Congrats on your first half. 2:18 at 47 is not bad at all for a first race I’d say. A work mate of mine recently ran his first (at 27) in 2 hours and he was training (running 6 miles 3 times a week plus long runs on Sundays).
You’ll do under 2 hour with some more training :)
Ran the Brian Diemer 5k this morning, which is one of my favorite local races largely because the course is super flat. Also they have a half-dozen local bands set up along the course, everything from a local school drum corps to somebody’s garage band. But the turnout for these small runs has still not recovered post-pandemic. Over 1000 people did the run in 2019, and prior years were about the same. No run in 2020, of course, and 2021 was down to about 400. It picked up a little bit after that, but not a lot, and this year was still only about 600. And this is one of the better established events in this area, there’s plenty of smaller ones that just disappeared over the last few years. These are fun events and I’m glad to have the chance to do them, but I do worry that these kinds of small community runs may eventually fade away if more people don’t turn out.
I love it when bands turn out for races. I always applaud as I pass.
In last year’s marathon attempt the first half took me exactly 2 hours and the second half exactly 3 :/
End of summer sees 557 miles in the bank. Plus some treadmill and elliptical stuff which Strava doesn’t necessarily notice but have the advantage of being out of the heat.
Training for NYC in November not going super well. Left it a bit late to restart longer runs and 13 and 14 miles were both hard. 15 wasn’t as bad. That was also a cooler day, so hoping the heat has been part of the issue.
Summer’s a bummer. How’s everyone else doing?
Good luck on the marathon training ramp-up!
I’ve only done one or two longer 10+ mile runs this summer. Have been pretty good at reaching 6-7 per day on average though. Heat makes it very hard, but it is also good training (assuming it doesn’t cause heatstroke of course). My last week on vacation on Cape Cod seemed super-easy compared to running in the blazing heat at home.
So my totals YTD are 1,133 miles running, 469 walking, and some miscellaneous elliptical, hiking, etc.
I’m at 1064 miles so far. Real goal is hitting the 2500km I did last year, but if I do it’s going to be super tight. I will likely fall short.
Knee injury is not yet 100% recovered, so I need to get on that too.
I will start training for a December Marathon next week, and then I have London next year. After that I might try to do NYC also in 2025 or wait to 2026 (depends on how I’m feeling and availability).
Wooh.
That’s soon. How’s your prep going?
Every km in 5:30 more or less. That’s pretty good.
The 2 or 3 marathons I’ve done always ended with negative splits.
Edit: How did I miss this thread?
I haven’t been tracking anything but I will probably next year, might even do another half/marathon.
My mileage is low this year as I’ve been following a very different protocol.
Look for a book called Unbreakable Runner, by some crossfit guys.
It’s about cross fit endurance, and the theory/practice is time in the gym and then some very structured running.
A typical run workout, like what I did last night, is thus:
Cadence = beats per minute. Every beep your left foot hits the ground.
4 (1 minute run at 100 cadence)
4 minutes at 95 cadence.
Repeat one more time.
Then 10 repetitions of 100m barefoot walking and 100 metres barefoot running.
That’s week 5 of a 6 week rotation, so the initial stuff is much easier.
There’s 2 of those runs in a week, and 3 days of strengthening and conditioning. As I’m not a fan of gyms I’ve been sticking to the calisthenics, and today I am due to do as many rounds as possible of the following in 15 minutes:
5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats, 20 situps/leg raises.
These can be as easy or hard as you like.
The focus of the program is to teach you foot strike, foot turnover, optimal running positions etc, and to build you body strength.
And it works.
I have to do fitness tests for my army reserve work, and one of them is a 2km run. I did that in exactly 10 minutes, after taking time out to tie my shoe laces. I’m 39 fwiw.
As you can see, the total mileage is very low.
As your limit is 3 - 5 km I think this might help you.
That was a hard Marathon with a lot of uphill. A LOT. Including the last 4 km or so. I think December’s (Malaga) should go back to 3h45m at least, which is what I managed on Berlin. Probably I can get it down to 3h40m? Depending on many factors, ofc. I’m going to get a trainer along my brother in law to try to improve technique.
More long term, I think my body could possibly do a 3h30m (5 mins). But I don’t know if I will get there, since that’s likely a grueling task. Faster than that I don’t think I’m built for (I weight 86km atm, despite all the training). Also getting older 
I’ve been running very well during summer break, with trainings of 10k at 4:30ish per km, which I never managed before. But my performance has dropped as soon as I hit Madrid again (which is weird, I need to figure out what happened). Kind of frustrating, but I think it’s a combination of tiredness, heat and height.
I did one proper marathon in 3:40 and one “mountain marathon”(shorter distance but some serious ascents) in 3 hours.
I sometimes think “proper” training might get me to sub 3 hours, or it might burn me out.
In the past I’ve been caught up chasing the miles and then got injured.