For the past 2 fall seasons I have done a half marathon. I'd like to run 2 of them this fall. How far apart should I space the 2 events ? How close together could they be without risking injury ?
an amazing likeness
Personally, I'm heading into a set of 3 half marathons in Oct and November, spaced at 2 weeks and 3 weeks. I'm working back from siginficant injury and my goal is to progess through them, lowering my time by 7 minutes between #1 and #2, and another 4 or 5 minutes between #2 and #3. For me, 2 or 3 easy days used to be plenty to recover from a half, so I assumed that 5 or 6 would give me a buffer and then use the next week for sharpening for the next race. Thus, 2 weeks between seemed reasonable.
Well...that didn't work out as envisioned, to say the least! Times in the three races were feakin' identical:
1:43:20
1:43:21
1:43:41
I couldn't have hit those times all the same if I had tried. Pretty discouraging actually to not make any progress....uggh. Back to the drawing board.
Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.
I seem to do fine with a 3-4 week pacing between the two spring and the two fall races I do regularly. I get a pretty good improvement on the second one (has been between 2-6 minutes). I have no experience running them closer than 3 weeks though. I raced a 10 miler a week after a half marathon, but was not happy with the performance in the10 miler, obviously I need more recovery than a week, so I guess for me it's somewhere between 1 and 3 weeks.
Regarding injury risk, I don't think it will be an issue unless you have a nagging or pre-existing condition or develop one during the race.
I spaced my races 3 weeks apart - it worked out just fine, but honestly would have preferred another week. I think a 4 week space would have been ideal.