A marathon is a distance of 42 km 195 meters that a runner must cover at his or her marathon pace. Everyone has his own marathon or M pace. The world’s best runners run a marathon in 2 hours 01 minutes or with a pace of 2 min 52 sec per km (speed of about 21 km/h), the average result of the Berlin Marathon is 4 hours 11 minutes at a pace of 5 min 57 sec per km (speed of about 10 km/h).
A typical marathon scenario.
Rarely is anyone able to maintain the same pace for the entire distance. In 99% of cases, the first half of the course is faster and the second half slower. The higher the performance, the less variation there is between the first and second half of the course. For those running faster than 3 hours, a 3–4 minute slowdown in the second half is considered normal. The lower the results, the greater the deceleration in the second half. For those who run longer than 4 hours, the second half can be 10–20 minutes slower than the first half.
This is because most amateurs don’t know their M pace or estimate it too optimistically. They start too fast and then gradually fade away, switching to a fast stride after the 30th kilometer.
How do I know my M-pace?
The best way to understand your M- pace is to train in the tempo pace zone for long periods of time. The duration of such workouts in marathon training varies widely from 10 to 25 kilometers. Ideally, they are performed at the same pace from start to finish. Few people can perform such training from the first time, so they are repeated regularly, but no more than once a week. The stage of training that includes such workouts is usually called race-specific. It starts 1–1.5 months before the start.
At what pace should I perform tempo workouts?
The pace of such workouts is always defined in the respective training tasks in the OMY! Sports app. In terms of perceived effort, these workouts can be described as “comfortably hard”. This mode allows you to do this workout for a long time — 1 to 2 hours — without accumulating lactate. It is thus a pace below (slower than) the TL (anaerobic metabolic threshold).
What does tempo workout develop?
In addition to general endurance and VO2Max development, tempo workouts develop what you need most in a marathon — mental endurance and the ability to quickly process lactic acid or lactate clearance.
- Long training sessions in comfortably hard mode train “patience”, without which there is nothing to do in a marathon. Gradually the muscles get used to running long and fast. Meanwhile, the brain adapts and stops sending signals to the muscles to slow down or rest.
- Lactate clearance is the body’s ability to absorb oxygen faster and process lactate, which is produced in large quantities at a marathon. The faster the rate of lactate clearance, the less “acidified” and more efficient your muscles will be. This releases extra energy and increases performance, i.e. your speed. Long tempo pace workouts gradually increase this ability.
Slowing down the pace for better results.
Regular long runs with tempo stretches of 10 to 25km allow you to step by step find the pace at which to run a marathon. Many people will realize that their marathon pace is below current expectations. And that’s okay, because running a marathon faster than you should is a guarantee of a poor result, or DNF. It is better to know your M-pace in advance and keep it from start to finish, than sprinting from the start line and switch to a jogging after the 25th kilometer.
Generally speaking, the ability to slow down your training and temper your ambition is a hallmark of quality marathon training. It’s likely to happen by itself — otherwise you simply can’t sustain 4–5 weeks of tempo runs with increasing volume at a pace faster than you can afford.
The preparation is harder than the marathon itself.
Get ready to tough workouts. The hardest part is doing them repeatedly, knowing that it’s going to be long and hard. If you’ve never run 20km at a fast pace in training, it can be a huge test of willpower. And repeating such workouts is even more challenging — because you already know what is going to happen. That’s why it always takes time to train for a marathon. Ideally 6–9 months, 60% of which will be spent on basic training with intermediate races at distances of 10 and 21.1 km, and 40% on race-sepcific training with many long tempo runs. Remember that you will need 2–3 weeks of taper to get into optimal shape and build up your strength before the marathon. Then you will come to your start ready to show a good result.
We rarely meet people who start preparing in advance. It is good if runners start 2 months before the marathon. Even so, a personalized training plan from OMY! Sports, the AI-powered coaching app, will do the most for you.
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