Monday, August 2, 2010

Marshall Half Marathon Training

After completely bonking in both my previous marathons, I decided it was time for a new strategy.  The first marathon I can blame on two significant injuries, but the second one was more my fault for not completing training runs and finishing long runs with a strong push.  I want to do another one and soon, but I need to know that I can finish strong first.  As I floundered through this summer without getting much running done, I decided I needed a better purpose and one that was not a marathon, yet.  I chose the half marathon in Huntington, WV.
I believe that if I can improve my speed, my efficiency and consistently finish strong on long runs, that I will become a stronger marathon runner.  But for me, the way to do that is through shorter, faster training.  I searched out an advanced training plan from Hal Higdon and pretty much adopted it as is.  Here is my plan laid out in calendar form. It calls for 6 days of running a week.  
Three of those days are almost always a three mile run with only one every other week or so coming at race pace.  Those days will also have some strength training built in to help me build the strength to stay strong and maintain form as well as to help me drop some weight.  I have read that every pound I lose should help me cut 2 seconds per mile and believe that being lighter should help me avoid the bonk.
The other three days of running deal with more specific workouts.  Early in the week is speed work with hill repeats or 400, 800 or 1600 meter repeats.  The midweek run is a tempo run that stretches from 40 minutes to 60 minutes.  Then the weekend run is either a long run or a race.  The long runs stretch from 90 minutes to 2 hours and often call for the last 1/4 of the run to be run at race pace.  The races build from 5K to 15K to make the plan fun and keep racing as a part of the program.
I am excited to make running a 6 day a week activity, to spend a little less time per day training than I do for full marathons and to proactively work on getting faster.  My plan lists paces for repeats that are scheduled for 5K, 10K or race pace.  Those paces are paces that I believe I can run now, hopefully, by the end of this training I will be running those repeats at paces faster than those posted.