Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2020 (Read 618 times)

So maybe I need to clarify a bit.

Having put myself through 4 different intense marathon cycles, I have a good internal sense of the different levels of quitting. I have bailed on many workouts in those buildups because I said "I'm just running myself into the damn ground right now." However, right now I'm quitting when things are getting painful, even though my paces are not necessarily slowing down.

To give an example, if I'm targeting 5:45 mile split for a threshold workout, I can literally run a 5:43 on my third rep and say "this is too difficult, I'm shutting it down." In my marathon buildups, I would at least wait until I started seeing paces slipping, and then quit, because my view has always been that if your effort feels right but you're 5+ seconds slow of where you need to be, you're not doing yourself any justice by continuing the workout. Right now, it's just "this is hard, I'm stopping." That to me should be trained through. I think I've just sort of forgotten what workouts are supposed to feel like.

Jmac - LOL it’s so fun when Mark names all the guys participating in the race, who’s behind, who’s in front.

A stark contrast to our race reports where we call them guy in red singlet, guy with the man bun, etc.

You should not dig too deep in workouts, period! Also, you specifically is starting to hit a certain age where it’s very not advisable to do that.

Workouts should be comfortably hard, never race hard. You hit race paces but it’s for a shorter period, so it’s not as hard as a race.

Think of it like this. You can only have a drink so many times in life. We are smart and drink once every week, every 2 weeks, once a month.

Somebody else drinks 2 bottles of wine per day, it will soon be a problem.

Likewise with training, you can only go to the well so many times before it comes back dry. And you should only go to the well during races.

Most likely you’re running workouts too hard for your current fitness. Just back off the pace a little for a few weeks and you will come back stronger. The mind can't go beyond the limits of the body  Also, sometimes you need to go for easier tasks to recover confidence.

I agree with you that the 10K is an excellent choice for this time trial.

Flavio good analogy. I have found as I get older some workouts are too much for me and leave me shattered.

Probably trying to run them too fast based on current fitness too.

I think it's just that the older you get, the less margin for error, due to how much harder recovery is.    High school kids can overshoot their training by a mile, and bounce back fairly easily and still improve.  But that magical recovery eases a bit every year.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in some of my age group peers is that they insist on training as if they were in their teens and 20s or even early 30s, both in terms of paces (especially easy day pace) and in terms of training structure.  They just can't accept that what their body needs and can handle is a moving target.

I got some information on Facebook about Parkrun New Zealand possibly opening july 4th.

What better way to celebrate American Independence Day! 

Took advantage of some really good weather that came in courtesy of a cold front on Tuesday to do a 5k (ok, 5,000m track) TT today. Result: 19:12. The first km (3:49) seemed a bit soft, and while it felt like I picked up the effort for the next few the clock says that wasn't the case (:49, :51, :53). It felt like I was going even slower for the last km despite trying to hold on, but it was actually pretty decent (relative to what I perceived) at 3:50.

I don't know that I could really expect anything faster with only a handful of workouts in the past 3+ months, but I have a good data point by which to judge going forwards.

Keen - the question is, how bad was the suck in the last KM?

Not as bad as it could have been, which I think was a combo of being out of touch with race feel, lack of workouts, and it being a solo effort.

Looking back at the data my HR actually dropped from a peak of 185 after 4k to 174 with 300m to go (then rising back to 178 to finish).

Add in some race day magic along with similar weather and a good course and I think I could probably take down my road race PR (18:54). Still a good ways away from my last TT, though (18:25).

Keen that's a good hit out without speedwork. Kudos for giving it a go.

Thanks.

I totally cherry picked the weather for this one. It's doubtful the weather will be this good here again until at least mid-October!

Mark oh cool on the 10 000m will be a good marker to check your fitness.

Ok Calsbear ran his 3rd 26 miler this week. I'm betting on one more so he gets over the 100 mile mark.

Nice job Watson.

I ran 32:57 in the 10,000m race tonight. Conditions were ok but a bit of wind around. It was really nice to have a good rust buster and it was my 2nd fastest 10k ever. I didn’t totally max out and could’ve probably pushed the last 2 laps a bit harder but didn’t want to go nuts after 3 months of no races in what was really just a group time trial.