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

Hi!

First thing first, beer... I am an Italian living in Northern Ireland, I love good wines, and I am learning to like good beers, and i agree with Mick and others on Heineken. There is plenty of good beers around, and Ireland is one of the place you want to be Unfortunately, my body decided it doesn't like it that much... so I have to pay attention as I have bad reaction to certain types of beers and wines (I guess there is something in it my body doesn't digest...)

Welcome Matthew! congratulation on your marathon debut (great time with a negative split!) and ambitions for the HM, I am sure you will get what you are after! I am very far from you in terms of performance and I do not think I can help or give suggestions, but I will read your posts and responses to learn as well as for curiosity. Looking around, I think you are in the right place to get great tips to achieve your goal!

JMac comments on the accents made me think and laugh a lot... I give you all different accents depending on the moment I am reading the post and where I am. The weirdest is probably the Belfast or Northern Irish accent, ever heard them? Normally Americans need me to translate what they say

Since I entered yesterday race with a PB of 1h34'38'', I am happy to say that it is now time for my RR. Yes, I did break my PB, even though it was not smashed under the 90'... but let's start from the beginning.

The taper didn't go as usual, I felt tired the days before the race, with heavy legs. I am guessing I didn't fully recovery from the marathon in Luxembourg, and the many travels and the travel with very early starts over the weekend to Italy (with wedding) didn't help... At the starting line I met a friend from my running club who can run 90 minutes HM and was aiming for 1'40. I asked why on a flat course like this... and he simply said "false advertising, this is not flat and tonight is windy!". Ouch! And he was right!!!

But I started thinking back to why I was running tonight and the initial reason was to experience the 90' pace for at least a few miles, so I went for it! I introduced myself to the pacers and focused on them for as long as I could.

For the first 3 miles we had wind on the side and it was not an easy run, the road was waving up and down, nothing major, but definitely not flat. Mile 4 had a hill that broke the pace. We passed from 6:40 (faster than 1h30') to over 7:10... even the pacers were surprised, but wind and the hill... They said this was normal and we would go a bit faster than 6'50 per mile to compensate the hills. I was putting in more effort that I wanted, and I could feel the legs filling up with lactic acid; but I decided to keep up with the pace and see what my legs could give me. I stayed with the pacers for another 4 miles. Then they went for a bit of a negative split (finishing in 1h29') I went for a crisis... I expected that to happen as I know that my legs get full of lactic acid and become heavy every time I push over the edge of my comfort zone (90' pace is definitely out of my comfort zone for a HM for now), Between mile 8 and 9 the crisis happened. The strike shortened and the pace slowed down.

I passed mile 9 in 1h 1'30'', still on time for 90', but slowing down. Even mile 10 was not too bad in terms of time (1:08:38) but I was slowing down and not getting any faster...

I know now that this is my limit at that speed (and I will work on it for Belfast).

What I liked of my reaction is that I didn't stop trying after the crash, I slowly tried to stay with the runners around me (coming from behind and accelerating from their slower start as they were actually racing smart) and kept the 7'15-7'20 for the next couple of miles.

The last mile was up hill again, and this time everybody else around me was slowing down, I tried to keep the pace, but I had to slow down as well to the point that I was probably running at 8' at the end of the hill. I managed a 7:40 between mile 12 and 13 and finished with a very good (considering the evening and the last month) new personal best of 1 hour, 31'37'' (chip time, gun time at 1h 31'42'' so not much of a difference between the two). This is 3 minutes improvement from last year half marathon in Belfast (flat). Looking at the race overall, they won it with 1h 10'26'' and the third place was at 1h 15' 38'' so I can consider my time more than good. I finished 99th (in the 100 for the first time ) with  a field of just below 1300 runners. On a side, I also noticed that my position was 22nd in the M35 category

Below my splits. Overall I am very happy with the race and the time. I have done what I wanted, experienced the 90' pace. I am now convinced that I can train to go below that in a flat HM. So I will now take a few weeks of recovery (considering these the weeks after my marathon) and then write down a plan to prepare for the Belfast Half marathon in September. I need to find a way to get over the lactic acid and the heavy legs (intervals and tempo runs I guess), but I feel back where I left 15 years ago (when I could run faster on 800 mt. but could not run a HM) and I am motivated to compete with my old times on longer distances. Let's see I can do over the summer

I will ask for help while developing the plan. Suggestions are welcome!

have a nice day

Marco

Matthew - Welcome. I'm a little surprised you are trying to run marathons given your age. Are you going to college? If so, did you have any interest in running for the school team? If not, then this is the place to be. I'd recommend you join the Sub 3 marathon thread as well, you'll get some great marathon advice in there and there are plenty of guys with a lot of experience.

Keen - It's interesting you said you still aim for M pace even if it's not your true M pace. Why so? The reason I ask is I wonder about that myself. Is the goal of those workouts to actually hit marathon pace? Or is the goal to run at a certain effort level, which is X% of T pace, even if that is not actually your M pace. JD talks about how M pace stuff is often mental prepping, but then again he points out how 60 minutes of running at his defined M pace is actually a tempo workout.

Mark - On the dehydration thing, it actually is somewhat true. It really depends on the alcohol level. For very light beers (4.5% or less) you can pretty much get away with drinking those all day without hydrating too much.

Rune - Your approach of hydrating and fueling is correct. On any normal day below 65F, I can go 2 hours in a run without needing to drink water. In the summertime though when it's 80+, I tend to drink on any run over 1 hour. For my long runs of 20+, I'll actually get water in every 20 minutes to make sure I don't fall behind, because if you wait too long, you've entered a deficit you will never recover from. Temps between 65-80 I drink based on thirst.

Marco - PR congrats.

Re beer - it is just a drink, I don't get wound up with others drinking the cheap stuff.

Some very important news....tonight Im drinking Montieths instead of Heineken. Tastes yummy and is hitting the spot 

JMac - All of the other paces prescribed by Daniels are pretty spot on, and given that I'm just shy of having been running for 3 years I assume that the M pace is where I would/should be if I had more miles on my legs. For all of the M pace workouts I've done (up to 10mi, I think) the effort has seemed pretty good, HR in line, etc. I just don't think I have the endurance yet to carry that out for a full 26.2. I do think the mental side of things is key as well. M pace is almost awkward to train at - it's much slower/easier than I, R, or T work, yet a good deal faster than easy pace as well. Getting familiarity with that effort is nice. I noticed that M pace intersects with tempo workouts after ~8+ miles, too.

Mark - Best of luck on the XC race! I've never done one before, and I've only ever seen one open XC race advertised around here.

I found a good deal on a pair of racing flats (Altra Vanish-Rs) and picked up a pair. I'm guessing they were "cheap" because men's 12.5's in pink aren't exactly flying off the shelves. These things are scary light - just judging by hand the pair of flats weighs about the same as one of my regular trainers (Altra Escalante).
I figure I'll wear them for just the speed portion of a track workout next week and then maybe use them for a 5k for an Independence Day 5k in a couple weeks.

JMac - I used 4mm drop shoes (Newton Fate, then Saucony Kinvara or Freedom) for the first couple years running, then tried out Altra Escalantes on a whim and loved them (all the cushion of a Freedom with more *pop*). There wasn't a ton of getting used to them for me, with the exception of fast stuff. I did a July 4 5k (the same one I plan on this year, here's hoping for another PR!) in them after a few weeks of only easy runs and my calfs really let me know about the difference in shoes afterwards. It took another month or so before they weren't sore after speed days, but since then no issues.
I've got a good 2,300+ miles in zero drop shoes since then so I shouldn't have any issues with them.

Well done Mark on the cross country race, fourth, fantastic!!! And great time

Thanks for the report

James - hope those injuries are improving and good job keeping at it with the swimming and pool running.

Me - another solid week at 81km.  Surprised myself with the Thurs tempo run which I thought would be a bit of a battle and ended up feeling great.  Legs were pretty tired today for my long run after yesterday's XC race.

M: weights, 5.5km easy

T: 15.9km progression run (easy -> HMP)

W: 10.4km easy

Th: 17.4km incl. 30 min HMP tempo (~3:35-3:40/km)

F: weights

S: 7.4km incl. 4.2km XC race

S: 24.3km incl. hill reps

Total 80.9km