Apparently, almost all of the race prediction charts I've seen suggest that my 5K and 10K race pace ought to differ by 15-20 seconds. But mine differ by 25-30 seconds. Does that mean I dog it at longer distances?
I think I am at about 22:10 for my 5K right now, which translates to about 7:08 per mile. According to the charts, my 10K race pace should around 7:25 then, or about a 46:06 10K time. In practice, though, I'm more around 48:09 time for 10K distance, which puts my pace at around 7:45 per mile.
I'm hoping for something in the 1:50:00 neighborhood in this weekend's half marathon, but yet again the prediction charts suggest that my 22:10 5K time should relate to a 1:40:00 half marathon time. Even my less-than-predicted 10K time predicts a half marathon time of 1:45:00. So not only does my pace rate slack off from 5K to 10K, it's does so from 10K to half marathon distance too.
I may be interpreting this incorrectly, but I believe it means my endurance levels and aerobic capacity need improvement, and not my speed. I'm not fast, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm lacking in the long distance area, and there's room for major improvement there, before trying to get faster in the 5K.
This is all a revelation to me. I've been training, trying to build my mileage and tackle longer and longer runs, all while trying to run at paces that are contradictory to the results I want. I've been pressing the lactate threshold and tolerance abilities of my body, which is all fine and good. But what I want to improve is my aerobic capacity and strength of my muscles to operate over greater and greater durations. Running slower -- maybe even "embarrassingly" slow -- for longer periods is what I'm going to have to concentrate on if I'm going to develop into a marathoner.
Based on my current 10K time, my training paces should be:
Brisk pace = 8:45 per mile (or 6.8-6.9 mph...1 minute slower than 10K pace)
Base pace = 9:15 per mile (or ~6.5 mph...1.5 minutes slower than 10K pace)
Easy pace = 9:45 per mile (or ~6.2 mph...2 minutes slower than 10K pace)
If I can get my 10K time to around 46:00 (as predicted by my 5K time), then these training paces will need to be adjusted by 10 seconds quicker.
I'm not even going to record my "pipedream" paces, based on a 20-minute 5K goal. I'm just coming to realization of just how far away that is. I'm not even sure if my body is capable of achieving it, no matter how driven my mind is. I'm going to work on getting through the marathon first and concentrate on endurance mostly. I'll get to the speed improvement later, afterwards.
