Question on racing with a heart monitor - What is best strategy. Recently I ran a marathon with a heart rate marathon and was trying to maintain a constant heart rate by adjusting my pace - I found the first 10k to be much slower (~7:20 min/mile) than the 2nd and 3rd 10k (~7:00 min/mile) and the 4th 10k I had a hard time maintaining the heart rate and slowed down a bit (~7:25 min/mile). This is my 2nd marathon so pretty new at this - very happy to come down from 4:30 marathon last year to 3:10 this year.
Overall it was good enough to get me a qualifying time to go to Boston but now I want to get my best race in Boston. I'm fairly certain I can overcome the 4th 10k slowdown with a bit more pushing myself.
Question is - why is the 1st 10k slower than the 2nd and 3rd 10k for the same heart rate target - Does this indicate a problem with my warm-up before the race or should I be targetting a faster heart rate for the first 10k to even out the splits with my 2nd and 3rd 10k.
Any experience out there with this - appreciate your input?
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