I've mentioned before that Renato Canova subscribes to the idea of "hard long runs" in marathon training, meaning running about 90% of your marathon effort pace for your long runs. I have decided to use a variation of this idea for my 1/2 marathon training. My major workout, which will occur every 7-10 days, will be a hard run at close to my goal (5:25) pace. I have already begun these workouts, with mixed results.
I knew early on that I would have trouble holding this pace for a long time, so I started with a goal of about 1 mile, with that goal constantly increasing. My first run I hit 1 mile in 5:22, and may have been able to go a bit more but stopped just to be safe. I did this workout a second time and hit 1 mile in 5:24 before dropping to 5:28 pace for the next 1/2 mile, successfully covering 1.5 miles just slower than my goal pace. My goal is to hit 2 miles next time out, and hopefully be up to 3+ as January comes to an end. The way I plan to do these workouts is to start near 5:20 pace and run as long as I can...and as long as the overall pace stays at 5:30 or better. This means next time out, if I run mile 1 in 5:20, I can still run mile 2 in 5:40 and still have reached my goal (2 miles in 11 minutes, or 5:30 pace overall). I hope to do better than this, but that is how the workouts will progress. I plan to run a competitive 5k sometime in late January and be well ahead of this pace.
One great thing about Louisville is the Louisville Triple Crown, which consists of 3 races, a 5k, 10k and 10 mile race, each 2 weeks apart. I plan to use these races as steppingstones towards my goal in the Mini Marathon. I will especially put a great deal of stock in my results of the 10k and 10 mile races. I hope to be able to run slightly better than 5:20 pace (33:20) for the 10k, and close to 5:25 pace (54:10) for the 10 miler. If I am at that point for those races, I know I will be on my way towards achieving my goals in the 1/2 marathon.In addition to my 1/2 marathon paced workouts, I plan to make two other types of workouts my main focus going forward. The first is pure speed. The reason I do this is to make sure my legs are comfortable running a pace significantly faster than race pace. In the past I have been fortunate to have a small amount of pure sprint speed, and I want to get some of that back. My speed workouts will include intervals anywhere from 100 meters-400 meters at well faster than 5:00 mile pace. I hope to comfortably be able to run closer to 4:30 mile pace come springtime (and run some fast, shorter summer races). So far I have only done 1 speed workout in my early training. I ran on a high school track and did intervals of 150 meters very fast, and jogged the next 250 meters as recovery. I didn't time any of this, and focused entirely on effort for the 150's. Going forward I will write in some more depth about my speed workouts.
The final workouts will be longer, slower paced workouts that more closely resemble marathon training. The intervals will range from 800 meters all the way up to 5k tempos a bit slower than 1/2 marathon pace. The key with these workouts will be moving, jogging recoveries so the workouts will be constant motion, more closely resembling fartleks. I have done a few short fartleks so far, and I will write in depth about some of these workouts going forward as well.
In all, I hope focusing on those 3 sets of paces will yield great results in my build to and in my first 1/2 marathon race.
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