Recently I pulled together an interesting (to me) chart of my personal best road race record times at various standard distances, with a column for pace in minutes/mile and with the second-best results also included:
| Distance | PB | year | pace | 2nd | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 mile | 6:31 | 2009 | 6.6 | 6:33 | 2011 | |
| 2 mi | 13:41 | 2009 | 6.9 | 13:52 | 2010 | |
| 5 km | 21:54 | 2010 | 7.1 | 22:15 | 2009 | |
| 8 km | 37:51 | 2011 | 7.6 | 48:43 | 2002 | |
| 5 mi | 41:51 | 2008 | 8.4 | 44:40 | 2007 | |
| 10 km | 46:57 | 2009 | 7.6 | 47:07 | 2012 | |
| 10 mi | 1:18:00 | 2012 | 7.8 | 1:18:41 | 2012 | |
| 1/2 mara | 1:55:33 | 2009 | 8.9 | 1:57:48 | 2011 | |
| marathon | 3:58:15 | 2012 | 9.1 | 4:01:06 | 2009 |
Eyeballing it, clearly I've badly neglected 5 miles over the years and have only run 8 km (= ~4.95 miles) seriously one time. Graphing the pace values versus distance on a log scale is even more revealing:
Half a dozen of the dots form a nice almost-straight line of records from 1 mile through 10 km. On the average, every time the distance doubles, my pace slows by about 0.3 min/mi. But those top three points are the anomalies, at 5 miles, the half marathon, and the marathon. Can they be pulled down to that same trend line, by more disciplined training, more mental toughness, etc.?
(cf. SpeedUpSlowDown (2004-10-18), Running2006Analysis (2007-01-27), Year of Running - 2009 - Further Observations (2010-02-01), ...) - ^z - 2012-04-16