Did 10 mins easy, as planned, started the marathon pace and just went too quickly. It didn’t feel that quick to me, but it’s a good lesson. Like you’ve said, the biggest mistake is going off too quick and I really have to control myself next week because I feel like I have a lot of nervous energy. Anyway, then weirdly git a stitch around 40 mins in to the ‘marathon pace’ so decided to round off with 3k easy. Will add some minutes to Sunday’s run. I actually need to do that run Monday, as off on a hike tomorrow
Pace on race day is everything. Those first 10 miles, your head is going to be telling you “go faster, this is too easy, what if”. DO NOT DO THAT!!! It will end very badly. 90% of runners slow down at the end of the marathon. The real skills is holding your pace back, so you can maintain it in the final 10k. From my experience at Chester it’s basically a 21km WU, then 10km at steady effort and then 10k working bloody hard. But the splits should be even. So that’s a good approach in the early stages when the temptation is to go quicker, tell yourself it’s just a WU for the main part of the race which comes towards the end. If you get it right you’ll be picking loads of people off in that last 10k, rather than crashing and burning. You got this.
Coach Simon 🍊
