Sub 1:10 Half Marathon Training

I ate some crap in the second half, but am taking solace in the 6 second PR. The weather out there is perfect, in the course was fast, that was just the time that I had of me.

Anyone see how the OP did in Naples?

No, SoFlo ran a race in Florida.

Thanks everyone. Like I said, I’m not going to come here and say “told you so” for that last workout. And for the record, since I never posted about it here, I did 6x1600m with 1:00 rest on the track and averaged 5:14. Maybe I could have run a little faster with doing a little less that day.

All I know is that I was very well prepared, although I just didn’t know what time that would put me at. Fortunately, it was over a minute faster than the time I was telling everyone I wanted to run. I never once said it out loud or typed it, but somehow I knew I could get under 67 if every single one of the stars aligned, and they did. I can’t lie that a part of that was trying to prove some people wrong from here that I’d be fine.

Thanks again for the congrats everyone. Good to meet you yesterday morning, Smoove. Congrats on the PR.

Good job out there today!

Congrats to everyone who ran and PR'ed today! My HM debut didn't go as I hoped, unfortunately. I ran 1:11:22 for 7th place. I was on pace for about 4 miles and fell off. It was mid-40's at the beginning of the race and my smart self decided to take my gloves off thinking it would warm up. This would prove to be a big mistake. My hands felt like they were going to fall off at mile 5 and about 3lbs each. Temperature wise it was great weather, but the wind was 14mph and didn't help. I ran with 4th and 6th place for 2 miles and then ran the rest of the way by myself. Too much wind, not enough fitness. It was a learning experience, but I wish the result would've been representative of the shape I think I'm in, maybe it was...

W: 9 miles @ 7:13 pace

Th: 8 miles @ 7:11 pace + 4 striders

F: 7 miles @ 7:21 pace + 4 striders

Sa: 6 miles @ 7:15 pace + 4 striders

Su: 2-mile warm-up, HM, 1-mile cool down. Splits: *based off of my Garmin- 5:20, 5:22, 5:19, 5:15, 5:25 (started hitting wind), 5:19, 5:27, 5:21, 5:19, 5:29, 5:28, 5:43 (all into wind), 5:32, 1:01 for 0.19. 1:11:26 on the watch.

Weekly total: 64.5 miles

Once again, thank you to everyone who posted and shared their opinions and experiences! I really appreciate you all.!

The race left me with a bitter taste, so obviously I want to give the distance another crack. Question: do you guys think doing Gasparilla in February is too close to run another half. Have any of you guys done HMs close to each other that yielded positive results? Or is it best I shut it down and focus on the shorter distances for now?

Smoove wrote:

I ate some crap in the second half, but am taking solace in the 6 second PR. The weather out there is perfect, in the course was fast, that was just the time that I had of me.

Anyone see how the OP did in Naples?

And 2nd in AG, behind a 1:05 from Kevin Castille. You've got some work to do.

All the work in the world isn't going to change my place relative to Castille.

Nice job, Smoove! Yeah, you've got an outlier there in your AG with Castille.

Nice job at Houston guys! Definitely got plenty of motivation for my own training!

OP - the weather can be a b*tch, but you mustered up a good effort. You're in shape, there's plenty more opportunities out there!

Ben Barrows - At the end of the day, you do the training that YOU feel is the right thing to do regardless of the critics on this forum. You were clearly lined up to do something special and you did! Amazing time today! Can definitely see that time coming down as you have plenty of potential.

Smoove - glad you got the PR. 6 seconds is better than nothing!

I had a down week prepping for my Sub 1'10 attempt as I raced a 10K this morning. Pretty pleased with my time (31'56), first 5K was flat with a bit of downhill then last 5K was more up. Was on my own for 7K, hit halfway in around 15'45 then gave it my all on the hilly part. Was good enough to win so i'll take it :)

8 weeks to go!

Thanks. You're sound assessment of my fitnes was in the back of my mind as I raced. I gave it my all.

Ben, 1:06:55 is cruising. Nice work! It seems like you either have made some decent fitness gains or youre built for slightly longer races. Your 5k pr is high 14s right? I think I saw that in this thread.

To be fair 6x1600 at 5:15 pace for a 1:07 half marathoner is a decent bit slower and lighter of a workout than 6x1600 at LT pace (~5:05). Perphaps what you call LT is a bit more conservative than what others call LT, which is why you didn’t feel like that was too much to do the week of a race.

SoFlo, it’s too bad the race didn’t go as you wanted. The conditions sounded sub optimal. My approach would be to spend another 3-4 weeks focusing on HM pace workouts. If I could execute all of those well I’d enter in another HM and give it a shot. But if I struggled I wouldn’t want to squeeze in a second half so soon. Especially given you’re decent but still reasonable mileage. I think looking back at some of your key HM paces you altered or adjusted a fair number of those because the paces felt too fast or hard that day. Given that unfortunately it’s not too surprising that sub 70 didn’t happen. Again if you can string together 3-4 weeks of successful HM workouts I’d say give it another shot but if you can’t I would start rebuilding and target a later race and aim for a bigger PR/ breakthrough. good luck!

Thanks. It’s a combination of a lot of things. Longer distances definitely do suit my physiology and my psychology, but pretty much every star aligned for me today and so many things went into why I ran a little bit out of my mind.

To be fair, I didn’t know I was a 1:07 half guy when I was doing that LT workout, but I did estimate my true LT pace for that workout at 5:09/1600. I had only run 14:56 for 5k, but my fitness definitely improved since then, so I was basing other workouts off of 14:47 instead. So I just scaled the 6x1600 workout back a tad to be positive that I wouldn’t be working too hard. I could’ve run less volume at my true LT pace and been fine, but I really just preferred the volume over the intensity, and that’s what people here were disagreeing with.

Now apparently this half puts me at either 5:05/1600 or 5:07/mile, and I can tell you right now that I can’t do that for LT runs without working too hard. For my 5-6 mile LT runs, I was averaging around 5:30 for all of them (although my last one was in terrible conditions on hilly roads). That’s why I love the LT repeats, because I can manage to hit my LT pace without feeling like I’m racing. I also take everything into account when adjusting my LT pace though, and the biggest one is that my perceived effort is so much higher because I train on my own, and I really think LT should be done by effort and not pace as long as you know what LT feels like, which I do.

So yeah, I’m definitely on the side of overthinking things rather than not thinking enough, but it seems to work for me.

Very interesting. That all makes sense. Nice work!

Congrats to all on this thread, especially Ben Barrows. Judging by your comments and confidence in your training, I thought you would run around 67-68; 66:55 is a great result. As for the race week workout, as I said in my original post, "you know your training better than I so whatever works for you."

The other guys here that ran 71:xx that is still a quality day - no shame in missing sub-70.

Ben Barrows wrote:

Now apparently this half puts me at either 5:05/1600 or 5:07/mile, and I can tell you right now that I can’t do that for LT runs without working too hard. For my 5-6 mile LT runs, I was averaging around 5:30 for all of them (although my last one was in terrible conditions on hilly roads). That’s why I love the LT repeats, because I can manage to hit my LT pace without feeling like I’m racing. I also take everything into account when adjusting my LT pace though, and the biggest one is that my perceived effort is so much higher because I train on my own, and I really think LT should be done by effort and not pace as long as you know what LT feels like, which I do.

Ben, what surface do you do those LT workouts on? I know your last one was on a track but don't you do some workouts on a gravel road? That is going to slow you down a lot and explains the slower LT pace runs

That’s well said Ben. Too many guys base their LT pace on Daniels formula and they end running too hard. You are running by feel. As a coach, I wish every runner was that smart.

+1

You have a lot of room to grow and you'll continue to improve because of your disciplined approach to training.

@SoFlo, That is a solid result. I would call 1:1X a win and about as good as you could expect considering the wind. If you feel like the wind was the difference you might as well try again in Feb, strike while the iron is hot. Or do it just because, if you want to. Sometimes I am guilty of not racing because I'm "not ready" even though I would have had fun doing it.

@ smoove, Nice race. You are ready to crush a marathon. You going to up the volume any?

@ BenBarrows, That is impressive. Enjoy the PR for a while before looking ahead to the next goal.

1 2 3 green wrote:

@ smoove, Nice race. You are ready to crush a marathon. You going to up the volume any?

Thanks. Yeah, I am probably going to peak at about 90 or so for my Boston training. That's where I peaked last year for Boston and it worked pretty well for me. I went as high as 100 for Chicago, and while that was my best outcome of my 3 marathons, it was also the training cycle where I came closest to burning out, and it was as a result of the higher volume. That was my 2nd marathon training cycle though, and it was a big increase in mileage for me, so I think with this being my 4th marathon cycle, I might be able to handle that kind of volume better now. So I have laid out my training plan to peak at 90, but will listen to my body and if says it can handle a bit more volume than that, I will peak a little higher.

My planned mileage totals starting this week, and ending on the Sunday before Patriot's Day (peak mileage weeks will have one workout day, most others will have two workout days, most intense weeks are the lower mileage fall back weeks):

63

90

81

72

90

81

63

90

72

65

63

54

40