I had
trained for half marathons many times in the past. I had used other people’s
training programs to get to where I thought I needed to be. As happens with experience in any field the
more you do things on your own the more apt you are to listen to yourself and
not others.
My last
half marathon I ran was three months ago, and that one I had basically run with
my goal being to cross the finish line uninjured. After injuring my Achilles tendon during my
marathon training last fall I had been hesitant to go all out in any sort of
training for fear of reinjury. After
successfully completing the Hyannis Half in February I decided that I had
recovered enough and it was time to let it all hang out.
In training
for the Johnny Kelley Half I chose a different route. Rather than do the normal long run, tempo
run, recovery run, etc training plan I focused on speed. Nearly every run I did during my training was
the same: run as far as I could as fast as I could. It didn’t matter if I could only do four
miles or if I could do ten, as long as I went all out and was sufficiently
gassed at the end I had done it right.
My ultimate
goal was to build up my stamina, obviously.
Ideally in going all out for ten miles I would be able to pace myself
better over a half distance and set myself a nice new personal best. My runs leading up to the Johnny Kelley Half
were routinely 7-9 miles with a 7:30 pace.
Using this info I set my eyes on a sub 1:50 half which would top my PB
by about 5 minutes.
Race day
came, cool and raw. The race route had
to be changed due to the fact that one of the roads was being worked on by the
Army Corp of Engineers. They said that
due to recent rains the road work could be compromised by a thousand
runners. The race route had to be
changed on the fly. This decertified the
course, and also left no guarantee that the route would be exactly 13.1 miles. Let
me end the speculation, it wasn’t. Using
my running app on my iPhone to keep my abreast of my time and pace I found that
the new course was 13.6 miles, a half mile too long.
I started
slowly as I had learned was best for distance.
I’m being sarcastic as I have often had a problem with starting too
fast, going with the flow of the crowd, and ending up tired by about Mile
8. As I got past 5 miles I felt good, my
legs were feeling it and I realized that my PB goal was easily in reach. The speed training for the half was working.
I stayed on
pace throughout the full course which seems minor but for me this was the first
time that everything fell into place. I
finished the 13.1 in 1:48, beating my PB by nearly 8 minutes. When I was done I had nothing left. I crashed in the nearby grass as I normally
do. I like to lay in the grass for a few
minutes to catch my breath and let my body recover.
Normally
after a longer race the last thing I want to do is run again. I am normally so
sore and sometimes injured. After the
Johnny Kelley Half all I wanted to do was run again. I had finally found a training plan that
worked for me and the best part was that it was my own. I hadn’t read someone else’s plan or asked
for advice. I had my own idea and put it into practice and succeeded. Sure, this was an idea for training for a
race, but it seems to be sort of a metaphor for life also. Sometimes if you listen to yourself and
follow the path you believe is best you will succeed. As I go on in running and in life I believe
that the lessons and results from this race will help me more than I know.
What did it
feel like to set a PB in a race for you?
What did you do differently in your training? When you set the PB what did that do for your
confidence in running? Did it spill over into the rest of your life?
