My main purpose for this race was to get an idea of where I am fitness-wise, 6 weeks out from my marathon. My marathon goal time is pretty aggressive I think, so I felt I needed to see whether I could hit an HM time where the race time predictors would tell me I am not kidding myself. That time is 1:40.

People seem to have different opinions of whether this is a good idea. Reasons it is a bad idea:

1. You are not going to be able to run your best HM in the middle of marathon training, so the time may not be meaningful
2. If you do, you are going to sacrifice too much marathon training, in taper & recovery for the half
3. If you don't make that training sacrifice, you are going to increase your risk of overtraining/injury
4. Your ability to hit the proper paces in your marathon training quality workouts should tell you whether you can reach your goal.
5. The race time predictors suck anyway.

So I considered all that, and decided I want to do it because I want to do it. (Stealing this line from Amelia Earhart, via the sig line on another RA user.)

• History: my 4th HM. My previous PR was 1:45, set only 4 months ago. So would seem like a big chunk to take off, although I had a pretty substantial negative split in that race. And there has been a lot of heavy training since then.
• Training: I have been essentially using Hansons Advanced Marathon Plan, plus a lot of extra miles. The extent of my taper for this race was switching the RD from Wed to Thurs, blowing off the Thurs MP/tempo run, and only a short easy run yesterday. So only 4 miles in the 2 days before the race. With the amount I've been running otherwise, on race morning it felt like I hadn't run in forever, and I felt pretty fresh.
• Race: This was the inaugural running, although the 23rd year of the event - they added HM for the first time. Very small turnout.
• Weather: cooperated perfectly. It was >90F yesterday, violent thunderstorms overnight, and 50% chance of rain predicted race morning. But it cooled way down to the low-mid 60's, never rained, and stayed overcast throughout the race - sun came out right after finishing.
• Warmup: 1 mile easy jog.
• Pace strategy: go out conservatively at an ~8:00 first mile, settle into 7:40-7:45 pace for a while, then work it down into the 7:30's if I have it in me.

Splits:

1 - 7:48

2 - 7:45

3 - 7:43

4 - 7:40

5 - 7:45

6 - 7:43

7 - 7:38

8 - 7:33

9 - 7:35

10 - 7:45

11 - 7:36

12 - 7:25

13 - 7:14

0.1 - 6:14

Official time - 1:39:51

Garmin @ 6.55 - 50:30, so about a 1 min negative split

AG 1/6, OA 14/92

I was pretty happy to get the sub-1:40. So I feel a tiny bit better about my marathon goal, except for reason #5 above, which is a pretty big one. The calculators have always been way off for me.

I was extremely satisfied with my pacing. It started to get pretty hard around mile 9, and thought I was slowing, but every time I looked down at my watch it was right on. I don't know what happened with the little pace blip in mile 10, but in any case after that I knew the 1:40 was there if I could hold on. I usually don't look at my watch in the last mile or two, since I am pretty much giving it all I have anyway, so didn't even realize how much I was picking it up in mile 13. I guess I needed every bit of it.

So my next challenge is to recover properly & get back into training. I am anxious to keep the mileage up, but will try to restrain myself. I am probably going to keep the mileage a bit lower & all easy until next Thursday's scheduled MP run, then try to do that one & continue on the plan after that. But I guess I need do the whole listen to my body thing, and see how I feel. Unfortunately my body can be pretty incoherent.

I'm very proud of you, you've been doing so well since your come back from your injury. I see myself in your training, but you do things more intelligently, so I have great expectations for you. I'm glad you decided to race this thing. You took a chance, yes, but one that was in your favour. Your training has been great and with the mileage you've been putting in, your HM result is very indicative of what you can do in your upcoming full, feel confident of that. Your plan for your recovery makes sense, I have no doubt you will handle it well. Congratulations, Dave! You've come a long way. 

P.S. I love that Amelia Earhart's quote. :-)

Those splits are a thing of beauty!  Good job on the race, and good luck on recovery week!

+1

 

That kinda scares me. On my first marathon, I will set my objective using race predictors. How else is someone supposed to set objectives? If the predictors suck and predict faster than I can handle, I will crash hard.

The race predictors were always accurate for me, as long as I logged in an average of 65 mpw in training.

I use the Daniels race charts and have had a good deal of success, but I must be peaking or in great shape and the course and conditions have to be favorable.  If any one of those elements are off then forget it.

I would suspect that is true of any of us regardless of whose chart we are following.

I like that you gave yourself a chance at having a good race by skipping Thursday's workout,  I thought you may do it anyway.

Regarding recovery, I have little issue recovering from races but long slow runs are more of an problem.  It is hard to get a read on you as neither seem to bother you and this event may prove the same.

As it is you brought the wood and laid that shit so big up's for that.

You are six weeks out and have never looked better, nice job yo!

How else is someone supposed to set objectives?

You could choose a celebrity and try to beat their time, not that I would know anything about that. 

Oprah?

No, Al Roker.