What's a reasonably competitive marathon time for an amateur?

[glenn1]

never run a formal marathon, although i'm considering it. I'm not the world's fastest person by any means, but i can pretty much hold an 8-8:30 minute/mile pace indefinitely, that's pretty much been my performance level since i started running in my army days, and up to today (i'm turning 33 on Sunday, so i think i have a pretty decently long baseline for comparison). I can push out a 6-7 minute mile for shorter stretches, say two miles or so, but my natural long distance pace is the 8:30 or so i mentioned earlier.

For those who have run a marathon before, would keeping that pace give me a "decent" race time? I'm not doing it for stat reasons, but i don't want the average grandma participant to be breezing by me either, and i don't know what the performance expectation should be.

 

[charrison]

Originally posted by: glenn1
never run a formal marathon, although i'm considering it. I'm not the world's fastest person by any means, but i can pretty much hold an 8-8:30 minute/mile pace indefinitely, that's pretty much been my performance level since i started running in my army days, and up to today (i'm turning 33 on Sunday, so i think i have a pretty decently long baseline for comparison). I can push out a 6-7 minute mile for shorter stretches, say two miles or so, but my natural long distance pace is the 8:30 or so i mentioned earlier.

For those who have run a marathon before, would keeping that pace give me a "decent" race time? I'm not doing it for stat reasons, but i don't want the average grandma participant to be breezing by me either, and i don't know what the performance expectation should be.

Depends on the age group

I was training for a marathon last spring, but got to busy. I was doing 10 minute miles and was probably looking at about 4.5-5 hours. Even running 8 minute miles, some granny will probably pass you .

 

[tsunek]

First you should figure out what your reasons are for running it. To run it competitively or just to run it?

 

[tsunek]

for the first marathon i found it better just to run and not worry about the pace to much.

 

[glenn1]

First you should figure out what your reasons are for running it. To run it competitively or just to run it?

Although there'd be a certain pride factor in doing well, the spirit of competition i'm looking for isn't simply about turning in a better time than the other runners. It's about setting a competitive goal for myself, so that i have something to work towards for motivational reasons. Running isn't a naturally pleasureable activity for me, so i need to have something to keep me going when i start wanting to quit. For example, a goal i had for many years was to break 12:00 for the two-mile PT Test run (never did make it). That's what kept me pushing, not an effort to beat Joe Blow who could run it in 11:30.