More Details - Weekday Runs Pacing and Timing

Runners enjoy a Sunday morning run at the LSU Lakes

For the past year or more, there have been a number of madnesses to my running. In the first few months of walking, then running, the timelapserunner could be seen with a pair of earbuds wedged in his ears and an iPod Nano clipped onto his running shorts. At some point, the podcasts wore thin and the joy of silent running began to hold sway.


Additionally, most of my running during the first six months or so after starting back took place in my neighborhood, a pleasant enough area with lots of trees and greenery. When a dose of motivation was needed to get into running gear, a trip to the LSU Lakes was usually in the offing. There's something very special about running around those lakes, and - judging by the number of other runners and walkers out there on any given day - I don't think I'm the only one with that appreciation. These last few weeks, the short jaunt around the larger lake has become a regular source of inspiration. Perhaps some of our weekday training runs will include trips to the LSU Lakes as well.

Though Galloway encourages his proteges to experiment a bit on Tuesday and/or Thursday with pace and interval timing, at this point the timelapserunner plans to use the following strategy for the weekday workouts:

• Warm up for 0.5 to 1.0 miles, beginning with a walk and adding more running into the mix,
• Run / walk 2 to 3 miles, using marathon race pace + heat stress pace correction, and
• Cool down with a 10 minute walk.

The blur of speedy runners
(Courtesy of wokka @ Flickr)

For the centerpiece of that strategy, the interval timing will use Jeff's recommendations and will be based on the corrected pace. The real question here is what to use for race pace. Yes, I know. We've already defined that to be 10:11 per mile. On a cool race day, that would call for doing about 9 minute miles during the running at a 3 min / 1 min interval setting. Somehow that sounds AWFUL fast. Even though we suggested a 5 hour finish time when registering for this race, the timelapserunner must not lose sight of his goal: to finish in the upright position. SO ... The plan is to TRAIN as though we were going to run the marathon at a 10:11 per mile pace, but plan on RUNNING the marathon - at least the first half - using a pace commensurate with a 4:59:59 finish.

At about this point, you should feel thoroughly confused. I know I did when I first thought this through (and I'm not so sure I really understand my plan yet). We're OK, though. We have plenty of time to gage our progress through the many weeks of training and we'll run several Magic Miles. There's ample time for course correction should this strategy need some tweaking.