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

Do you guys feel back-to-back Q workouts are advantageous for most people? I think I've seen some people on here say they never do them.  I ask because I have a week left on Phase II of the Daniels' HM plan which (nicely) places Quality runs on Tuesday/Friday and long run Sunday.  I started putting phase III into my spreadsheet planner and noticed the entire 6 week phase places H(ard) intervals on Wednesdays and tempo runs on Thursdays.  Do you see benefit in tempo runs on non-fresh legs?  I am inclined as a relative newcomer to training plans to adjust it spread out the Q days but I wonder if there is a method to his (seeming) madness.  The tempo runs are all 1mi or 2mi repeats or steady 20 minute runs so they are not amazingly demanding but after doing 5km worth of 5k-pace the day before, I can't imagine it would be too fun.  As always, all input is welcomed. I really appreciate all your take on HR.

Keen: Nice week!... Re: HR:  I don't know your numbers but if that HR curve were mine, I might have it scrapped,  The first thing is I would expect peaks and recoveries with slight lag as but I only see 2 significant drops, and a couple of other recoveries were minimal. Others are not even visible.

You get 2 HR drops, one a the beginning of the first interval (probably not a good contact by then), the second accounts for a recovery of 84bpm in 7 seconds which is unheard of.

Let me show how my strides (1 min on/ 1 min off  with optical HR) look like:

https://www.strava.com/activities/1362589065

Blair: I haven't done that, either.  Back to back Q  are pretty hard.  I don't think they apply for most people... probably elites and people with high mileage... But, if that's the plan you are following, perhaps Daniel introduces them gradually

Keen - I don’t run with HR, but I follow a simple principle with all my running: I need to see something twice in order for me to believe it’s a trend or correct data. For me, that means proper paces for tempo or intervals. If I run a great tempo run day that’s 10 seconds faster than I usually do in the past, that doesn’t mean I’ll raise my VDOT to correspond to everything being 10 seconds faster. If I see that my next tempo is also 10 seconds faster, than I count it. Obviously the concept isn’t perfect with HR (because it only gets lower), but I don’t think you should raise it 4bps because of one workout.

Blair - I liked the back to back Q session in Daniel’s HM plan. Of course, YMMV, especially with injury history. I find it especially useful when I’m not running a lot miles (40 mpw let’s say). The reason is that if I’m caping my T runs at 10%, that means only 4 miles at T pace. I dont’ find a workout like 4x1T to be especially difficult, but if it’s the day after an I or H session, it really adds to the challenge. If you’re running his 2Q plan for the marathon though, you certainly do NOT want to do back to back Q sessions, because those Q sessions are nothing like they are for the HM plan.

Blair - I've often included back to back quality workouts in my program.  It depends a lot on your body's ability to tolerate it, as it's not something that works for everyone.

Keen - nice week!! To me that looks like some sort of measurement error as the HR climb doesn't correspond to the pace intervals, and there's not really any major dips between the intervals after adjusting for the two stops you mentioned.  I don't know exactly what would cause it but FWIW I wouldn't trust those outputs.  At 65F, the temperature isn't hot enough to make recovery difficult even if the humidity was quite high.  I'd expect it to look something like the link that Jaime posted.  It's pretty hard to max your heart rate running 2 min intervals like that.

Jmac- yep. I did 4x1mi cruise intervals last week and had to slow down on final interval.  I think I will be staying away from back-to-back workout days for a while

JMac - that sounds really, really promising for you.

Re back to back workouts - I've never tried them.  The only situation I would consider would be if commitments during the week made me doing a Saturday tempo, and Sunday long run.  But I would do a lot to avoid that.

Hi all! Let me introduce myself. My name is Marcel, 31 years old, living in The Netherlands. Father of a 3 year old daughter and 2 stepchildren, age 13 and 15.I have been playing badminton ever since I was 7. Decided to quit early 2016, after 22 years of playing. Reasons were 2 years of constant small pains/injuries and back to back degradations. From 3th division (a very respectable level) to 4th to 5th division.

Decided to give running a go, since I can not imagine a life without sports. Ofcourse I made the mistakes lots of people make when starting running. My base condition was pretty ok after all those years of badminton, but I started running too much, too fast. I did run some races in 2016 (few 5K/10K's). I didn't even run that much, but looking back to this period, I think about every time I ran, I ran a temporun. Being used to go all out at badminton training (and not get punished for that), I guess I was used to train hard and give it all every single time.

2017 started likewise. Ups and downs, injuries now and then. Low mileage.Averaged 50k/month for the first half of the year (about 31 miles/month). During summer things started to get better. July 2017 through November 2017 I averaged 100k/month. Might still not be that much seeing you guys' monthly totals, but hey, I was injury free and I was able to run more than I ever did. I also started playing badminton again after summer (friends persuaded me to start playing again). It went well. One badminton training a week and in the weekend we played competition. Had I not started badminton again I would've probably been able to up my mileage even more.

Somewhere in November I made the stupid mistake to do too much in one week and ended up having trouble with my shins. In december I only ran once. In January it was getting better and I managed to almost hit a 100k month again. End of the month I ran a 10K PR of 42:16, which was totally unexpected. After the race I had to stop for about 2 weeks, because I felt my shins again.

Badminton competition has ended (it runs from September through January), so I can put more time and effort into running until after summer. Last 2 weeks I have done a few easy runs (only twice a week), to see how my shins react. It seems like it's getting better again. Running is completely pain free, they are only a little bit sensitive the day after. Right now I'm preparing for my first half marathon on March 11. Low expectations for this one, since the mileage has been very low the past few months. Considering my 10K time of 42:16 in January I should hopefully be able to break at least 1:40, so I will start the race with a pace of 4:45 min/k, or 7:36 minute miles. Hope to sustain that through the race and speed it up a little in the second half.

Since I'm in the sub 1:30 half marathon thread, my goals will also be to break 1:30 on the half marathon, and prior to that I'd like to run a sub 40 10K. Don't know if these are realistic goals. Most importantly, I want to stay injury free and up my mileage (which means I'll be running loads of easy miles, and speed work probably only once a week). I guess getting (much) more miles in is the best way to achieve my 10K/half marathon goals.

Hi Marcel

I think we have 3 running dutchmen by now. I thought they all did ice skating in their spare time

You are pretty fast - that 10k off a very low weekly mileage is impressive. For the half marathon I think the 4:45 is going to be tough to sustain. But I am slowly working up to your 10k pace so I am not a good reference. Good luck though with the half on March 11th.

I will finish another week of ~50k but mostly treadmill now since I am on a ski week. This is my first week of JD's Phase two but I might only get one quality workout in on the weekend.