Converting to Metric for the Half Marathon

Growing up as a child in the mid 70's I have recollections of President Jimmy Carter and his efforts to convert the United States to a metric unit based society. Anyone who has ever learned and used metric will attest to its ease of use.

For example, if you are using a 12 milimeter socket wrench and need to get a wrench one size larger you get out the 13 millimeter wrench. Using the Standard English system if you are using a 5/8 inch socket and you need one size larger you need to fire up the synapses and perform mental gymnastics to get to the 11/16 socket wrench.

One mile is equal to 1.609 kilometers and one kilometer is equal to 0.621 miles.

I need to complete 21.1 kilometers for the half marathon. At the end of each kilometer I will determine if I achieved my goal pace for that kilometer and adjust my pace accordingly for the next kilometer. You could view the race as being an accumulation of 21 report cards, one per kilometer.

I have mentioned before I wanted to maintain a 5:41 minutes per kilometer pace to break my two hour goal. This pace is an easy number for me to remember. I grew up on 541 N. Lincoln St. in Palmyra. Realistically, I am not going to run the same pace for each of the 21 kilometers. I most likely will run faster in the beginning of the race and then gradually slow as the race progresses. I believe I could hold a steady pace for about 12 kilometers now. I have no idea how rapidly my last nine kilometer paces would regress.

I need to do some research regarding the features provided by my Garmin Forerunner watch. I know the watch provides an instantaneous or current pace as well as an overall run or race pace. The feature which would make this watch most awesome is a last segment pace, be it a mile or a kilometer. If I could set up my watch to display the three paces of instantaneous, last segment and overall, I will have no excuses relating to being ignorant of my pacing. The watch will enable me to effectively manage my pace throughout the entire race.

The half marathon race will also feature pace runners. These are people who will be purposely maintaining a pace to facilitate running a prescribed time. For example, I could simply try to keep up with the 2 hour half marathon pace runner throughout the race. I am not sure how they will be identified on the road during a race. I imagine they will be wearing a jersey with a distinctive color combined with a distinctive number to indicate the pace. God forbid I accidentally follow the one hour half marathon pace runner. Also, it would be less than fortunate to accidentally wear the same color as the pacer runners for the day.

NOTES: My weight is at 188 pounds. I would like to lose another 5 pounds before race day. I have some body fat to eliminate but I also will be building some muscle mass through strength training. We'll see which way the scales go.