Had the pleasure of running the London marathon last Sunday, and went into it hoping for a sub 4 effort. As a background, I’ve played football since I was about 7, and have a fairly decent level of base fitness, so I presumed this should be an okay target.
Unfortunately, in the build up to the race itself a combination of factors (mega busy at work, 3 weeks away where I couldn’t train) meant the total training mileage was around 110km, with the longest long run at 22km. I thought this might prove difficult on the day itself, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the utter black hole I would find myself in.
Long story short - the downhill at the start gave me a false sense of confidence, even though my HR shot straight up to around 176 (shame about the weather too). So the game plan became about banking as much time as possible going into halfway, and then clinging on until the end at whatever pace I had to for sub 4. And this NEARLY worked - went into 21.1 at 1:54:30, so I was feeling confident. Until I went past 25km, and then it was just a battle to run in a style which didn’t cause the front or the back of my legs to start cramping.
Overall, crossed in 4:01:25, which is tantalisingly close to the goal time of 3:59:59. With the Berlin marathon coming up in September, the plan is to do a proper training block this time - and my main question is, what should a target time for this block be (i.e. given the stats of sustained HR, finishing time, circumstantial lack of proper training, what should be the pace I structure my training around to become my “easy pace”?)
Rather annoyingly, Garmin cut my predicted pace from 3:57:30 to 3:32:40 immediately after the race, but I’m dubious on the accuracy on this.