In the second article in this series on pacing the marathon, I described the Honolulu Marathon Clinic as being my main programmatic competition in the early 1980s when I first started training athletes for the Honolulu Marathon. Thirty years later, the Clinic, under its founder, Dr. Jack Scaff, was still competing with me for clientele.
In 2012, I decided to find out how effective the Clinic was at getting athletes through the Honolulu Marathon without hitting the wall. I hoped my work on organizing groups for the marathon had put BC Endurance ahead of the Clinic, but I wasn’t sure. So, I got Scaff’s blessing to do a comparative study and compiled our results.
The accompanying table compares the way athletes from the Clinic and BC Endurance performed on the last 12K of the 2012 Honolulu Marathon. It also shows how all sub-10-hour Honolulu Marathon finishers performed. “Performance” refers to an athlete’s average pace for the last 12K, as a percentage of overall average pace. Slowing means an athlete was between 6 and 10 percent slower than average race pace on the last 12K. Crashing means the athlete was more than 10 percent slower.
By contrast, cruising means that an athlete pace on the last 12K is within 2% (faster or slower) of overall average race pace. And flying means that he/she is more than 2% faster than average race pace on the final race segment. An athlete slows or crashes when extreme fatigue and low energy force his/her pace to drop. Of course, there could be other reasons for major slowing, such as waiting for friends who have had to slow down. But I assume that most people want to finish as quickly as possible and would do so were it not for some major physiological impediment.
“My studies indicate that more than 90% of athletes who finish close to their goal time were cruising or flying in the last 12K.”
In the current study, 62.5% of all finishers in the marathon were slowing or crashing; the BC Endurance percentage was 39.8%. The Honolulu Marathon Clinic was in the mid-range at 51.8% slowing or crashing. Similarly, 21.1% of all finishers were cruising or flying; the BC Endurance percentage was 40.6%. And, again, the Honolulu Marathon Clinic was in the mid-range at 27.7%. The inquiring reader should want to know why these figures matter, especially regarding a fastest possible finish time.
I assume that most athletes want to achieve the finish time they set as a goal for the race. My studies show that any athlete can increase the probability of achieving that time by 1) running 6-8% slower than average goal pace on the first 10K, and by 2) not exceeding their average goal pace by more than 1% in the middle 13.1 miles.
Furthermore, my studies also indicate that more than 90% of athletes who finish close to their goal time were cruising or flying in the last 12K. By contrast, athletes who slowed or crashed finished much slower than their goal time. Since most athletes are trying to finish as fast as possible, I believe that slowing and crashing (as defined here and in the previous article) have a major negative impact on overall performance.
Having satisfied myself that I was on the right track solving the perennial marathon pacing problem, I aimed my inquiry toward the goal of organizing BC Endurance groups to pace the marathon more effectively.
