MacMillan and Me

A few weeks ago I unfortunately missed the run clinic where pacing was discussed, so I was looking around online to see what paces I should be training at to attain a 1:50 half.  I've heard about the MacMillan Running Calculator, so decided to punch my deets in and see what came up.

Dangit.

Endurance Workouts:
Recovery jogs:  6:26 to 6:45/km
Long runs:  5:49 to 6:26/km
Easy runs:  5:49 to 6:08/km

Stamina Workouts:
Steady state runs:  5:14 to 5:23/km
Tempo runs:  5:01 to 5:14/km
Tempo intervals:  4:57 to 5:07/km
Cruise intervals - 1000m:  4:54 to 5:00/km

After taking my thumb out of my mouth and uncurling myself from the fetal position, I took a hard look at the numbers.  The long run pace sounds fairly reasonable, and this week's long run (10K) was done at a 5:42/km pace...so I could probably actually slow it down a bit.  It's the stamina workouts that I'm a little worried about!  Yikes...I know the whole point of these is to build stamina in my legs...but wow, tempo runs at 5:01 to 5:14/km sounds really, really fast.  A 1:50 half means a 5:13/km pace so it's not far off, but I'm just having a hard time imagining I can keep that kind of pace for 21.1 kms when I fought and struggled to keep up a 5:29/km pace last week at the Scotiabank.   

Methinks I have a lot of work ahead of me.