First 1/2 Marathon

[Travis Goss]

I ran my first half marathon on June 4th,  Hospital Hill run in Kansas City.  My time was 1:43:20.  This was only my 2nd competitive race the first being a small 5K which I ran in 21 minutes.  I am a beginner and was wondering how ya'll think my time was for my first time.  I would like to eventually qualify for the Boston Marathon,  and also make the Fort Leonard Wood team for the Army 10 miler.  As of right now it looks like I need to run under 1:05 to have a chance to make the team.  I'm looking for any advice. 

[Joe]

Hey Travis, congrats on your half marathon and nice running.  Hopefully some smarter runners than me chime in with advice, but I would say to run more miles.  From what I can tell that is the secret - just add a mile or 2 each week and run a lot.  Very unscientific but it's worked for me.  Click on the "mileage board" link and look at the people who run the most - then look at their race times!

As far as your goals, everyone improves at different rates.  Since I'm somewhat of a beginner, and just ran my first half marathon a year ago in a similar time (1:40) I could give you some idea of what to expect.  Almost exactly a year after running that 1:40 I ran a 3:15 full marathon with pretty consistent training, just a week off here and there for minor injuries.  So if you were the same person and did the same runs (obviously you're not) that is what you could expect.  If you have some weight to lose though, for example, you could possibly improve faster.  If you've run xc before or had other recent athletic endeavors, I'd bet you'd improve faster too..  Of your BQ goal and your 1:05 goal, the 1:05 looks harder.  Hopefully you aren't wanting to do that at this year's 10-miler?  For the 2012 race it might be doable though.  Good luck!

[Colby]

Travis,

  Joe has some pretty sound advice. It is all about adding "slow" (aerobic) mileage. A general rule of thumb is not to increase your mileage more than 10% every two weeks. I think a lot of that depends on what your base mileage is. (example, going from 6 miles a week to 12 probably isn't a bid deal) Don't add miles and speed together...that was my mistake! One at a time and take an extra dose of patience to help you along the way.

I returned from Afghanistan recently and was running between 40-55 miles a week, never faster than a 7:45 pace and I was amazed at how fast I was able to run my 2 mile for a PT test when I got back (11:55). Just getting a good aerobic workout is extremely important and will help your speed out more than you think. Keep the slow miles coming!

[Joe Furse]

These guys don't need any "smarter" runners to comment...they've got it down.  The more you run, the better you'll be at running.  Add mileage first, then worry about speed once you have a nice base built up.  Don't worry about all the extracurricular things too much (weights, fancy diets, etc)...just run.  Every day (perhaps minus one day a week if you're like many of us on the blog who skip a day for personal reasons).  Be prudent about how fast you build up.  Listen to your body.  Keep things gradual. 

[Jeff Linger]

Travis,

I don't know if you're logging all your miles or not. If you are, here is what I'm seeing. 95 miles to date this year. 40 some miles in the month of June, yet 18 of them came on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. In my book that sort of thing is potentially a recipe for disaster. You want to build into 5-6 days of consistent running each week, but I suspect at this point 1/2 your monthly miles in 2 days might be too much and lead to an injury. In my experience the magic number for marathon training to eliminate a potential marathon bonk at BQ pace is somewhere around 65 miles/week. Someone once said that to calculate your bonk spot take your average daily mileage and multiply it by 3. As such, 9 miles a day average over 7 days times 3 is 63 miles/week. But one needs to build up slowly to this capacity. I use the 10% mileage increase every 2 weeks up to about 40 miles/week. At that point I tend to switch 10% every 3 weeks. When I was training for my first marathon I was running about 45 miles/week when I joined this blog. I noted that most of the fast runners were suggesting the 60+ miles/week training .... so I bumped right up to that and held it for 8 weeks going into my marathon. I ran a 3:11:30, qualified for Boston, took 3 weeks off and started back up only to run into joint inflammation almost immediately that put me out of running for almost 2 months. Had I tried to 'run through the pain' for even 1 more week my doctor told me I probably would have landed myself with a stress fracture. I believe that until you can get up to at least 50 miles/week consistently, there is essentially no need do any 'tempo' work. Its not that you can't do it, and its not that it won't improve your running. However, your miles will be more beneficial in the long run to skip the 'speed' workouts in favor of training your aerobic capacity. The first goal to set for yourself is 5-6 days/week running. Once you get to this point, then you can begin to increase your mileage overall. So, lets say your currently running 25 miles/week and doing 4 days/week. I'd keep your mileage at 25 miles/week but do it over 6 days instead of 4 for 2 weeks. Then begin increasing your mileage by the above rules. Simply increasing your aerobic capacity through appropriately increased mileage will increase your speed and bring down your race times. There are a number of good books out there. Although I haven't looked at the most recent ones, my 2 favorites are Brain Training for Runners and Advanced Marathoning.