I need some help please. I am currently coming back to running after about 15 years off. For a year or so I've been pottering around at about 20 km/week and ran a few 10k's.
Now, I'm aiming to run a half marathon on the weekend of 8 Nov and current I'm on week 8 of a very generic training program I got from Runners' World (Run your first Half).
Lately I've been looking at training paces, and it just doesn't make any sense to me. This weekend I did a 19 km training run in 1:40:39 which gives a VDOT of 39.32. This pace felt fairly comfortable to me even though I died a bit after 15km. However, taking into account this is the second time in 15 years I've run further than 13 km, I would still classify it as an easy paced run. On completion my breathing was still very easy with no labouring, just my upper legs were fried. Last weekend I did 16 km in 1:26:27 which yields VDOT of around 38.5.
Now, if I look at the training / running paces specified in the VDOT table and taking an easy pace based on the 19km from this weekend at about 5:20/km I need to aim for about 1:30 HM time (about 4:15 /km). I just can't see myself achieving this as I probably can't do 1 km at that pace. I am hoping for a 1:45 to 1:55 HM.
So, I guess my question is, where am I in this? I don't think I am going too fast on the easy runs, but somehow I just don't have the pop in my body to run a race below 5:00/km. Do I:
1.) Accept that I'm over cooking the easy runs and scale back to 6:15/km (I just can't see myself going that slow);
2.) Do something (hills / fartlek / core) to increase speed and strength?
Obviously it is too late for this race to make any changes, but advice for next races will help (I'm aiming to do another HM mid to end December).
Current training bests:
5.2 km: 26:39
9.9 km: 51:18
In my previous life (20 years ago) I had PRs of 36:36 (10k) and ~1:20 (HM)