I looked back at my blog at one point and noticed I started talking about this stupid goal of a (sub) 2 hour half marathon back in like 2014. Very shortly after that I set a new personal record at IMS of 2:07:10. People I talked to about it in real life seemed to think this was an achievable goal for me. But so far this season, I’ve ran 2 half marathons and didn’t come close – 2:10 in November and 2:18 last weekend. This is starting to not be fun anymore.
I hired an online coach this year thinking that was the missing piece to my training, to get me where I wanted to be. In my mind, I obviously had some level of fitness but just needed to be guided better instead of piecing together training plans I found on the internet. I worked with her from February 2016 until my first attempt in November, the Phoenix 10k/Half Marathon event. She never sent me anything with pace goals but simply listed the workouts as “easy” runs or “moderate” runs and I had no idea what that really meant to me. Some days "easy" felt like 10 minute miles and some days I was closer to 11. I expressed my concerns in the weeks leading up to the race, that I wasn’t anywhere near what I needed pace-wise to finish in 2 hours. So she adjusted my training to include 2 tempo runs where the goal was a 9:00 pace. :\ Good, but too late in the game. I thought I was very clear about what I was trying to achieve at the beginning of our engagement, and became frustrated with her when I had to remind her several times over several months about when my half marathon was, what my time goal was, and what my previous PR was… Lesson learned: An online coach may not be the best for me, and/or I didn’t figure out our communication plan soon enough to be able to get some good use out of her training. Or, maybe there just isn’t a plan that can help me! It’s not immediately clear to me if I was doing better or worse under her guidance. At the race, I PRed my 5k and 10k times but severely pooped out during the last half of the race. In any case, I didn’t think I was getting the amount of attention for the price I was paying, and I broke up with her.
Since Attempt #1, I switched to using this training plan I found online. I jumped in at week 8, since I had about 4 weeks between half marathon gigs, and made my second attempt at the Buckeye Half Marathon. The race didn’t start until 9am, which felt late to me, and there was virtually no shade on the course so we’d be in full sun the whole time. I guess it shouldn’t matter but, I’m starting to think I’m one of those runners that has to have completely perfect conditions to reach a time goal, and that day wasn’t going to be it. Apparently the low 50-ish temps at start time aren’t quite cool enough! I did okay during the first half of the race, my pace was < 9:30, but it got hot and I had had enough sun and kind of mentally pooped out around mile 8. Finishing after 11am for a half marathon kind of stinks, period.
Then I took Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday completely off from running. I’m back on the wagon as of Wednesday. I’m still on the Women’s Running training plan, but starting at week 6, and I upped the mileage each week by about 10% of what it calls for. I also hope to include cross training on all of the “Rest/XT” days AND on the easy run days, whereas previously I was pretty adamant about either run OR cross train but never both on the same day. We’ll see if it helps. I’ll know in about 6 weeks, at the Phoenix Women's Half Marathon. If there's anyone out there with suggestions, send them my way. If not, there’s always IMS (now they call it Sun Health I think) where I PRed before – maybe I can get lucky! And if not that, then too bad – no more time goals! This is driving me bananas!
I hired an online coach this year thinking that was the missing piece to my training, to get me where I wanted to be. In my mind, I obviously had some level of fitness but just needed to be guided better instead of piecing together training plans I found on the internet. I worked with her from February 2016 until my first attempt in November, the Phoenix 10k/Half Marathon event. She never sent me anything with pace goals but simply listed the workouts as “easy” runs or “moderate” runs and I had no idea what that really meant to me. Some days "easy" felt like 10 minute miles and some days I was closer to 11. I expressed my concerns in the weeks leading up to the race, that I wasn’t anywhere near what I needed pace-wise to finish in 2 hours. So she adjusted my training to include 2 tempo runs where the goal was a 9:00 pace. :\ Good, but too late in the game. I thought I was very clear about what I was trying to achieve at the beginning of our engagement, and became frustrated with her when I had to remind her several times over several months about when my half marathon was, what my time goal was, and what my previous PR was… Lesson learned: An online coach may not be the best for me, and/or I didn’t figure out our communication plan soon enough to be able to get some good use out of her training. Or, maybe there just isn’t a plan that can help me! It’s not immediately clear to me if I was doing better or worse under her guidance. At the race, I PRed my 5k and 10k times but severely pooped out during the last half of the race. In any case, I didn’t think I was getting the amount of attention for the price I was paying, and I broke up with her.
Since Attempt #1, I switched to using this training plan I found online. I jumped in at week 8, since I had about 4 weeks between half marathon gigs, and made my second attempt at the Buckeye Half Marathon. The race didn’t start until 9am, which felt late to me, and there was virtually no shade on the course so we’d be in full sun the whole time. I guess it shouldn’t matter but, I’m starting to think I’m one of those runners that has to have completely perfect conditions to reach a time goal, and that day wasn’t going to be it. Apparently the low 50-ish temps at start time aren’t quite cool enough! I did okay during the first half of the race, my pace was < 9:30, but it got hot and I had had enough sun and kind of mentally pooped out around mile 8. Finishing after 11am for a half marathon kind of stinks, period.
Then I took Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday completely off from running. I’m back on the wagon as of Wednesday. I’m still on the Women’s Running training plan, but starting at week 6, and I upped the mileage each week by about 10% of what it calls for. I also hope to include cross training on all of the “Rest/XT” days AND on the easy run days, whereas previously I was pretty adamant about either run OR cross train but never both on the same day. We’ll see if it helps. I’ll know in about 6 weeks, at the Phoenix Women's Half Marathon. If there's anyone out there with suggestions, send them my way. If not, there’s always IMS (now they call it Sun Health I think) where I PRed before – maybe I can get lucky! And if not that, then too bad – no more time goals! This is driving me bananas!
Comments
Post a Comment