In thirty-six hours I'll be 45 minutes into running the 2016 Seattle Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon -- ideally somewhere past the 10K point. It's been a very fast 5 week training cycle coming off the April 18 Boston Marathon and mid-May Nordstrom Beat the Bridge 8K. This will be my 4th Rock 'N' Roll half marathon and 3rd consecutive year. I believe this year's training cycle leading up to the race -- and building on a base that included 2 marathons in a 5 month stretch -- could be the hardest I've trained yet for this distance.
The last 3 weeks have included some very promising workouts of substance that included a 75-degree half marathon time trial in 1:42 on tired legs, successive 8-mile tempo runs in 7:27 and then 7:24 average pace and 4 x 1 mile intervals in average 7:05 pace. With a personal PR of 1:34:20 (on a flat course in 2010), a 1:39:20 last year (on a course that was hillier than the modified route for this year's race) and a 1:37:07 in October 2014 - I have a shot at racing one of my better times over the last few years. I haven't run below 1:36 since the Green River Half Marathon in January 2012 where I went 1:35:50 -- and not sure I have that in me for Saturday, but am going to go out with my A goal being 7:19 pace and sub 1:37:00 with a fallback to anything sub 1:40 depending on how the new course plays out (more hills in the early miles with more of a downhill finish the final 5K).
The only real glitch I've had this training cycle is that my Garmin FR620 which has been a constant training companion the last twenty-four months refused to re-charge as of last Sunday. Not being confident I could get it repaired by Garmin in less than 7 days, I decided to upgrade to the Garmin FR 630 (picture below) for Saturday's race. Thus far I've done a single run on the new watch and had about every issue once can expect running with a complicated piece of new gear after 2 years of something different. It's not optimal, but my early impressions are positive and I'll make the best of it on Saturday AM. I'll do a future blog post on whether this upgrade at $399 was worth it given the FR620 was rock solid for 2 years (other than the charging mechanism suddenly dying).
Racing strategy for Saturday at 7:00 am is to get through the first 10 in sub 74:00 - 74:30 and then knock down a 22:00 closing 5K for something in the neighborhood of 1:36:00.
Stay tuned.
 |
| Garmin FR630 - my new training companion albeit at an awkward time |
No comments:
Post a Comment