Forums >Racing>Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2020
JamesD
Another good week, with 51 miles being a new high. It rained just before I ran on Monday, so I went to my usual (pre-covid) trail thinking there wouldn’t be many people out. There were fewer than usual, but still more than I was comfortable with without a mask. Was surprised by how hard the trail felt after two months of running on grass and soft dirt. I seem to be getting acclimated to the summer weather (though Wednesday’s TDP of 155 was a bit much), and when the TDP was only 140 on Friday, I felt strong enough to go a little longer than the 12 miles I had planned. Pleased that my legs recovered well enough from Monday’s & Friday’s longish runs to do strides the following days after my recovery runs. Going really slowly on Saturday helped. Twisted my right foot in different places a couple more times during the week, but it felt ok afterwards.
Have a question about tempo pace on the track. The calculator I use seems to imply that at my speed, a given pace on the track is equivalent to about 20 seconds/mile slower on the road. This seems like a big difference, but if it’s correct, should my tempo runs on the track be about 20 seconds/mile faster than on the trails or roads? I’m using the definition of tempo pace as the approximate effort I could run for an hour in a race if tapered. I assume my road/trail tempo pace should be around 6:40 (10K PR pace is 6:23 and half goal pace is around 6:45-50), so should I try to keep my short track tempos around 6:20 pace? I should be able to do that for 3 miles/20 minutes without too much strain (have done it for 2.5 miles the last couple of times), but I think it would be too much of an effort to try to sustain it for 4-5 miles, and eventually I'll want to do that as I approach my next half, whenever that is.
Sun - off
Mon - 12.5 miles easy on regular dirt trail @ ~8:27
Tues - about 7.5 easy including strides
Weds - about 10.6 easy
Thurs - off
Fri - about 13.7 easy
Sat - about 6.8 very slow - maybe over 9/mile - and easy including strides
Total - about 51.1 miles
12/26/52-week averages - 42/41/36 mpw
Post-1987 PRs: Half 1:30:14 (2019); 10K 39:35 (2019); 5K 19:12 (2017); Mile 5:37.3 (2020)
'24 Goals: consistency, age-graded PRs, half < 1:32
Mother of Cats
FWIW, I usually tempo either on the track or on a very flat 3 mile road loop. Between those two, I've found that I'm the same or perhaps slightly faster on the road than I am on the track (probably because a 3 mile loop involves less turns than a 400m loop).
[note - all this, of course, is after allowing for the 2-3 second difference between a 1600 on the track and a full mile on the road]
It does not make any sense to me that a road tempo would be 20 seconds slower than the track, unless the road is hilly. In which case, the slowness is due to the hills, not the asphalt surface. A tempo on a crushed stone path or road would be slightly slower, but only about 5-10 seconds if it was flat.
On another note - even a 3 mile tempo at 6:20 pace seems a bit aggressive to me for someone trying to break 1:30 for the half. And definitely no for 4-5 miles at 6:20 pace as a tempo - way too aggressive. When I'm in shape, I click off 4-5 mile tempos at that pace in good weather, and that's when I'm in 84-85 minute shape for a half. My 4 mile tempo pace is generally around my half marathon pace.
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James congrats on your new biggest week. My unscientific feeling is that the track is about 2 to 3 secs/km faster than road due to the energy return of the rubber.
Mark wow bloody good return to racing. That is so fast. Were you 2nd ?
My week done at 82kms.
I tried my first faster run in 8 weeks since I injured my calf.
Yesterday I ran 5k warmup then 5k controlled tempo at 3.55/km. It was my first hit out in the Takumi Sens and they were nice and light and fast.
Backed up today with a pack run of about 8. Pace was a little fast but I snuck in 2 slow warmup kms first to get blood into my old legs
55+ PBs 5k 18:36 June 3rd TT
" If you don't use it you lose it, but if you use it, it wears out.
Somewhere in between is about right "
Resident Historian
Nice week, Piwi, good to see you back to some speedier running. JamesD, a new high for weekly miles (on 5 days running) -- well done. I agree with darkwave and piwi that 20 secs/mile is not a reasonable difference between road (even with some small hills) and track. For me, a track may be 3-5 sec/mi faster, partly because of the rubber surface, partly because it's easier to hold a steady pace. That's similar to Piwi's 2-3 sec/km. Your tempo pace of 6:40 for 20 min looks about right. Going off the 10k PR would say a little faster, off the half pace, a little slower. Mark, your 10k PR is looking a little soft after that time trial -- as you'd expect after three months of solid training and increasing mileage. Deal with that after the Aug-Sept races.
Neil
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I'm here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. - Hunter S. Thompson
James - congrats on the weekly mileage high! I'm with Darkwave - there's no reason the paces should be very different on the track or road (assuming the road is also flat).
Piwi - nice week! Yup I was 2nd. The young guy took off with 3 laps to go. I didn't want to overcook it but he had a good 50m by the end so I don't think I'd have gotten close anyway! He ran a 15:05 5k recently so he's pretty talented.
Longboat - yeah, I'm kind of interested to see what I could do in a 10k race with the proper training and preparation. My two fastest track 10k times have both involved minimal taper and no specific preparation. National 10k Road Champs are in November now, assuming I recover OK from the marathon I'll be targeting that race (and hopefully it's not too hot a day).
Me - slightly lighter week due to the race, and significantly easier given the lack of hills now I'm running from the office again a bit more! I achieved what I needed to from the race, which was mostly just to blow out some rust after 3 months without a race effort, and remind myself of my relative strengths and weaknesses in a race situation.
In random statistics, this was my 19th straight week at 50 miles / 80km or more. I've never hit more than 9 in a row before!
Also, the optical HRM on my Garmin Fenix 5S seems to have died overnight. Luckily I've still got my old trusty FR235 so hopefully the battery on that still holds up OK after 2.5 years in the drawer. The Fenix apparently has to get sent to Australia for repair or replacement (and of course it's out of warranty too).
3,000m: 9:07.7 (Nov-21) | 5,000m: 15:39 (Dec-19) | 10,000m: 32:34 (Mar-20)
10km: 33:15 (Sep-19) | HM: 1:09:41 (May-21)* | FM: 2:41:41 (Oct-20)
* Net downhill course
Last race: Runway5 / National 5k Champs, 16:22, National Masters AG Champ!
Up next: Still working on that...
"CONSISTENCY IS KING"
Mark - excellent race. When I saw Strava with 3:06 pace, for a second I thought you pulled off a 31 minute 10km! Nice week.
Piwi - nice week.
James - nice week and consistency.
PRs: 5km 18:43 (Dec 2015), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:26:16 (Sep 2016), full 3:09:28 (Jun 2015)
40+ PRs: 5km 19:31 (Oct 2020), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:29:39 (Jun 2018), full 3:13:55 (Sep 2022)
2023 PRs (hope to beat in 2024): 5km 20:34, 10km 41:37, half 1:32:32, full 3:21:05
2024 PRs: 5km 20:25
My week was ok. I'll be looking to get 50km next week. I'm hoping for 200km for June. My hamstring was pretty good post the cross country race.
Super fast RR:
It was our clubs cross country Mad Dash relay. Six people per team, massive difference in age (e.g. 7 years to 70+ years olds) and abilities. Our team has a 70+ year old starting, followed by a 9 year old girl, a fairly quick boy around 11-13, a very quick 12 year old boy, me, and a (for his age) pretty quick 60(ish) old.
I did a moderate warm up, the first in road shoes. And the rest in my cross country shoes, which are quite minimalist with small spikes. I was hoping for sub 4 for the race. I really had no idea where our team was placing, apart from we were a long way in last place post the first lap. After my final warm ups I was at the start line, a few minutes before the quick boy before me.
I started my watch and took the tag and I was off. The course is quite flat and quick for cross country, except for the stream section. The first 100 metres I was perhaps a tad too quick at around 3:30/km pace. Soon after I drop down through the stream, run roughly 100 metres more then back through the stream. The stream section plus the next 100 metres was pretty slow, roughly 4:30/km pace.
100 metres post the stream I speed up, it takes about the long to kick out a substantial amount of water, which really slows pace down.
I then have a few people in my sight that I can overtake. I'm roughly 3:50/km pace.
The last 300 metres I speed up a bit, and overtake the two ahead of me, running around 3:30/km pace.
I get to the finish line and, hmm, our sixth runner wasn't there! He runs over about 20 seconds later and I tag him. The person timing us tells me 3:48, which quicker than I thought. I had 3:52 when glancing, afterwards I realize that was my pace, and my watch had 4:04 for the course.
Given how little I've ran this year, and my hamstring injuries, and Covid-19 restrictions, I was pretty happy with the race.
We have our 6km cross country handicap race next Saturday, so the timing error is going to hurt me. I'll probably aim for 4:30/km pace next week.
3 months til Masters
I'm way behind on the thread. Going to go catch up now. My taper has been kind of mediocre as baby prep has taken over life and sleep has been less than ideal and work has been super busy. 78 and 73 miles the last two weeks.
2023 Goals
Marathon Sub 2:37 (CIM) 2:41:18
10k Sub 35:00 (Victory 10k 34:19)
5k Sub 16:00 (Hot Dash 5k in March (16:48), Brian Kraft in May (16:20), Twilight 5000 in July and August (16:20/16:25 Both heat index 102-103F)
Sub 1:16 Half Marathon City of Lakes Half Marathon 1:15:47)
Sub 56:30 in 10 mile (Twin Cities 10 mile, Canceled due to weather, 56:35 as a workout)
2024 Goals
Sub 2:37 Marathon
Sub 1:15 Half
Sub 34 10k
Sub 16 5k
DW & others - Thanks. If track tempo pace isn’t too different from road tempo pace, then I'll try to run my track tempos closer to 6:40 pace. 6:20ish has felt right so far for the short ones, but I guess it’s not really tempo pace. The calculator I’m using (runbundle, which seems to use WMA 2015 age-grading tables for the road distances) gives significantly lower age grades to track times than to the same times on the road. It may be assuming track times are run with spikes, though.
Watson - Good that you got back in a race. Enjoyed the RR. Choosing the order of runners of such varying speeds would be an interesting puzzle. Putting your two slowest runners first gave the others people to chase, and the field probably was spread out by the time they started passing others, which could be good on a narrow course. If you were going for the win, slow-fast-slow-fast might have worked, but if your anchor runner didn't show up for 20 seconds, that probably wasn't an issue.
dps - Good luck with the baby & the race.
DW & others -The calculator I’m using (runbundle, which seems to use WMA 2015 age-grading tables for the road distances) gives significantly lower age grades to track times than to the same times on the road. It may be assuming track times are run with spikes, though.
Age grading is based on actual performances, not on scientific extrapolation. The distinction between age grading for track and road times is most likely because you have many more masters and older runners on the roads then on the track.
Watson good race report. Nice to see your club back running again.
DP excellent mileage especially with your busy life. What are you tapering for ? Sorry if already mentioned.
Congrats to Jmac on his fast 10k TT on Strava.
Piwi - I entered Mt Maunganui Half Marathon this morning. I saw they posted a discount code (LEVEL1) on Facebook yesterday that gives a 20% discount. I thought I'd missed out because the post also said it expired last night, but I tried it this morning and it worked fine.
Watson - nice RR. We are lucky to be back racing again. Was it the same stream as in your profile picture?
DPS - well done getting it done with everything else going on. All the best for the baby - can't be long now.
I was feeling great last weekend and decided to skip the doctor's visit last Monday...I don't think I was dumb because this has been a great and pain free week. Monday and Tuesday, it was weird even though I only took three days off. My quads were a little tighter than I had figured they'd be. But by Wednesday, I was feeling great and had a good workout.
My diet has completely fallen off the wagon this weekend, so I feel like trash now. Ready to get back to it next week with some good runs and good diet.
Mark thanks ! Got the discount on the 10k. You have a good chance of winning although I'm sure with lack of racing there will be a good turnout.
My age group won in 47 mins last year but I got beat in this in 2017 by a 51 year old who ran 38.xx although I was in the next age group down.
Mark thanks ! Got the discount on the 10k. You have a good chance of winning although I'm sure with lack of racing there will be a good turnout. My age group won in 47 mins last year but I got beat in this in 2017 by a 51 year old who ran 38.xx although I was in the next age group down.
You never know who will show up! Looks like there have been some fast runners show up in the past with winning times for the half normally around 1:10-1:12. Quite a fast winning time for the size of the race but you have some quick runners down that way. Hell, depending what's happening then the Robertson twins might even front up!