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

Great week for everybody! I see miles/km up for many!! fall marathon preparation is kicking in I guess 

Alex welcome in the forum! I am quite often (at least 4 times a year, some times more) to NC (Raleigh) for work. I have always wondered about the the Tobacco marathon and HM. Did you even run it? You are in a great forum for your goal. I am attempting the same progression as I would love to go under 90'. I am with Piw and the others on suggestions, listen to your body, increase miles, get in some tempo and interval and don't be afraid of slow recovery run.

Steve, your winter adventure reminded me of last winter... I hate those condition and hands can get bad very fast. Definitely need to remember coming winter in this part of the world. Hope your hands feel better and you will bring your gloves in future cold rmorning run

For me, I am planning my summer training for the Belfast HM (any suggestion welcome), resting (25-30 miles per week) and listening to my body. I will increase mileage slowly from next week until I am back to >40 and then try to keep it that way. I do not think I will aim to 50, but I might pick close to that in August, depending on how it goes. I am planning to have an interval training and a couple of tempo (one shorter during the week and one longer (above HM distance, with 5 to 7 miles HM pace) during the weekend. I will include some fartlek as well. I hope to hit the 90' this time (even though in secret I aim for 1:27/1:25 I know I might not be ready this year yet....).

I will test my condition for the intervals in a couple of park runs (I am currently running intervals just below 3'50''' per K but they feel easy, so I want to see if I can break my personal on the 5K (19'40''). Another reason is that I need to teach my brain and body to race again. I haven't really raced since I was 19 (I left athletic in 2002). I am running HM and improved my time from 1'52'' to 1'31'' in a bit more than 4 years but I am not racing yet. And if I really want the time to become convincing I need to learn how to suffer and race again. So I plan to train this aspect this summer. All this will be done with a careful eye on injury cause I know I am not as young anymore, so increasing mileage and speed might not always be possible.

I'll keep you posted

Has anyone seen or heard of Flavio? He has been travelling I know but noone has that much vacation??? Not even Rune 😁

thanks piwi! I will review the plan. Just one question: when you say  have the longer tempo capped at 4-6 miles at half marathon pace and put in a longer run 13 to 15 miles in the weekend, do you mean to have the tempo in the longer weekend run (15 miles with 6 miles race pace) or 2 separate sessions.

I was planning to have the long runs in the weekend with (4-6 M) race pace  included. Eliminating the short tempo in the week, would give me the following sequence of 6 sessions (more or less repeated with differences during the summer) :

-easy, interval, easy, mid long or fartlek, easy, long with race pace.

I like it, and the plan is shaping well I think. Now I just need to follow it and stay healthy

I did not hear of Flavio... maybe he is having a very long vacation after all

Piwi - Awesome house locale!
The local running club only formally meets during training for either the local big spring or fall marathons, so they're in a lull right now. I'm hoping to make their runs whenever they're on a flat route, but even then I won't be with anyone some of the time since I may be doing a workout in that LR. In my town running partners are quite scarce - there's actually only 3x other people on Strava in my town (that I know of), and I'm by far the slowest! 2x HS kids (one who ran 10 min for 3200 to finish 2nd in state this spring) and a sub-3 marathoner who just aged up a category (either 45 or 50, not sure which).

Marco - I agree with Piwi all around, though personally I'd add between 6-10 miles at M pace into 14-15 mile LRs every other weekend, with the "off" weekend LR just easy miles.

Haven't heard from Flavio, either.

Hello guys,

 

I'm back after 3 awesome weeks traveling. Unfortunately I got injured after the first week of vacation and took the next 2 weeks off.

Welcome back!

Was your injury "I'm on vacation and I don't feel like running?"

Or, if it's a traditional one, what is it, and do you expect to be running after your illness?

Welcome back Flavio! Hope you’ll get well soon

i  use propolis all the time for immune system and fighting cold and trust me it cannot be used as suggested, to give you an idea , it would probably be similar to use chilli peppers...ouch!

Ouch no way im putting chillies on my vagina 

 

 

This was the first post I read after missing a couple days worth and it definitely required a bit of backtracking through posts for context 

Rune- hope you had a great holiday, the pictures looked great.

Flavio - hope you had a great holiday too and hope the injury is nothing serious, and the cold is better soon.

Marco - agree with Piwi, a 6 mile tempo workout is tough.  Including tempo workouts in your long runs is good if you can manage it though and a nice way to break up a long run.  Overall I think your plan is pretty well-balanced with easy runs in between the tougher ones, and one day off per week in there too.

First off, I'd just like to thank everyone for the warm welcome, I wasn't really sure what to expect when I posted, but my feedback was overwhelmingly positive, so thank you!

Mark- I am actually running my first half this January in Phoenix (Rock 'n Roll Arizona), so my current training plan is to run a couple 14 milers in there. I think I'll play with the pace a bit, run some faster intervals and run the entire long run at a more moderate than easy (Ben Barrows did something like this in his Houston Half training on youtube). Also, congrats on the great XC race!

Marco- Great PR, even if you didn't reach your A goal of sub 1:30, you should be happy with a 3+ minute PR. But don't let up on that sub 1:30 goal, it's at your fingertips. You mentioned that your HM pace is out of your comfort zone, which is good, but your training should make that pace more comfortable for you. You don't want to feel like you're just hanging on for 13 miles, so I would recommend doing more workouts at HM pace or faster (whether it be interval workouts or 1-3 mile surges on long runs or something else).

Jmac- Yes I am attending Kansas State University, unfortunately, my cross country season wasn't the best and my track times were not good enough to be able to get onto the team there. Maybe I will try to make it onto their team my sophomore year. In the meantime, I thought trying out something new would be a great way to keep setting new goals after leaving the structure of high school running.

Keen- Thanks, that's exactly what happened, once I had a new run, all the rest came over! It's tough to start a new way of training, because for the past seven years I have trained Paavo, so the new terminology in Daniels kind of messes with me. I don't really get the R, I, H workouts (both the purpose and the differences between them), so if someone could explain those, that'd be great! I mentioned above that I will be attending K-State next year, and on Strava I see you're from OK, so do you know any good, competitive races in the KS, OK area?

James- During track season and most of my leadup to Grandma's was ~50 miles per week, with maybe about 60% at easy pace. It's a little different because my Paavo program (what we ran in high school), the "easy pace" was supposed to be 45-60 seconds per mile slower than a tempo effort for that distance would be. So my "easy" pace was usually sub 7 minutes per mile, while my marathon goal pace was 6:52 per mile. Maybe I set the bar too low, but with only 4 weeks to transition from racing the 800m all track season to racing a marathon, I wasn't really sure what to expect from myself. In the future, I will likely slow my easy days down to around 7:15 per mile. Good luck sorting out your hamstring, sometimes the best thing to do is just rest up instead of testing it out every few days.

Alex- Welcome, you'd be surprised how much time you can shave off with some quality training. That 20-22 mpw will definitely need to go up, I'd recommend having a base building period where you do most, if not all, easy runs and just focus on building mileage. I would say at least go for doubling your current mileage to 40-45 mpw. It may seem intimidating, but if you take your time building up, and listen to your body, you will become accustomed to it, and that will help your longer distance training immensely. As far as workouts, I wouldn't recommend doing all runs the same pace (unless you are in a base building phase). Once you are past building a base, I think a good rule of thumb is having a long run be about 20% of your weekly mileage (assuming you are running 6-7 days per week).Other than that, I don't know many good half marathon workouts, as I'm pretty new to long distance races as well.