Yesterday on the new training plan, my coach wanted 7 intervals of 3 minutes each at half marathon pace. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this gave me no small amount of angst. Coming off a year riddled with injury and the heart scare, in which I ran (I use the term loosely) four halves but raced none, how on earth was I to know what to shoot for?
When I trained for my first half back in 2007 my only goal was to finish. I didn’t pressure myself to push any particular pace until mile 10 when I realized sub-2 was in reach.
My half PR (1:51) was run in 2010 and I am not even in the same galaxy fitness-wise now
The deliberations in my head went like this:
Hmmmm 10 minute miles might be right.
Are you kidding?
Ok maybe 9:30s
You ran the WI half at that pace with your rotator cuff killing you, making you walk.
Your rotator cuff is fine now.
Ok how about 9:20? I’m getting winded just thinking about it.
I came to my senses and consulted my BFF Greg McMillan and his trusty pace calculator. He has never let me down before. If Greg says I can do it, I can. All I had to plug in though, was last year’s best 5k time: 26:07….a bit of a stretch for an accurate half projection, especially since my teenage Bichons have more endurance than I do right now. At that rate, my man Greg says 2:00:XX is within reach. I was thinking something considerably slower.
So I fired up the mill (yeah the tundra thing, still). Because it is my style to under-reach, the first 2 intervals were 9:31 and 9:22 respectively. I simply lacked confidence that I could complete 7 repeats any faster. Intervals 3 and 4 were at 9:13 and guess what? I wasn’t dying. Not even close. I entertained going faster then reminded myself this was not speedwork, but dialing in a race pace. Intervals 5, 6 and 7 were at 9:03 and that too was fairly comfy…for 3 minutes anyway.
McMillan says I can handle a 9:14 pace. I’m going to go out on a scary limb and set 9:14 as my B goal. I think, if I play my cards right, I can be closer to a 9:03 pace…ha! just realized that’s my marathon PR. Let’s see if I can hold that for a half.
How do you set pace goals? Do you go big or go home? Do you under-promise and over-deliver like me?
Usually, I let other people set pace goals for me. For my first marathon, I had a coach and let him decide for me. After that it was basically “beat the previous time.” For anything under a full marathon, I just run pretty much as fast as I can.
I am contemplating using a Hal Higdon plan for my April half, and it has 400s at 5K pace. I haven’t raced-raced a 5K in 2 years and that was in the winter, 6 months post-partum. My PR is pre-baby so … YEAH. I hate race pace stuff. Today, I just did them at what I want my 5K pace to be.
i kind of track it by heart rate first, see what i can handle. Ya know?
I like Macmillan too.
But right now my pace goals are “anything that gets it done”. Sigh.
I think it’s always better to be slightly conservative than slightly aggressive. Another way to test your current level of fitness–go to a track and after a warm up, run two miles straight at a hard yet sustainable pace. The goal is to keep your splits even (not slowing down on number two) but still pushing all the way through. That can give you a fairly decent picture of current fitness and how to gauge intervals (or give Joanna that info!).
I’m in the underpromise/over deliver camp. It’s easier on me mentally than struggling to hit paces. So far it’s worked pretty well for me.
Nice work! I am terrible at setting paces. I usually do that before training, but 90%, just run based on feeling. Between injuries and pregnancy, though, it’s been hard to nail down a legit training program for a race. Maybe it should be my 2014 goal?
I can totally relate to that angst. Coming back to good health this year I just didn’t know what my body was capable of any more. I’d go to some speed sessions where we’d have to split into pace groups and I’d be agonising over which one to be in. I always chose the slower option. A lot of the concern was because of having been unwell but some was just because I didn’t trust my body any more.
I always try to be realistic. And I prefer to go by feel. But honestly, I didn’t train for enough half-marathons to really do that. That said, I always get angst-y when doing intervals where there is a set time to hit.
Under-promise and over-achieve was my game last year…it kinda feels good, I have to admit. Better than the alternative of setting the goals where they’re unreachable, right?
Well done, you are going to nail those halves this year (and I think you can go even faster than 9:03, but I’m not going to say that in my outside voice!)
Ooh, that’s exciting! Sounds like a very appropriate goal based on your 5k and previous year. I’m excited for you!
Love that you went faster than you thought you could!!!
I think you will end up surprising yourself numerous times while training!!!
I’m trying to set one right now for half training too. I know I have slowed down but I don’t want to set my sites too low. Hard to know. I am going in between old pace and what I think I can do.
All of this is still way past where I am right now. I think I’m just focused on finishing and not having someone come up to me and tap me out like a dance competition. Do they do that? I don’t know.
I’m sure you’ll reach your A goal!
I am go big or go home. Also known as sometimes crash and burn. The funny thing is if they told you to do 7 x 3 minutes at 9 minute miles for speed work would you have batted an eye at it? I think you can hit the A goal. Just saying!
Erica I would’ve considered 9 to be quite slow for speedwork. But I have speedwork tomorrow so I guess I am ‘saving myself’ for that too. Haha!
I’m so with you. I always talk myself out of a training pace – “there’s no way I can do THAT”. Ol’ Greg is great at giving an ‘idea’ of what to shoot for, then I add at least :30 🙂
you can totally do this!! i know what i used to be capable of, and it’s hard to set goals now based on slowly getting better. I used McMillan this week too to figure out mine. My goal is to chip a way a minute or two with each race. We shall see how that goes 🙂
You can do it! I know you can! That’s what all this training is for!
And I love that pup picture! So cute 🙂