Decision time: run marathon or PR half marathon in 2024
I’ve had a good few months of running; really a good year so far. However, I’ve been waffling on my goals. I haven’t decided whether this is the year for my first marathon. One option is the Mohawk-Hudson River Marathon in October, the only marathon local to the Capital Region. There are full marathon and half marathon options for the Mohawk-Hudson. On August first the registration fee increases.
My minor goal is a total of 2,024km in 2024. I’m a little bit behind, at 1,119km year to date, but I’m close. 55% of the goal 58% of the way through the year isn’t far off track.
In April I completed the Helderberg to Hudson Half Marathon in 2:17:29 (6′31″/km or 10′30″/mile), which was a significant improvement over my performance in previous half marathons, except for my first two which were when I was in my thirties. That inspired me to consider a half marathon PR as my 2024 goal. It would be quite the feather in my cap to beat the time from 2004 twenty years later.
Are these achievable goals?
Training for distance and training to increase speed are different things, and emotionally those two goals feel very different. I’ve run marathon distance in training, albeit using run/walk intervals and the final 3k was all walking. Or hobbling. Nevertheless I finished that distance in about 5:55. That’s five minutes before the course cutoff for Mohawk-Hudson. Based on that it’s not a guarantee that I’d finish under the cutoff, but I’m a stronger runner than I was seven months ago (and I sure hope I would be over 1100km later.) My odds of finishing, even last, are good.
By comparison, a half marathon faster than my 2004 US Half run would be an aggressive goal. I’d need to cut twenty minutes from my half marathon time. My 2004 half marathon time was 1:56:10 (5′30″/km or 8′52″/mile) and my 2006 half marathon was 2:06:33 (6′00″/km or 9′40″/mile). Can I run better than a 5′30″ kilometer? Sure. On a good day I can do five of them. But 21.1 of them?
The last time I did the Magic Mile test was in May and I did it in 8:17. According to Galloway’s calculator that puts me at a 2:10:18 finish in the half marathon. Have I gotten faster since May? Not really, but comparison is difficult. I don’t usually push hard in training the way I would for a race, and temperature is a factor. I probably ought to do the Magic Mile again, but that doesn’t account for the heat. The next half marathon I’m scheduled for (Run 4 the River) is Labor Day weekend. Temperatures will probably be not quite as high. Last year Run 4 the River had a high of 22ºC/72ºF and Mohawk-Hudson had a high of 18ºF/65ºF, either of which is favorable compared to today’s high of 32ºC/89ºF. Galloway recommends a minute per mile slower pace for every ten degrees Fahrenheit over 60ºF. 1I’m translating that to 6 seconds per kilometer for every degree Celsius over 16ºC. That’s not exact but it’s a very rough rule of thumb to begin with. I prefer round numbers. Personally I still use Fahrenheit but including this here in case anyone cares.
So let’s try an exercise in extrapolation. In June I ran the Good Karma 5k here in Clifton Park in 26:47. That’s 5′22″/km or 8′37″/mile on a 19ºC/67ºF. That’s slightly faster than Galloway’s Magic Mile would have predicted without accounting for temperature. Reversing Galloway’s math leads me to assume a 8:04 Magic Mile and a 6′01″/km or 9′41″/mile, or slightly slower than my time in the 2005 US Half. If I give myself the benefit of a pace adjustment for temperature I should ideally (optimistically) be able to do a half marathon at a 5′43″/km pace on a cool day. I would have to improve my half marathon pace by 14 second per kilometer and be at my absolute best on race day.
Bottom line: either of these goals would be a big challenge. The faster half marathon would be exciting, but so would my first marathon.
Why not both?
Here’s what makes this a choice. Run 4 the River is in a month. At my level of conditioning it would be miraculous to do it in 1:56:09 or better. Could I reach that pace by the beginning of October for Mohawk-Hudson? That’s almost two months and very likely cooler temperatures. It’s still a pretty big stretch, but the Mohawk-Hudson Half Marathon gives me a much better shot at the ring than Run 4 the River.
If beating my 2004 time in 2024 isn’t realistic but completing my first marathon is, I should register for the full marathon. Two months is not a lot of time to train for a marathon, but I’ve been trying to stay near to marathon condition for months. I’d have to ramp up but I’ve got reasonable foundation miles to build on.
Which do I want more?
What I’m more likely to be able to accomplish is only one part of the question, and it’s not even the most important. My goals should not just be about what I might be able to do. The other question is what I want to be able to do, and how these goals align with the kind of running I enjoy.
I do enjoy long distance running, but I don’t know if marathons are my thing. I don’t feel the pull toward the fifty state challenge (and it’s too late for me to run fifty marathons in fifty states before I turn fifty anyhow.) I know I enjoy the half, and I enjoy doing longer distances on my own. I want to have done a marathon, but once I’ve done one I don’t know if I’ll want to do more of them. I might just go back to the half being my longest event.
One approach would be to pick a marathon that I think would be the best one if I only ever do one marathon. I have a mental list of candidates there: Big Sur International, Québec City, Mount Desert Island, or for some international intrigue the Detroit Free Press International which actually crosses the Detroit River into Ontario and back. However, the fact that there are several marathons that I find appealing suggests that planning around not wanting to do more isn’t a very strong reason.
Mohawk-Hudson is a good choice. It’s the one nearest where I live. I can talk about it with other runners I meet here, and I get to support the local event. It’s likely the one most suited to me right now because it’s mostly flat but with a couple of hills to give my legs some variety along the way. I’ve run most of the course (not all at once) so it doesn’t have any real surprises in store. It’s got scenic views along the Mohawk and a section on city streets through Watervliet.
Still haven’t answered
A thought exercise I did earlier in the year was to ask which of these goals I’d want to accomplish if I could only do one. Would I rather do a full marathon but never beat my 2004 time in the half marathon, or would I rather get the PR in the half and never do the full? There are two answers to that.
First the positive perspective: which would give me the bigger personal feeling of victory? Without question, setting a new PR for half marathon would be a personal victory. It would show that at 54 I’m in better shape than I was at 34, and that my decline in fitness during my 40s had been eradicated. It would show that I can come back from setbacks, and overcome adversity. It would say that backsliding isn’t failure. It would be a real high point in my own personal storyline. This carries a huge emotional charge. Doing it 20 years after I set the first record would be symbolic but moreover this stuff isn’t getting easier the older I get. Sooner is probably better.
Then the negative perspective: which would I find it easier to live with if I never did it? As I just mentioned, getting fit ain’t getting easier as I get older. Making gains requires a lot more dedication and consistency than it did when I was 34. In 2004 I ran a total of 590km/367 miles and only 386km/240 miles of that was before the US Half in October. I ran 819km/508 miles in 2023 and 338km/210 miles by April of 2024 when I ran Helderberg to Hudson. I got faster in my early 30s than in my early 50s, and I did it with fewer miles. So if I never beat my 2004 PR, that’s really no failure. The victory here is to keep going and as long as I do not ever being as good as I was at 34 is… just normal.
Having never run a marathon (an actual race, anyhow) I feel like I’ve missed out. I don’t have the full spectrum of what it means to be a runner. There’s no such thing as “the full spectrum” but the marathon feels like a key part of my running résumé. Saying that I prefer the half feels empty when I haven’t done the full. If I never do a full marathon race, I will always feel that I missed out on part of the experience.
That’s just a thought exercise. It’s not meant to be the decision, although it is a real part. I could have an accident or an injury that meant that having accomplished the one I never get the other. That’s no basis for a decision, or if it is, only a tiny part. The reason for the thought exercise is just to get a better sense of what I actually hope to achieve and what I want to gain from these challenges.
I have about twelve hours left to make this decision. Or not. The penalty for delay — the difference in the registration fee from today to tomorrow — is ten dollars. It’s good to have a deadline to force me to make the call, but it won’t be the end of the world if I push the decision off. Writing all this out here has clarified the question for me, but I’m going to hit the publish button before I make the call. I know I haven’t been writing here very much lately, but it would be unfair to leave you in suspense. I’ll follow up with a post once I’ve registered.
- 1I’m translating that to 6 seconds per kilometer for every degree Celsius over 16ºC. That’s not exact but it’s a very rough rule of thumb to begin with. I prefer round numbers. Personally I still use Fahrenheit but including this here in case anyone cares.
