Help me get to a 1:11 half-marathon by this November

call up Alberto and buy up his centro sauce

you're gonna need a lot

You need to increase your aerobic threshold. You do this by doing 3 long runs per week at threshold pace, whatever that happens to be for you on any particular day. It's simply the fastest even pace you can maintain for the length of time you're running. Don't worry if it's slow to start, it will improve. Include some 5k races / time trials in your schedule for the first few months and work on getting your time down. Include a session of 2-3 x 1 mile repeats for speed. Run the other 2 sessions as recovery runs, but run them at threshold pace if you feel good. Do this until august and see if you can get your 5k pace down to 15 min. If so, you should be able to peak for a 71 hm in November.

hr 2 wrote:

Alright, I'm making a serious comeback this year and would like to put everything I got into the next 10-month training cycle. But I know training hard is only half the battle, I need smart letsrun input.

I'm 30 years old, runner since high school

I'm in 18:50 5K shape right now (based off a recent race)

PRs

4:41 road mile

16:03 5K

33:45 10K

1:14:12 HM

I'm running about 50-55 miles a week after just 4 weeks of picking up running again but most of it is slow, around 8:30-9:00 pace. At first I was really sore but that's starting to disappear.

A couple days each week I run 4-6 milers around 6:30 to 7:30 pace

I can't run doubles but I can rack up high mileage on singles.

How should I structure my training plan from here? What are some key workouts that I should focus on for half-marathon specificity?

If ever anyone was a candidate for Hadd training you would be that one. This piece is golden. Simple follow Hadd's instructions and report back to us. As you have already run 1:14 it is certainly achievable.

http://www.angio.net/personal/run/hadd.pdf

(read from page 11 section IV)

Poster above just gave you the worst possible advice.

You need to do a solid base building before any workouts. At this point you need to recover some leg speed, but not through intervals. Abuse strides, hills on easy/ LR days, hill sprints if you like those. One tempo per week, never pushing the pace or the distance. Relaxed tempos. No time trialing every week. Don't bother with races either. Schedule one for ~6 weeks from now and run it off base miles only. Reassess, start over. Insert workouts if ready. Don't do too many workouts either, plan one peak, maybe two for a tune up race.

By poster above I meant the 'you can do it' guy.

I was kinda in the same boat a few years ago (35 instead of 30). I'd taken a big break from running and wanted to run a fast marathon. Stuff happened and I wasn't able to run the marathon I wanted and opted for a half instead, running 1:10.

It took me a couple years to get it with the first year being nothing but base running with a few tempos and slower interval sessions thrown in. Not saying you can't run 1:11 in Nov. but with your fastest recent 5k being 18:50 it's going to be a journey.

During the year leading up I was running 60-70 mpw with either a hard progressive tempo/interval session and a long run. Distance days were around 6:15ish (if I remember right).

I remember right before the 1:10 I ran 3x3 mile at around 5:25ish pace with 3:30 rest in between.

Thanks for the input so far.

The Hadd training looks tempting. I've never used heart rate to guide training effort/paces before but after reading through that manual it seems like the basic principle is....running a lot of miles and run them very easy....add in a 200m/200m fartlek run...and 10 milers at a steady state

hr 2 wrote:

... but after reading through that manual it seems like the basic principle is....running a lot of miles and run them very easy....add in a 200m/200m fartlek run...and 10 milers at a steady state

Not saying this is you, but many people lose sight of the 2-3 solid, long steady state efforts each week. The other easy miles allow 2 things: fitting in a pretty good amount of miles at the aerobic threshold, and lots of overall miles.

And, as someone who has followed the Lydiard/Hadd approach a few times, I can assure you that after a while those "very easy" are actually as a pretty decent clip. For me, at first 134 HR was pretty slow, but after a while I was having to hit mid 6 minute miles to get up to 134. Took several months to get to that level though, and without a HR monitor I never would have modified the paces over time in the same way (wanted to go faster in the early months, and wanted to go slower in the later months, than the HR indicated).