Base Week 1

Week 1 of Base building done and I'm feeling pretty good about it.  

Now, about my goal! Last week I mentioned that I had a goal in mind and that I would set it in stone once I start the training and am able to judge where I stand. After this 1st week of base building, I feel pretty confident about the goal that I've set for myself. At the moment, it does sound a bit lofty but its not impossible or even unrealistic. 

My PB in the half marathon distance is 2hrs 16 minutes something. I set this back in 2018 and I haven't done a half marathon race since. I also don't have any other recent long distance race times to go by. So this goal may seem like I just pulled it out of nowhere and in a sense thats probably true. Given the huge gap between the races, experts may tell me I shouldn't expect to PB in this upcoming race but my rationale is: why not? So I'm aiming for 2:10:00.  :) (But I'll also settle for anything under 2:16:00 just that for training planning, a good, round 2:10:00 works nicely)

There is a significant gap between my current pace (expected finish time for a HM at current levels would be around 2:35:00 I would say) and goal pace. But I didn't say that this plan wouldn't take work. I have 20 weeks to go and I'm willing to put in the time and effort. Or at least try. Plus, a challenge is always more motivating and will keep me on my toes during this training block.

The other day, I was listening to a running podcast (running explained) and the episode was about half marathon training and setting a realistic goal pace (mine's 6'09" to a km btw) and it talked about how the bulk of training should be at easy pace and dedicate maybe 1 run a week to goal-pace work. The body must get used to running longer distances at the goal pace so that its ready for Race day but that doesn't mean that every run should be run at goal pace because that would just lead to exhaustion & burn-out. So every week, schedule in a tempo run of 2miles, 1mile or 1K or 800m repeats at goal pace. It was also mentioned that if you can't run even 800m at your goal pace, then it is probably an unrealistic goal to set. 

So I put that to test on Friday and woohoo... I could run 800m at 6'09" (more or less). It felt hard but I can work on it. Today I ran 60 minutes on ground after a long, long time. Just about covered 7.7 km. Thats a 7'48" pace. These long runs are meant to be easy and I'm not putting any pace pressure on them. I need to feel confident about going long again while remaining strong. (Although, 7'48" pace didn't feel too easy. comfortably hard I would say it was). The problem is that these days, I'm running these long distances on a torturous 300m loop. Round and round and round - 60 minutes felt like forever but I got it done!

So theres Week1 in a snapshot... Lots of green checks. Got to keep this going. 2 more weeks of base training (or as I call it the honeymoon phase / confidence building phase) and then full-on HM training.. :)