10 Miles at Marathon Pace

Since I start running marathons with NYC in 2006 I have been occasionally running marathon pace workouts. With each marathon I have been trying to do more of this type of workout because I believe in the reasoning of why they should be a benefit for the marathon. Originally I started with 6 miles and then progressed to 8 miles and today I did my first 10 miler at MP (during this training cycle). My goal was to run at 6:52 pace or 1:08:40 for the complete workout, my time was 1:07:37 for the 10 miles which comes out to 6:46 pace (the slowest mile was the first in 7:06, the quickest was 6:38 between 6 and 7). I have read that elite marathoners will occasionally do MP workouts of up to 18 miles and I would like to work my way up to being able to do 15 miles at 6:52 pace comfortably or a least without it feeling like a tremendous effort! Until next time best of luck with your training.