training started going poorly a while ago when i was sick, and then had back spasms. since then I fell off my bike and broke my arm, and am only now working back in a bit of running. so the goal of the 70-minute half won’t happen this year, but i’m working on getting back to where i was and then building myself up to a higher level of fitness in the future
I don’t know how reasonable it is for me to have a goal of sub-70 minutes in January of 2008. That’s 5:20 per mile for a very long way. My previous best is 73:01 from January of 2007, although I had problems with my shoes that race, and ran a little slower than my ability.
I can’t train on the roads much because I get injured when I do, so my benchmark workouts have been long tempo or “steady state” runs on a 2.5K loop of trail. It’s a fairly slow loop, with some sharp turns and poor footing, so I’ll feel confident going into the race if I can consistently run 5:30 pace for 50 minutes or so on this trail as a workout.
I’ve done two workouts on the trail so far:
8/23/07: 3 laps, 8:40, 8:34, 8:42. Just about the goal pace, half as long
8/28/07: 5 laps, 8:55, 8:55, 8:59, 8:59, 9:00. close to goal duration, 10s/mile slow
I’ll do my next one this afternoon. I’ll be going for 6 laps in less that 54 minutes, but won’t be too upset if it’s a bit slower than that. Mostly, the goal of this run will be to get myself used to longer distances, rather than faster paces. I need to be psychologically ready to push myself for an hour at a time on any given day.
