Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2020 (Read 618 times)

Am I the only one who assumed Flavio was a dead ringer for Alfred E. Neuman?

In case you ALL wanted to feel not-so-old, my first recollection of Major League Baseball was the Brooklyn(!) Dodgers winning the pennant on the last day of the season, avoiding a playoff when St. Louis lost elsewhere. I had the flu or something, and listened to the afternoon game on the radio. 1956. Two seasons later the Dodgers moved to LA.

I've been plodding along at about 20 mpw (some weeks 25, some 15) for a while. My motivation to do more has definitely slipped with no races on the horizon here, but I continue to battle muscle pulls.  I thing I need to get back to heavy weight training, but I'm not keen on going to a gym (which are allowed to open here now).

Extrovert-Introvert: I'm towards the introvert side, but I do enjoy group runs, including track workouts (although it's getting harder to find runners doing serious track work close to the paces I'd have to run them). I like socializing with runners too -- they have important things to talk about; non-runners, umm, less so....  To modify darkwave's line a little "...being with random* others drains me, and being by myself recharges me."
* with no common interests

My wife is a swimmer rather than a runner, but similar on the E/I scale. As we're both (mostly) retired, we can both enjoy our own interests and activities in the same house, just knowing the other is close by. WE may sometimes interrupt each other's train of thought to interact, but that usually doesn't bother us much.

Glad to see you Kiwis are getting races in now, with COVID back to minimal levels. We'd come visit for an extended period (even with the 14-day quarantine requirement) if we could get in. Community cases are not terrible around here, but we have to be very careful.

Marky Mark, congrats on the new job; is the EY position in a similar role to PWC?

Flavio - Nice pic, and good running!

James - Hope you son gets over the appendix  quickly. I had my appendix out years ago; it burst before they could get to it, which meant a long recovery to clean up the infection.

Mark - how long does it take for you to recover from a half? For me, I've tried workouts 4 days after and bombed, but I'm usually good 7 days after. It should be similar for the marathon, just double. I looked back at last spring, which was the only time I tried to race a half after a marathon (4.5 weeks later). I didn't run my first workout until 2.5 weeks after. I feel that I recover very well from racing, but marathons are very rough.

Me - haven't really given an update, just been chiming in. I'm back to running all my workouts. My foot issues, whether they're Achilles or plantar (frankly, both areas have hurt so I don't know) are feeling better, but not 100%. But I'm very happy with the progress.

I've realized recently that even though I'm in a 5K/10K cycle, my skillset is still overly skewed towards threshold and marathon paced runs. Almost everyone who talks about VDOT calculators, or any calculator for that matter, talk about how difficult it is to hit the equivalent marathon pace for a given lactate threshold or VO2 max pace. I am slowly getting into old man territory, i.e. I had to work very hard during my MP workout this past Sunday to slow down. I was able to hit 6:02 average pace, with a few miles in the 5:5X range for my 10 miles at MP this past weekend. I tried running a VDOT that was actually slower than a 6:02 equivalent for my 1200 workout Tuesday and got absolutely smoked.

It's amazing how after years of training it's still all there, even if you haven't done any marathon work since March.

JMac - yeah 7 days after a half I'm normally good to go.  I figure I'll see how I'm feeling on the weekend as that would be 2 weeks since the race.  Thanks for the help.

Watson - yes, it's in Auckland.  But given it's National Champs, I don't want to go in there unless I can give something very close to my best.  I had an awesome race there last year and I don't want to tarnish that by underperforming this time around.  Given JMac's comments, I'm going to see how I feel on the weekend then make the call.  The other factor is that the race is in the middle of the day... it could be seriously hot if today is anything to go by!

My upper hamstring/glute trouble is getting worse.  It's been 2-1/2 weeks since it resurfaced, and for a while I thought I was gradually improving.  For the first several days, the soreness (not sharp pain) would start in the hamstring at the beginning of a run and then move into the glute after a while, and the soreness would gradually decline some, though never vanish, and I could "speed up" to just a slow pace.  Yesterday it hurt a bit more, and today the glute soreness was worse at the start, and even after it diminished, it was still too much for me to feel like continuing was a good idea, so I bailed after 15 minutes of plodding.  Time to call medical folks.  Good thing my swimming has been going well (unless, that is, the swimming is aggravating the glute somehow).

P.S.  In case I didn't catch all the autocorrect "fixes," the soreness is always in my glute and never in my flute.

 

Are you able to use a massage ball in the area or is it too tender?

 

I foam roll my hamstrings and my glutes (as well as my quads & calves) about 20 minutes before & after running.  Used the vibrating roller this morning because there was more soreness; it seemed to help briefly, but when I started my run (better described as a shuffle), the soreness was worse than in previous days.  If it was too tender to roll, I wouldn't try to run.

With an image like that Mick will be here soon 

Mark I somehow got watching on YouTube yesterday the 10k nz road champs from 1992. Jono Wyatt won in sub 29 mins. He went on to be one of the greatest mountain runners of all time.