I'm planning on running the Salt Lake City Half-Marathon on April 21. It's way to early to decide on a pace for the race, but I thought it might be helpful during my training to have a rough idea of the pace I might run during the race.
My PB for the half-marathon is 2:21:56 and was sent in August 2006 at the Great Salt Lake Half-Marathon. In April, I would like to set a new PB of 2:10:00 or faster. To reach 2:10:00 I would need a pace of 9:55, but because I'm taking walking breaks, I would actually need 9:25. My average pace for the GSL was 10:47. Thus, I would need to reduce my average pace for the race 1 minute 23 seconds. That, basically, is my goal during the next 2 1/2 months: to reach my August 2006 pace and then beat it by 1:23.
Note: when I speak of my PB for the half-marathon, I'm referring to my recent running of that distance. The race in August 2006 is my only running of a half-marathon. Twenty five years ago, when I ran marathons, I didn't run any half-marathons, but my time for the first half of the four marathons I ran was about 1:51:21. If I had been running a half-marathon instead of a full marathon, I would have run faster and would have had a time about 1:31:42. Because of my age it isn't realistic for me to try to run a half-marathon in 1:31:42, so I'm trying to set a new PB for a recent running of that distance.
I think it may be realistic for me to try to beat the 1:51:21 number, but first I have to do 2:10:00 or faster. As my friend, Bruce, says: baby steps, baby steps.
I'll be entering a new age group (55-59) on February 7th and may wish to consider starting all my PR's and/or PB's from scratch... but I'm still beating my old PR's as I didn't start running until my late 40's, therefore I'll just strive to improve my performance every year and not concern myself too much with records, after all we're still running and training and that's the REAL reward.
ReplyDeleteI think, Bruce, that for a few more years you'll continue to get faster!
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