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

James been over organized is a good OCD to have 

Flavio thanks for that Strava converter. I tried again and it got my latest week and that was on Sunday morning for me.

Zebano - I'm kinda with you.  It's really not that different to the flu.  The hysteria is a bit silly.  One of the handful of local cases was in our suburb.  The family got mercilessly cyber-bullied despite doing everything right.  People suck, sometimes.

What sort of bullying did they get?  If they were isolating and openly communicating, what could people possibly complain about?  Genuine question, because I know people find some pretty incredible things to complain about.

I'd also love to meet someone who has stocked up on toilet paper to try and understand the thought process.  Especially since the same people don't seem to be stocking up on canned food.

SteveChCh: Do you use RunningAhead to track shoe mileage? I don't track shoes in Strava because I do it here.

No, but I have started on Strava.  Since I changed my shoes a week ago my legs feel like they're back to normal.

I did seem to have a dodgy stomach for the first half of my long run yesterday and I almost turned around numerous times, but it started to feel better after the halfway mark.  I did really start to suffer from fatigue towards the end, so I think whatever was wrong used up some energy.

Flavio - forgive me if this was asked on another thread - but is it working on a rolling 'last 7 days' approach or specific calendar weeks?  Looks great and seems to work well.

Steve - I'm in Christchurch next week (and it isn't a whirlwind day-trip, for a change!).  Fly down from Welly on Thurs afternoon, landing around 4pm.  If you're free, we could catch up after work?

Mark - I actually have a work dinner that night.  Are you working in town on the Friday with any potential gaps?

We've got a client workshop on the Friday morning in town.  Should finish around 12:30 and my flight's not until 3pm so could potentially grab lunch if the workshop doesn't run late (which it might).

Good week as I embraced my first full Pfitz-adapted week.

Monday - 9.2 miles on treadmill

Tuesday - 10.3 miles (2 mile w/u, 2x20 min @LT w/4 min recovery, cd) LT the first set was good, and was not great the second half)

Wednesday - 11 miles, endurance work

Thursday - 6 miles recovery

Friday - 8.2 miles on treadmill, w 2 sets of 6x150m strides

Saturday - 17 mile long run (every intention of progressive long run ending at LT, but I blew up...more on this below)

Sunday - 4.5 miles recovery

Total: 66.2 miles

Weighed in on Saturday morning after my run. I ran fasted as I have been cutting calories during increasing miles over the past two months. In 2017, I looked at myself in the mirror, unhappy at 206 lbs. I began to count calories and run a little bit more, purely for exercise, hitting 50 mpw by the spring and finally getting down to 176. I've maintained since then +/- 6lbs. In the fall, I was  sitting around 180, but still didn't feel great.

After Christmas, I was 182ish or so and decided that  I would stop cheating on long run days, where I would easily consume 5,000-6,000 junk calories and offset the healthy eating of the week. So I have tracked and cut calories very well. I would be hungry at night, sometimes denying myself, but not starving myself. I had to get a good baseline of where I am, thus I was fasted on Saturday morning,  blew up bad on the run with little energy.

But, the good news is, I was down to 167.8...my lowest since 7th grade easily...21 years ago. All in all, I am now transitioning myself to eating to maintain, which means I hope my runs increase in their effectiveness as well since I won't be below on calories.

With that said -- anyone have any good snack recipes? I was considering making some Superhero Muffins from Shalene Flanagan's cookbook, but wasn't sure if anyone had any other easy and healthy post-run snacks that hold  you over.

Good weeks on the thread.

My week was 4 rehab sessions.  Plus on Friday, at the physio I ran two minutes on the treadmill.  Sunday was 5 * (2 min run * 2 min easy).  So a little over 2km for the week!

Irrational(?) mental stuff - Dallas was pretty warm and humid, but by far my biggest issue was just that stomach bug kicking in mid-race. Ft. Worth was warm (but not too humid) and windy, and I know I simply failed to adjust effort properly for that. Before the both of them I had a really good HM, though. The logical part of my mind tells me that I've been putting up good training and lots of volume but simply made a mistake in Ft. Worth and that I would have been screwed no matter what the conditions were in Dallas.
But there's some sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that's telling me that my training just isn't right at all and/or I'm just not cut out for this fast marathoning stuff and that I should stick to races in the 10k-25k range. Or that since I've liked the training I should just stick to that and avoid races altogether. 

Keen - Totally understand the stomach stuff. I've found easy running just doesn't simulate the shaking of the intestines that goes on during a race. I absolutely need to train my stomach at marathon pace or faster. Regarding your sneaking suspicion... do you enjoy the marathon training? I think that's one of the biggest factors in people's success or failure. If you have a real drive to race a certain distance, then why mess with that?

Me on strava feel free to follow, or don't. If you don't drop me a message saying who you are or I won't follow you back. My profile has been on reddit running before and while I don't mind strangers following me, giving out kudos to so many people every day actually got to be a giant pain. I dropped all the people I had never interacted with before or didn't know in real life.

Piwi -  have you mass produced those yet? I bet you could make a fortune on the hysteria!

Cyber Bullying??? Over what? I really don't understand. Sometimes people suck.

James -  good work with the 1200s, I find every year I struggle to remember how to pace and once I remember that the workouts get a bit better. 45 miles is a solid week. I'm a little weirded out how having a wet shirt would cause you to stop a run, do you not sweat ? My shirts are almost always soaked by the end of a run.

MRakers - You're taking the Pfitz dive! Congratulations. Also that weight loss is really impressive, how did you run 50mpw at 200lbs? My goto postrun snack is .... pickles! I love pickles and they're low cal and salty which has the side effect of killing off my chip cravings. I've told myself I should convert to eating beats for the supposed increased blood flow but since my Grandma died I haven't found anyone who makes beets that taste right to me.

Speaking of blood flow, I watched Game Changers last night with MrsZ. We were ... extremely skeptical of their repeated use of studies where N <= 3 but I've been considering going vegetarian simply due to the environmental impact of raising livestock. I'm being a bit lazy here having not done so much as a google search, but has anyone found any sites that basically support/debunk what the documentary claims about eating meat being terrible for heart health? Regardless, we've decided to just do a meatless Monday for a month or so and see how that goes.

Anyways here's my summaries:

Run

bike (mostly spin)

Swim

Quality Sessions:

Tues: (lunch) 50 min Spin bike class (after work) 11x30sec FAST, 2 min recoveries. This session went surprisingly well as I was regularily hitting < 5:20/mi for the fast sections while still feeling under control (aka, not sprinting). This gives me some small hope I'll be able to PR in the mile in a month and a half.

Thur - .55 miles in 5 min @ 15% grade... I did not go far enough to win the free shoes =(

Friday.: (lunch) 18 min T on spin bike (after work) 20 min tempo @ 6:51/mi. Tempo paces are really showing some improvement this cycle! I'm assuming that if I can get this down to something like 6:35/mi then I'm in good enough shape to consider a sharpening block for a sub 90 half but that's second half of year stuff for me.

Sunday: (AM) 4x200R, 4x800I, 4x200faster than R.

Great session, my legs are still feeling it. My main goal was to not replicate last weekend where I seriously overran everything but to hit actual paces. I opted for a 40 sec R (vdot 55) and an I pace of 96 (vdot 48). I've found R paces are simply way way way way easier for me than I or T and I've long feared T workouts, so seeing Friday's workout was a huge confidence boost. Last week I did 4x800I and hit the first 400 in 92 every time and died in the second half, this time I nailed the first lap and held pace (3:13, 11, 12, 11). The final 200s were just fun and my final two reps being 35.5 and 34.5 indicate I've got the raw speed to run sub 5:00. All in all I'm thrilled with this workout..

My only complaint this week, is that I didn't even try to lift, but honestly I'm doing enough work the main reason to do so is injury prevention. I'll try and do some bodyweight work in the evenings.

I think I'm essentially going to repeat the last two weeks of workouts at this point just progressing the workouts a touch. I'm super excited for Tuesday's workout (6x :30 fast, 2:00 M which I'm going to progress to :40/1:50). I don't know when it happened but alternations with quick recoveries are workouts I love and I believe they've made me significantly stronger.