The greatest operating watches can do much more than monitor your exercises. Come race day your Garmin watch will help you keep on monitor and hit your goal time, with quite a lot of options out there that can assist you efficiently tempo a marathon.
I’ve run the London Marathon six occasions and used a number of totally different approaches when establishing my look ahead to the race, all of which have been designed to maintain me on monitor for my goal time. That’s tougher than in different marathons I’ve run as a result of the GPS sign goes AWOL operating by means of Canary Wharf and the tunnels on the course.
The only technique to monitor your race is together with your regular information screens, however I’d counsel including lap tempo to them, somewhat than present tempo. Present tempo is especially inclined to GPS bother and can bounce round loads, whereas lap tempo is your common tempo for the present mile or kilometer cut up you’re operating and is a extra steady quantity that can assist you tempo your run.
Even with lap tempo the GPS issues you encounter within the second half of the London Marathon when operating beneath 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 verify I’m hitting my goal tempo.
A extra superior setting is to make use of the gap 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 might be, and one other offers a predicted end time plus your common tempo and distance remaining.
The expected time is useful so long as you take note of the gap your watch has measured in contrast with the precise distance you’ve got left to run, with GPS inaccuracies included. Examine the gap on the watch towards a marker while you move it and add any discrepancy in time to the anticipated time on the watch.
One other Garmin instrument 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 damaging cut up the place you run the second half of the marathon quicker than the primary.
I’d advise towards this although. PacePro is good however will likely 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 cut up will rise and fall with the hills. PacePro will 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.
Probably the most difficult and most correct choice you need to use is a ConnectIQ app that lets you appropriate the gap readings on the watch. I’ve used one known as Peter’s (Race) Pacer to do that (Peter’s (Hello-Viz) Pacer is a less complicated app that does the identical factor). While you move a marker on the course, hit the lap button and it rounds the gap measured by the watch up or right 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 modify the common tempo and different stats on the watch. You may also set a goal time with Peter’s Race Pacer and it’ll let you know how far forward or behind you might be.
