Forums >Racing>Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2018
Rune - good luck for the race. I agree with starting at 1:35 and dialling it up if you feel good. Weather forecast looks pretty ideal for you so I hope it stays that way!
Me - took a punt today and ran a 5km TT to see where I'm at ahead of Sunday's Orewa HM. After 2 light weeks on holiday, but a good few days training after getting back I didn't really know where I was at and wanted a benchmark - mentally I've written the race off as I'm only really doing it to keep my series standing alive (this is the third of 5 races and I'm a reasonable shot at a podium placing for the series). Anyway, despite having slightly tired legs after 3 days running I managed to hit 17:02 which is only 0:19 behind my race PB so I'm actually kinda looking forward to Sunday now.
Having said that, the weather forecast is not great with hot and humid conditions looking likely. The saving grace is that it will probably rain which will partly solve the temperature/humidity issue. So I'm not going in with a goal, will just run it on feel which has served me pretty well in my last couple of HMs. The course has changed slightly since last year and should be a little quicker - it goes in most of the same places but they've moved the start/finish location and cut one of the slow trail sections out along with one of the hills.
3,000m: 9:07.7 (Nov-21) | 5,000m: 15:39 (Dec-19) | 10,000m: 32:34 (Mar-20)
10km: 33:15 (Sep-19) | HM: 1:09:41 (May-21)* | FM: 2:41:41 (Oct-20)
* Net downhill course
Last race: Waterfront HM, 7 Apr, 1:15:48
Up next: Runway5, 4 May
"CONSISTENCY IS KING"
Hi, guys,
Mark: Good luck in your race. If conditions are not good, I guess you are going for placing. The snowy/hilly/altitude runs gave you strength and boosted your O2 transport. Not sure if also give you some rest.
Rune: Good luck for you too, I hope the conditions like course and weather are good. I stalked a bit of your training and I see some things: Firstly, I see you're training MP at 4:30, and have done a sizeable amount of running at that pace, So 1:35 is a sensible baseline. On the other hand, you haven't done much of tempo pace lately (4:19). hence running more than 30 min at that pace might be a bit of unknown territory, so if were you, I'd start speeding up between Km12 (mile 7.5) and Km15 (mile 9.2), depending on how I feel that day.
There is only one doubt I might add: Your last week was very hard compared to your average, specially the long run... how did you recover from that?
Watson: For some weeks it doesn't work... for me it was 2 weeks back... the probable reason is that I have 2 time-overlapping activities (one private/manual to add miles for the week and shoes, the other public with HR, but didn't have the distance because I forgot the footpod)
Me: I'm taking a look at my tempos and I see some improvement but also a plateau. Back in November I was able to reach higher HRs, now I struggle to get over 163bpm, which it's good fitness-wise but also points to a different weakness... Possibly strength. Any thoughts especially related to my upcoming HM?
Cobra Commander Keen
Piwi & Rune - It's amusing to me seeing you two talking about the OKC team, when I live right outside of OKC and am completely out of the loop on them.
Rune - Good luck on the race. The cruise intervals are supposed to feel the same as a tempo run - comfortably hard - and be the same pace as the "standard" 20 minute tempo (1 hour race pace). I like Jaime's race strategy for you.
Mark - Good luck on your race as well, and great job on the TT. I need to do something like that myself as I haven't truly raced anything since the end of last April.
Jaime - The increasing pace at HR is obviously good, as you said. Struggling to increase your HR is, to me, an indicator of fatigue. I haven't followed this thread long enough to know, but what has your rest schedule looked like?
I did my first "true" (read: based on a concrete plan) interval workout this morning. Next time I need to just remember the workout steps, rather than following it from my watch. That way I can manually lap everything rather than having to use the auto-lap on my watch. It was also my first run on the track since it was torn up and refinished over this past summer-winter. Very nice, bouncy surface. A big improvement over the old, cracked asphalt it used to be.
5k: 17:58 11/22 │ 10k: 37:55 9/21 │ HM: 1:23:22 4/22 │ M: 2:56:05 12/22
Upcoming Races:
OKC Memorial 5k - April 27
Bun Run 5k - May 4
Jamie and Piwi - on RWOL app, what happens when you go to previous week?
Jamie - your tempo improvement looks good. I would race the first 10km at 4:10 pace, and then play it by ear.
Mark - good luck.
PRs: 5km 18:43 (Dec 2015), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:26:16 (Sep 2016), full 3:09:28 (Jun 2015)
40+ PRs: 5km 19:31 (Oct 2020), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:29:39 (Jun 2018), full 3:13:55 (Sep 2022)
2023 PRs (hope to beat in 2024): 5km 20:34, 10km 41:37, half 1:32:32, full 3:21:05
2024 PRs: 5km 20:25
Problem Child
Haven't been here in a LONG time. Mostly becuase the current focus is a sub 20 5K (March 11ish). I downloaded the spreadsheet from page 10. WOW that took someone a while. 7 lbs is seriously approximately 7 seconds per mile faster?!?!? I need to lose some weight. Is there an instruction manual or something for this thing?
Many of us aren't sure what the hell point you are trying to make and no matter how we guess, it always seems to be something else. Which usually means a person is doing it on purpose.
VDOT 53.37
5k18:xx | Marathon 2:55:22
Watson: It works on the previous week, and then it goes one week further back, and so on to until I hit a week with issues like I mentioned. It's not the private activities, it's not the manual activities, But there is something the applet doesn't like, my guess is the "simultaneous activities".
Thanks on the game plan, it's actually pretty good for my Goal A. I think I will know better when I try the 10K tempo in 2 weeks time.
Keen: I'm currently running 5 days a week on average. I usually run the long (marathon long) on the weekend, and I take one day off. Tuesdays are Tempo days, so usually is after a rest day (but it could very well be accumulated fatigue from the long run)
Brew: The second sheet in the same XLS file contains the instructions. RW had 2 sec per pound per mile.. I guess it's not that linear and you still have some constraints on how much weight you can lose without it being unhealthy
Jaime- Your tempo efforts show pretty steady improvement. As for the HR issue... I really struggle to get my HR up in cold temps unless it's a really brutal workout, so maybe that could be playing a part too? Anyway I think those recent tempo's bode pretty well for something around the 1:26-1:28 mark... maybe faster with a good taper. In terms of plateau... you've got two options - either run longer tempo's or try and run them faster and see how it goes!
Tempo runs are a great fitness benchmark but there is some research that suggests intervals are more effective for building fitness so if you aren't including an interval workout of some type already then perhaps including that would help your tempos too.
Keen - I've really been enjoying the track workouts lately. They are such a great way of doing interval work and if the track is nicely surfaced they are a lot more easy on the legs than pounding the pavement for intervals. My current favourite is 5 x 1k hard / 400m jog, and trying to get each of the 1km reps faster than the last.
Thanks for the well wishes for Saturday all. Good luck to you too Mark.
Mark - Strong 5k for sure. I think proper altitude training is done with low to moderate intensities so you might have given yourself a boost there.
Jaime - You're looking strong based on your tempo workouts. Nice improvement. Regarding my training I know the last couple of weeks have had some hard workouts but I'm feeling pretty good. I figured two days between my 4x2k and the race would be good enough for short term recovery at least. Either way it is what it is and is actually pretty similar to what I did before the same race 2 years ago, when I was on a marathon program training for Paris. Despite no tapering back then I felt pretty strong that day. This time around my tapering consists of the fact that I only ran 1 mile yesterday since my stomach clearly didn't agree with what I had eaten earlier in the day. Even called my wife to pick me up as I wasn't sure if I would make it home walking.
Keen - Yep, I feel like I have a good idea of what that "comfortably hard" feeling should be, and I think I was there on the 3rd interval, but past it on the 4th. If I hadn't been so bad at pacing I could have run the first interval at the proper pace and maybe felt better at the end. As for intervals and my Garmin I try to always use auto lap when I run on roads, but manual laps on the track. There is an article out there somewhere that explains really well why running on a track is difficult for gps watches, and I've found that to be true.
Brew - I'm hoping my training will enable me to drop below 20 on a 5k sometime soon. Just haven't found a good week to drop one into my plans yet.
Since my run last night was cut short I'm debating with myself whether I should go out for 3 easy miles or so this afternoon/evening. Maybe it's a good thing to do to loosen up before the race.
5k: 20:32 (1/17) | HM: 1:34:37 (2/18) | FM: 3:31:37 (3/18)
Getting back into it
Rune good luck hope you stomach is better. No harm trying a short jog today.
Mark excellent 5k TT as a benchmark start to your year. I could imagine intervals are better as they push you towards a max limit in speed which probably induces more stimulus for adaption. Hope your race goes well and the storm is gone.
Commander american sport isnt that big over here but since we have a kiwi playing for OKC there are now alot of guys wearing OKC singlets over here. I watch all their games and knew nothing about Oklahoma but googled it so I at least new roughly where it is. Pretty hilarious really and my wife says I have a mancrush on Steven Adams lol.
On the old forums i made a fool of myself by asking one of the members ( a lady called Rebecka who lived in Seattle and loved the Seahawks,) if they played in the top league.......they had just won the superbowl haha.
Watson my previous week is fine but Jaime may be onto it as others are having issues. Did you have any manual entries ?
I was supposed to be in a kayak fishing comp this weekend but its cancelled due to big seas so my running wont suffer now.
55+ PBs 5k 18:36 June 3rd TT
" If you don't use it you lose it, but if you use it, it wears out.
Somewhere in between is about right "
Rune: good luck with the race!
Brew&jaime: I believe it depends on your BMI or at least the formula uses the BMI I believe. So the closer to the minimum you are, the lesser the benefit. I am currently like Flavio a fatso (sorry Flav but these were your own words) since my BMI is 26 and any pound less there leads to a reduction quickly and then levels off. Someone else here stated to weight only 125lbs and that is already below the min BMI and hence there was zero benefit. My goal is to lose around 5 pounds until summer. I feel like if I don't run more than 50k per week, my weight doesn't move at all. Which is quite sad but well...I know a guy who claims his weight loss threshold is 90kpw!!!
Me: 4 easy runs so far, all around 50-55min each and together with the "long" run on Sunday I will be close to 50k and about 5:30 hours. Happy with the progress so far of slowly upping the mileage and a relatively calm knee! Will stay another week at this level (5times per week around 50k) and then increase 1mile per day or an additional day again. Feels good!
HM: 1:47 (9/20) I FM: 3:53:11 (9/23)
2024 Goals: run a FM & HM + stay healthy!
That was quite funny when Piwi asked if the Green Bay Packers were a minor league team.
Ha, one journalist asked Chicago Fire's Schweinsteiger if he thinks the Fire can win the World Cup that year Really funny for all that are into football aka soccer.
On a different note: is it preferable to run 2 times per day short or once but longer? For example two times 4miles vs once 7miles? I guess the typical college day foresees many days with dual sessions but I don't read much of that here on RA. Thanks in advance!
Piwi - I had no idea you have a "local" playing for OKC, and it amuses me to think of those shirts being worn halfway around the world. I don't pay attention to pro sports, but it's the majority of the non-business talk I hear around the office.
Mick - I think 1 run is better in general, mostly due to the extra capillaries/mitochondria it helps generate. I imagine that those benefits are greater for the marathon than for a 1/2 or shorter race, though. Then again, I'm no excercise physiologist, so my thoughts are probably worth about what you paid for them.
Watson it was actually the Seattle seahawks
JamesD
Mick/Keen- For what (perhaps not much) it's worth, I read a thread a while back on LetsRun.com that suggested the opposite, at least for easy runs, It linked to a study that said that after 30-40 minutes of easy running, the marginal benefit - I forget to what measure, unfortunately - of each additional minute dropped significantly, so two easy runs of that duration in a day would give more benefit than one of 60-80 minutes. I think the conventional wisdom, though, is that running doubles isn't really necessary until you get to a weekly volume well above what most of us run, maybe 100km/week. Splitting runs in two also means you spend twice as much time warming up, cooling down, foam rolling, showering, changing clothes, etc. Interested to see whether any of us who run higher volumes have tried doubles and what their experiences have been.
Post-1987 PRs: Half 1:30:14 (2019); 10K 39:35 (2019); 5K 19:12 (2017); Mile 5:37.3 (2020)
'24 Goals: consistency, age-graded PRs, half < 1:32