After reading portions of Jeff Galloway's "Marathon: You Can Do It" and Bob Glover's "Competitive Runner's Handbook," I've come to the realization that I've been been training incorrectly. My ego, I think, has led me to try to run as fast as I can over a given distance, resulting in pacing that is too quick. That may be the reason why I've always been frustrated when trying to add distance. For instance, my 12-miler "long run" should have been run at a pace much slower than what I wound up doing. I ran it more at my HM goal pace when, in truth, I should have been running a minute to a minute and and a half per mile slower.
I'm going to have to regauge my thinking (as well as better understand all the jargon relating to pace).
My working principle is that 175 is my HRmax. Therefore:
95% = 166
90% = 157
85% = 148
80% = 140
75% = 132
70% = 124
65% = 114
My training and race paces, then would probably be:
Recovery runs (65% HRmax) @ about 6.0mph or 10:00 per mile
Long runs (70% HRmax) @ about 6.3 mph or 9:30 per mile
Easy runs (75% HRmax) @ about 6.6 mph or 9:05 per mile
Marathon pace @ about 6.7 mph or 9:00 per mile
Half Marathon pace @ about 7.0 mph or 8:35 per mile
Brisk training pace @ about 7.3 mph or 8:15 per mile
Tempo training pace (85% HRmax) @ about 7.5 mph or 8:00 per mile
10K pace (85-90% HRmax) at about 7.7 mph or 7:45 per mile
5K pace (90% HRmax) at about 8.3 mph or 7:14 per mile
1.5 mile pace (90-95% HRmax) at about 9.0 mph or 6:40 per mile
These are probably off and need to be adjusted, but it's a baseline for me from which to work. I believe I need to spend more time in the stamina and endurance slower training ranges as I build my mileage rather than trying to build a foundation always trying to go for best time. I'm not spending nearly enough time on recovery runs or true easy runs either.
This may be a reason, too, why gains in speed seem to be so hard to come by.
