race pace vs training pace

He ran a 10 mile race in 1:11:22 and then used that time and McMillian's calculator to establish training paces.

Honestly, that may work for some people, but pace is affected by so many different things.  You said the 10 miler was hilly, and if your training routes aren't hilly, then you have a kink in the system already.

Do you have an HR monitor?  Typically, most people establish their run training zones based off of heart rate.  Here's a popular thread about establishing those zones based off of YOUR body, and not a formula that someone uses to generally describe an entire population of runners.

By the way, how did the training zones the calculator gave you compare to what you had already come up with?  Ok, I just saw where you mentioned they seemed kind of fast. 

Also, keep in mind that HR also has its limitations in that there are things that throw it off that are in and out of your control, just like pace.  It's a good idea to use a combination of things like pace, HR, and rate of percieved exertion to outline your training zones. 

I think that davealt is right.  That's what I got out of the question too.  I also had the same question.

I put my 10k time in the calculator, and it told me that I was going too slow on my long runs and base training.  I was close, but not exact.

HOWEVER, I quickly just tossed that aside because I train by heart rate zones using the LT method to determin them.  That's what I go by, not pace.

As someone who runs so slow I'm n no position to advise you how to run.  But I'll just say that I train by HR nad when I plug a race result into McMillan the outputted training ranges pretty much perfectly align with my zones.  Ie.
Long Runs = Mid Zone 2
Easy Runs = High Zone 2
Tempo Runs = Zone 4
etc...

That's assuming I had a good race and the course was similar to my training routes.  If not there are computational ways to correct times for hills, wind, etc...

If my HR zones start to creep outside the McMillan training then I figure it may be time to reevaluate/retest my HR zones.

Well in general I push hard 2 or 3 times a week while the resting sessions of the week are easy pace (whatever pace I want).

For the "training sessions" I follow this pace rule which is very popular for most of the runners, at least in Italy.

1) Take your ACTUAL PB on 10k race (if you do not have it, try to estimate it in a reasonable way)

2) IT 2km should be done at the same 10k pace (with 1.5 laps jogging recovery)

3) IT 3km at Half Marathon pace (with 2 laps recovery)

4) IT 1km at 5k race (or even faster) with 1 lap recovery

5) "Medium" pace session at 20 sec/km faster than 10k race for at least 8km and max 15km

6) Marathon pace is around 30 secs/km faster than 10k race and should be used for at least 10km to a max of 25km session

7) Long runs: long debates on this pace where you can find people doing them at a veeeery slow pace. I do them tipically between 10 and 30 secs /km slower than the marathon pace, increasing the speed on the last 5-10 km. Sessions should be at least 20km and max 3hrs.

For shorter IT sessions like 400, 300, 200 meters, things are more complex. 

Dan I'm envious of your potential.  I would struggle to rip off a low 7 min miler for that distance but you say you are 215?  Damn, drop 20 and watch that time drop too (not to mention the knees you will be saving).

This is not what you asked but I train about 155 bpm (top of zone 2).  Last HIM race I was able to hold 160 bpm (sub lt).  But my kickin it half mary was 7:14 so keep that in mind.

PennState - 2008-04-08 4:40 PM I think you are training too easy IMHO. However, I don't know much about you. 7:09 pace is pretty darn reasonable for a 10 miler... this is likely pretty close to your lactate threshold pace. If you had worn a HR monitor during this race you could have gathered some interesting data. For the record, the McMillan calculator is pretty good. My guess is that if you increased your training paces to what it said you should be dong that you would lower your 10 miler time even further

OP - at the time you ran the 10 miler should probably be very close to your Maximum Lactate Steady State which many of us also refer as LT for endurance training (although we shouldn't but that's another thread). The point is that if I was you I would use that pace to calculate my training zones (I prefer the Jack Daniels VDOT http://www.runbayou.com/jackd.htm) and train by that. The only reason you would run much slower of your easy pace would be if you were running a significant amount of miles per week and still you would do that only for so many week while you adapt to the load.

Training is about training load and if you want to continue improving you should train at the right pace/power to continue stressing your body and adapting.

Help me learn something so I may be able to provide sound advice in the future.  Or maybe realize I should just leave that to others and not answer questions. 

There was an ealier thread where someone wondered if they were going too slow or not seeing results training slower.  I suggested one speed workout per week to stress the body.

It was mentioned that without me knowing about this athlete, my suggesting a speed session could be harmful and was not very sound advice.  It was a very good point, and I didn't consider that with my original advice.

Now, once again, we have an athlete asking if they are training too slow, and it is suggested they train faster and stress the body and that's ok.

What I'm I missing?  How much more about this athlete do we know?  Is it the knee injury of the other athlete?  The fact they had a coach?  The fact we know the race time of this athlete?  The fact that this athlete is faster?

Please enlighten.

ranger5oh - 2008-04-08 5:06 PM Aikido... its the fickleness of BT... havent you gotten used to it yet? A 215 lb guy, running 7:09 miles for 10 hilly miles...... I think he should be giving US training advice.

THAT'S for sure!  Guy's smoke'n!  I'm only 10 lbs heavier and can maybe do 7:30 for a 10k if I'm lucky....

ranger5oh - 2008-04-08 2:06 AM Aikido... its the fickleness of BT... havent you gotten used to it yet? A 215 lb guy, running 7:09 miles for 10 hilly miles...... I think he should be giving US training advice.

I entered his data in a software, indicating 1% average of ascent, meaning around 160 meters totale vertical ascent which is something that makes 10 miles hilly from my understanding (correct me if it was more or less).

The software gave me

4'26"/km pace

4'18"/km effective pace (translated to flat course pace)

Potentials:

Marathon: 3h15'45"

HM: 1'32'37"

10k: 41'21"

 As a starting point, the OP can use the 41'21" as a reference pace for his deducted training paces. It is 4'08"/km which is almost 7'02"/mile.

I think you are confusing both cases; in the other example you are alluding it was suggest for the OP to include speed session (as in higher intensity sessions) when he was not running enough to begin with and also he was getting over/or just recovered from a knee injury. You shouldn’t get into training load specific without knowing the whole story, for the majority of AGers the main reason for them to not experience better running results is due to the low training volume.

In this case, the OP 10 miler time indicates to me that has the current fitness to perform his Easy pace run (Z1) at a faster pace of what he is doing. No one is getting into details about training load and advising more intense sessions at least I am not. I am just suggesting that he should adjust his training pace based on the race results because performance is the best fitness indicator and considering that by training at the correct pace he should be able to continue experiencing bigger gains buy just running now at his ‘new’ easy pace.

I didn't play in the last thread but did read it. My quick assessment comparing the two threads is all the things you listed above. Given a race result you can can see what they are capable of, and when combined with training paces, it is easy to see that they are training slow. The running calculators such as McMillan and Daniels VDOT are actually quite good, and they clearly show the same fact that the OP is training slow. Nobody has said that he should immediately go out and do tempo and VO2max runs. They said increase your average pace when training with same volume. Also when you can do a 10Miler at about a 7min pace to says a lot about the runners fitness.

The first thread had the poster running at way slower pace (5.5mph IIR) with HRM. This shows that the poster has to work on building volume and base, once they bring there pace down and there volume up then speed work may be appropriate.

To answer your original question ........

Yes, I use the McMillan calculator to help me get a sense of the pacing in training that I want to stay at or around for my various workouts.  Mainly because the running goals I have are right in line with where the pace charts put me.

And they are very effective and as long as your PR in a reasonable distance is up to date the ranges are very sound ones to work with.  Even though I do not train by HR like many of the other people that posted here do, I run with one and based on the HR zone system that you have seen bantered around in other posts, those McMillan pace ranges are fairly consistent with the HR zones that correspond to the pacing (i.e. - tempo run pace usually puts me right around LT, long run pace puts me comfortably in Z2, etc.).

By your definition, not by others ........