I started writing my San Francisco half marathon race report but then realized that it might end up really LONG so decided to break it down into two post. So here's part one:
The last half marathon, Pleasantan Half Marathon, that I did was back in April end. Training up to that point was not as consistent as I would have liked but I was still able to put a decent run together on race day with the time of 2:09 (My last half marathon effort was 2:46 before that). That evening Arun sent me an congratulatory email and somewhere in the email he mentioned I should aim for sub 2 half marathon at San Francisco. Running a sub 2 half marathon was definitely a goal for me this year but I never targeted extremely hilly SF half for that
. During that time I had also taken up biking bit more seriously in hopes of doing a century bike ride later in the year and was taking swim lessons two times a week. In general, my simple life with one sport had turned into one chaotic mess with 3 sports and I had no idea on how to structure the training effectively in line with my race schedule (which by the way was really long :)). That's when I contacted
Jeremy and he agreed to take me under his wings. We worked together and came up with training schedule that worked well around my work hours.
Training under him was radically different as compared to what I was use to up to that point. Entire training was heart rate based. So instead of seeing run x miles at y pace I use to get run x mins in y heart rate zone. This meant running much slower than race pace most of the times. So finally, I was going make use of the heart rate strap that I had bought last year with my watch thinking its cool thing to wear around to some good use :)
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| Running with super fast Vishal and Samar. Always fun!! |
I had block of about 11-12 weeks of training before San Francisco and most of first 8-9 weeks of training focused completely on building good aerobic fitness. I must admit I was really skeptic about running MUCH slower than the race pace most of the time but with time, as the fitness increased, I had seen my pace improve from 10:xx to 9:20ish with the same effort level (same heart rate zone). Seeing this kind of improvement made me believe that this was the right approach in longer run.
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| Going on to Golden Gate Bridge during training run |
Last 3 weeks still mainly focused on building aerobic fitness but some of the session were devoted to hill repeats and hill sprints. How can you run SF half without training for hills!! Being a local race I also had the advantage of running the actual course before the race. I did run 70% of course including the golden gate bridge with Vishal, Samar and Coach Arun two weeks before the marathon. The course had two major hills within the first 10 miles (that we did).
Last weekend before the race weekend I again went to SF and did (3 x) hill repeats on those two hills just to get that confidence that I can tackle them next weekend at the race.
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| Coach Arun leading the way. Don't ask how we took this picture :) |
Looking back at those workout logs of 11-12 weeks I think I was really happy with my training for one I had never trained that consistently (without breaking down) before and some of those weeks consisted of 10-13 hours of training. I was overly obsessed with pace and speed in the beginning but as time went and I started understanding nuances of heart rate training I figured that focusing on building solid aerobic fitness (even if it came at the cost of sacrificing some speed) was the right way to go about it. Speed will come back with time and improved fitness!!
Since I did not focus on building speed in my training, going into the race I did not have any expectations of about my finish time but I knew it would be close to my PR 2:09 and I would have taken that considering how challenging SF course was as compared to Pleasanton half marathon.
