One Third Crazy

I'm one third of the way through marathon training! I can't believe it. I don't think I've ever made it this far into a training program without missing a mile. In fact, I'm even ahead by a bit! I wake up every morning and look at my training schedule hanging on the fridge to see what I have that day. When I finish the planned workout I highlight it and pat myself on the back (or have a cookie... or 5).

See all that yellow?!

Other than a tight hip flexor I'm still feeling good and seeing improvements. I decided to check the McMillan calculator to see where my training paces should be now. I used my most recent 5k race time to get the following:

Recovery: 10:55 - 11:43

Long run: 9:54 - 11:11

Easy: 9:52 - 10:46

Tempo: 8:53 - 9:11

That's a huge improvement over the prior paces! I was a little scared of those tempo paces but I decided that I wasn't going to let that stop me. Tuesday I ran 4.25 miles on my lunch break at 10:38 average pace (right in that easy range!). So I decided to used yesterday's scheduled 8 as my first 'real' tempo run.

I woke up at 4am and made myself coffee and toast before heading to the treadmill. I started out slowly with the goal of doing 2 miles warm up, 4 at tempo, and 2 miles cool down. I think I started at 5.6 MPH (10:43 pace) and every quarter mile or so I would pick it up a bit. At 2 miles I started into the 9 minute mile pace ranges and worked my way down to 6.5 MPH (9:13 pace) and held it until 6 miles. Then I repeated the process in reverse and finished out at 10 minute mile pace. It's amazing how easy 10 minute miles felt after running 3.5 at 9:13 pace. I ended up with a 9:45 average pace!

Today I'm scheduled for 4 miles and I plan to do them at recovery pace so my rest day tomorrow can be as productive as possible.

Do you use prescribed pace ranges? What do you think of McMillan and the other pace calculators?