Unlike all you Boston-bound folks, I'll be running my first marathon in May, Vermont City. My training thus far has been influenced by three schools of thought: No Pain, No Gain; Train Smarter, Not Harder; and Just Run Lots. In other words, I haven't really had a plan at all. Let me re-phrase that: I've tried to concentrate foremost on my long run (up to 17 miles now), do pace workouts based (loosely or slowly) on a percentage of my Marathon pace (7:40 m/m for a BQ AG time of 3:20), and also I've tried to keep an eye on my HR monitor- I just ran a 7.2 mile RR at an ave HR of 169; 50:40, 7:07 m/m. It was pretty hilly. So, Let's say my LT is 169. (Max: 188? 193? I've only hit 193 once so it might be the monitor; resting: 44 BPM) Based on those numbers, I have an uneasy feeling that I haven't been training hard enough. So, with a month to go (and I'm not suggesting that I try to "cram" here: I just want to train effectively), any ideas about the upcoming weeks? When I look at the Macmillan Pace Chart (against my better judgement), the training paces seem a little fast--I've been trying to stick to a MP+ 15% rule. HR-wise, my sub-10 mile runs seem to run in the mid-140's. On my last long run (16 miles), my HR ave was 129, which left me with the uneasy feeling that the run had done me very little good. I'm not in love with HR training- it's just that most of my runs are hilly- they probably average about 75-100 vertical gain/mile, which certainly isn't "billy goat" impressive, but will certainly keep you off PR pace. So I occasionally look at HR #'s to judge effort. I think this is a long enough post. Thanks in advance for your replies. Edit: My custody schedule for my girls requires a slide rule and a good grasp of game theory to figure out, but I can usually only count on be able to run 4, occasionally 5, days a week.