Beginners and Beyond

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Question regarding half marathon pace (Read 75 times)

Docket_Rocket


    Run it for a PR.  Done.

    Damaris

     

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    onemile


      Five weeks out marathon day, you race that sucker like if there were no tomorrow. Then you use the finish time to readjust your race goal if needed. Time to be realistic. And forget that running a HM at marathon pace silliness.

       

      This!


      No more marathons

        Oh hell, that's easy - go for it.

        Of course I may not be a good judge of such things since my half and full PR's are one week apart.

        Boston 2014 - a 33 year journey

        Lordy,  I hope there are tapes. 

        He's a leaker!

        Love the Half


          I think a big thing to ask yourself is how well you recover from hard efforts.  I have noted in the past that it takes me longer to recover from an all out effort than a lot of folks.  You can still get a lot of benefit from a race even if you don't go 100%.  So, for example, my HM PR pace is 6:33 while my marathon PR pace is 6:51.  If I were staring at a HM 5-6 weeks out, knowing that a seriously all out HM effort would require two full weeks of reduced mileage and no speed work, I'd run it at maybe a 6:40 pace.  At that pace, I'd be completely recovered in a week but I'd still have gotten in one hell of a workout.

           

          I might note that this is sort of the approach you see from some elite athletes.  They'll run a HM a month from the marathon but rather than running the 1:01 or 1:02 they might be capable of producing, they'll run something like 1:03 or 1:04.

           

          I don't see any reason to run a HM at marathon pace but I'm a cheap bastard.

          Short term goal: 17:59 5K

          Mid term goal:  2:54:59 marathon

          Long term goal: To say I've been a runner half my life.  (I started running at age 45).

            My friend would tell your friend that 20 sec/mi faster than MP should be plenty conservative. This past Spring, he ran a HM 29 sec/mi faster than MP 4 weeks out and was fine.

            MothAudio


              Echoing Brad's comment, 20 marathons completed and only once did I find success using a half marathon as my tune up race. That was the Parkersburg half in August, 2 months out from Columbus in the early 90's. I ran my 2nd fastest half, over a hot, humid and hilly course, en route to one of my BQ marathons in the Fall.

               

              All of my other half marathons during my marathon cycle were less successful. And looking over my goal half marathon races, I've had some decent results in the weeks following but those were limited to 5k, not a marathon. There's a 14k with rolling hills in Cincinnati 4 weeks out from the Columbus marathon I've had good results. Long enough to get in plenty of LT work but not so long that it affects your training / recovery. I've been able to jump right back into quality workouts the following week.

               Youth Has No Age. ~ Picasso / 1st road race: Charleston Distance Run 15 Miler - 1974 / profile

               

              wcrunner2


              Are we there, yet?

                Here's an outlier for you to show that individual response can vary greatly. Running my second best time ever, even though I paced the race very poorly, in the 7 weeks leading up to the race I ran 7 races including an all out HM 7 weeks before and an all out 10M 3 weeks before. The week before during the "taper" I ran an 8.4M race at about 90% effort.

                 2024 Races:

                      03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles

                      05/11 - D3 50K
                      05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour

                      06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.

                 

                 

                     

                LRB


                  Good stuff!

                   

                  Regarding half marathon recovery I have only run one in the past two years but had no issues with recovery and in fact experienced a jump in fitness immediately thereafter it.

                  B-Plus


                    What pace should I run on Sunday?

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