Bumping the thread, eight days until the Moscow Half-Marathon. Feeling great, in fact I think I'm pretty well prepared at this point. Trained through the whole winter and kept at it as the spring rolled in, I think sub-2 hours is in the bag at this point for sure unless something drastic happens. Could've done more speedwork but opted for more miles per week instead. Last three weeks were 65km, 70km and 75km total. Ran a 15k in 1:20:36 a month ago as a trial. Aiming at somewhere below 1:55.
I know no one probably cares but I'll still post an update when I'm done with the race. 
Smashed it today.
Last August: 2:08:32. Today: 1:49:55.
This was my best race so far by far, and also the first race where I really knew what I was doing.
There's really no secret apparently, you just gotta put the hours and hours in training and then you feel strong on the race day.
I aimed for 1:55:00 because I knew I had sub-2 hours in the bag for sure, and I also entertained the thought I could do sub-1:50. I thought if I do sub-1:50 I'll buy a pink singlet I really liked in one of the shops they set up after the race.
Started out in the corral with 1:59 pacemakers, I planned to hang with them for the first 3 kms and speed up then, but that went out of the window because there were a lot of people in the corral and I started about 30 or 40 seconds behind them. My biggest worry was that I would go out too fast as I wanted to do negative splits. I knew I couldn't rely on my watch because GPS is really wonky in Moscow (I could only rely on the total time elapsed and my heartrate), we had an opportunity to grab a temporary tattoos with times we needed to hit for a certain result. Looked like this:
It didn't help that my heartrate was spiked because I'm always nervous during the races
I tried to be conservative but passed the 1:59 pacemakers after three kms and was on track for sub-1:55 after the first 5km. Physically I felt strong, mentally I was kinda doubting myself somewhere after 8km mark because my heartrate was a bit too high, I thought I'd blow up and won't have enough for the last stretch. I ended up (not on purpose really) alternating between a really good and a somewhat conservative times per km at that point (5:20, 5:09, 5:36, 5:15, 5:26). The stretch between 8km and 13km was supposed to be the most difficult mentally because it's basically a dead end, you have to run there and back again and there are no aid stations, however somewhere at that point I let go of any mental hurdles and just ran. It's like something just went off in my head. Looked at my watch at the 15km mark and saw 1:20:15. Before the race, I knew if I would be somewhere around 1:20:00 at 15km I could try and really give it all and get under 1:50:00, but at the moment it was getting quite hot and I just kinda thought "well, you know, 1:51 or 1:52 would also be fine".
That being said, I had a 5 hours playlist for this race and I just put it on shuffle and went with it; and somewhere at 17km it threw Mors Principium Est at me. At this point I knew I had to go for it.
The last 4 kms were really difficult (4:53, 4:47, 4:39, 4:39) and I thought I won't make it on time, I'd either lose stamina or throw it mentally, but apparently all the long runs helped because I managed to hold it and finished just below the 1:50:00 mark. I feel I gave it all today.
Technical things aside, it's amazing to race when you're prepared. For the last six or seven kms I overtook loads of people who were slowing down. I even had energy to air guitar to the songs in places.
Right now legs feel totally fine (although we'll see how it goes tomorrow). The biggest struggle was the heartrate (180-185 during the last 5km and I've never got it this high during training). Marathon at 6:00 per km seems doable with a couple of months training and a few more 30k runs/75km+ weeks. We'll see. I'm also waiting for the photos from the race, I'll post a good one or two if there are any.
Now, for Kade, Tomi and Rich in case any of you are interested, actual splits because the ones on Strava are screwed up:
Topic: The Official Exercise/Fitness Thread v. Run Forest, Run! (Read 193462 times)
