Training Advice: 5 weeks to HM (Read 578 times)

I’ve posted a couple of times on RA and have received great advice. Thanks to all the members here for their kind support and encouragement.

Background:

• I started running about an year back with C25K (completed in Feb this year). I had poor fitness before I took up running and was a complete couch potato. Since then, I've run my first HM in Sep 2012 (2h 55m). The conditions were a bit severe (temperate > 90F and humidity around 90%) and I had mostly walked the last 4 kms. This was on a training base of about 30kms per week.
• The senior runners here suggested that I build a base of 50kms per week for my upcoming HM (20 Jan 2012, 5 weeks from today). All of it easy running without any speedwork
• I’ve touched my target weekly mileage of 50K twice in the last 6 weeks but have been unable to maintain it due to frequent travelling
• My mileage for the last 7 weeks has been : 43 kms, 49, 33, 33, 39, 49 and 30 (average of 40).

I would really appreciate advice on how I should approach the next 5 weeks. Would this be a good time to introduce any hills or speedwork? Any advice on target pace?

My best times are: 5K (31m28s - today), 10K (70m, July 2012) and HM (2h55m, Sep 2012). I haven’t run any other races. My log is public.

Thanks for taking the time out to read. I look forward to your advice!

Actually not. While I started out, the intention was to do a hard workout and somewhere around 1.5K mark I thought of converting that to a 5K time trial as I was anyways pushing myself to my limits.

My lap splits were: 1st Km - 6:44, 2nd - 6:27, 3rd - 6:16, 4th - 5:57 and 5th - 6:03. But I did give my everything for the 5th and 6th km. My legs were feeling strong without any soreness at the end but my heart was about to explode!

Thanks for your comments.

My normal training pace is around 8:00 min per km (around 13 min per mile) - that's my best estimate of my easy pace. I do play around with it a bit with some work outs at 7:30 pace (12:00 in miles)

My last long run of 11 miles was at a pace of 12:30 but it wasn't easy pace, more like "hard" and a little short of race pace. At this pace, my estimated HM finish time should be 2h43m. I am not sure how much I can push and bring this down. You can check out the lap splits in my log here. My max HR during the last kilometer reached 196 (95% of Max HR of 207!) and average HR was 172 (83% of Max).

Thanks once again, will try the work outs suggested by you!

I ran the Mumbai Half Marathon in 2:30:12 which is an improvement of 25 minutes over my 1st HM (Delhi, 30 Sep 2012).

Thanks to all the excellent folks here at RA for all the gyan!