Pacing charts and hill repeat gradients

Pacing charts and hill repeat gradients

We have a great two part question on this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Lindsey gets asked where is best to find 21km and marathon pacing charts; and what gradient should you be running on, when doing hill repeats.

What are you training for?

Click on any of the images below to download your training program now

Transcript

Into another edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown, we’ve got a question in from Barbara Foot today. Lindsey Parry joins us. Lindsey, Barbara wants to know, where can you find pacing charts for 21km and marathons?

Obviously there are pacing charts available if you are going further and running Comrades, but for those distances, are there standard ones you can follow or do you need to be wary because obviously each 21 and each marathon is slightly different? Then she also wanted to know, what gradient of hill should she be doing when doing her hill training?

Lindsey Parry: So, there will definitely be pacing charts that can be found for different races and you’ll probably find those on the web. But I would be careful of, particularly careful of general pacing charts because races all have unique characteristic.

Be that flat, hilly, hot, cold, there are variables that make a difference in every scenario. A lot of races will put out some sort of pacing advice and there’s heaps of examples of that on the internet, but just be cautious of following a general pacing chart. You want to have a good idea of what is my course, where are the ups, where are the downs, where am I going to run a bit quicker, where am I going to run a bit slower, those kinds of things.

4-6% - ideal hill repeat gradient

Then in terms of hill work, for the type of training that Barbara is doing for a marathon now, I would look at between 4-6%. The 6% is already getting to pretty difficult stage. Then in terms of the pacing predictions that in particular I make, at 6% it starts to get quite difficult to stay within those time predictions.

At 4% it’s probably erring on almost too easy, but it’s pretty difficult to go out and find a 5% gradient wherever you live in South Africa, in this case Port Elizabeth. 4-6% is a nice enough range, just understand that on both the lower end and on the upper end of that, the paces will be affected marginally by that.

BB: Brilliant, Barbara, thanks very much for that question and we look forward to hearing from you again. She was also just saying how much she loves the podcast and the webinar, so Barbara, thanks for your kind words, much appreciated. Don’t forget, if you’d like to register for the next Comrades webinar, it is coming up. All you need to do is head over to coachparry.com and you can get all the details there. From myself, Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry, it’s cheers.

Subscribe to RUN with Coach Parry

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

 

Subscribe on Android

Download via RSS

Subscribe on Stitcher

Subscribe on Google Podcasts