Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2018 (Read 704 times)

Taking it all in, I think I'm going out at 86 minute (6:34/mi) pace and I'll reevaluate as I go along.
My 10k predicts 86:12, and that was done at the end of my highest-mileage week in a year. I've gone faster than the Jack Daniels charts would predict for my two races this year, so that coupled with everyone's recommendations is how I came up with the goal. Typing that out it sounds to me a tad conservative, but I am wanting to be pretty aggressive with this race.

Rune - Oh no, definitely not. That would lead to certain death. He has a table in one of his books that shows a 20 minute tempo at Threshold pace is equivalent to a 60 minute tempo at about T+25 seconds at my current fitness level. If you haven't done a long tempo in the past, you should try it, although anybody who has done serious marathon training uses these as a staple of their workouts, often something like 12-14 at MP. Also, you need a signature with PRs and upcoming races!

Rune - thanks!  I actually struggle with running less than 11-12km now unless it's a recovery run.  Kind of feels like I'm just getting into it and then it's time to finish.  Focusing on a bit of strength building at the moment hence all the hills.  Hope the Disneyland trip was fun!

JMac/Rune - I found those long tempo workouts invaluable when training for the marathon last year.  In hindsight, my 35km long run was actually a better effort than the race itself - I think from memory I had ~18km at MP in there.

For HMs my coach introduced a new workout, with 3 x 12 min just above HMP / 3 min easy.  It was actually pretty brutal (I call it the Pain Train) but it seemed to set me up really well for my last HM.

Keen - sounds like a good plan for your race.  I had a look at the course map, because I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to that sort of thing.  It looks pretty quick aside from that weird (but short) twisty section at around the 5.5 mile mark.  No hills of any real consequence and the last couple of miles look ripe for picking up the pace if you still have some gas in the tank with a very slight downhill gradient to help you.  I put you down for a 1:26:00 target but let me know if you want to change it.

Rune - Generally I find training paces harder than the race, at least for HMs, because a taper and a bit of race-day adrenaline make quite a difference.  The Pain Train workout above ended up being my actual HM pace for my recent PB HM but I was battling by the 3rd rep when I did the workout!

Interesting to hear your experience with your 20 miler before Paris.  With that 35km FM long run, I reckon if I'd carried on I would've done a better time than I did in the actual race.  Granted, race day was humid, whereas the conditions for my LR were perfect temperature wise but it absolutely poured with rain from about the 18km mark and that didn't seem to make much difference even when my shoes got wet and heavy.

All - this is not a reason for you to tell me to do another marathon.  I have duly noted your comments in this regard.  

Mark - When you say "above" HMP, is that faster or slower? 12 minutes for me would be right around Threshold pace for 2 miles, and I've done a ton of 3x2 mile with 2 minute walking rest in my day. They are very difficult workouts, although the worst was in marathon training when I had to do 4x2. As Flavio/Watson would say, I started to see Jesus at the end of that one.

Piwi - Definitely don't use GPS to do track workouts. You should see a bunch of crazing markings on the track and they all have meaning. You can use these markings to do intervals in outside lines, although it's a bit hard to get interim splits. It's also a bit tricky to figure out exactly how to offset yourself in a given lane. The easiest way to explain it to look at the IAAF link below and check out the last/outside lane. You'll see three important markers: Start 800m, Start 400M, and Start 4x400. Each one of those offsets exactly one turn. So the 800m is one turn, 400m is two turns of the track (or exactly one lap) and the 4x400 is three turns of the track. If you're trying to do something like 800m in the outside lane, you need to offset 4 turns of the track, so you would have to walk off the distance to where you think a theoretical fourth marker would be, and start from there. 1000m intervaks would be a fifth marker walked off, etc. Hope that made sense.

https://www.iaaf.org/download/download?filename=90af96aa-3d93-4e8f-a295-40c0c971c20f.pdf

Thanks Jmac. I think I will save 800m repeats with 400m recoveries  for the track then 

I did my VO2max workout this morning in the dark so no one could see me  my first intervals in nearly 2 years. Set my watch to intervals with 4km warmup then 5 x 1000 with 400m jog recovery and 2kms cooldown. I think I ran them about right as I was starting to hate life by the 3rd one . I didnt know pace untill I uploaded back at home but I averaged 3.35/km although I had one at 3.30 and one at 3.40 which isnt ideal. I should get a better feel for these as I do more.

Mark - I'm a course map geek as well! I do know the course really well, having done training runs over it many times, and that little segment isn't as bad as it looks. You're right about there not really being any big hills - the worst is probably a bridge in mile 2. Other that that it's flat to rolling, and less hilly than my usual routes. 1:26 is just fine as a tracking point!

Piwi - Thanks for the vote of confidence! On one level I can understand 1:24 not being far off of 1:26, but on the other hand this all seems really fast - at the beginning of the year I thought I'd be happy if I could break 1:28.

JMac - Thanks for that .pdf. I've been looking for something like that but have never seen anything that detailed. As someone who never did track growing up, or even serious track workouts until this year, that's a huge help.

Arvind - Care to stick around to chat beyond dumping weeklies?

My FIL's company is fielding a couple relay teams for the marathon this weekend, and his lost their 1st leg runner. Since they couldn't find anyone else willing, I'm taking the first ~10k leg of it. It's exactly along the HM route and it'll only mean wearing a second bib (likely folded down and pinned to shorts) and carrying a timing chip to pass to the next runner. We have it planned so that I'll actually skip the official relay handoff and meet the 2nd runner where the relay exchange route meets up with the official route - I should be able to just toss the tracking bracelet without losing any time at all.

Piwi - The first leg of the relay is actually concurrent with the HM this weekend!

I was shocked to see my pace so consistent for that run since I was just trying to go by feel. And I don't have much other than straight lines to run in out here!