Yesterday I ran the Lowell Sun Half Marathon - the same half marathon as I did in October 2008. My goal for this time around was simply to build up to the distance while keeping PF and IT band issues under control.
In order to do this, I've only been running about twice a week for the past couple months. That is one major reason for the lack of updates to the blog - any running I've done hasn't been following any set plan. The only guideline I've really followed was to do a long run on weekends and a mid-week run of anywhere from 3-5 miles. For the long runs, I was adding one mile per week. Once the long run was 9 miles, I decided that instead of doing 10 miles the following week, and 11 miles the week after - I'd add 2 miles to the long run distance, but go every other week, with about 6 miles in between. So one week was 9 miles, the following week was 6 miles, the next week was 11 miles, the following week was 6 miles. I worked up to 11 miles two weeks before the race, so that I had a full two weeks of rest before the half marathon.
Initially, my thinking was that I'd have no chance of beating my time of two years ago. I was only running 2x per week this time around and doing virtually no speedwork. However, as the race got closer, and I saw how my HR and pace was doing, I thought that I might just have a small chance of barely edging out the previous time. However, I made sure to keep the mental note to not overdue it and re-aggrevate injuries from earlier in the year.
On race day, I decided on the tactic I'd use - break the 13 miles into three different stages. Stage 1 was three miles of slow warmup, about 10-11 minute miles. Based on experience, it'd take three to four miles for the field to thin out anyway, so this would be a good opportunity to take it slow and get muscles warmed up at a HR of about 150. Stage 2, miles 4-10, would be the meat of the race, and I'd use the run-walk-run strategy. Since I had only been running a couple days a week, my 11 mile long run a couple weeks ago was using the run-walk-run to try and minimize stress and overuse. During the race, I'd follow with the 4 minutes run, 30 seconds walk, 4 minutes run. However, I'd try and keep the 4 minutes of running at a brisk pace with a HR of about 160-165. Finally, at about mile 10, I'd enter stage 3 - possibly (depending on how I felt) treat the last few miles as a 5k - faster pace, no walk breaks.
Overall, the plan worked out pretty well:
Mile 1 - 9:53 avg HR 137
Mile 2 - 10:10 avg HR 143
Mile 3 - 9:21 avg HR 149
Miles 4-10 - No mile splits, I used the stopwatch to track the 4 minutes/30 seconds laps. There was a time or two I extended beyond the 4 minutes, in an attempt to prep for the last few minutes where there would be no breaks, or at least far fewer.
Mile 8 - Total time of (I think) 72 minutes, plus/minus about 20 seconds.
Mile 9 - Total time of 81:10 or so. I remember this because I was comparing to last time, when 9 miles was met in 81 minutes, exactly 9 min/miles. So I was on pace with the same race a couple years before.
Mile 10 - Right around 90 minutes, plus maybe about 20 seconds. I remember this because the mile marker was incorrect, saying it was mile 9 - and I remember thinking that there was no way I was maintaining an average of 10 min/miles.
At mile 10, I was starting to reach a bit of a wall. So I decided on one more walk break. When I took the break, I realized that I was starting to reach a point where the walk breaks were inducing some tightness and soreness. That settled it - no more breaks from there on out - whatever discomfort (note - NOT pain!) I was feeling during running would be less than if I stopped and started again. So I kept running along. As the yards went by, I started ticking the speed up. Although my rate of passing people had slowed down, noone was passing me.
By the time I reached the finish line, I had been running for 24 minutes straight, with an avg HR of 169. I'm not sure of the distance, because I didn't start the last 'lap' at a designated mile marker, but based on where mile 10 was, I believe it was the remaining 3.1 miles.
Total time: 1:55:07
Avg HR: 158
Compared to two years ago, I was about 40 seconds slower. I started out figuring there was no way I'd beat last years time, as the race got closer I thought I just might (50/50 chance), and as I was in the race, especially around mile 8-9, I was thinking that it was definitely possible. However, I opted to err on the side of caution, not wanting to aggrevate the IT band - and as a result the last 3 miles were done more conservatively that in 2008, and I fell short.
So now I have a bit of a dilemma - I originally just wanted to get through the race and begin the offseason of recovering from injury. Since I was able to run the race at about the same clip as last time, without aggrevating injury, now I'm more motivated to keep running until the weather forces me off the road. But I don't know if it is worth it (ie, how much carryover there will be to next year). One possibility is to start barefoot running - something I was planning on building up next year. However, I dont know whether my left foot PF issues would be aggrevated by such an activity or not.
