Half Marathon Race with TrainsAsOne Preparation

On 16th September I did a half marathon. I finished in 1:55:16 h which means 5:25 min/km (8:39 min/mile). My goal was to do it in 1:45:00 h (4:59 min/km or 8:00 min/miles).

Race Analysis

Conditions and Plan

The weather was perfect. Around 20°C with blue sky. The start was at 10:30 am. No problem here. The night before I had a good sleep. I took a light breakfast (fruit salad with yogurt). On the starting line I felt good and confident. The course was nearly flat and had three rounds. The race plan was to stay cool the first round (5:00 min/km) and don’t let me take away with the carefree crowd. The second round would than see a little acceleration to 4:50 min/km and in the final round I wanted to keep that speed as long as possible.

On the Course

And what happened actually on the course? On the first round I managed to run slightly slower 5 min/km. At the second round I grabbed a cup of water, because I had a dry mouth. From that on my speed dropped to around 5:30 min/km. I could hardly hold the speed any more, but fortunately there where three other guys which “dragged” me with them. Just at the end of the second round the leader flew by. I thought, heck is this guy fast (his fishing time 1:12:50 h) and grabbed another cup of water at the aid station. Then I straightened my body and left the other three guys behind me. I never looked back and I never looked at my watch. It felt that I’m really going faster than before. But as you can see below this wasn’t true. I even slowed down to around 5:40 min/km. At the finish line I pressed than the lap instead of the stop button and realized it 16 sec later. The women at the time measurement said something like: “You look really relaxed”. I turned around, but there was nobody. She smiled at me and repeated the sentence. Then it came to me, yeah, I look so relaxed because I was so slow.

Measurements

Below are the measurements from the 735XT and the Garmin running heart rate monitor. The three spikes in the pace diagram were my stops at the aid stations. At the last one I really had to break hard because someone just in front of me stopped running and started talking with the people at the station. I nearly crashed into her.

My heart rate went up to a maximum of 187 bpm. At the end there was no performance condition any more. The strides (Avg. 1.14 m) got shorter and the cadence (Avg. 166 spm) was also going down. Power loss on all systems. The vertical ratio is also quite interesting. An average of 11% and the color red means, that to much power was going in the sky and not into the forward movement. Compared to my 10 km road race (4:53 min/km, 7:51 min/mile) I had the same average cadence of 166 spm and an average 9.6% vertical ratio, which is a little bit better.

TrainAsOne Preparation

I started the training (4 days/week) for the half marathon with TrainAsOne on 26th September 2018 (First goal). I run 534.9 km (332.4 miles) in 16 weeks. An export from my TrainAsOne history can be viewed here: TrainAsOne Training

In Week 13 and Week 14 I had to pause my training plan for seven days because of a cold. This explains the lower kilometers in this period. The last two weeks were than tapering. There were only 3  than 20 km (12.4 miles). From time to time there was an assessment run to check my progress. One type was a 3.2km as fast as you can run. The second type was a 6 min as fast as you can run test. The most runs were economy runs with a 5 min warm-up and the rest of the time in a steady pace between ca. 6:30 min/km and later ca. 6:00 min/km. I did three interval sessions and five threshold runs (see example images below).

Conclusion

1:45 h for the half marathon was too optimistic. Stepping back and looking now at the runs I made, it is clear that I’m at the moment not able to run 4:59 min/km (8 min/mile) for 21,1 km. Can I blame TrainsAsOne? No. The suggested runs were and are in my opinion well structured and adapted to my abilities.  Not too hard, that I could be injured or over trained, but hard enough to see a steady progress. The different tests made sure, that I still was on the right path and the training was adjusted accordingly. What I liked the most is the integration with my Garmin watch. The runs are easily synced with it. I could than concentrate on my runs and the watch gave me the instructions what to do. For example, too slow, too fast, just right, next interval etc. A reminder per mail for the next run was also great.

I doubt that my cold in Week 13/14 had a big impact on the result on race day. I felt good and the couple of untrained kilometers couldn’t have slowed me down that much. On my side there is a lot to improve. My running technique sucks and this is just a friendly statement. I seem to be glued to the ground or the handbrake is on or something else hinders me to move forward (too much vertical movement?). I don’ t really know yet, but I will find out. Apart from that, I haven’t made any running drills or any sort of running specific strength training. Really something I should consider. Weight is something else to look at. I’m now at around 78 kg (172 lbs). When I started this side I was at 83 kg (183 lbs). This is good, but I have still some kilos too much.

October 21 is already my next run. Just a 8 km city run. There is not much time left (32 days), so the only thing I’m changing at the moment is going from 4 days to 5 days running per week on TrainAsOne. In the meantime I will think about how I can improve my running technique.

But even if I haven’t reached my goal I enjoyed all the training and the race itself.

 

Just to clarify things. I’m not working for any of the above mentioned companies nor do I get any money or any other benefits from them. It’s all my own opinion. If this changes I will state it clearly. Thanks for reading.