*Plan your race. Race your plan.

*All plans are subject to change every step of the 26.2 miles

Finishing in 2022 4:39:27 not what I wanted

What’s your plan for race day?

Are you going to head out fast and hold on to the bitter end? Perhaps you’re planning on running negative splits.

Maybe you’re going to do what I’m planning on doing and following a pace runner. You’ve had 16 weeks of training to work it out. Perhaps you’ve been adjusting your goals up or down as your training has progressed.

My plan was set in stone before I started training. It might even have been outlined at the end of last years event when I didn’t reach my goal time. 

This is my 19th year marathon running and Grandmas is my 24th race. Except after last year’s event I thought the 2023 race was going to be my 25th time over 26.2 miles. I wanted to mark my 25th marathon in some way. It took a lot of recounts on Athlinks and medal counting to confirm that it would actually be number 24. 

I remembered that first marathon. Whistlestop 2004. It was a great achievement. But I was absolutely spent at the end. I bonked and it was an absolutely agonizing struggle to finish. My time that day was 4:33:35. I decided that I wanted to run my 25th marathon faster than my first.

Given that all marathon courses are different and that I was planning on running two marathons in 2023 (now I’m running three) I would aim to run one of them faster than that first one. Three bites of the cherry if you like. 

Four and a half hours would be fine for me. But 10 minute miles would be about 4:22:00. Nice and easy to work out. Six miles an hour,

So that’s what I’ve trained for. An approximately four hour 20 minute marathon. I’m pretty certain I’m capable of finishing quicker than that. The Jeff Galloway magic mile calculator says I could do 4:11:39. If I could do that, I’d be ecstatic.

So my goals are:

1: Finish. This should always be everyone’s first goal.

2: Achieve goal time of 4:22:00. Though any time between 4:20:00 and 4:33:00 fits the bill.

3: Beat 4:20:00 

As the race has a 4:20:00 pace runner this should in theory be quite easy. I’m just going to sit there with the pace runner. Pace runners are trained to get you home in the time you want. 

Pace runners are great. They run well within their capabilities to get you home in your goal time. They have covered the marathon distance hundreds of times in their running careers. If you’ve never run with one before, you should expect lots of encouragement, instruction, and tactical advice. I’ve run with pace runners many times, and although I have sometimes been dropped by them because my plans were too grand for my level of fitness. I have also dropped them and gone on to a good finish time because they set me up well. I hope for the same this year.

Decision point.

My plan is to stick with the 4:20 pace runner to approximately 20 miles. There’s an English telephone box in someone’s front yard there. (The owner tried to sell it to me last year). If I’m feeling strong at that point, then I’ll up my pace to try to beat the 4:20 time. The infamous Lemon drop Hill comes at 21 miles so I may wait until I crest that before starting the final push. After that we have less than 10K to the finish. Cheering crowds line the route, and I’ll be carried along on a wave of enthusiasm to Canal Park and glory.*