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Training for sub 1.30 half marathon
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Sounds like Horses for Courses to me and lot of brilliant runners on this thread. I read that your 5 Longest tuns should add to 100 so it's interesting to hear you running 9 20milers.
The girl I'm training improved her speed massively over a 3 month period when we did interval training and tempo runs. She should have done sub 3.30 but started too fast over the first 8 miles and had bad 16 & 23 miles.
She's the endurance but needs to improve speed a bit more. I think the progressive runs and the 200/300m flat out reps are the way forward.
This leapt out.
Are you really proposing "lots" of high intensity sprints to help someone speed up at half marathon distance!?
Sounds like a massively risky strategy. Some kind of minimal mileage high impact type schedule?
And not liking the sound of 1mile warm ups, especially if the woman you coach is a bit older too...
With reference to Mike's post I'm starting to think I am more suited to speed work and lack guts/effort over 10K and Half perhaps. I did Birmingham last Sunday an whilst happy with my time (PB) I felt I ran too conservatively and may have just had more in the tank,,, my PBs
Magic mile: 5:21 (tarmac flat), 5K 18:59, 10K: 40:06, Half Marathon: 1:32:06
Lol Anthony Morgan! My pbs are: 5k 20:39, 10k 42:52, HM 1:31:21, marathon 3:15:48. I find that generally men are faster at the shorter distance and need to work on the endurance and the opposite is true for women.
Agree with Stevie in that I like a 3 or 4 mile warm up before fast intervals but can get away with 2 - 3 if doing longer intervals.
Mike - that is amazing. Well done.
I'm interested in your lady's marathon. What time did she do and what pace did she start at? A successful marathon is all about good pacing. I've ran 13, all under 3:43 but it look me 10 attempts to get under 3:30.
Aa for the 100 mile rule - that refers to a minimum. However the runner needs to be comfortable with running 20s to be able to do them week in week out. My duration runs are simply 3:15 at a very easy pace. Most of my 20s are run at easy pace with a couple of testers thrown in where I run blocks of say 5 easy, 5 MP, 5 easy, 5 MP etc.
Steve G, (Liverpool fan?) when I say lots i mean may be 3 or 4 per session. Yes its a little bit risky if you dont do it properly because you need to be running i would say 5 times a week and have a really strong base to do this. But the high Intensity stuff won't be done until after a mile warm up, strides and a few miles of tempo. So easly 3/4 miles and she'll be propely warmed up by then.
Minni - the plan was run to 8 min miles and then go for it at the end but she started too fast 7.30 and 7.20 for first two miles and it took 8 miles for her to settle at race pace of 8mm. By then the damage had been done imo. She struggled at miles 16 (8.21) & 23 (8.33) but the others were pretty consistent and finished 3.30.45. We were looking for sub 3.30. She said the next day her legs were fantastic and she felt as though she hadnt given it everything.The Longs runs were easy pace, 9 mm or less, but midweek runs of up to 10M were done at race pace. I'm sure if she had paced it right from the begining it would have been achieved.
Comments please.
Stevie G, "Minimal Mileage high impact schedule"
No we'll be tailoring one of the schedules from here. What i'm talking about is on top of all the normal stuff like long run, intervals etc.
My coach makes me warm up for 3 miles before I'm allowed to do any tempo stuff.
Bet our resident Liverpool fan has an opinion on the matter.
Am I not allowed an opinion?
Of course! You went first.
Sounds to me like more of the same gradually increasing the weekly mileage should be the order of the day. The reasons why - well it's working so far and if you've never been able to string several months training together it's too early to start doing much faster stuff.
imo sets of 400m intervals are a waste of time and done hard are going to get you injured, as will doing a lot of very long runs unless you are very injury resistant. 12 months on from now yo might start looking at the next step and that might be throwing in some faster extended intervals.
I've followed this from afar. We'll done, keep it going.
You've done park run in sub 20 so I would suggest you're more than capable of starting at 4 miles and aiming for 6.52 average. Tag on an extra mile up to 7 say every 3rd week. That plus everything else you're doing should make a big difference.
You can certainly do the 4, 5 or 6 x 1 mile repeats, or 3 x 2 etc etc, I just personally find the continuous run harder but more rewarding.
Id warm up and down with at least a mile either side and certainly a few 100 m stride outs to get the body ready to work hard.
Keep the updates going.
I think 3 x 1 mile would be enough to start off with for a couple of weeks, you may find it tougher than you think as time goes on if you are not used to regular speedwork.