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

Mick - welcome!!

JMac - frustrating with the injury.  We're definitely all looking forward to seeing you back in action.

Piwi - I'm not a surfer but I reckon you are on the money with your comparison.  Nothing like hitting a really smooth run through the trees on a powder day with 20cm of fresh snow!

Keen - really admire your persistence on the TM. I honestly don't know how you do it.  But having seen what winter can be like in parts of North America, I do kinda get it!

James - good to see you are feeling better again.  Takes a while to get these things out of the system sometimes.

Flavio - nice consistent weeks - have you got a race lined up that you are aiming for?

Blair - nice week and interested to hear how the keto approach works out.  It is awesome up here in the mountains and we have had a ton of snow (60cm or so in the last week).

Me - a miserable 30km in the last week but it was all at altitude and all after snowboarding at least half a day!! The powder days really take it out of your legs so I guess it's kinda like the brick workouts that triathletes do haha.  Gotta at least do something with a HM the week after I get back from holiday though.  Grateful to have had some awesome snow conditions here at Big White even though it has been foggy at times.  4 or 5 powder days in the last week which is as good as you could hope for.

All - just a reminder to let me know if you have any races coming up in Feb.  Currently have Blair, Rune and myself down with races.

Mark - I'm jealous of your skiing! It can be so much fun.

Mick - Welcome!

Blair - Nice work!

JMac - Good luck with the foot!

Piwi - Sounds like surfing is good, still wish I had picked that up at a younger age. The plumbing/home improvement is going well, I had to slightly reroute some electrical wires this week and knock a hole in our wall for ducting for our kitchen vent. I think next weekend will bring more electrical and maybe some additional wall hole punching 

Keen - Very nice week! I guess I've figured I enjoy some of the DIY home improvement or I wouldn't be doing it. It certainly brings a good sense of accomplishment when things come together, work when I hook systems up again, and turn out nice in the end.

Flavio - Looks like your training is progressing nicely.

James - Sucks with the flu but it seems like you are on your way back.

Jaime - Nice week again!

I finally got back on track again this week after a couple of sub-par weeks. I decided to compress the workout schedule a bit to not feel like I missed to much, so I had three hard runs, which beat me up pretty badly, at least judging by how today's long run felt. The Bay Area did show itself from its best winter side today though with temperatures in the high 60s during my run. Next week will be tough with 12.5 miles m-pace on Wednesday and a 19-mile run on Sunday so I hope my legs will recover some the next couple of days.

I'm also wondering if I should purchase one of Jack Daniels' 24-week marathon programs for my race in October.

Not much to report on my end, 2 runs of 4 miles each with some pain in the foot. Doctor said I can keep going with 4 mile runs, so I'll probably get up to 3 runs this week and then try for 5 runs next week to see if I can handle just more days without necessarily going up in mileage. My foot did feel better the past few days though, I'm hoping this is a trend and not a blip.

Rune and Jaime - Good to see you guys back from last year's thread.

Blair - It's always the hips! They're my key weakness and cause almost all the problems I have. I'm really going to focus on them over the next 2 weeks.

Mark - I actually really like skiing as a way to cross train. Sure, it doesn't get your heart rate up exactly the same, but it works so many different muscles that you would never get running, so I view it as a good way to take a break from running but still see benefits. I'm not putting any races on the calendar (and you can take the NYC Half off if you do have it up there).

MJ - Welcome aboard

Flavio - Definitely no fast stuff for me anytime soon. Best case scenario is I start adding mileage slowly now. Even with my "aggressive" schedule, I won't be back to running over 30 miles a week for at least 4 more weeks, and nothing approaching tempo or faster until mid March. I'm not going to push this coming back.

Piwi - Do you find surfing does a good job on your legs? I imagine it's a good quad workout.

Keen - 55 miles on a treadmill is absurd. I find 4 miles insufferable, even if I have TV or movies to watch.

Jaime - The HR seems to correlate with being new to the keto diet (elevated HR).  It's usually around 155-165 for easy runs.  My cadence was lower than usual (possibly because I was going much slower than any regular run?). I'm usually around 186spm and averaged 175spm with this run. I'm not sure of any correlation.

As for keto, I am learning as I go.  As much reading as I did, it's an ongoing learning process.  You are correct: it can be quite complicated when done correctly. And done correctly for an athlete.  Essentially, by restricting your carb intake to close to nil, it forces your body to start burning fat as fuel as opposed to carbohydrate for energy.  If you've ever hit the wall, this is a terrible feeling.  But by inducing it over a period of time, your body begins to produce ketones to assist in making this process much more efficient.  Or something like that   Right now, I'm getting the macronutrient tracking down.  I am at around the same amount of calories/day but the big focuses are on net carbs (for a very active person, staying below 35g per day), getting enough fat (around 140g for me) and protein (around 120g).  Plus the need for electrolyte intake is upped (especially with no processed foods to do the trick!) so I need a lot of extra sodium and potassium.  It's been tough but I'm slowly adapting, I think.  I committed to 30 days pure keto and then going to targeted (which is "carbing up" 25-50g easily digestable carbs before an intense workout).  There's a few elite endurance athletes that follow the diet (the 100 mile WR holder, I believe, and some standout triathletes).  The many cited benefits are something that made me at least want to give it a go!

Enric - do you mean "4:21/min" or is your metric conversion off?

Blair sounds interesting on the new nutrition program you are doing. Ive never tracked my calories, probably why I still have belly fat  but naturally eat well and healthily when my mileage is high. In my 2 marathons I didnt hit the wall but that was down to prior training and sensible pacing along with eating well.

Mark Im enjoying your snowboard activity on strava. Looks like you are having a dream holiday.

Jaime 84kms thats very nice great job. Truth be told i havent been very motivated since 2015 but....I am still running and its a constant part of my life.

Rune excellent job on hitting 40 mpw and doing DIY. When I was running 60 mpw marathon training I never had much energy for household stuff especially on long run days.

Eric nice 50 miles. I find 50 mpw is when I start to hit some good form.

Jmac good to hear you are been very sensible with this injury. Surfing does very little for your legs as you may only stand for a few secs but having strong legs helps for foot pressure and carving turns etc. A typical surfer build is short with strong shoulders, back, chest, from all the paddling etc ( im talking about the top in the world guys ) but there are exceptions like in running. I watch the world tour surfing and many of the men are around 170 cm 5'7 and 68kgs 148lbs which is basically what I am.

Heres my last week pretty light. All runs from home and mostly progressive starting at 5.30/km and ending at around 4 min/km.

Weekly Summary
Monday, Jan 22, 2018 thru Sunday, Jan 28, 2018

I used the Daniels plan and it was good fun. I had to recreate it in Excel though since all the different paces and acronyms are tough to memorize. There is an excel spreadsheet floating around online that calculates the paces automatically after entering things like age gender height weight max hr and last pr over the goal distance. It gives you the repitition / interval / threshold / recovery / easy / stride / you name it pace as well as lactate thresholds and so on. I was only averaging like 30mpw and thought it was tough particularly phase 3. But at 55mpw it should be absolutely ok. Good luck!

MIck & JMac - Thanks for the input! I don't have an issue with marathon pace runs, but I do wish I could find that spreadsheet! There's no way I can remember the different workouts on my own, so I spent the last hour or so creating the quality workouts in Garmin Connect, copying them to the Garmin calendar, then pushing them all to my watch. I have to keep track of these somehow, though a quick glance at my phone will suffice for anything that isn't quality related.