How Hard is a Marathon Road Race ?

 

Some hard races wot I have dun....

I recently ran the 2023 Manchester Marathon...it was hard !

But that got me thinking...how hard was it, and was it harder than other races I have done in the past ?

Strava has a Relative Effort measurement, which relies on (i) measuring your heart rate during your exercise, (ii) setting up your heart rate zones correctly for you (NOT just accepting Strava defaults!), (iii) measuring your HRM accurately (a chest strap is a lot more accurate than a wrist based optical measurement). 

The time you spend in higher HR Zones and overall duration of your exercise, increases your Relative Effort score. Note that a 'big score' is not necessarily a good thing...ultimately it is all about 'efficiency', particularly for endurance events. You may be able to sustain 'Threshold' HR for almost an hour in a 10K race, but you will typically fail in a Marathon at this HR...you need to ease back and try to sustain 'Tempo' HR (ideally just below Threshold !) for as long as you can...

I do measure my heart rate (I am a bit obsessive in the HRM department), have fine tuned this over the years for me and always use a chest strap, so this seemed like a good moment to do some investigation....

Manchester Marathon 2023 Relative Effort 449 (HR Zones 87% Tempo, 11% Threshold)

So how did this compare ? (see pic above)

So it turns out this was quite hard...for a road race...with more effort than my last Marathon Road Race - Boston 2018 (Relative Effort 363)

Off road, Lairig Ghru Hill Race was harder (Relative Effort 486), which sounds about right...similar distance but more elevation...

But unsurprisingly, the hardest race on my palmaris is our local favourite, The Two Breweries (Relative Effort 496), which although shorter (30km) is much hiller (1455m), and (for me at least) is considerably longer (4 hours)....

Note also that Glentress Trail Half Marathons are up there in 'the league of suffer scores'...and 'Feel the Burns' punches high for its mere 20km!

So there you have it...if you are looking for a hard race (and you think a road marathon would be too easy), the local Two Breweries fits the bill very nicely...don't say you weren't warned !

Happy running!!