Half Marathon Trainers

1

HM pacing (Read 251 times)

    I haven't been able to stick to my training schedule lately, so I combined some "tempo" work with my long run today to experiment with paces for next week's HM. I'm wondering what my pace should be-- my goal was a 1:45 (8 min/mile), but I'm not sure if that's possible at this point. My run today was on about the same terrain as the race will be. Here are my mile splits: 1 8:42 easy warmup pace 2 8:26 3 8:38 4 8:40 5 8:28 starting to push it a little 6 8:27 7 8:22 8 8:05 effort around 8/10 9 8:27 made myself slow down and not overdo it 10 8:26 I'm thinking 8:15ish for race pace?
      You're working with about the same difference between training pace and race pace as I was. My training has been 9:30-9:45 with occasional shorter runs between 8:30 and 9:00. [I don't bother figuring splits anymore as I generally will just have hard, moderate or easy runs.] My actual pace for the 13.1 was 9:15.

      Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end. (RF)

        John, Do you think if you ran with other people they would have pushed you to go faster? That's what I'm unsure about -- this will be my first race in over a year.
          Without a doubt---either to my benefit or to my detriment. When I used to race I would always find my pace much faster than planned and unless I disciplined myself to stay with my plan, I would fall apart by the end. Yesterday I think I was right on track. If I HAD pushed harder or if I had let other runners push my time, things would have slowed by the end of the run. John

          Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end. (RF)

          bas


            I don't have Johns long experience, but out of the four HM's I ran I was overdoing it in the first three, with the results John described. It is really difficult to race a long distance well. I also found in every race I did so far that my pace there tends to be faster than when I am training, and not only in the races where I started out too fast. I will try for my HM in October (and for the 10 mile race I will run next week) to make a plan in advance and try to stick to it during the race, unless it turns out to bee too ambitious (not unlikely) or not ambitious enough (highly unlikely). bas

            52° 21' North, 4° 52' East