my magic pixie dust race

[ilanarama]

I posted a couple weeks ago about my goals for my (then) upcoming half marathon; I ran it on Saturday and blew my goals out of the water. My race report is here.

I am actually not quite sure why I was able to run such a fast and strong race, much faster than anything I did in training for more than a mile at a time! But I have been asking around on a running forum I post at (the Runner's World forums) and am coming to the conclusion that it was due to 1) running lots of relatively slow miles, 2) running much shorter distances relatively fast once or twice a week, 3) running lots of hills which strengthened my legs and got me used to hills, 4) taking an easy week before the race so that my legs were rested.

The book I am using to build my training programs is Brad Hudson's Run Faster, which I know I recommended to someone on this community a while back. Now that I have actual results, I'm even more confident about recommending this book. He has sample programs for all of the major distances (5K to marathon) at 3 levels of ability/interest, plus lots of text about how to assess your own needs and strengths so you can modify the programs to fit your own physiology.

Comments

[lyras]

I just checked out your race report - that's fantastic! Congratulations.

I'm still working towards my goal (making good progress, though), but I'll be looking up that book in the near future. Thanks for recommending it.

[ilanarama]

That's great that you're making progress! It's such a good feeling to see your distances getting greater and your times coming down.

[cyphomandra]

Congratulations - that's an amazing time!! And, from your report, it sounds like you were pretty comfortable for most of the run as well. I will definitely be trying to track down that book. And finding some more hills (the group run tonight went up one very large one...).

(and I've discovered I'm eligible for the Australian government's economic stimulus package if I sort out my taxes in the next week, having switched countries at, for once the right time; I'll be buying a Garmin GPS/HRM once that's through, for which the Australian economy will probably not be all that grateful!)

[ilanarama]

Woo Garmin! I have an older model I bought cheaply when the new ones came out, but I envy those with the new fancy ones because they are smaller than a breadbox and don't drop signal as much in heavy forest cover.