Reading Half Marathon 2011 - What Happened?

In a previous post, I resolved that I wanted to go sub-1:30 at the Reading Half Marathon. The intention was good and a plan was put in place. Yet, I finished 9 minutes outside of my target time and over 5 minutes outside of my PB.

It's always gutting to see plans not going the way you want them to go. As objectively as possible, I've listed out all the reasons I can think of. They might come across as excuses, but that is what really happened and I hope not to fall into the same situation again.

Too much speed work

In the first 6 weeks, I started out with a massive amount of speed training. The idea was that by training at a faster pace, subsequent training at goal half marathon pace would feel easier. It sounded like a good idea, but it didn't work out the way I envisiaged. Or maybe the execution was poor. The speed work I was doing was really hard and I wasn't responding well to its demands, often ending up tired on recovery days. This meant I was doing very little slower-paced running to build my mileage, which left me unable to carry out my later training runs effectively. 

Holiday in NZ

My Christmas holiday in NZ was planned way back in June last year, where catching up with friends and family was a must for me. It's not unusual that all runners take it easier during the festive season, however I really lost my training motivation in that time. Any training runs I managed to scrape had no purpose. I was running without any direction.

Holiday in France

Two weeks after returning from NZ, all jetlagged and tired from a long haul flight, I went on another holiday in France - snowboarding in the alps. The timing of the holiday was not ideal with regards to my training preparation, and in hindsight I probably should've avoided going on holiday. If my earlier training had gone well, I could've afforded the holiday but it merely added to my increasing number of missed training days.

Sickness

After getting back from holiday, I realised that I wasn't going to be ready to run sub-1:30. I resolved to really train for the event. There were only 7 weeks left but I thought I was able to salvage something. I could still run a PB, anything under sub-1:34 would be fantastic considering the disasterous buildup so far. For the first 2 weeks I trained as hard as I normally would for a half marathon. But it was too fast, too much, too soon. The cold Oslo winter and the huge mileage buildup (I peaked up to 45 miles/week) resulted in me getting sick with a sore throat. I was hopeful that it would go away, but it stuck around for nearly 3 weeks, forcing me to cut back on training severely.

Relocation

To further rub salt into the wound, I had to relocate back to the UK a week out from race day. Relocating back to the UK was completely unexpected and just bad timing. Having lived in Oslo for 8 months, to move everything back and say goodbye to everyone in Oslo meant that my training had really flatlined that week.

Conclusion

So that completes my list of excuses on why I failed at Reading. I ran 1:39:37, which I guess is not too shabby considering how much training I did, but if I really stuck to my plan who knows what time I could've run that day?

But wait - there's more

Here's a table of my performance at Reading this year compared to last year where I set my half marathon PB. I paced myself very conservatively at the beginning which explains the big 1:57 difference in the first 5 km. Interesting to note that the final 5 km had the smallest time difference. This indicates that I followed a good pacing strategy and/or managed to kick on at the end stages of the race. And it's not surprising that in both years, the 15 km split was the most challenging part of the course with slow times in both years (ignoring this year's slow start).

	2010	2011	Difference
5 km	22:29	24:26	1:57
	22:29	24:26	1:57
10 km	21:36	22:40	1:04
	44:05	47:06	3:01
15 km	22:49	24:05	1:16
	66:54	71:11	4:17
20 km	22:47	23:30	0:43
	89:41	94:41	5:00
Finish	4:54	4:56	0:02
	94:35	99:37	5:02