Advice please.... (Read 430 times)

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately since I've been noticing the improvement I made over the summer months. I've been marathon training seriously since April. When I first set out on training, I wanted to run a 5 hour marathon (previous marathon time is in my signature). Now I have a pace goal of averaging a 12 minute mile for the whole race. I want to sign up for a pace group because I seem to run so much better. Either the 5:15 (if they have one) or the 5:30 group. What do you suggest? I think doing a 5 hour marathon right now would really be pushing it for me so that is why I switched to a pace goal instead. Here's what I"m thinking. This is my first time running a marathon for time and my second marathon overall. I'm leaning more toward the 5:30 group because I know for sure I could hang with that group the whole time. I figured that if I'm feeling that well at mile 20 that I could go ahead of the group if I wanted to. BTW, I'm running the San Anotnio Marathon November 16 so I still have a good 6 weeks to go of training. I do my first 20 miler in a week and a half and my second three weeks out from the race. I'm also going to be running a half marathon on October 19. The goal of that half is to run it at marathon pace/effort to predict my finish in SA.