Training Paces

I've been reading a lot lately to help me set a realistic finish time goal for my first full marathon. My biggest fear is overtraining at the expense of risking an injury that will sidetrack me from being successful. Today I came across this really useful tool, Runners World Training Calculator which advertises itself to be One Tool for All Your Training Needs. What a fantastic resource! Not only did it summarize for me the target paces for my different type of runs (Easy, Tempo, Max, Speed, and Long), it also highlighted for me that I have, in fact, been overtraining.

Based on my half-marathon performances thus far (2:03:15, 1:59:23, and 1:59:48), I can comfortably say that my target time for the Philadelphia Marathon should be between 4:10 and 4:30. With that said, my recent training paces have been more aligned with a 3:50 finish time which is not realistic at all. And, I do think I am beginning to feel the consequences (right Achilles, left knee).

So, this week (Week 5), I will implement a new strategy going forward with my training program. Tomorrow is an Easy Run day and I will be slowing things down a bit and will look forward to new results!

Training Run	4hr 30min	4hr 15min	4hr 10min
Easy Run	11:28	10:52	10:40
Tempo	9:36	9:05	8:55
Max	8:41	8:12	8:03
Speed	8:03	7:36	7:27
Long	11:28	10:52	10:40
	12:53	12:13	12:00