Ran first half marathon, did good, not great

You choked under pressure. The next one will go better.

Possible explanations:

1. Your stomach bug took more out of you than you realized.

2. Not enough aerobic development. 45-55 mpw with a 16 mile long run means you are running 29-39 miles in the other six days. How many days per week are you running? If you don't want to increase mileage, then for HM training I'd consider doing the 16 every other week, doing a HM targeted workout on the alternate weekends, and trying to spread a little bit of that mileage out over the other days. Or you could try to bump it up to 55-65 mpw for your next cycle and see if that helps.

3. Not enough quality in training. I also only do one workout and one long run per week, but I do this so I can get quality work (long repeats, progressions down to MP/HMP, etc) in the long run.

Or some combination of the three. I generally find 6 straight miles at HMP to be extremely uncomfortable in training, so there's a disconnect between your tempo runs and your performance.

Keep in mind that this was your first half marathon.

That is always important to keep things in perspective.

There are always factors that can switch:

1> what you ate that morning

2> what you did not eat that morning

3> how prepped your glycogen stores were leading in

4> your pre-race taper

5> the hardness of the pavement

6> the hills

7> the sleep you didn't get beforehand

8> If you slept that night beforehand

Training will prepare you for a particular time. But please remember that the body is God's instrument and it works how it works.

Personally, I think a 1:33 is a great time and at a general 3:24 calculation, it's not off of BQ prep time.

Don't let people tell you it's not a good time or that you choked or anything. People will say anything. Be proud that you achieved a time that was 91% of what you had trained for. 91% is an A--anywhere.

Thanks,

Mike

That stomach bug probably took more out of you than you realized.

When I was 37 I did similar training. 50-60 miles a week (last 3 months), long runs 18-20, same pace on long runs and mile repeats 5:40-5:50. Assuming the course was accurate,I ran 6:06 pace, 1:19:50.

I would think that you could have run 6:20 pace.

If your first 6 miles were 6:35 and you wound up averaging 7:06, that means you averaged around 7:40 for your last 7 miles...you really fell off.

You didn't have unreasonable expectations, it was the stomach bug.

You'll probably run a really good half next time out.

Target a sub 1:24.

Definitely possible. I hadn't been that sick for a long time. It was very frustrating.

When I was doing 45 mpw, my long runs were about 14 miles. I only recently bumped up to 16 mpw with the 55 and 57 mile weeks. I would run 6 days a week. The other 5 days of running were 7-9 mile days. I would only increase a couple of miles a week at most. I've had stress fracture issues in the past so I really wanted to take my increase slow. I am definitely going to keep increasing my mileage though.

I might try to modify my long run a bit as you suggested. As the first reply suggested, I'm pretty sure I just choked. I just wanted to be sure my expectations weren't unreasonable. I like to run 5k's and 10k's and my wife convinced me into doing a half. I didn't feel nervous before the race. Apparently I was more nervous than I thought. Thanks for your reply.

I do not think your expectations were way off. 6 mi tempo at 6:28 should translate into half marathon race pace. Going out at 6:35 and coming in at 7:30ish in a half marathon is a pretty significant positive split. You were basically running close to your easy pace coming in.

You shouldn't panic. It was your first race. Just keep training and try again in a few months. If the second race is the same, then it is time to start asking questions. But a half marathon is a funny distance. You really need to be close to marathon shape, but still be able to hold a pace that is just as close to 10k pace as it is to marathon pace. It is not unusual for the first one to be a bit of a crash and burn.

the tempo runs at 6:28 suggest you could have run faster (unless you were racing the tempos)...

have you done any other racing that can give us some guidance?

Since you fell off goal pace, it sounds like you need to work on endurance issues - doing more work at HM pace or faster.

6 mile tempos are good, but probably you need more.

For example, try 4 x 2 miles a little faster than HM pace, with 2 minutes rest. Or do 2 x 2 miles, then run easy for 30 minutes, then do another 2 x 2 miles.

The point there is to get you used to racing at speed even when you are tired.

Daniels has some good workouts where you do hard work at the beginning and end, with an easy 30-60 minutes of running in between. You should get the book and check those out.

First off, thanks to all of the other replies. I don't want to reply to each one and make this thread way too long. Many good tips I will keep in mind.

agip wrote:

the tempo runs at 6:28 suggest you could have run faster (unless you were racing the tempos)...

have you done any other racing that can give us some guidance?

Daniels has some good workouts where you do hard work at the beginning and end, with an easy 30-60 minutes of running in between. You should get the book and check those out.

I don't think I was racing tempos. I mean, they were difficult but I felt fine afterward. I generally ran a couple of miles at easy pace back home after the run. I'll have to think about it the next one I do.

It's hard to give accurate race times as I have really improved over the last 9 months. My 5k early last summer was 21:15. That's when I decided to train hard and see what happens. My most recent 5k at the start of March was 18:40. My only accurate recent 10k, my last race before the half, at the end of March was 39:04.

The stomach bug is a big red flag. Just because obvious symptoms were gone doesn't mean you were not still fighting it.

Also I'm wondering if you are like me and suffer big time if you let your mileage drop. I find that if for whatever reason my mileage in the preceeding 7 days leading up to a race drops below about 30 miles, I will die in the last third of a race (5k to HMs). 'Overtapering' doesn't seem to affect everyone to the same extent though.

I don't think your expectations were off at all. Bad races happen sometimes and often you'll never completely figure out why.

Good luck with the next one!

Just curious. What half did you run? Was it hilly? Hot?

I remember hearing years ago that: you can never make up on the downhills what you lose on the uphills.

My PR was on a pancake flat course in Stockton.

A slightly rolling course, as long as the hills are short and gentle, can result in a fast time also.

The stomach bug was clearly an issue. You don't die off your tempo pace halfway through without something being wrong.

Someone above mentioned splitting your week up a little more, and I think that's a solid plan. I don't train much more than 40-45 miles a week when I have the time and find that running a weekly long run can really get in the way of the consistency that I'm looking for.

For example, if I'm shooting for a 45 mile week, on 6 days of running, a 16 mile long run means I'm putting in 30 miles the rest of the week on 5 days, or 6 miles a day. The flag there for me would be that I'm not really getting enough work done during the week and my long run is the focal point of everything I do.

Plus, I feel a 16 mile long run for half marathon training is more than you need. I alternate my long run to every other week, and never run anything longer than 12. Then on the other 5 days, I'm averaging about 7 miles with the alternate weeks being averaging 8 a day.

When I run my long run, I usually make it a progression run finishing the last 4 or so at pace.

Your workouts definitely indicate that 6:30 pace is more than doable, I'd probably venture to say you can go faster. I run my repeats around the same as yours and I run around 6:15's for my tempos and recently ran 1:23 and felt like like there was more to give.

...and look, a half marathon is a long race - it's hard to do well in a long race while running 50 miles per week. The tables you might have been looking at assume that you are training correctly for a half marathon. and 50 mpw is really not enough to nail a HM, esp early in a running career.

So the point is that your 5k/10k times might be materially faster than your HM time, until you can run 60-70 miles per week for a few months and prepare correctly for a HM.

Someone earlier in the thread touched on it, but I'll repeat:

Huge choke job.