of which I'm basing my Pfitz training, is a 1:50:09 HM.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I treat GA as just "easy, but I would not want to do this for a LR". This usually ends up 9:45ish pace.
Long runs, I have honed in on the effort level at this point. Usually falls in the 10:20s, and if I'm disciplined early and keep to this, I can kick it in the last few miles closer to 10:00.
LT runs in the Pfitz plan, I find are very difficult. Perhaps this is because of sheer duration, being a mid-pack runner - my theoretical 15k pace is 8:13, my HM PR pace is 8:25. Even though he says in the book that slower runners should be running tempos closer to 15k pace and faster runners close to HM pace, 15k pace is really, really difficult for me to maintain for as long as the run goes on, to the point where by the end I feel like I am running much too hard to a) gain what I'm supposed to from the workout and b) recover fast enough to get what I need to out of the rest of the workouts.
I have been roughly using HR as a guideline, as well as using Daniels' adjustments to threshold pace for longer duration runs - with both of those, I have been running the 5 mile tempo runs at around HM pace. The longer ones will be slowed down by a small notch when I get to them. Maybe those are slower than Pfitz intended, but that is what I'm functionally capable of.
Recovery, I run them "stupid easy". If I find myself putting in any real effort, I slow down. Usually this ends up for me being ~11 minute miles.
My wildly inconsistent PRs:
5k: 24:36 (10/20/12)
10k: 52:01 (4/28/12)
HM: 1:50:09 (10/27/12)
Marathon: 4:19:11 (10/2/2011)