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

Piwi - new shoes, that's awesome, I'm happy to hear the wife let you open the box already.

You must be building some serious strength if you are running those beach runs on the sand.

Jmac - I built this nice box for you.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

- * - * - * - * - * -  I HATE YOU   - * - * - * - * - * -

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

While in the US it was so damn difficult because there were so many ethnic restaurants available, I had to try them all (Iranian, Cambodian, Greek, Vietnamese). I really need to learn how to watch my portion sizes so I can still have fun eating what I like.

I come from an Italian family and food is at the center of everything.

I've learned a few tricks lately though. I noticed that after lunch I always crave something else (because the food is boring), but it does not have to be sweet, so I have almonds and apricots on hand, just half a hand is enough to shut up the gluttony god.

I have also realized that hungry me thinks he can eat 10lbs of food, so if I manage to get something in before deciding on what to eat I'm usually satisfied and don't over eat.

Flavio - I couldn't tell you if I lost anything or not, I think my scale is pretty wonky at times so I haven't stepped on it very frequently. I did just have a biometric scan appointment at work to get an insurance discount (checking height, weight, body fat, fasting glucose...) and the weight they gave me was a good 7lbs / 3.18kg less than what I figured it would be, but who knows how accurate their scale was either.

Portion sizes in the US will absolutely do you in at most places.

JMac - I'm pretty sure I can still go sub-90, but the PR attempt is absolutely gone without an unexpected cold front. Yes, I'm in better shape than I was in April, but this course is a bit more challenging and the temp will be 10* higher.
Originally this was to replace a 1E, 5M, 1T, 4M, 2E (continuous) workout. Doing this workout is now more tempting. More by effort than pace, of course, but I'm not at all sure what to consider a realistic M pace.
I'm also debating whether or not to use my planned marathon shoes for this race or save them for a 15M workout in a few weeks.

Piwi - Aren't new shoes the best?? I typically wear mine until they're pretty dead as well.

Marco - Good luck on the relay - I've wanted to run one of those for a while. Best of luck with your recovery before starting your next real cycle.

Piwi - I love new shoe feeling too. Sometimes I think my shoes are completely fine, and then you put on a new pair of the same version and realize how dead the old ones were. I still don't have a great system for knowing when to replace them though besides just tracking miles and ditching them at some point around 400-500 miles.

Flavio - That box you built may be one of my top 5 favorite things I've seen on this forum. My problem is I don't stop when I feel satisfied, I only stop eating once I feel sick because I can't eat anymore. And Keen is totally right, portion sizes will kill you in the US, there's a reason there are so many fat people in our country. I've found that eating nuts and chewing gum helps me. The nuts are healthy and have good fats, which fill you up quickly, and the gum satisfies the sweet tooth.

Keen - I run in my marathon shoes all the time, for any T or M paced workout. I actually think having shoes not worn in enough is a mistake for the big race. They shouldn't have hundreds of miles in them, but they definitely should have at least 50, up to maybe 150. To Piwi's point, we have the KP adjuster formula. For the temps you're dealing with, if your goal was sub 1:25 with great conditions, I think between 1:28 and 1:29 is the right adjusted goal. I would go out at 6:45 pace and go from there. You probably will feel like it's too slow for the first 3-4 miles, but heat and humidity start hammering you later in races so it's so important actually not to run by feel during high temps.

Bro - Bummer about the strep. Hopefully you're different, but antibiotics always wreck aerobic performance for me until they've completely worked their way out of my system.

JMac - I typically run races in the same make/model shoes I train in, or in this case a slightly different model (Altra Escalantes are my usual, planning on using the Escalante Racer). With this I know what to expect from the shoes, so usually do a longer tempo or tune-up race in them, along with a LR and call it good if there are no issues. My M+T LR from a couple weeks ago was when I tried them out first.

Thanks for the guidance on adjusted pace - that's certainly helpful.

It's interesting some people don't train in the shoes they race in. I've heard that you pretty much have to with these new elite racers, e.g. 4%, as they aren't meant to do more than 150-200 miles in them. I like training in my racing shoes specifically because they use such different muscles being flats that I want to get them prepared for the race. Of course, this does wear down my racing shoes much faster.

Mark - I never really thought about the weight drop in percentage term, that's interesting. I've pretty much settled at my current weight for a month now, so I don't think I'll be entering any sort of danger territory.

Me - September was my highest mileage month ever. I ran 268MI/431KM. I remember when I first thought about what it meant to do 70/113 in a week and thought it was crazy. Now that I've gotten used to it, I'm already wondering if I can bump it up to 80 for Boston next spring. The problem above this level is that it removes my desire to run only 6 days a week. I actually have really enjoyed only 5 days a week for most of my buildup, but I couldn't keep that once I went up to 70. I'm not sure where it breaks that I need to 7 days a week, but probably won't go to whatever that mileage is. I would rather incorporate doubles than lose that off day.

Oh and can someone give me a 400m interval workout to try ( remember Im old ) would 8x400@3k pace with 1 min recoveries be right ? Just trying to get leg speed up.

For pure leg speed, you need to A) speed it up and B) lengthen recoveries. So 3K pace is too slow, and your recoveries are too fast. You're sort of in no man's land of not fast enough for pure leg turnover, but too fast for VO2 max.

I would go with something like 8x400 @ 1.5K pace (or mile pace for Americans), with full 400 meter recoveries. The point of this workout as you said is just to get leg speed up, so you should take those 400 meter recoveries as slow as possible since you want full recovery.

Edit: this is a hard workout. It may be too much for you given your recent mileage history (mean that in the most friendly way possible). I would honestly do 200 meter repeats with 200 meter recoveries if you don't want to risk injury here. I'm not even sure I could do 8x400 right now since I haven't done speed workout recently.

Rune - yeah I find people who don't use sick leave incredibly annoying!! In NZ you get 20 paid sick days each year anyway and my firm has been really good at equipping people to work flexibly (i.e. from home) so there's absolutely no excuse for not using them.  Luckily this cold seems pretty minor and my HR and HRV are both back to normal so I should be good to go tomorrow.

Me - actually starting to get pretty excited for National Road Relays tomorrow.  My club, Takapuna, is in the A grade along with 10 other teams.  The variation in depth is crazy though - there are probably 5-6 extremely strong teams and a few like us who just don't have quite the same depth (almost like an A1 grade and an A2 grade).  Wellington Scottish's C team (which is in the B grade) may well be faster than a number of the A grade teams!  Anyway the most important thing for us is actually beating our local rivals North Harbour Bays, who are in the B grade but have a reasonable looking team (I don't fully understand how the grading works but basically they work off cumulative 10k times for each team).

I got the last leg, which has 3 pretty big hills and a flat finish.  I run a lot of hills in my long runs and have had some good races on hilly courses (until recently ALL my PBs were on undulating or hilly courses) so it probably works pretty well for me.  Mostly I'm relieved I didn't get leg 6 (uphill the whole way) or 7 (downhill most of the way). The course is here for anyone who is interested.  I'm not sure we got our leg allocations quite right as we've put our strongest runner on the shortest leg (!).  He (Andrius Ramonas) is an absolute beast who does all sorts of crazy trail runs and ultra's though, so who knows, given it's the uphill leg maybe he'll make us up a whole lot of ground.  On current form and fitness I'm probably actually the 3rd or 4th quickest in the team so gotta make sure I put in a good effort!

I got to Elite frequent flyer status on Air NZ earlier this year as well so I'm bringing most of the team into the frequent flyer lounge with me this afternoon (they were all pretty keen to get to the airport quite a lot earlier when they found out about that).