My goal is to run a sub 1:20 half marathon and my coach says that that's a speed every athletic guy under 40 can run without doing any fast workouts. All you need in his opinion is the aerobic engine developed through lots of easy running and twice a week progressing a run to aerobic threshold (marathon pace) for the last 3 or 4 miles.
Should I just trust his advice or do something else in my own time?
Throw on some wind sprints and that's basically Lydiard marathon phase.
I would call 4 miles at marathon pace a workout. But no, assuming your marathon pace is slower than your half marathon pace. If you want to run 13 miles is 6 minute pace, you're not going to get there by running 4.miles at 6:20 pace twice a week. That's just math.
You should at least be able to do 6 miles at marathon pace and 4 miles at half marathon pace and have some running faster than that. Strides and hill repeats would suffice.
BTW how much do you pay this coach?
Hhhhhhhhh wrote:
My goal is to run a sub 1:20 half marathon and my coach says that that's a speed every athletic guy under 40 can run without doing any fast workouts. All you need in his opinion is the aerobic engine developed through lots of easy running and twice a week progressing a run to aerobic threshold (marathon pace) for the last 3 or 4 miles.
Should I just trust his advice or do something else in my own time?
So your coach would have you never run faster than marathon pace?? That's just dumb for so many reasons.
You would be an idiot not to include race-pace running in your training for any event.
1:19 is my PR. I didn't do any speed work on the track, but I did a lot of progression runs 6-10 miles where I would speed up from 7 min mile to just under 6 min mile.
You don't need speedwork but you need some faster mileage.
At the recreational level, getting faster at shorter distances usually means you will get faster at longer distances too. So I say some 800-mile reps at 5k-10k pace are still very helpful.
At the very least do some strides after your runs.