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

Kim website looks great. Congrats on making the big move. I have been self employed for 27 years and love the freedom of been my own boss. I also use " we " when talking to customers 

I pulled a calf about 11 weeks ago. I had 5 weeks of low mileage and biking and its seems ok now.

Keen that's a long way for Sahara dust to travel. Shows how small the world actually is to mother nature.

2 workouts are a bit much for me too although I count fast longruns as a workout as well as either tempo or intervals.

I'm meeting up with Steve sunday week at Christchurch for a recovery run and coffee afterwards. Will do the Parkrun on the Saturday.

Piwi - nice, first forum meetup this year I'd say?  I might try and do parkrun sometime soon.  But I just noticed that coach has a particularly nasty track session planned for this week (400 repeats with 1-minute recoveries), which will probably feel a lot like a 5km race by the end haha.

Me - This morning's run put me at 2,401km for the half-year.  I remember at this point last year I'd just crossed the 2,000km mark so I'm around 20% up on overall mileage.  Admittedly it helps that there's been a lot less races in the last 6 months versus the same period last year, but it still seems like a big step up.

Kimba - I'm in flyover country, Iowa to be precise. It's now regularly in the upper 80s here which I know makes Texas chuckle condescendingly but the humidity has been out of this world. I'm starting to see "Feels like 100" in my weather app =(

Regarding the ultra, recovery is slow but I was amazed how well a decent weekly mileage and a bunch of tempo runs carried over. I had once sworn never to do one (or another marathon) but that's gone, now I'm scouting ones in the Rocky mountains next year. =)

Good luck with the private practice, I'm really curious how virtual medicine will work out for you. Most notably as a person who will do strength work on their own, I've never found a guided workout full of calf raises and the like to be that useful, but things like ART and dry needling have done wonders when I've needed them.

Keen - how did you like that 4x1KM workout? Last year I did a lot of critical velocity workouts -- about 3min intervals around 10k pace with minute recovery totalling 18-24 minutes of running last year and felt like they were a great workout. I got a lot of the benefits of tempo runs and some ability to handle the faster running I would get from VO2 sessions without trashing my legs.

What's this about a dust cloud? That's crazy.

Kiwis - I'm so impressed with the way your country handled the corona virus. Super awesome that you don't have any cases, enjoy your brunch.

Mark that is a stellar amount of KMs for half a year. Congrats on stepping up this year and staying healthy.

 

As of last night, a mile race I'm entered in is on for July 25 (police approved it yesterday).  It's being run in 50 person heats.

 

A small local race is happening tomorrow - limited to 50 people.

 

Jmac - not every race is a NYRR/BAA extravaganza.   

 

I guess that's a "race" but to me, that's effectively no racing going on. Until at least 100 people can line up at the start and run, it's not a race in my opinion. Given the trajectory of the US, especially the south and west, I don't see that happening until next spring. Maybe some areas in the country can handle that, but not anywhere near a metropolitan area.

I think people who think fall is going to be fine are way too optimistic in the US right now. Planning to run any race with 500+ people in the fall is silly, unless you're in a state where your government has 100% given up. Then maybe. But why any government would take that chance if there's good vaccine news in the fall is beyond me.

Kim - thanks, yeah I’m doing my strength exercises regularly to try to keep the woes at bay.

Awesome website and best of luck on your new endeavour. Was evolvept not available?

Using We is perfect especially because you might add more people in the future.

Keen  - heh, we all have our weak spots, mine is for pastries and Italians are grand masters at baking great pastries.

Marco - this will sound weird but Italy is being very familiar to me, in a way it’s almost as if I just returned home.

I know just the ice cream place to go in Bologna.

I’m still waiting for the process to complete, who knows when it’s going to end.

Jmac - I resent your definition of a race cause it makes the only race I've ever won not a race 

Question for the experienced marathoners on here... my goal marathon has some hills in it.  The total elevation gain is around 200m / 650 ft.  There are basically 6 hill climbs, 3 of these are relatively gradual ones which I'm less worried about, but there are 3 I'll need to think carefully about.  One particularly nasty one just before the halfway mark (about a half-mile climb with a 9% grade) followed by a couple of short, sharp ones (both around a quarter-mile climb with ~6% grade).

 

On race day I'll aim to run to even effort and not kill myself on these hills... but for those who have run Boston or other hilly courses, did you do any specific hill training at or around MP/effort and how did you manage it?  I'm thinking I'll incorporate some hills in my MP tempo blocks and try to get a feel for the pace/effort trade-off.

I agree with others re training at marathon-effort on similar uphills. For me, the Newton Hills at Boston were my nemesis. Suffered badly three times. For the fourth, I trained on similar-size hills in series, and had no problem at all. When I looked at your Strava runs a while ago, the hills on your regular routes should give you lots of opportunities.

I had the same reaction as darkwave to a marathon with 1/2 mile at 9%: .  I looked at the Rotorua route on the website's map. Some sections may hit 9% (like Km. 20.20-20.36, 0.16k/0.1mi) but they are pretty short . The other large hill Per the map, that entire hill (20.04-20.61) has a climb of 27m, 4.7%. No doubt, some serious hills, but not as daunting as described. You will have to watch the downhills a bit, though, there's a short -9% section coming out of that area.

ETA: Just noticed that the website map has an option to show gradient -- but I think it's averaged over some larger distances so the short steep ups and downs don't come through.

I've driven up that hill in Mark's marathon many times and run up the other twice. He will not need to walk.