The finest operating watches can do much more than observe your exercises. Come race day your Garmin watch may help you keep on observe and hit your goal time, with quite a lot of options accessible that will help you efficiently tempo a marathon.
I’ve run the London Marathon six occasions and used a number of totally different approaches when organising my look ahead to the race, all of which had been designed to maintain me on observe for my goal time. That’s more durable than in different marathons I’ve run as a result of the GPS sign goes AWOL operating via Canary Wharf and the tunnels on the course.
The only technique to observe your race is along with your regular information screens, however I’d counsel including lap tempo to them, relatively than present tempo. Present tempo is especially inclined to GPS hassle and can bounce round quite a bit, whereas lap tempo is your common tempo for the present mile or kilometer break up you’re operating and is a extra secure quantity that will help you tempo your run.
Even with lap tempo the GPS issues you encounter within the second half of the London Marathon when operating underneath excessive buildings and thru tunnels can throw your watch off. I take handbook splits when passing the mile/kilometer markers to get an correct quantity for every to ensure I’m hitting my goal tempo.
A extra superior setting is to make use of the space and time goal setting on the watch. In your run web page maintain the menu button, choose coaching, fast exercise (or set a goal relying on which mannequin you’re utilizing) after which distance and time. Choose marathon distance and put in your goal time and also you’ll get two new information screens. One reveals how far behind or forward of your purpose tempo you’re, and one other offers a predicted end time plus your common tempo and distance remaining.
The expected time is useful so long as you consider the space your watch has measured in contrast with the precise distance you will have left to run, with GPS inaccuracies included. Test the space on the watch in opposition to a marker if you cross it and add any discrepancy in time to the expected time on the watch.
One other Garmin software you need to use is PacePro, which gives you a goal time for every mile or kilometer of your race based mostly on the elevation profile of the course, your general purpose and race technique, as in whether or not you need to run even splits, or a destructive break up the place you run the second half of the marathon sooner than the primary.
I’d advise in opposition to this although. PacePro is good however might be rendered close to ineffective by GPS inaccuracy and is most helpful on hilly programs just like the Boston Marathon the place your tempo per break up will rise and fall with the hills. PacePro may help you stick to focus on tempo within the first half of the London Marathon, which has good GPS accuracy with few tall buildings, however when you hit Canary Wharf inaccurate tempo readings will throw it off.
Essentially the most difficult and most correct possibility you need to use is a ConnectIQ app that means that you can appropriate the space readings on the watch. I’ve used one referred to as Peter’s (Race) Pacer to do that (Peter’s (Hello-Viz) Pacer is a less complicated app that does the identical factor). If you cross a marker on the course, hit the lap button and it rounds the space measured by the watch up or all the way down to be actual.
So in case your watch reads 5.12km on the 5K marker, hit the lap button and it’ll appropriate to five.00km, after which regulate the common tempo and different stats on the watch. It’s also possible to set a goal time with Peter’s Race Pacer and it’ll inform you how far forward or behind you’re.
