Which is better for her to run a HM faster?

[Fatih Quadworks]

I've a friend of mine who is training for her 1st HM race in Sept 4th, she is 36 and has been running regularly since February.
She ran her first HM in 2:28h, with some walk and stretching breaks due to pain around her knees and hips. (June 18)
She tried another long long run 30 days after (her 1st 22k, July 18th) and ran the HM in 2:21:25 in it, felt much better with no stop.

Since then, she has been focused on more intervals, tempo runs, since she built the cardio-metabolic adaptation for the race distance and the confidence, now time to make it much faster.

This week, she did pyramid intervals (400-800-1200-1200-800-400) and 3 x 9' (equiv. 1miles) longer intervals in another day and need to work on continuous speed in longer runs which is the question.

a) 5k negative split warm up + 5k progressive tempo + 1k recovery + 1k all out + 1k cool down (She did her 1st 5K tempo 2 weeks ago)
b) 2k warm up + 8k progressive tempo + 1 or 2k cool down

Which one you think better? Or any better idea rather than these above?

P.S. : She will run her 1st marathon (hilly) in Oct 2nd, and 2nd marathon in Nov 15th (flat).

[Jon Allen]

Faith,

How much weekly mileage is she running, and how many days per week? The general feeling on the FRB is that until someone is running 60 minutes per day most days (5-6 days/week), they will get more benefit from increasing overall normal mileage rather than doing hard speedwork. I'd be particularly cautious about pushing too hard- she just did her first 5k tempo, and now she's already thinking of a workout with an 8k?

I don't know if there is much difference between the two options you present. I'd be cautious about doing a 1k all out.

Is she increasing her long runs up to 20+ miles in the build up to her marathon? And why is she planning on a 2nd marathon almost immediately after her first? It seems to me there's a high risk of injury or burnout, rather than a slow increase into a long running habit. Not saying she can't do it, but I wouldn't try it. Signing up for 2 marathons 6 weeks apart when she is still building strength/endurance just doesn't seem wise, especially since she had recent knee/hip pain and her time is relatively not too fast.

Slow increases lead to long term success. Big jumps for a new runner rarely work. Just my two cents. I encourage people to do half marathons for a while (1 year or longer) before slowly building to a marathon.

Best of luck to her! Hope it works out. I'm happy to answer more questions if you have any.

[Sasha Pachev]

What Jon said...

In addition - my feeling is that if 10:00 pace is not something a runner can comfortably keep, we should not be increasing the mileage. First we need to learn to run the current mileage (assuming it is something reasonable, at least 1 mile a day) at 10:00 pace. Once she is comfortable at 10:00 pace, she should up the mileage.

Consider this - a half marathon at 10:00 pace is about 2:11. So she would be running a 10 minute PR by just jogging it if all she did is run 1 mile a day at 10:00 pace, then up it to 2 miles, then 3, 4,5,6. If she is comfortable for 6 miles 6 days a week at 10:00 pace, she should have no problem keeping it up for 13, so with no speed work she gets a 10 minute PR.

I did notice some magic around this threshold over the course of the years - runners that naturally run 10:00 or faster improve a lot when they up the mileage, whereas the ones that are significantly slower do not seem to improve no matter how much they run unless they push themselves into the sub-10:00 zone. I am speculating this may have something to do with a metabolism change once you start getting yourself off the ground more.