Pacing is the most important skill in the sport of long-distance racing. Go too fast at any point in a race and you increase your risk of a fatigue-induced, crashing slow-down before the finish. Go too slow and you risk the equally ignominious embarrassment of a “slow” finish time.
Fortunately, there is a happy medium. It’s called the maximum sustainable pace for the distance. Sustainability is crucial, as there mustn’t be a crashing slowdown. Nor should there be a frantic sprint to the finish. That’s why the “maximum” qualifier is part of the equation. You’ll know you’ve got it right when it’s all you can do to complete the final segment of a race at a “cruising” pace.
Cruising is not the same as taking your time. A cruising pace is within two percent of your average pace for the full race distance (whatever it is). You wouldn’t be able to go much faster on the last segment because there wouldn’t be much left in your energy gas tank. Nonetheless, if challenged, you could muster a short, but winning dash to the finish. Cruising indicates you’ve done less than an all-out racing effort.
Cruising is between hanging and flying. Hanging offers no possibility of a winning pick-up. You’ve gone as fast as possible for the distance, and you are either slowing slightly or about to slow drastically. On the other hand, flying indicates you’ve held back during the first three quarters of the race and have plenty to give in the final quarter. In other words, cruising tells us you’ve exerted a very hard, overall effort, bracketed by a hard one and an all-out one.
“If time is your major concern, finishing at a hanging level results in the fastest finish time, but not the most satisfying experience. You’re left feeling defeated by the distance, your time notwithstanding.”
Your maximum sustainable marathon pace is not a single, unvaried start-to-finish pace. Rather, it’s a pacing range, which starts slower than average pace and gradually speeds up as your body warms up during the first 10K. The biggest pacing pitfall is speeding up beyond the maximum sustainable exertion level during the middle 21K. Our BC Endurance experience indicates that the 42K racing distance is too long to squander energy in the middle miles, regardless of how much energy you seem to have between, say, 15K and 30K.
Given an abundance of energy during the early miles, the pacing protocol through 30 kilometers is provided by long experience. Thus, we can give you a mile-by-mile pacing plan that, when followed assiduously, will get you to the finish at a cruising pace. It’s tougher to determine the maximum sustainable average race pace that enables you to finish at the cruising level. That’s a topic for a future blog.
If time is your major concern, finishing at a hanging level results in the fastest finish time, but not the most satisfying experience. You’re left feeling defeated by the distance, your time notwithstanding. Some athletes prefer to finish flying because it’s exhilarating to use conserved energy passing people in the final segment.
We suggest a cruising finish because it’s usually fun, non-injurious, relatively painless, and it contributes to your longevity in the sport. Your finish times will eventually lose importance, but sustainability never does.
Maximum Sustainable Exertion
The accompanying graph illustrates another way to understand your maximum sustainable marathon pace. Rather than showing pace in minutes per mile, however, the red curves represent the exertion needed to generate an optimal start-to-finish pace on the following exertion scale: mild, light, steady state, threshold, ragged edge, and maximum.
The graph shows that five different athletes produced five different marathon performances between 4 and 8 hours. The assumption is that each athlete’s performance is close to his or her fastest possible finish time. If this is true, the red curves each represent a gently rising, optimal range of exertion from start-to-finish of the marathon.
By running harder than optimal they risk impairing their finish performance with a crashing slowdown well before the finish. By running easier than optimal, they harm their performance by running slower than their true ability. Thus, the red exertion curves generate the maximum sustainable pace for each athlete’s marathon.