Brookings Half Marathon Race Goals

About a month ago, I jotted down my goals for this weekends race A, B, and C. My race plan was a range of my A and B goal, with the final time coming down to what I had left for my final 3-5 mile kick.

A goal: 2:02 9:20 pace

B goal: 2:05 9:35 pace

C goal: 2:07 9:45 pace

Now that the race is getting closer, I'm not really sure what the heck my goals are. Hah. I want to run hard, and I'm prepared (I think) to go to a place mentally where it hurts without giving up (uff... that sounds hard, right? maybe I'm not that mentally prepared...hah).

The weather looks great, my training has gone extremely well, and I've seen huge progress in my fitness levels in the past 6-8 months. So I think my plan for tomorrow is a bit of a no-plan. I'll do my standard "take mile 1 easy" easy pace tbd based on how my body feels tomorrow I suppose. Followed by 5 miles at comfortably hard, then the next 4 a little harder, and the final 5k with whatever I have left. Normally I have splits and all that fun stuff all calculated out, but doing so this go around is just freaking me out.

So I think what my goal is for tomorrow is: run hard, leave it out there. Worry about the time on the clock when you cross the finish line. We'll see how that works for a change.

Looking Back on Training

A couple of weeks ago, I started looking back at past training cycles. This is one of my favorite pastimes (I'm so lame, I realize). I was thinking about goal times for the Brookings half marathon, and had a hard time wrapping my mind around a sustainably hard pace for 13.1 miles, as one does.

I started looking back at my training from 2014 for the Brookings half marathon, when I ran a 2:02 and was training for a sub 2 half. I was shocked to see that my training wasn't anything special. A 2:02 half seems so fast right now, that I expected my training to be really strong, fast speed work, good mileage, strong long runs. Um... not so much. There were some decent speedwork sessions, and some long runs. A lot of weeks with one run. A lot of long runs that said, "really hard, walk breaks, blah...etc." And apparently I raced two half marathons on back to back weekends. And still ran a 2:02. My long runs are slightly speedier, but WAY more consistent both in pace and frequency. My tempo runs have more miles in them, roughly the same pace. My speedwork has faster paces at longer intervals.

January 2014 60.5 miles 2017 72.4 miles (slightly sub 11 v. 10:38 pace)
February 2014 80.2 miles vs. 2017 41.8 miles (slightly sub 11 v. 10:36 pace)
March 2014 52.2 miles vs. 2017 89.5 miles (10:45 v. 10:27)
April 2014 65.7 miles vs. 2017 110ish miles (10:20 v. 10:40ish)

Whoa.

The cool thing about looking back on this data is to give me confidence in what my training has been like in this cycle. Which might be one of my strongest cycles outside of marathon training (which is where my current half PR exists). Hopefully I'll be able to remember this when I'm running the race next weekend and it feels hard.

Here's to doing hard shit.

or something like that.