Edinburgh Predictions ?!?

The countdown has begun and I'm now into the final week before my first marathon in five years.  I sort of know what to expect, but that doesn't stop the nerves from building and the worries from rushing around my head.

Have I run enough? Have I rested enough? Did I go far enough? Should I have done more hills? Which shoes shall I wear? Vest or T?  The permutations between PB and DNF are endless, and each carrying with them varying degrees of satisfaction, disappointment and associated physical and mental pains.

The facts however are simple enough to dig out of my training history, so here's some info for all you stat freaks.  Let me know what you make of it and give me your best predictions.

My Base
My mileage covered this year so far is around 770 miles, averaging almost 40/week and that is a much better base than I've every had before.  The only real problem being that as you can see below, I peaked in February and the past few weeks have had much lower mileage than I would have hoped for.

Weekly Mileage split into HR zones

My Distance
Although I gradually built up and sustained a good average mileage, long runs have not been as long as I would have hoped.  Looking back, although I have 21 runs over 10 miles, only 5 of these stretch to 15!  I don't think I'm going to be that comfortable past the 17/18 mile mark.  Let's hope the crowd will encourage me at the end.

Daily Distance (miles)

My Pace
This has gradually crept up through the year and one of the great benefits of recording all my runs using my Garmin and SportTracks is that I can now see improvement in average pace across all my running, not just events.  In effect I have shaved almost two minutes off my min/mile pace and this has given me a new 10k PB of 47:49 over an undulating and waterlogged GWR Towpath course as well as decent 1:52:35 for a gruelling Forest of Dean Half. 

Average Pace (min/mile) over the year so far

My Predictions

So how might my recent times translate into predictions?

Well, using the infamous RunnersWorld calculator I get the following marathon time results:

• Based on a 20mile training run: 4hrs 17min
• Based on Forest of Dean Half: 3hrs 53min
• Based on my recent 10k PB: 3hrs 39min

So, with an average of 3hrs 57min it looks as though I may actually break the illusive 4hrs!  But I don't think that's going to happen this time....I'm not going to hold my breath.

If I've learnt anything from previous races it's that there are just too many variables, so I'm going to set my sights on a new marathon PB of sub 4hr 30min and hope I can keep on target and the lack of long runs doesn't bite me where it hurts!

Just wish me luck, and please if you can, visit my sponsorship page and help support the charities I'm running for.