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Maintaining pace in a half marathon
I am doing the Windsor half marathon at the end of september, which will be my fourth half since taking up running last year. I have noticed in the previous races that my pace drops off considerably in the last 3 miles, by about about 45 seconds a mile (from 7m15s per mile to about 8m or more per mile). Is there anything that I should be doing in training that can help improve my stamina over the last 3 miles. My training previously has included longs runs of a maximun distance of 12 miles for the last 4 weeks of training.
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It may be too late this time round but for next time if you can do regular runs of longer than 13 miles ideally 15+ miles at least every other 2nd or 3rd week from about 12 weeks out that will help
Try running the earlier miles a little slower, so that you have some oomph left for the last three.
The overall pace should then remain about the same.
Thanks for the reply guys, it looks like there is no substitute for putting in the miles to improve endurance. So far I have been using a self created training plan of 3 runs a week, which has served me well so far. These are:
Monday 7mile tempo run (about 48mins)
wednesday 7 miles easy ( includes hills, about 52 minutes)
Friday 12 miles easy (about 1hr 28mins)
After posting a time of 1:35 at Reading this year I have set myself a goal of 1:30 next year. My first thought in achieving this goal was that being able to maintain a constant pace throughout would shave of a couple of minutes and be a step towards my ultimate target.