Sub 1:30 half marathon in 2017 (Read 323 times)

What kind of breathing rhythm do you guys prefer? I was reading Daniel's running formula and it seems he commends an inhale every 2 strides, exhale every two or possibly 3/3 for longer distances. I have never really tried to count or be fully aware of this. It is a bit tough co-ordinating at first. I find my stride count in my head off sometimes when concentrating too much on breath but then find myself holding my breath or breathing awkwardly when focusing too much on on stride count. I'd been counting every other stride so when my right foot hits the ground but I kept messing up.and was concentrating too much on my right foot strike. Started counting each footstrike 1-2-3-4,  inhaling on 1, exhaling on 3. Or I do 1-2-3, 1-2-3, alternating inhale/exhale on 1. But like I say, I am having issues concentrating enough to do this for long. Any tips? Does it eventually become natural without much need for counting?

Rune - Good luck!

Blair - For what it's worth, Runner's World's Budd Coates notes that a consistent 2/2 or 3/3 pattern means that you're always landing on the same leg when you finish your exhale, which he says puts much more stress on that leg.  He argues for 3/4, 2/3, and 1/2 for easier, medium, and hard runs (or maybe 4/3, 3/2, and 2/1, I forget whether he wants more strides on the inhale or the exhale).  I've tried that a few times but have never gotten to where it's second nature.

Here's my week.  Race report will come later today when I have time.

Sun - off

Mon - 4.2 miles easy & sluggish

Tues - 2.6 easy including four strides, stopping every half-mile for exercises

Weds - off

Thurs, 2.8 including 1 @ 6:35

Fri - off

Sat - 13.9, including half marathon at 1:31:53

Total - 23.5 miles

8-week average - 26 mpw

Blair / Piwi- I've never really thought much about breathing, I just tend to let it flow.  Other than trying to ensure I'm not breathing too shallow of course.

Piwi - awesome elevation.  I did a long run on Sunday and included a climb up Gills Rd which is a long, nasty one.  I normally do that loop from home in the other direction, so I've always run down it in the past rather than up.  ~120m climb over 3km.  It was horrible.

Blair - nice week.  Treadmill workouts are tough mentally, not a lot to distract you from the grind.

Me- back to work this week with some fun sessions including a decent tempo block and a good track session on Saturday.  Will probably stay around this level for the next couple of weeks and then maybe do a mini-taper before the Omaha HM.  Body is almost back to normal after the marathon and it'd be nice to finish the year with a good race.

M: 12km easy

T: weights, spin bike

W: 17.7km mostly easy

Th: 13km incl. 10km tempo building from 3:50/km to 3:40/km

F: weights

S: 9.4km track session incl. 5 x 800m / 200m rest

S: 21km easy

Total: 73.3km

Too-Long Race Report - Soldier Half Marathon, Nov. 18, Columbus, GA

This is my annual goal race in my hometown, a military-themed half & full that usually attract around 1,500.  The number of out-of-towners adds to the atmosphere, and we had runners from 35 states, which seems like a lot for a race this size.  There aren't too many competitive people, though - the half usually has 10 or so under 1:30, and 2:50 wins the full some years.  I enjoy the variety & tranquility of the course, which starts & ends at a large infantry museum and includes several miles on Ft. Benning army base.  I think there's only one large sign on the entire course, and no billboards.  Since it's sort of like a three-looped figure 8 with the museum in the middle, spectators can see runners at the 1-mile and 7-mile marks as well as the start & finish, or they can hang out in the museum if the weather's bad.

The temperature when my wife, our son (who volunteered), & I arrived was in the high 40s (8-9 C), but it felt colder, maybe because it was very humid.  Although I was bundled up, my teeth were chattering as we cleared security.  I warmed up with lots on, then gave my wife my heavy shirt/cap/gloves at the starting line.  I started slowly as usual and let others run the first half-mile too fast.  I don’t wear a watch in races, but I was behind the 3:25 (7:54/mile) pacer for the first quarter-mile.  A friend who had said he was just hoping to go under 1:35 (though he did wind up just below 1:30) got ahead of me early and stayed there, so I was pretty confident that I wasn’t starting out too fast.

The first two miles were on a peaceful tree-lined highway heading to the base.  Gentle inclines, descents, and curves on this stretch kept things from being boring as we sorted out our paces, but they weren’t difficult.  Smiled at my wife as I passed her for the first time.  While I was running steadily with my friend Eduardo before the 1-mile mark, I started to have a cramp in the lower left of my stomach, where I don’t think I’ve ever had one.  I eased up, hoped it wouldn’t get worse, and let him move ahead.

For nearly all of the third mile, a bike path with a gradual steady hill took us between lots of trees and 8-foot cattails, and the scenery was very pretty & calming.  The cramp was worsening, but I didn’t have trouble with the hill itself, just felt like I was easing my way up without too much effort or speed.  For the next couple of miles, as we passed parachute jump towers and military buildings, lots of the people running with me and sometimes passing me were huffing & puffing while I was breathing pretty easily.  I tried pressing the cramp several times without much success.  At some point it left the lower left and reappeared in the upper right of my stomach near the lowest rib, where I had a bad cramp at last month’s 15K.

During the fifth mile, I stopped three or four times to stretch and press my stomach, and I walked for a while once.  It didn’t seem to help much, but knowing that several of you were following me did help me not to drop out at that point, so thanks.  Decided to keep going and at least get some training value out of the run since I hadn’t done a long run in almost three weeks.

I gradually eased back in, but it felt sort of disorienting running slower than my race pace, like, “I’m with people who are racing, but this isn’t what a race is supposed to feel like.”  While I was returning on an out & back section of a tree-lined street with lots of old officer houses, Eduardo’s wife yelled to me from the outbound section, which lifted my spirits.  Soon afterwards, I passed Eduardo, who had stopped with a calf injury.  The 10K split clock said 44:20, over 2 minutes slower than my split last year and about 3 minutes slower than I had thought I’d be.  At that point we started a fairly steep downhill where we lost the elevation we had gained on the earlier uphill, and I think changing my form while descending helped diminish the cramp, though it never totally went away.  I didn’t push, but people started coming back to me, and I would speed up a little when I passed them.

The next couple of miles were on a bike path that went past the museum and wound its way behind a golf course.  When I saw my (Chilean-raised) wife again, I said the Spanish word for “cramps” so she would know why I was going so slowly.  It seemed like a bad idea to use a word that other runners could understand, maybe because thinking about cramps might make them more likely to tie up.  I caught up to & followed for a while a woman who several times put her hands to her sides as if trying to press out cramps in the same way I had earlier.  Made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one, though she told me afterwards that she didn’t have cramps but just liked to change the way she carried her arms every so often.  I eventually moved past her and gradually passed a couple of others who came back to me.

After a couple of miles on an isolated water works access road, the half runners made a U-turn onto a parallel bike path & the full runners continued on.  The two guys I had been gradually approaching didn’t turn, and I was alone for the next couple of miles.  At the turnaround, the 10-mile clock showed 1:10:42.  Making allowances for this year's new clock placement, I figured I was about 1:45 behind last year’s pace, so I was gaining some, and since I had faded badly last year, I thought I had a chance to get my (soft) PR.  Still didn’t feel all that fast, but I didn’t think I could push any harder without the cramp getting worse.  The path back was alongside the access road, but they were separated by a thick row of tall plants.  It was odd to be running alone but to hear through the plants dozens of unseen runners heading the other way, especially when they were talking.

Despite not thinking I was pushing that much, I had three brief incidents in the final miles when my lungs got tight and I had trouble breathing.  Each one only lasted about 10 seconds, and I didn’t have to slow much, but the gasping was a little scary.  If they had happened at the start, I would’ve thought it was the cold, but by the second half of the race both the weather & I had warmed up a bit.  It's happened in a couple of other races, and I imagine it might have been something like asthma.  Seemed like a lung thing rather than a stomach thing, so I doubt it was related to the cramps.

At the 12-mile mark, we turned off the bike path and onto a main road for a straight shot back to the museum.  I gradually caught up to & passed a couple more runners, but I still felt like I was running in about one gear too low.  Final time was 1:31:53, beating by 16 seconds my PR from last year.  18th of maybe 800 (results aren't online yet) overall, & 1st AG.

The bad part of the race is obvious, but on the good side, I pushed through the cramp somewhat successfully.   Also, running the last 6.9 just a few seconds over 1:30 pace and the last 5K at 6:50 pace despite the cramp reinforced my belief that I’m in sub-1:30 shape if I can avoid cramping.  I also beat the other competitive local runner in my age group by 5 minutes, the first time I’ve ever beaten him.  (He's usually around 1:30; maybe at 58 he’s finally slowing down, or maybe he had a tri last weekend.)  Since he only runs one race a year, I suppose that makes me the fastest in town in my age group for now.  That’s my already-too-long race report, but I’ll ask for advice about my cramping in a separate post.

James - congratz on the PR, you barely missed it. Stitches on the first half of a race are new to me.

Have you done your physicals lately? Maybe there’s some mineral imbalance.

Rune - that elevation was super tough, congratz on the PR.

Mark - superb week so close to the marathon.

Piwi - hills are speed in disguise, you’re building massive strength.

me - my week was 39.7km roughtly 24.5 miles. I was on a good groove until the weekend when I went to visit family. The result was no running and quite a bit of pasta and tiramisu.

Greetings fellow 1:30 half chasers from an occasional lurker on the old RWOL thread!

I could use some advice from the collective wisdom.  I've got a local half in four weeks (Dec. 17) which is almost ideal for a fast run.  It's flat and the temps should be in the cool/cold range in which I've run my best times in the past.  I'd like to go for a PR (current is 1:31:19 from a few years back) or at least make an all-out effort to see where I am currently, and I'm wondering what sort of training I can do in the next few weeks to help me at this distance.

About me:  48 y.o. male, running seriously for about 5 years now.  This year has been my biggest year yet based on volume (averaging ~50mpw), but almost all of it has been at slow/LR pace (8:00-8:30, depending on conditions), with very few 'workouts'.  I've also done a ton of racing (6 fulls, 6 halfs, and a few 10-milers and shorter races), but most of that hasn't been all out.  I just finished the Richmond Marathon on Nov. 11th and beat my 3:20 goal with a 3:18, so I'm confident I have the endurance for a decent half - I'm probably lacking the speed, and need to focus on that.  My best half this year was a 1:34:18 on a hilly course in the spring, and that was probably about a 90% effort (it was COLD and I just wanted to get back in the car, so I hustled!  .  I know there's not a whole lot I can do in the next four weeks, but what would be some good workouts to run a good half?

Thanks!

Arvind - holy cow you’ve got yet another HM in.

All - I’ve added all 3 results from the weekend to the board on the first page.

Next we only have Mark December 10th in Omaha.

RJ - welcome aboard.

As you mentioned there is not much you can do this late in the training cycle, that said, there are a few things you can do.

That would include a few long runs longer than 90 minutes and a tempo at desired half marathon pace, the distance will depend on what you’ve been doing lately.

Please share how long have your long runs been on average (discounting the full marathon) and if you’ve done any tempos on HM pace (over the past 2 months).

My initial guess is that you're primed for a sub 1:30 half provided that you can recover adequately from the effort from the full.