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Hi, new to this forum!
I’m doing the Half Marathon program and have the RHM1 session in 2 days (Boxing Day… aaargh!).
I was wondering about the pacing of this session and specifically whether to be running at my TARGET half marathon race pace or my CURRENT ESTIMATED half marathon pace? I imagine these will be reasonably different as I’m still a couple of months away from my race?
Is is realistic for me to hit 3 x 3km at my target race pace (which will be a PB)?
Dunners, great question! It depends on your appetite for risk and your self-awareness. If the gap between your current estimated fitness and desired fitness is large, now is the time to find out.
If you are not confident in your level of current fitness, use your current estimated pace. If you feeling strong and willing to take a bit of a risk, then go with your target pace.
The risk being that if you go with target pace and blow up, you’ve lost a critical workout.
And, a common cause of half marathon failure is not accepting actual current fitness and forcing a goal pace.
Is it realistic for you to hit 3x3km at target pace? I don’t know, but you’re about to find out!
You can also split the differnet: first 3km at current estimated, if that goes well, next at target pace. If that goes well, one more at target.
David
Hey David, thanks for your useful reply to this. I actually used the target and ‘estimated current’ paces as a pace zone for the first two pieces, then felt comfortable enough in the third to run faster – faster than target HM pace actually.
It worked very well and gave me confidence that I’m on the right track. Now I just need to shed a few of those festive pounds and see what I can do on race day!
The other thing I’m mindful of is I tend to over-perform at shorter distances. So, even if I can hit 3x3k at HM pace doesn’t necessarily translate to being able to keep to that for the full 21.1… but like I said I still got a lot of confidence from this session.
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