You work odd hours? Otherwise, I’m confused. If my races started at 09:30, I could sleep in, eat a big breakfast and still have a couple hours to kill. Also, as mentioned, it’s not so much the sleep the night before as it is the sleep in the days before the night before.
Like you said, assuming you’ve done the volume, sub3 should be a given. That said, fueling is also key. Friend of mine ran 1:23:xx in her build 3-4wks out from her marathon. She had fueling problems, died a slow death, and finished in 3:09:xx. It happens!
I get out of bed at 7:00am and start working at 8:00am, don‘t know how „odd“ that is.
That’s after 6 hours and some of actual sleep (which is 11:30pm eyes closed).
The nights before the races I usually get to bed earlier, yet have a harder time to fall (and stay) asleep.
Right out of bed, my stomach usually can’t take a ton of food. Doesn’t really matter, just saying that there is a trade off for me.
It SHOULD. but he has to “not get greddy”.
Use me as cautionary tale: Did 1:24:48 half, 5 weeks before boston and 4 days after the most badass wo I have ever done (15 miles at tempo (total) - 6:20 ish for me back then). I finished Boston in 3:11.
shit man… sound familiar… I feel her pain!
Fitness is there, but now, you have to be VERY careful, and not get greedy. Do not try to do more than you can take, and that might mean do less than what you think you can do.
On paper, if you put the miles, you have a shot at 2:57.
If you can gradually increase that, shooting for at least 7.5 hours of actual sleep, you’re going to see amazing increases in your recovery, health and mood. You’re going to be faster, too.
FWIW I don’t think you necessarily need a ‘formal’ breakfast that’s going to take hours to digest- I’d certainly recommend getting some carbs in beforehand in most cases, but something like a sports drink will do the same job while also being a bit simpler in terms of digestibility and logistics.
I’ve got a fairly disagreeable stomach and ended up having more success with some combination of a banana on the way over and/or a gel before the start, depending on the distance- trying to mess around with timing anything more substantial was more trouble than it was worth. (And I have no shame in being a late riser, road race start times suck ass)
When I said “odd” I was thinking that maybe you worked overnight shifts. In any case, starting a race on a bad night of sleep or inadequate amount of sleep is probably the norm for most everyone. Most races, I’m waking up at like 3am for a 5:30 start. In any case, focus on quality sleep during taper week. The night before isn’t the most important. Carb up in the leading days. The morning of you shouldn’t need a whole lot for a half-marathon. I’ll have coffee and bagel w/peanut butter. Then I have a gel on the start line right before the start. As @grawp said, race day is a diff compared to training w/the taper, crowds, other runners, etc., all there to bring out the beast in you!
I did it today and it was BRUTAL
1600 @10k
1 mile @ tempo
1200 @ faster than 10k
1 mile @ tempo
800 @ 5k
1 mile @ T
400 @ faster than 5k
(my coach added: ) 1 mile @ T.
It sounds like most of a 10k race in terms of difficulty. But, I usually stay away from these mixed pace workouts because it is hard to figure out just how difficult they will be and how to pace them. So I can just see myself being unpleasantly surprised.
The article seems to refer to the training stimulus derived from longer runs (by which I assume they mean “long runs without significant mid-run fueling”), leading to lowered muscle glycogen in the latter part of the run.
Completed my long run today as I’m traveling this weekend… Anyway, today’s long run went ‘okay’ but definitely felt harder from an RPE perspective than I would have liked. My original plan was to do 5/6 mile warmup, 10 miles at GMP followed by cool down to 20 miles total. Due to being on a time crunch I modified a bit.
3 mi warm up
12 mi GMP
1 mi cooldown
pause
5 mile cooldown cont
After main set I had to take my daughter to an appointment which took about 20/25 minutes. While at her appointment I stepped out to finish out the run with another 5 easy miles. For a total of 21 miles.
The I shortened the warmup and extended the main working set to ensure those miles were uninterrupted. In reviewing the stats, the heart rate drift was within 1% for the first 10 miles but then spiked in the final 2 miles (nearly 5%) due to steady incline. My heart rate was in the high 150’s, maxing at 161… My hope is to run closer to low to mid 150’s. I got decent amount of sleep last night and made sure to eat a good meal the night before so a bit confused as to why it felt harder than I excepted.
Not going to do anything crazy and modify schedule or do anything differently but will make it a point to monitor RPE for the next few weeks.
Those of you that run with a Garmin watch, what data screens do you find most useful during a race?
The main information I need is regarding my pace and predicted finishing time during my marathon - I want to make sure I’m on schedule without wasting energy doing any maths
I usually run w/ lap pace and auto lap set to 1km. Super simple.
That said, I’ve heard good things about PacePro from some friends, but have yet to try it myself. Here is an older explanation of the feature, but still applicable:
edit:
So I got bored and decided to play with PacePro. It’s cool. You can set it for a flat 42km along w/goal time and be done with it. Even cooler, you can load the marathon course in and it will have elevation data for you to play with when setting up PacePro. To load the course:
Enter PacePro > Create PacePro Strategy > Select a Course > Hit the in the upper right to search
Now you need to recenter the map over Manchester (iirc that’s your race ??) and select the List tab. Now pick one of the Manchester Marathon 2024 (probably one of the ~115m elevation ones). The 235m one seems to be the oddball.
Then set your goal time and play with the pacing strategies, etc…
I have to say, it seems very cool! Maybe try the feature out during a workout. Set it up for the marathon pace part of a workout. Say you have 16km at marathon pace. Example, warmup. Stop and save. Now go to running and load the PacePro you configured (16km MP). Hit start. This way you’ll get an idea of what you’ll see and how it works while you’re running.
See the edit to my initial reply if you haven’t already. No course/GPX needed especially considering Manchester is billed as a flat fast marathon. You could go vanilla w/distance and goal pace using PacePro. Having the course probably quite nice if there is significant elevation and you wanted to adjust aggressiveness on the uphills and see how the pacing works.
in the upper right to search