I have a unique question which may have come up before, but I can not find anything on it anywhere...
Why does half marathon-marathon pace feel hard for me (after halfway) if shorter race paces and the shorter races themselves are not that bad?
I feel that I incorporate all different paces into my training. I can feel good in a half marathon or marathon for the first half of the race, but it quickly gets harder at maintaining pace after this point. It feels more like muscular fatigue...I lose all strength and spring in my stride (not a feeling of lactic acid buildup). I have done harder long runs and even some longer threshold workouts (upwards of 6-8 miles at once or 8-10 miles of intervals) which I thought would lead to not feeling this way.
Should I try something like 8-10 miles moderate before doing specific intervals at half marathon pace? Would this get me used to the muscular fatigue?
It's frustrating. In the past I've had incredible specific workouts leading up to a half marathon or marathon and could even run fairly fast at 5k-10k (without hardly any workouts at those paces) and then go onto feel great the first few miles only to feel the muscular fatigue build up quickly over the course of the race.
I've run 29:00 for 10k, but only 1:06 and 2:24 for the half and the full.
I also have noticed through trial and error that if I do too many workouts at 5k-10k pace I get fit really fast, but plateau or go downhill after a little while. It's difficult finding the right mixture. In the short term (next few months) I want to run under 1:05 for the half and then focus on trying to train to run the best marathon by next January (at the trials).
Thanks for any input.