Start Slow, Finish Faster

For these past 2 weeks, I still found myself back at the drawing board, trying to figure out how come it was easy for me to run 22miles at 7:39/mi (4:45/km), and yet had trouble achieving that average pace in the first 15miles of the marathon. Then it occurred to me, I was always feeling a bit lousy before in almost all my long runs, while in the marathon, I was always anxious to start running right away. So normally, in my long runs, I would just take the first 10Kms real easy. Then depending on how I feel, I would hammer the last half to a little bit faster than marathon pace.

22miles (7:39/mi ave pace) started at 8:20/mi

On the other hand, I started my marathon too fast at 7:25 pace. I already tried to run this slower, but since I was near the front at the starting line, my adrenaline must have made me run faster than needed.

My Marathon split pace (ave 7:50/mi) started at 7:25/mi.

After the 13mile halfway point, I was already fatigued and was getting slower and slower. My slowest miles were at 18 and 23miles. Comparing the two graphs (Blue=22mi long run, Red=Marathon), it is obvious that I've progressively slowed down in the marathon after running the first 5miles too fast. On the other hand, my 22mile long run started really slow.... it reached my marathon target pace after 5miles, and I still progressively ran faster. In the end, I hit my goal pace without trying during training. In actual execution at the race, I failed.

Moral lesson of the story is still like the Hare and Tortoise story. Start slow and finish faster. At least I've learned in my last marathon and hope to do better in my next one. Next week would be the start of my 12week marathon program and I'm aiming Condura to run under 3:20. I hope I execute this one correctly.