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We sometimes see runners on strava or IG referencing their ‘goal race pace’ for various distances. We wanted to do a deep dive into how useful this actually is to train using goal race paces or if it is actually detrimental to your progress as a runner. Should you be training using your goal race paces or should you be training at your current fitness level?
What causes someone to want to train at goal race pace
We want to run a sub 3:00 marathon and know that is a 6:52 pace. We think that if we train & do workouts with 6:52 pace as marathon pace, we will be in sub 3 hour marathon shape
The FLAW with this logic: You could be racing workouts.
Many marathon workouts are broken up with rest intervals. Let’s give for example a workout like 3 x 2 miles at marathon pace within a long run. Someone who is in 3:10 marathon shape could do a 3x 2 mile workout at 6:50 pace. However, this 6:50 pace is their threshold pace.
Another common example- women in 3:45 shape and wants to BQ
When she trains with an 8:00 marathon pace: this is actually her threshold pace. When she does a threshold workout at 7:30 pace, she is actually dipping into interval pace and anaerobic territory. Physically she can do these workouts, but they will be too stressful over time and lead her into worse shape and not improving
Not only will she be working very hard and not improving, she will be frustrated on race day because her training workouts indicated that she was in better shape than she actually was. Little does she know, she was racing most of her workouts and overtraining during her training cycle
When we don’t train at the correct paces, we neglect the purpose of the workout & negate a lot of the benefits
It is not good to set a goal and train at “GOAL” paces. Instead, you should train at the fitness you are currently at which will allow you to progress and reap the benefits of the workouts
How should you figure out what pace to run
Do a race or time trial
If the 3:45 chick raced a 5k in 23:00 and we discovered her marathon pace is 8:22 and threshold pace is 7:50, we can use these paces in training
We would retest fitness in 4-6 weeks. It is better to slightly undershoot workouts than overshoot them.
Even if you think you are in better shape, you need to be honest and do a race. It doesn’t benefit you to run faster than you should.
What if you really want to run a BQ time but the fitness just isn’t there?
Have it be a longer term goal and focus on other benchmarks to get theseHow o
