my vision is only so good, but I can identify all the parks with portables or real bathrooms, the fast food places, gas stations, or breakfast places (or whatever for the time of day) as I run by. when I would run longer i’d pack paper towel in a ziplock bag in case i was out in the country somewhere. before I learned that trick i would sacrifice a sock. not good times but inevitable.
My daughter ran a full before she got pregnant as a bucket list thing. Now the kid’s out in the world, she’s back at it and talking about running a second one in the fall. Good for her. I guess it’s been long enough that she’s forgotten what it feels like to cross that finish line lol.
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It’s those last couple of miles before the finish line that you’ll want to block out of your memory. Feels good to finally get there.
What is the sort of pace adjustment needed to go from a 10k to half or full marathon? If I run 6.2 miles in an hour…I feel like I could go about 30 seconds a mile slower and maybe do that twice, so a half marathon in 2:20 or so? A marathon in nearly 5 hours does not sound like something I would be interested in.
Maybe a basic question - what happens at a longer distance that I dont know about because I have only done 6-8 miles?
I think the guy with this site has a lot of cred (maybe only because I’ve read several of his books)
He bases longer distances on how fast you can do a mile. He says if you can do (all these times are with a hard effort on a good day) an 8:25 mile, you can do a 1 hour 10K, a 2:12 half marathon and a 4:47 marathon. All also assume you can do those times after following a several week training program (no necessarily his), not that you could do it tomorrow.
The site has a built in calculator if you want to use a different mile time. I backed into a mile time for you consistent with that 10K time. Google “Jeff Galloway Magic Mile” for more info.
He also says (not on that page) that if you follow a multi week training program for your distance, including some speedwork, you can probably improve 3%, possibly 5%, not because the magic mile formula is wrong, but that over that training your one mile time would also improve.
yeah, adding 30 sec per mile should get you from a 10k to a half.
same for going to a full, with the caveat that if you haven’t really trained for it it is hard to predict what happens to you after 2.5-3 hrs. weird shit pops up.
@SteveWhite is right that galloway is a good resource usually
That’s pretty much in line with my experience. Back when I ran a bit more I did about 50min for a 10k, and that translated to about 1:45 half and about 4hour for a full (had foot issues about mile 20 and had to slow down the rest of the way).
2.14 miles in 31 minutes (9 running, 22 walking), 4.14 mph. Small improvements.
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Based on those times I would think maybe you’d do a half in a little more than 2 hours. I did my first half in I think 2:20 and that was when my 10k time was around your time. I was running an easy pace so maybe you could do it faster.
1.89 miles in 31 minutes. It was a hard workout and I didn’t feel great about it even before I started.
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Week two, run 4 (I did a repeat run today because I didn’t feel ready to move on to the next week), 2.09 miles in 31 minutes. Much better feeling than Friday’s.
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Week 3, run 1. 1.8 miles in 28 minutes, which is only 3.86 mph. I had 9 minutes of running and 19 minutes of walking, which is 3 minutes less than I was doing before.
It was 5 minutes warm up, then two cycles of: 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, and then finally a 5 minute cool down. So it’s the same amount of running from yesterday, but 3 minutes less of walking. So my mph SHOULD have gone up, but those 3 minute chunks were rough and I was probably going at a walking pace by the end of both.
My knee is giving me trouble. Wore a patella tendon knee brace and it might have made it more painful? I expected some knee pain, because I sprained my MCL 10 years ago, but it was my other knee, which isn’t giving me any trouble now. I’m icing it now and taking tomorrow off. I don’t want to have to throw in the towel. My husband has similar pain and got an MRI and it’s jumper’s knee, nothing to do for it. I suspect the only option for me is to “take it easy.” But I’ll go see a doctor if nothing improves.
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I don’t think you need to worry about pace at all at the moment. It’s really only where you’re consistently getting in maybe 25 very easy miles per week that you would start thinking about adding in stuff like short intervals. Until then it should be 100% easy which is probably going to be alternating between slow jogs and walks.
You should be going slower and steadily increasing time instead of trying to go faster within the span of 30 minutes which isn’t something that can be done even for experienced runners.
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I appreciate what you’re saying, but no level of running is easy - it never has been. Even the slowest jog gets my heart rate up sky high. The only thing that has worked for me is to continue to push through it, and after a few months I can go longer, although my heart rate never really gets much lower than the 170’s-180’s.
I have a hard time not comparing my pace to evaluate progress. Being able to go a little longer is good progress, but what’s the point if I am going at a snail’s pace?
I think concentrating on form at snails pace is worth it. It gets the running muscles engaged and you can maintain it for longer. It actually takes good balance to run at snails pace.
I like that you’re alternating running and walking. It lets you take stock of any pain points and you can choose to not run any further if you sense that injury might be imminent.
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I’ve read several of the Jeff Galloway running books and like his advice. He would definitely say total distance is the most important metric, and speed for beginning runners is almost irrelevant. His entire method is the merits of alternate running and walking. He would suggest doing that from the beginning. Most days I don’t strictly do that: usually try to start just running for a mile or two, then about 30 seconds walk, 1 minute run for the rest, which most often is 5 miles or 10K (6.2 miles) in total. Frequently I think I’m going to run for more than 2 miles at the start, but frequently those days end the running-only at 1.5 or 2. At least in the last 3 weeks, each time I planned to do at least 5 total, I managed at least 5 total.
Galloway is also a big proponent of enjoying your running experience, but I don’t remember any specific advice for doing that.
He also says it’s almost impossible to run too slowly to be benefitting your body. He wants you to be running, not walking, during the running intervals, but slowing way down is fine. (In particular, since I can run a mile in a little under 10 minutes, he suggests my pace for weekly long runs should be over 14 minute miles, slower fine.)(I think he means that should be my target average pace for the running and walking, so that I’m faster than 14 while running.)
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A couple things I have found is that 1) there is a pace of running that feels natural to me and 2) there is a pace of running that my body allows. #1 seems like it has been relatively stable my entire life and #2 seems to depend on body weight and conditioning. Running has felt really hard whenever #2 is slower than #1.
Hills present a challenge regardless of where I am on #2 since #1 is still fixed. I usually do a lot better moderating pace if I focus on breathing while I try to run rather than focusing on running while I try to breathe.