It’s always good to have a plan. Previously I had speculated on the benefits of being relatively slow over the first part of the Malvern Midsummer Marathon course to achieve the target time of 8 hours, however following a scoping exercise I have now reversed my opinion on this. NB the official course is not yet published so I am basing my assumptions of previous years courses. The main factors in making this course different to a sensible road race are the terrain (by which I mean here the going under foot and obstacles) and the elevation profile.

The start and end of the course are on the Malvern Hills, so well-trodden paths. The middle footpath section will be harder and influenced by the weather. The elevation profile shows the toughest part is the slog along the last 7 or 8 miles of the course.

The new plan is therefore to take it steady at the start, accelerate through the middle section and then a slow slog up and down over the hills at the end. I think that the downhills will actually be as difficult as the uphills on the aching legs. Here’s my new planned speed profile for each mile.

The best monitoring metric that I can seem to get out of the phone app that I will use to track my progress is the average pace per mile, here’s what this will look like to meet the target time of 8 hours with the speed profile above.

The advantage of being relatively quicker at the start is the opportunity to get a faster time if the legs don’t ache too much at the end, the risk is of course that I’ll be burnt out by mile 18 and unable to achieve even the slow pace required. After the event hopefully have the date collected to compare the plan with the actual.