First Marathon – where I told myself finish in
under five hours and you never
have to do this again.

I’m a day late on the blog posts this week. But good things take time 🙂 Like the marathon. Not only does running the race take so much longer than anything else you will have probably run to this point, but the training is all consuming. I’ve learned a few things, though, about finding my marathon pace these past few years.

First – it is slower and steadier than other shorter distance paces. There is a reason that the experts say that most great marathon performance were not earned by doing a positive split (ending slower than you started). Case in point – my third marathon this past fall in Vermont. I KNEW I was going out too fast! The marathon started with the half and with a strong wind at my back I was too fast the first 15 miles. Look at these splits below. You can see the difference (and when the wind caught up to me). So, at the start line, just swallow your pride, resist the urge to run your first 5K at 5K pace and settle in and enjoy the slower pace which will end up getting you to the end overall faster.

Second – don’t expect quick changes. Don’t judge your progress one day to another. You can see measurable change over a length of time. Speed work on Wednesday? Don’t go all out on the easy run on Tuesday since you’ll just kill your legs for that key workout the next day. And, don’t expect that just because you ran fast on Wednesday that Thursday’s run is going to be just a quick. It won’t. But, a month from now, with consistent work, you’ll see an uptick most likely. You need to be patient to see results. But all too often we are not patient.

Third – if you are comparing yourself to others you are only failing yourself. You don’t know if that #BeatYesterday Garmin runner of Instagram has been doing this 5 years or 5 months so whether they are fast or slow, posting long or short distances, give it a like as you scroll by to encourage that person, but DO NOT compare your running to anyone else’s. Yes, you can use race pace calculators to input a race you’ve recently run to estimate times you should be shooting for, but do not get down on yourself for not keeping up with the seemingly perfectness we see online. Those runners have bad days too, we just might not see them.

Finally – stay positive. A marathon is long. And during the training and running of it you can get into your own head with negative thoughts. For the most part, I’m pretty positive about my running. But I do have my off days too. Just this past week I was able to interview the most amazing athlete for work and she passed on this nugget of awesomeness that I shared with my running partner on Saturday – you need to use the right language on yourself. We, women in particular, tend to use negative self-talk, especially towards their performance in sports. How many times have you said to your self “ugh – I can’t make it up that hill today” or “I feel sluggish and fat today so that’s why I’m slow”? Flip that around – would you EVER say that to a running partner or friend? Would you ever turn to them and say “Yup – you’ve not making it up the hill”. NO! You’d never say something like that to another person. So, treat yourself with the same care and concern you treat others and stay more positive with what we say to ourselves.

Marathon pace is that place where you can just keep going. What keeps you going?