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

jmac - Because of you I learned that Jack means John, so thanks for that I often wonder why English speaking folk bother with full names, who's gonna call someone Theodore.

What a monster workout and awesome week. You seem to be getting on the better side of the fitness mountain.

Like I mentioned before I see you talking about weather and I forget how beastly fast you are.

Steve - über fast long run with tempo. Was the pain closer to the knee or down below closer to the ankle bone?

Corey - I don’t see you on the front page, remind me again when is your next race?

Piwi - come back to Strava, we need you to pester Jmac about kiwi points.

Keen - your 5K PR seems a bit soft, it looks good for a take down. I remember you still had a little in the tank at the end of that 10k.

I understand some people are shufflers and do better on the longer distances, but you certainly have strength, maybe you could benefit from some raw power training to gain a bit more speed.

What’s your 400 or 800 all out?

Mick - how did that avocado chocolate go? If you liked it I can give you a recipe for a banana pancake, hell yeah let’s turn this into the morning hour tv show haha.

Don’t have time to respond to everyone completely, but wanted to comment on a few things.

Flavio - Thanks. I really hope this cycle leads to a PR, but it’s always so hard to tell during training in the summer because you just feel terrible all the time from the mileage and the heat. It’s only in the upper 60’s here in Denmark and although it feels great, I’m still not feeliing in top condition. I know the taper solves everything, just need to keep reminding myself.

Steve - during my marathon taper last year, I felt a crazy pain in my foot. This was 4 days before my race. I went to a podiatrist and was told I have a stress fracture! It didn’t make sense to me (how can you get a stress fracture during a taper, the “hopping test” failed for me, and I’ve had a stress fracture before and this didn’t feel like it), so I went to another doctor. This was all 2 days before my race. Second doctor said it was just tendinitis and gave me some cortisone. I ended up fine and ran the race well. Taper madness is real, it’s all mental, both with how you’re going crazy about losing fitness and also that every niggle can seem like a devastating injury. I’m just mad one doctor almost confirmed that it was real.

MJ - No Zurich for me, just Denmark and Bulgaria. It’s quite nice running in cooler conditions, but I find it really hard to run on vacation. It’s nice to get a few miles in to tour the city, but trying to maintain even 40 MPW on vacation is rough. My original goal was 48 miles, but I’ll be happy just to hit 30.

Rune - I know you’re running, so start posting again!

Central Park / Bro - Good job not getting yelled at! Most people are nice, but there are a lot of folks that do not adhere to anything resembling common courtesy, like looking before you cross the road, or running on the left side when they should be running on the right. There are also a crazy amount of running groups that are active around 5-8 PM that just take up the entire running path. Hopefully you’re avoiding that. Also, I see that it’s outrageously hot in NYC right now, around 95 with dew points near 75. You need to mention that because I know that Piwi is going through serious withdrawal that nobody is talking about the Dew Points with me not running in it. That’s brutal running conditions so I hope you’re handling it well.

Jmac - ser if you can catch the food tour in Sofia. It's free (or tip based) and they take you to 5 places to eat bit sized meals. All summed up it's a meal and you get to sample the local cuisine.

Marco nice target good luck. I keep it simple and if its relatively flat and windless run even 4 min/km from start to finish.

Steve - That's pretty much exactly how I would have imagined Central Park to be on that day.

Flavio - I've been doing plenty of 400/800m work during this cycle and my HM one from spring, so I think my running power has improved over what it would have been otherwise. I've never run either of those distances all-out - I haven't even tried running a single mile TT (track or road) in over 2 years now. Perhaps it's time...
I defintely agree that my 5k time is soft since when I set that PR I pulled back some during the last 2k due to some lower GI issues.

JMac - Enjoy the trip!

Marco - Best of luck this weekend! I've only done the one 10k, so I have no real advice on how to run it.

Jmac - That's crazy, especially in the week of a race.  I guess it's easy to be paranoid when one wrong step can see months of training go to waste...although I guess it depends on being a journey or destination kind of person.

Keen -  It was fun times, although I tried to avoid the topic on that trip...and based on my post disappearing I should do the same here.

Good luck to the 10km racers this weekend.

I did another 70 minute easy run last night and while I got through it, I had pain in both calves and couldn't have gone faster than easy pace without an injury, or so I felt.  I was sore everywhere afterwards.  This sort of thing has happened before about a month after a race when I've tried to jump back into it and generally ends in injury.  The running this week hasn't been fun, at a time when I need to be going hard if I want a crack at a PB in 3 weeks.  I'm starting to think I'm better off avoiding injury and freshening up for a week or 2, and look at a different race.  Unfortunately the next one is the Canterbury Marathon which isn't until early December which has potential for my battle with heat to resume, a battle I rarely win.

Steve - you have had some rough luck, again. You and Flavio should probably not bother wasting money on lotto tickets.

Piwi - thanks!  Judging from the regional results, the only way Wellington won't win the M35-50 division is if their flight can't land due to fog or the Desert Road is shut!  They have like 4 or 5 guys running 31-32 minutes and the top 4 placings for each team count for the results.  We should be a reasonable shot at second, though, as we have better depth than most of the other teams with 6 guys around the 33-34 mark, and some of the South Island associations aren't sending full teams up anyway.  Weather forecast doesn't look great, with potential for wind and rain, but I'm not that worried about rain personally and with 5 laps of a loop course, the wind is a lot less of a factor than it would be on a point-to-point course.

My strategy is going to be to aim around 3:25/km from the start, and then kick it up if I can on the last lap.  This should line me up pretty closely with my team-mate Simon Mace who ran around 20 seconds faster than me in the regional race.  He is a smart racer and I have him to thank for two of my previous half marathon PBs.  The course should also be quicker than the Auckland course with its dumb S bend and dumb U-turn even though there is a little hill in there.

Anyway the other reason I need to PB is that all my current PBs were set in the same pair of racing flats which I've now had to retire  Superstitious much haha.

Good luck to all the racers. May the runners god be with you !!!