Hi!
I’m stopping in today with a quick training update.
My training for the next month will be focused towards my next half, which will be First Light on January 8, 2017 (exactly 1 month from yesterday). You probably know that I love races. I typically run all. the. races, but I don’t have any races scheduled until First Light. I’m really excited about the actual training and not having a race every weekend. Hopefully my excitment will lead to motivation to work hard and *hopefully* get a new half marathon PR.
First Light is one of my favorite local races! The last time that I ran the half there was actually the day after Daniel and I got engaged. That is the coldest race that I ever remember running. I think the temperature was in the 20s (which is SUPER cold for south AL). I just remember being so miserable (during the race, not because we were getting married (obviously))! Since that year, I have run the full twice and the relay four times, but have never run the half again. This year shall be the year (Lord willing).
I’m going to document my training here on the blog. I really enjoy reading about the ins and outs of other runners’ day-to-day training. I feel like sometimes we get lost in the daily workouts and don’t take a step back to look at the overall picture of how those workouts come together to make up the training cycle though, so I wanted to start with an overview of what I am planning to do with this specific phase of training.
In general, the specific phase is meant to build on the running fitness that is established in the fundamental or base phase of training. The goal is to bring your fitness to a peak for a goal race by focusing in on preparing for the specific demands of that goal race.
For the half marathon, I will primarily be doing aerobic and lactate threshold (i.e., stamina) workouts and long runs (i.e., endurance). I will also have a few V02 max (i.e., speed) workouts. Here is an overview of the workouts by category for the next few weeks:
Week 1: Speed + Endurance
Week 2: Speed + Stamina + Endurance
Week 3: Speed + Stamina + Endurance
Week 4: Speed + Stamina + Endurance
Week 5: RACE
I want to have a goal of 1:23 – 1:25 (6:20 to 6:30 pace) for the half. That is, of course, assuming that my training goes well. In order to get there, I need to work my lactate threshold pace down to the 6:15 to 6:20 range. It is somewhere in the 6:30 to 6:35 range currently, so I’ve definitely got some work to do!
I will check back in Sunday with the specifics of my runs for the week. I’ll go ahead and tell you that I bombed (not in a good way) my first workout. Womp, womp. It’s no big deal though … sometimes we just need to have to have short-term memory loss, forget the bad workouts and move on!
What is the next race on your schedule?
I run/race to maintain fitness and engage with the community that I’m active in in other ways (announcing, etc.) as I don’t do running clubs real well (overstimulation being an introvert) nor have any major goals that I just HAVE to achieve. My racing is always a function of what else I’m doing on a given weekend and where I’ll be. I just enjoy being able to go out and put together a decent half for me (2:15 or so at almost 50) whenever I wish. If I do a half next Sunday in Galveston, I may do another tomorrow in Lake Charles, La. or Temple just to be ready. 🙂
I love that running and racing can have a different look and different meaning to each and every runner. I know that you travel for races a good bit and that is something that I would truly love to do as well. I think it’s awesome to maintain a base fitness level and be able to jump into a half anytime that you want to and it works for your schedule! Keep it up!
Good luck Sam! It’s okay to bomb a workout sometimes, it happens. I have done it before too. I have a half marathon the Saturday after yours and am just glad that I might actually be able to RUN the race let alone race with a goal in mind. I took a month off running races and came back a lot stronger because I wasn’t recovering or preparing for a race all the time, so it may really help you to race a little less (plus, probably not a ton between now and then, with the holidays and all). Keep us posted on how it goes so I can use your workouts when I train for a half marathon for real in March ;).
I’m glad that you have come back stronger! Not being able to run certainly has a way of making us appreciate the times that we are able to run. I’m glad that you are going to be able to run your half in January!
Haha, I hope I will come back stronger. I haven’t necessarily come back yet to know. I did come back stronger from a stress reaction I had in 2014, though. Any run sure beats injury!
Way to be positive! I’m interested in hearing how all your workouts go. I like that you put your goal out there and now get to be accountable. It’s inspiring.
Thank you! I sometimes shy away from posting goals, but I don’t know why. No one really cares one way or the other (as far as if you reach the goal or not … it’s the process that is interesting). Transparency is what I appreciate in other people so I figure that I might as well be transparent too!