I am racing a 1/2 marathon at the end of April, and was wondering if anyone had a specific workout to determine race potential. Perhaps a 5 (or 7,8??) miler at race pace? There is a 5K this weekend, but I fear a race that short is not a great HM predictor.
Do an easy 20km warmup run before the 5k. :)
21km: easy 0-5km, HM pace 5km to 19km, easy 19-21km. HM pace for two-thirds of the actual distance is a good indicator, if it feels strong and controlled.
Are you going to taper for this HM? I personally have felt that if I taper, a good indicator 3-4 weeks out, is doing a 7-10 mile run at marathon pace. It should feel pretty easy. Another is the 5k race, use Daniels formula to figure out projected HM pace.
6-8mile run at half-marathon pace, one week before the half marathon race.
Alan
Assuming you are running a fair amount of mileage, over say 40mi/wk, go and run a charity half-marathon. Keep the first 10-12 Km at a snails pace, hang back and encourage runners who will be running, say, 2+ min/mi. slower than your target pace. From there, dial into your goal pace and hit those times.
Runningart2004 wrote:
6-8mile run at half-marathon pace, one week before the half marathon race.
Alan
Hey Alan,
I did a 10k tempo run @ 6:02 pace last Thursday (hard but not race effort) and I have a Half Marathon Race on a similar style course this Saturday. From what you are saying I'm OK with trying go out at a 6:02 pace?
Thanks,
Shorter Fan
explain?
explain what?
I'm currently running 80-90 miles a week and my most recent tempo run was a 10k @ 6:02 pace. I have a half marathon this weekend and thinking about going out at about that same pace and seing what happens. Looks like Alan agrees with me that I have a decent shot at running that pace for most of the race.
If that 6 mile tempo felt awful hard, then 6:02 might be a decent rough starting point.
I've run 2 x 5k @ HM pace in the past leading to a decent HM effort, and found it to be a VERY demanding session. 10k continuous would be harder.
If that tempo was comfortably hard, then 6:02 should be fairly conservative.
That's my opinion anyway.
Well the 10k tempo was uncomfortable but managable. I'm more of a marathon strength runner so I was uncomfortable with the pace for the first mile and half but then settled into my rhythm and managed the full 10k at that pace. I definately could have made it a another couple of miles but not without significant effort.
It was on the harder side of my normal tempo runs but definately not a race effort and I felt fine the next 2 days and managed a good fast paced long run on the Sunday following (tempo run was on Thursday).
Why not.