What could I run for a half marathon after xc season is over (without training specifically for the distance at all)?

ya..... wrote:

Tempo pace is defined as a pace you could hold for a 60 minute race. So if you ran 6:11 pace for a 4 mile tempo, then you should be able to run 6:20 pace for a half marathon.

This is a terrible way to figure it out.

If you can run 6:20 pace for a HM, THEN you should do your tempo at that pace. It doesn't work the other way around because it's easy to go too fast on a tempo run. It's not a race or a 'test' of fitness.

Anyways all that said, my best HM is 1:23 and I was in about the same or slightly better shape than OP. So that would be a good goal.

SMJO wrote:

Why would someone run a half so tentatively? Running 30 seconds per mile slower than potential for the first miles is ridiculous racing advice.

Run the first mile a little slower until fully warmed up and then get a move on. Who cares if the last few miles are tougher. It's a half, not a full.

You must be one of the 97% of the idiots who always go out too fast and I dust off the last half of the race.

If you plug 1:25 into McMillan, her workouts match up almost exactly. If you punch in 6:11 pace for a 1:21, she has not come close to running any workouts that would predict that time. If she goes out at 6:11 pace and is really in 1:25 shape, she will last until between 11k and 12k. That last 9k would be pretty ugly.

When I ran 6:24 pace for a half, my first 3 miles were 6:35, 6:38, and 6:27. My last 3 were 6:24, 6:21, 6:05 (slight downhill). My middle 7 avg exactly 6:24.

When I ran 1:19 a few years ago(6:02 pace), my first 3 miles were 6:15, 6:11, 6:05 and my last 3 were 5:59, 5:52, 5:47 The middle 7 averaged 6:02 pace.

Based on my further research I will amend my suggestion to the first 3 miles being 6:40, 6:40, 6:35. The middle seven should average 6:30 and the last 3.1 should be run near 6:20 pace. If I have time tomorrow, I will give some formulas to figure the pace to run your fastest race possible at different distances.

Guy that I ran with in college hopped into a marathon after XC season, and he ran 2:20:28.

1:25

the race guru wrote:

SMJO wrote:

Why would someone run a half so tentatively? Running 30 seconds per mile slower than potential for the first miles is ridiculous racing advice.

Run the first mile a little slower until fully warmed up and then get a move on. Who cares if the last few miles are tougher. It's a half, not a full.

You must be one of the 97% of the idiots who always go out too fast and I dust off the last half of the race.

. . .

Based on my further research I will amend my suggestion to the first 3 miles being 6:40, 6:40, 6:35. The middle seven should average 6:30 and the last 3.1 should be run near 6:20 pace.

Agree with "race guru" in this case.

Different things work for different people. My pacing advice to this woman and target time of 1:25 were based on the information she provided--in particular, the way she's been accelerating through many of her training sessions. An accelerating pace in the half seemed like a good match.

Some people/situations are better off taking the approach that "SMJO" advocates. I didn't think that was the case here.

If you want a better answer than my simple (1:25), I'll go ahead and give you one.

The 6 x k seems to indicate to me that you are in about 18:20-18:40 shape. This range indicates 1:24:30-1:25 half marathon performance for the reasonably strong / distance oriented runner.

Comparing your 4 mile tempo time and your 6 mile tempo time, there is too much of a drop off to really call the 4 mile effort a true tempo effort. So, that rules out any capacity that you could go 6:15/6:20 for a 1/2 marathon.

The biggest indicators of 1:25:00 to me are the 6 mile tempo and the 13 mile long run with the fast finish. Since you said you ran big negative splits on the 6 mile tempo run, I'm going to assume that you could probably take the 6 mile tempo out to 8 or 10 miles and still keep it at roughly 6:30 pace.

With the capacity to do 8-10 mile tempos at 6:30-6:35 pace, I'd say you were easily on the verge of breaking 1:25 and it is a good goal for you.

With the long run, nothing really special, but if you can run 12:40 after 11 miles of solid running, it just indicates good strength to me.

1:25:00

--> lengthen your tempos to be sure.

Update, today our team had a long run and I averaged 6:55 pace for the first 13 miles (ran 14 total but took the last mile slow in like 8 minutes for a cool down). That included a fairly slow first mile and a couple other miles that were slower due to going through some rough trails when it was still dark. Threw in a 6:19 and 6:23 in the later miles, along with lots of miles in the 6:30s and 6:40s. Certainly not an easy long run, but not too terrible either. Felt tired and was running pretty hard by the end, but wasn't in pain or really going all out.

Well, I did run the half marathon today, and let's just say it...didn't exactly go as planned. I ended up running 1:27:40. There were a couple reasons for this, mainly (1) I was really stupid and went out too fast in the first 5 miles because it felt so easy at the time, then died; (2) the conditions were just about as bad as possible- 75 degrees, humid, and windy; and (3) my legs were still not recovered from running in our regional xc meet 2 days before (Friday), which I wasn't sure I'd be competing in when I originally posted this thread. All in all not what I hoped for but honestly not that surprising when I think about the above factors in hindsight, plus the fact that I'm not specifically trained for half marathons, thus the going out too fast and dying. Based off of some of the long runs I'd done recently and the effort associated with them, though, it seems that under ideal conditions I should've been fit enough to go out at the pace I did and not suffer nearly as badly or as soon as I did as a result. That makes me think that the bad weather and even more importantly the fatigue from a hard 6k xc race led to me not being able to race up to full potential today. But it was still a PR for me over the half I did senior year of HS, and obviously I wasn't treating it super seriously, so all I can say is that I went out and gave it my all and today that just wasn't quite enough to live up to what I had hoped for (1:25ish).

Those three factors mean that you cannot assume that you would not have realistically expected to run the target time. In fact, If it were cool and you had not raced on Friday, that fast start might have only been slightly aggressive and part of a 1:23-24 time.

I say go do something similar again. Plus, as you get older, you will likely gain strength for going long. Finally, since you were tapped out for the triplet of reasons, you probably still have a good long race in your training legs after enough time to recover (and this will give you some training and some practice on obtaining the right pace.

No mention of your pr's!

Congrats! I think 1:25 was a realistic time based on your fitness, but sorry the weather didn't play in to your favor.

Thanks guys, I'm toying with the idea of running another one in December off of winter base training, so maybe I'll get another shot at it then.

I've learned something important from this thread. If you want lots of helpful responses to your question, make sure you add the word 'girl' to the end of your login name.

I was thinking the same thing, Runner dude girl. As for the half-marathon, assuming you ran pretty hard at the regional race, I think that's a pretty solid time for the half, but do you think it's a great idea to be doing such a long race only a few days after XC ended?

I know a way to get even more better advice.