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If you feel that you don't have enough endurance training or you have never run a marathon, set your finish time goal 10% or so slower than the best time estimate. We see that most beginners finish 5-10 minutes lower than the best predicted time and suggest beginners take this into account when setting their time goals. It is much more enjoyable to finish strongly than to experience the sensations people have variously described as "hitting the wall", "being jumped by a bear", "crashing" or "dying". The beginner's first and foremost goal should be to finish!

 

 

It is best to set a series of time goals, the first being what you know you can run, the next an acceptable time, and third what would be a good day. These time goals need not and should not be too far apart (5-10 minutes or so).

 

 

To provide sub goals, and to monitor your progress along the race course, you should compute a series of intermediate times or "splits" and memorize them or write them down on something that can be carried along.

 

 

Although it is generally accepted that more even splits (constant pace) provide the best results, some runners prefer to use negative (start slow, finish fast) or positive (start fast, fisish slow) techniques.

 

 

Those using negative splits usually describe races where the technique has been effective as beign very positive psychologically because they feel stronger than everyone else at the end. It is a major boost to pass people during the last few miles. For some runners this self-reinforecment may aid performance enough to compensate for the slow start.