I’ve been playing around with the McMillan’s Running Calculator lately, comparing my different race paces and looking for areas of improvement. The results weren’t too surprising. My half marathon is lagging considerably when compared to the other distances. I’ve been really frustrated with my inability to run a solid half lately and am hoping to rectify that come January and the Manhattan Half. One thing I didn’t expect though was for my mile time to be faster than what my marathon would suggest — I feel like all 3 miles I ran this year were poor races. I guess that makes me feel a little better about failing to reach my goal for 2009 of running a sub-5:00 mile. Maybe that was more ambitious than I thought. Obviously, I didn’t train much for it specifically, but I just assumed that it would come with an increased level of fitness. It still remains to be seen whether I even bother putting that goal on the list for 2010. More on that another day though… Here are the numbers:
| Mile | 10K | Half Marathon |
Marathon |
| 5:14 | 37:40 | 1:23:48 | 2:56:45 |
| 5:19 | 38:20 | 1:25:18 | 2:59:54 |
| 5:27 | 39:14 | 1:27:17 | 3:04:05 |
| 5:16 | 37:54 | 1:24:20 | 2:57:52 |
The highlighted cells are my actual race times. The rest of each row is filled with the predictions based on that highlighted time.
An unrelated note: I just found a bunch of comments in the Wordpress spam queue that weren’t spam. Sorry to those folks who wrote them — I wasn’t trying to censor you. Promise.
Interesting table. Even though you’re not happy with the 5:14, to me it looks like you the speed for a major revision of the half PB. You could probably get the sub-5 mile with a period of ‘mile training’ – fast 200 reps, 400 intervals and the like.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. The thing is, I don’t know if it makes sense to try to fit in a period of mile training in the midst of a year devoted to moving up to 50 milers. It seems contradictory, almost. Decisions, decisions…
That was ‘you have the speed’ ;)
Yes, well, 50 milers don’t need that much speed. You could keep one fast session (200/400 intervals etc) going. It’s worth breaking 5 while it’s still possible.
[...] a mile in under five minutes. Ewen made a good point that breaking 5 won’t always be possible. Even though it’s not directly related to my [...]
[...] couple notes: According to the McMillan’s Running Calculator numbers I figured out before, my half is now the strongest of the 4 distances I calculated. It [...]