START 06:55 EDT · ELEV 750FT
ATHLETE: L. MATSON
not the clock.
Effort > Pace.
Always.
RPE and HR are the truth on a course with 933 ft of gain. Pace targets are downstream of effort targets. If the hill steals 25 sec/mi but RPE stays at 5, you are on plan. If pace is on but RPE has crept to 7 by mile 8, you are off plan — back off immediately.
The first
10 are a leash.
ATL went out at 7:18 through the half — 30 sec/mi too hot — and the wheels came off at 20. Pittsburgh is not won in the first 10 miles. It is lost there. First 3 miles are 8:25–8:35. No exceptions, no negotiation, no “the legs feel great today.”
The Hill is
a checkpoint.
Forbes Ave at miles 11–13 is not the race — it is a 200-ft toll gate to the second half. Climb it on RPE 6, never RPE 8. Lose 30–60 sec on Forbes; do not try to claw it back in Shadyside. The course gives those seconds back at miles 22–24.
The course, read as terrain.
Seven zones. One race.
Six gels, one banana, eleven water cues.
Tap any marker for the fueling rationale.
Every gel is timed to a flat or descending segment. Fueling on a climb compresses the diaphragm against a working stomach — the result is nausea, side-stitch, and a stomach that refuses the next gel an hour later. The protocol below is non-negotiable.
Twenty-six miles, on a strip of paper.
Read this when your brain lies.
The wristband is the last line of defense at mile 20. Every mile lists target pace, RPE, cumulative time at the 3:35 split, and a one-line action cue.
Highlighted rows are The Crucible (M11–13). Bold rows are fuel cues. If your watch and the wristband disagree, the wristband wins — pace it back, not forward.
- Print on paper, not cardstock — paper conforms to the wrist when wet.
- Tape over with packing tape before pinning — sweat will eat ink.
- Mount on the inside of the left wrist, ahead of the watch face.
If X, then Y. Decisions made before they're needed.
One paragraph, no hedging.
Pittsburgh is not Atlanta with hills in different places.
The single biggest strategic difference
In Atlanta, the hills are distributed — eight noticeable climbs scattered across 26.2 miles, each one taxing but recoverable. The damage you did at ATL was not from the terrain; it was from the flat first half tempting you to bank time. You ran 7:18 pace through 13.1 because the course let you, and the back nine punished you for it.
Pittsburgh inverts that geometry. The terrain itself is the governor. Forbes Ave at miles 11–13 is the most concentrated single climb in any major US marathon — 200 vertical feet in roughly half a mile, peaking at the exact moment a flat-course runner would be considering a surge. You cannot bank time before it (the early miles have rolling terrain that punishes anyone running 7:30s); you cannot bank time on it (anyone trying to hold marathon pace up Forbes is buying a 10-minute crater at mile 22); and the second half is a 7-mile rolling grind through Shadyside, Bloomfield, and Highland Park that rewards only one thing: arriving at mile 14 with your aerobic system intact. The whole race is a problem of not detonating before the flat 22–24 stretch where you can finally use your fitness. ATL was a pacing failure. Pittsburgh will be an impulse-control test. The course is engineered to extract your worst instincts. Bring guardrails.
An alternative you probably haven't considered
Cover the watch face. Set a single hard ceiling: HR ≤ 83 % of max (≈ 162 bpm for you) from the gun through the base of Forbes Ave. Whatever pace that produces — 8:05, 8:30, 8:45 — is the right pace. You release the cap at mile 11 and run Forbes by RPE only. From mile 14 onward, pace becomes a permitted reference, never a target.
The case for it: every blowup in your training log, including ATL, has the same fingerprint — heart rate creeping into 84–87 % range for 30 minutes before pace falls apart. You don't have a fitness problem. You have a pace-anchoring problem: the watch tells you a number, the number feels achievable, and you defend it past the point your physiology is asking you to ease. An HR cap removes the anchor. It feels insultingly slow for the first 40 minutes. Then, somewhere around mile 12, the runners who went out at 7:50s start coming back to you. By mile 20, you're the one doing the catching, and your stomach still works because you fueled on a calm aerobic system instead of one in zone-4 distress.
The risk: if your HR monitor glitches (cold start is the usual failure mode for the first mile), you have no backup target. Mitigation: pre-warm the strap for 5 min at the start corral, and if the first-mile HR reads obvious garbage, fall back to RPE 3 / nasal breathing only for that mile and reassess.
I am not telling you to run this protocol. I am telling you to decide before race morning whether you are running it. The worst version of race day is the one where you start with a pace plan, switch to an HR plan at mile 5 in panic, then switch back at mile 9 because the HR plan feels too slow. Pick one tool. Trust it. The plan above (Sections 01–05) is built around effort-matched pace. The HR-cap protocol is built around effort, period. Either works. Mixing them does not.