Trying a New Plan for River, Roots and Ruts Trail Run Half Marathon

I'll be visiting Fort Myers Florida the first of the year, and registered for the River, Roots & Ruts Trail Run Half Marathon.  For all my races to date I've used the Runner's World Smart Coach to design my training plans.  While I've been happy with their plans, figured this would be a good chance to try out a new feature on Endomondo, a sports and activity data tracking program I've been using since I started running.


I entered all the data it asked for, using my HM PR from this spring of 1:33,  and it came up with a plan for predicting a 1:30 finish, with the easy/long run pace at 8:22.  Today's workout called for a time trial so it could adjust the plan for my current fitness level.

Garmin Data for the Endomondo 1.86 Mile Time Trial

I ended up running a 6:40 Avg Pace for 1.86 miles of the time trial (20:40 5K pace).  I was a bit disappointed with this pace, but I'm still nursing a sore foot/ankle left over from the Chicago Marathon a couple weeks ago.  

After the time trial Endomondo plan adjusted the paces of the workouts and now predicts a 1:40 HM with easy paces at 8:58.  This seems like a pretty big drop in pace and predicted finish to me.  The McMillan pace calculator predicts  a 1:35 for the same 5K pace, guess we will see how it goes!  Maybe I'll re-do the time trial in a couple weeks and see if it adjusts the paces and predicted finish and paces again.