The important thing is to run perpendicular to the curves. That's what I have learned.

The important thing is to run perpendicular to the curves. That's what I have learned.

 Would that be a straight line?

A perfect argument against trying to execute a plan that involves running a certain pace.

Maybe - but it's hard to know how I would have run on that day if I tried doing it by feel.. I've run quite a few marathons, and tried it both ways. I find that when I try and run by feel I tend to run too fast early on and crash badly later. Maybe with more experience I'll get the running by feel thing better.

My best marathon in terms of pacing was last year's Paris marathon - I planned to run 3:30, ran at that pace (well - 1 minute ahead at half way), struggled a bit at the end but held it together well enough to come in at 3:30x. I think it was about as well as I could have run on the day.

I'll go again for 3:15 in Paris in a couple of weeks and will pretty much run at that pace - maybe go just a little faster at the outset. (Slight complication is that I've picked up an injury, but I'm hopeful that it'll be more or less better by race time.)  Recent performances give me confidence that I'm in better shape than when I failed in October...

Maybe - but it's hard to know how I would have run on that day if I tried doing it by feel..

But what's the alternative?  You take a guess and try to run x pace just because?

I realize I'm beating a dead horse but every time the garmin theme comes up people throw out the notion that using a gps is a good way to stick to a predetermined pacing plan--as if it's a given that doing so is an intelligent way to race.  As if it's the default.

You'd be better off learning how to read that highly sensitive instrument known as your body and figuring out what marathon effort actually is.  You do this by paying less attention to the gizmo on your wrist and more time during training and tune-up races learning what it feels like to train and race.

The funniest thing about this phenomenon is that very frequently there are stories on this very board of people who forgot their gps in the car, or the battery died as soon as they turned it on or whatever and so they were left to run the race "freestyle" and they wound up running a big 10k pr or some such.  It happens all the time.  And yet nobody makes the connection that maybe they've become a little too dependent on the digital security blanket strapped to their wrist and that maybe there is something to this idea that maybe racing is an effort not a pace.

I'll admit it's not strictly an either/or thing.  There are clearly people who have not only figured out what racing effort is but have also become good at building the correct pacing plan to run a max effort, using a gps as one of several tools to execute it.  But that is not most people.  Most seem to pick a number because it's their BQ or some other nice round number and then use a garmin to run that pace for as long as they can with no regard for whether that's actually their marathon race pace.

I don't literally mean you as in pr100, but the "you" that is the great, unwashed masses of slack-jawed garmin-addicted plodders I imagine existing somehwere out there in the interwebs, buying all of the latest generation of expensive gadgets--the Garmin 310xt to replace their perfectly good 405, which replaced their perfectly good 305, the iPhone app that tracks their mileage and calories, $150 shoes with $50 "superfeet" inserts, etc.--hardly training, eating fad diets, doing isometrics and isotoncis and px90 while whining on messageboards about how they were able to hold "marathon pace" for 18 miles but then "for some unknown reason" crashed and burned.

This is awesome.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a race with the GPS strapped to my arm with a predetermined plan and, once the race starts, tell myself "to hell with the GPS!" and just run. Yeah, I'm still checking it but only to try and lower the "average pace" reading. Somehow knowing your crushing it gives incentive to crush it even further. And then there are times when your just working too hard to possibly even look at, focus on, or read the GPS. Those are good times. 

Thanks.  In hindsight I'm a little disappointed I didn't work in a reference to Vibrams or those $120 "barefoot" running sandals that they sell on BornToRun dot com.  But hey.

Calf sleeves keep my legs fresh.  Arm sleeves help me look cool.

And I drink shakeology.

I don't literally mean you as in pr100, but the "you" that is the great, unwashed masses of slack-jawed garmin-addicted plodders I imagine existing somehwere out there in the interwebs, buying all of the latest generation of expensive gadgets--the Garmin 310xt to replace their perfectly good 405, which replaced their perfectly good 305, the iPhone app that tracks their mileage and calories, $150 shoes with $50 "superfeet" inserts, etc.--hardly training, eating fad diets, doing isometrics and isotoncis and px90 while whining on messageboards about how they were able to hold "marathon pace" for 18 miles but then "for some unknown reason" crashed and burned.