Knowing nothing else about your training plan, what were you expecting and why? You reduced your volume 30-40%, and it's not clear you actually added speed work to your program.

Plus, those time differences could be chalked up to weather conditions. Slightly better heat acclimation could have resulted in PRs. Or not. Adding 1 lb of weight could do the same. I would tend to agree that you're not improving (again, not seeing enough details), but you're not slipping much.

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Life is tough. But it's tougher when you're stupid. -John Wayne

you have cut off training time by 30-40% and still can perform similarly. I think it's just ok :))

 
Don't want to start a debate as to what qualifies as "speed work," but I generally consider it to be race pace or faster.

Your speed work may not be speedy enough, or you may be doing too much of it. People making the jump from volume to intensity based training sometimes try to do intensity every day, which IMO is usually not sustainable and often counterproductive.

What's the composition of those 7-10 miles? It could be all at 7:30/mile or you could be doing a mix of threshold, tempo, and steady running ranging from 5:30-8:30/mile and end up with the same average pace but very different results.

yes much mixing the fast stuff too. 400s , 6:00 or under, 3-8 miles 6:40

I might be missing something here, but your average workout was 13 miles? How many times a week were you doing that?

If you run 1:28 for a half marathon, I would say you should be doing some km or mile repeats at about 4:00/km or 6:25/mile. That would be my standard 7x1km interval pace with 400m jog pause, when I am in that kind of shape.
I think running 13 miles at 8:30/mile pace is ok, but it is more of a long run if you are training for a 10km or HM. It wouldn't say that it should be your average run distance. 8.5 miles is a better normal distance run, but you should still do some long runs.

I try to simplify things. When doing a proper run training block I run 2 quality sessions a week (1x track intervals + 1x hill repeats) and a long run.
Everything else is at easy pace, about 8:00/km for me. If I increase volume, it all goes in the easy pace bracket.
YMMV

This statistic completely leaves out volume.

Unless you're saying that you kept the number of runs the same, then the % decrease in average run distance would also be the same for total run volume...

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

last year 12-14 miles a day for 7 days,
this year 7-10 for 7 days.

so the % of run volume dropped, with the % pace faster.

Rough assumptions here...

If you're cutting overall volume, but keeping the same amount of quality volume, then the result would be that you're increasing the percentage of quality. This seems to be what you did. Doing 30 miles less per week in that fashion would be a pretty decent chunk of aerobic work to stop doing. I'm not too surprised you slowed down a little.

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Abell

Just so we're all on the same page, IIRC, you run 7 days/wk, 52 wk/yr, 365 days/yr, right??? So you ran around (13 mi/day) (365 days/yr) = 4745 miles last year. Is this about right??? I'm not sure everyone realizes how much you run. In addition to your 1:27-ish half mary, didn't you also run a 2:57 mary in an iron distance race??? You are quite the runner:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Distance running is almost always a matter of volume.

That said, 15 seconds over a 10K or 30 seconds over a 1/2 marathon don't mean much unless you are averaging times for a bunch of races. Temperature, winds and crowds could all account for that amount from one race to another.

Did you gain any weight from the diet change?

You don't run a 1:27ish half mar and then run a 2:57 mary that doesn't happen.

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TG - I am fully aware that those two results sound inconsistent, which is why i asked the question to synthetic, the OP. It could be that the 1:27 was a train-through race vs the 2:57 being fully tapered.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

2014 totals:
Swim: 131h 08m 28s - 431932 Yd
Bike: 692h 01m 35s - 9664.42 Mi
Run: 684h 18m 26s - 4657.84 Mi

13.1 , 1:25 is my best during a marathon (twice), 1:26 in an open.
26.2, 2:54 is best in boston. wish i did 2:57 mary in iron distance .

I am comparing the results of same races i did this year and last ( I do something every 2 weeks) and I have averaged out the numbers that showed the decrease. Well it seems the only solution here is return to my volume levels and try to maintain this new natural pace. Kind of hard when you are pressed for time.

Well, training about 30 hr/wk will leave almost anyone "pressed for time"; that is a huge amount of training!!!

Your 1:25 half was in a marathon??? Or did you mean in a half iron???

Guess I had you confused with someone else who said they went 2:57 in an iron race but still, 2:54 at Boston is quite good:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."