May 19th, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Long Run

Today marked the first day of the official shift in my training to focusing on the half marathon.  I chose to try out a program through runnersworld.com that took in my last 10K time and created a somewhat custom program for me.  It is only 16 weeks in length, though, which means it expects me to run my race on September 6th.  Not sure how I’ll adjust that part of it, but I’m still 15 weeks from that point anyway, so I have some time to figure it out.

10 miles.  I keep repeating that to myself.  10 miles.  It seems a huge distance suddenly.  There had been times in my earlier training where I’d gotten just over 9 miles, but those days also seem an eternity away from now.  I suppose now is the time I should mention that for the first time, I’m changing the constant in my training.  As I stated early on I’d been keeping time as a constant and trying to shift distance to create my velocity.  The new program, though, uses distance as the constant and allows time to shift as needed.  This creates a shifting velocity as well, but it can also mean significantly longer times running than I’m accustomed to in my training.  It also means that I’m no longer fixated on keeping my heart rate in a specific zone.  I’m still using the Polar to track how I handle the running, but the goal now is to see how my cardiac system responds under these kinds of stresses.  The thing that really motivated me to use this program was that it actually said that at the end of this program, I’d be able to run my half marathon in 1:35:37.  That’s 38 seconds slower than I want as my goal anyway, so it definitely puts me in the right spot and if I tweak it just a tad, I might be able to make my target on the first try.

Housekeeping:  10.25 miles in 1:26:48 for a pace of 8:56 per mile, 1234 calories.  Now, the target pace was 8:46 for 10 miles.  That’s 6.84 miles per hour and treadmills only increment in 10ths of a mile.  That means I probably should have set the pace at 6.9.  I ran the first half mile at 10:00 per mile or 6.0 MPH.  I then ran the next 55 minutes at 8:34 or 7 MPH and then went down to 8:49 per mile or 6.8 MPH for the remaining run.  Once I’d crossed 10 miles, I slowed to 15:00 per mile or 4 MPH and then 20:00 per mile or 3.0 MPH until I had made the last .25 miles.  For the 10 miles, my pace was a 6.88 mile per hour average, or just faster than my target of 6.84.  A lot of math involved to get to that point, and I’ll skip those details, but for the first time I actually had to get out a spreadsheet to figure out if I’d made my target.  Thankfully, I did.  I had to adjust the incline, and I’m ambivalent as to whether or not that was cheating.  I was struggling and I wasn’t going to slow down but I had to do something to attempt to get my heart rate to slow even a bit.  I still wound up running 45 minutes in zone 4, which means it was all carbohydrates for energy and that I’ll have lactic acid soreness tomorrow.  I was more annoyed that twice during the run, my monitor dropped off, saying it no longer could read my heart rate and that caused me to pause the run long enough to readjust the strap.  Sometimes, I think the equipment is more hassle than it is worth.  Still, it helps me get a handle on what I’m doing to my body and I believe it will keep me from killing myself.

I am also weighing whether or not I should just adjust my workout to indicate that I need 5 minutes or a half mile of warm up and a quarter mile of cool down.  The program never mentions it unless it intends for me to include it in the run mileage totals.  Hard to say.  I do know I could probably adjust the warm up pace a bit which would allow me to run a bit slower at the end and still keep my total pace, but that also won’t get me that extra 37 seconds I’m hoping to shave off.  All hard to say.  I just know that I do have the physical ability to run 10 miles.  I also know that while I didn’t anticipate it, as I start adding in my strength training on easy run days, I’m going to have to adjust my diet.  In theory, I should have had almost 4000 calories today and I’m just not prepared to eat like that yet.  I also realize that unless things change, I’m cooking a LOT of carbohydrates, which means I’ve got to take in more.  That should be an interesting challenge.

Cheers!