Marathon Training Pace?

Heavy rains came this morning as I awoke briefly from my slumber. I was thinking, 'How are they going to do the Terry Fox Run'. Because of my ITBS, I have already decided not to attend the run, and anyway I had already paid $25 and got the T-Shirt, and hopefully, most of the proceeds will go towards cancer research. I later found out from sgrunners who went (kops, tiwazz, sanji) that the 8km run was cancelled, and just the 4km run went on, with mostly a very carnival and family atmosphere; the running mostly erratic, spoilt by the heavy downpour.

I decided to go for a very slow jog with Beverly in the evening, just to see if the ITBS has recovered. I put on a knee-guard and went out slowly...in fact very slowly, so as not to aggravate anything. The weather was immaculate. For the first time in a long while, I was able to go rather slowly and maintained a very good average heart rate of 133-138. Whoa...this was like 70%-75% MaxHR, a recommended training heart-rate for long distance runs. My pace was an average 6:30min/km, which is 1min below my targeted marathon goal pace of 5:30min/km. That is about right for a marathon training pace. I managed to achieve this over the 12km run I had today, not easy, since I always have a tendency to want to run faster. I could have gone for another 10-15km at that pace quite easily.

After my run, I stretched and iced my outer left knee region, and it seemed that there wasn't much pain anymore. I am keeping my fingers crossed, and may just go shopping for a patt strap (to ease ITBS when running) over the next few days.