SC wrote:
2000 SC. 3000 was a little too long for me.
I was exactly the same. Now I'm waiting until I turn 60 in four years time, and the championship are 2000m s/c with barriers at 2ft. 6 not 3ft.
SC wrote:
2000 SC. 3000 was a little too long for me.
I was exactly the same. Now I'm waiting until I turn 60 in four years time, and the championship are 2000m s/c with barriers at 2ft. 6 not 3ft.
It's all about threshold
so 15K to half marathon feels great, shorter than that is a strain longer I start to bonk
9000m race.
3km xc then 3km on the track then 3km xc
or the 3km horse race with a partner clucking coconuts.
Half marathon. Long enough to test endurance, short enough--compared to the marathon--that you can run hard, not holding back too much. It's a hard race to get right. My PRs have always come from negative splits, where I managed to hold myself back, warm into the race at a pace (for the first 3 miles) maybe 5 secs/mile slower than the pace I ended up averaging. Get a full head of steam, hold it a long time. Hit 10 miles and you've got a 5K left. A fast half marathon for me always involves 5K effort for that last 5K, if not 5K pace (duh). If I've trained well, I can hammer on those tired legs and not melt down. If I've missed some element of race prep, the meltdown--or at least fade--comes. And if I haven't used tuneup races to get a keen sense of the effort level at which the whole thing needs to be run, AND if I haven't then psyched myself to hurt myself (as it were) and give all, then the fade comes.
Put it all together and you enter that final mile knowing you're doing something epic.
Some folks get that from marathons. I get it from half maratons.
10 miles.
The mile. I love that mile.
The marathon. I've done 17 so far; I'd do one every weekend if they weren't so f*king hard on my legs.
Well, I could not break 28 for 200 so became a XC slowpoke with 31:22 10k/2:26 marathon and retired thinking I was a 'longer the better' guy. Guess what? The online calculators all say my 4:00 1500 is theoretically my best time. If I'd have known, I'd have done more speed work.
When I ran? Probably 1200m or something like that. I had PBs of 1:51 and 3:44, and everything seemed to fall off really quickly on either side of those (51.5 relay split and a 14:40 5k PB). I never raced the 1200 but I always figured I could run around 2:55.
Right now? Probably 300m. Still don't have great fast twitch but playing soccer might keep my aerobic conditioning up enough to last 3/4 of the way around the track.
10 mile if in at least okay fitness. It's all about the threshold, as a previous poster said. 10k is too much under threshold, but so long and painful at a hard pace. Half-marathon is usually too long. I wish all these half-marathons were 10 milers. 15k is good, but not a nice round number in my mind (I think in miles, even though I lived abroad for many years).
5 mile and 5k are runners up
Iamold wrote:
Well, I could not break 28 for 200 so became a XC slowpoke with 31:22 10k/2:26 marathon and retired thinking I was a 'longer the better' guy. Guess what? The online calculators all say my 4:00 1500 is theoretically my best time. If I'd have known, I'd have done more speed work.
4:00 off of 28s speed? Damn.
Physically I think I perform best in the 1500m, but mentally I'm all about the 1000m. The 800m is a sprint, the 1500m can be daunting; the thousand gives you enough time to breathe but is short enough to just get through.
KudzuRunner wrote:
Half marathon. Long enough to test endurance, short enough--compared to the marathon--that you can run hard, not holding back too much. It's a hard race to get right. My PRs have always come from negative splits, where I managed to hold myself back, warm into the race at a pace (for the first 3 miles) maybe 5 secs/mile slower than the pace I ended up averaging. Get a full head of steam, hold it a long time. Hit 10 miles and you've got a 5K left. A fast half marathon for me always involves 5K effort for that last 5K, if not 5K pace (duh). If I've trained well, I can hammer on those tired legs and not melt down. If I've missed some element of race prep, the meltdown--or at least fade--comes. And if I haven't used tuneup races to get a keen sense of the effort level at which the whole thing needs to be run, AND if I haven't then psyched myself to hurt myself (as it were) and give all, then the fade comes.
Put it all together and you enter that final mile knowing you're doing something epic.
Some folks get that from marathons. I get it from half maratons.
I couldn't have said it better.
I find full marathons to be a long grind. Get out a little slow, then settle in around mile 3-4 and hold as long as you can. The problem with the full is if you bonk, it's a long way to the finish line and there are a ton of factors that go into the race (hydration, glycogen, overuse, etc)that vary a lot.
In half marathons, a well trained runner, in good weather, can in theory go the entire time without hydration or glycogen replenishment. Also, if you bonk, it's a lot shorter of a distance to finish.
My first half I was averaging around 5:35's through 10 -- hit a wall around 10.5, making my last 5k around 19 minutes. Compare that to Boston this year where I was averaging 6 flat pace (2:00:06 through 20) and ran my last 10k in 44 minutes.
It's not that my motivation at Boston dwindled, but the effects of cramping and glycogen depletion were carried out over twice the distance.
That being said, I recently closed the last 2 miles of my Half Marathon PR faster than the last 2 miles of my 10k PR... (5:15/5:09 vs 5:12/5:18)