Past Races and what I've learned

This week I've been looking over my past race performances, and trying to understand what factors contributed to good or bad times.

My best 10k was in 2008 and was my first serious race where I'd trained to run, rather than just showing up for a fun run.  All other distances have improved on 2nd attempts, however, I've never managed to improve on the first 10k time, which was 52:50.  This was run in cold rainy conditions, and I ran the whole race with my sister, after she'd been on Gladiators, so she was in peak fitness.  The competition here clearly helped my pace.  In 2010, I did the 10k distance again and achieved  53:26 and one other in that area which I can't quite remember.  In 2011 I did it in 54:14 but I did the first half slow with friends.  It was a month after my first marathon, and I did the 2nd half in 24:45, so potentially if I had raced the whole way, this could have been sub 50.

My best 5k was in 2011, again benefiting from marathon fitness, at 24:01.  I also raced a trail race at that distance that year in 26:26 - this was the second fastest women's time, and I did this after getting home around midnight the night before having been to a cocktail bar- I was hungover for the race!

For the Half, I set a sub 2 hour target in 2010 before building up for my marathons and I achieved 1:59:03, yet last year, I did 2 half marathons both in 2:06 and 2:05

Marathons were London and Berlin in 2011 in 4:38 and 4:33 respectively.  Here, the major issue wiht London was pacing- my mins per mile ranged from 9:07 to 12:40.  It was a hot day, and I definitely hit the wall, but I'm  sure I could have managed 10:00 the whole way and saved myself 15-20 minutes.

What caused slower times?  Lack of consistent training, which lead to injury.  Too regularly consuming alcohol, leading to less training.  Slightly overweight, leading to slower race times.  And in the longer races, the big problem is pacing!

On a Runner's World Forum, Steve Smythe, who's one of the marathon coaches has suggested I need to do the following in order to qualify for Boston:
The speed has to be improved and then you have to do much harder marathon training with the improved speed being utilised

To run around 3:35 you probably need to get that 5k time down to around 22, the 10k down to close to 45 and the HM to 1:38 and that not going to happen straight away..

You probably need to work on the speed through the summer and then aim to get the marathon down to 4:00 in the autumn and then take it from there.

So, I need to get faster.  I'm going to build the endurance for this marathon, not worrying too much about speed.  And I have signed up for the first Bournemouth Marathon in October, to go for the sub 4 hours.  

Has anyone else had experience of taking their marathon time down by an hour?  Can you tell me how you did it?