Using Athletica to work out Marathon race pace

General
1

Hi,
I have a marathon in 3 weeks time and im starting to think about pacing and goal times.
What is the best way to use the data from Athletica to help inform my decision:
VT1 3:57 min/km
CS 3:05 min/km
MAS 2:41 min/km
MPS 1:36 min/km

The speeds that Athletica have produced seem unsustainable to me. For reference:
Garmin threshold 4:43 / 164bpm
Garmin VO2 53

Marathon will be on a very flat course (Gold Coast - 70m elev change)
Thanks for your help!

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Hi @Earyourfailcakes ,
Not sure what the issue is however your pace data seems off. It looks like those faster speeds are related to the normalized graded pace (NGP) which takes elevation into account - perhaps this is where its going wrong as you can see your long run yesterday had a moving average pace of 5:10, and a NGP of 3:50. You rated this an 8 so very hard. Notice that your workout reserve went to -21% so lots of new work in the body here. This was about the distance you are targeting so likely you’re able to lift slightly but certainly not the CS number you’re quoting. I had a look through at your 5k test results but couldn’t find any there so difficult to find a calibration for you. But based on this session and your Garmin data if I were to guess you might target around 5’/k.
I note that you are connected to Garmin and intervals.icu. While a fix is underway for some of the odd Garmin file transfer that can happen (Garmin=>Athletica) which yours may fall under, one short term solution we’ve discovered (for swimming at least) is to also connect to Strava (even a private account). You might want to consider this and then observe whether or not that solves the likely NGP issue.

Perhaps

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wow, thanks for digging into that for me. Yeh the numbers seemed suspect, would actually love to be able to run that quick though! I thought it might have been the elevation… impossible to find anything flat near me.

So to follow up:

  • What do I do about my incorrect paces? I think deleting that activity might help but don’t think theyre going to be right (again because of previous workouts where it has excessive elevation correction). I did a 5k TT a few months ago, but im reluctant to hit one now this close to the mara.

  • Ive connected to Strava. Do I now disconnect from Garmin?

I saw on another post you said 90-95% CS, so ill factor that in my calcs. Ill hope to break the 3:30.

Thanks again

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What date did you do this on? Definitely don’t do one now.

Swimmers doing best with both connected.

Correct. So we can take your 5k TT result, calculate CS from that, then take 90-95% to give you a ballpark target to go after. The rest is just feel and grit on the day.

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Thanks for that.
April 17 did a 5k that was a bit lacklustre to be honest and its probably a bit long ago thats its not very predictive.

  • Is there an easy way to reset my zones or get them back on track?

Its not a huge deal though, I have the mara in 2 weeks and after that will be resetting to a Tri plan so will just do some testing after a rest. Im assuming Athletica will then weight the testing data more highly than previous data? :confused:

Only downside I can see is with the load factors all out of wack (with athletica thinking my runs are easy when they arent due to pace discrepancy) the progressive overload and taper function is probably cooked and makes the rest of my plan a bit unreliable.

Thanks again

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I forgot about the settings page! i did some quick digging around and estimated the CP as 4:15 and Critical HR as 170. Just saved and reset the plan, ez

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