I’m a bit older than you are. Typically, I will run training halfs in the “winter” (in North Central Florida you have basically 4 weeks of mild temperatures) in the mid 1:30s.
In the warmer (and humid) months, say from May through September (when we are lucky), I will painfully run the same routes in 1:45 and it feels harder and just not pleasant. So, not a surprise if your times vary that much.
Thankfully, I’ll be moving to NC in just a couple of weeks.
98% effort is too fast for a tempo or even threshold run (I’m assuming that tempo = sub threshold not threshold). That’s near all out effort for the duration and will require a much longer recovery period than going at 88-92-94% effort and the physiological gains are not going to be any less running a bit slower, the recovery cost could be much lower.
To paraphrase Jack Daniels run only as fast as you need to make the physiological adaptations you are looking for
I’m the same. Same age, decided to train a little less. I think my older body didn’t like the heat this year (3 months straight 100+F heat index). Running hits you the hardest when it’s hot.
You’re getting old and you don’t recover properly anymore.
I would change “don’t recover properly” to "harder to recover adequately’
Which old guys don’t account for. They should change their recovery plan.if not, the recovery is not done properly.
What once works, will keep working, until it won’t, at which point you gotta change something.
Many years ago I shifted a lot of my 45+ athletes to 5d/wk of running instead of 6. Didn’t see a performance drop in any of them. That was 1 more opportunity for them to recover
Thanks everyone.
I am going to go with some form of overtraining as the diagnosis.
I suppose it’s doesn’t matter exactly what the precise mechanism is.
It is crazy when the results of:
8 months of hard training = results of 3 month break
I suppose triathlon is an excuse to do fun (but hard) stuff outdoors.
I guess it’s easy to get carried away.
It is definitively not fun to completely eat sh#t, when you thought things were going okay.
I suppose another aspect of the fun is learning to know oneself.
And suffering when you are wrong.
I lived in the South for 20 years. Typical temperatures for training runs in January and February were 35-40 deg F. One year I had been very consistent in my training and when January & February rolled around I finally started to see some break out runs and all my hard work was finally paying off. By the end of May our over night low temperatures were staying around 80 Deg F. My fast run times were erased by the heat and humidity. Two years later when January February rolled around I again started to see PR’s and was excited only to see all the gains I though I had made erased when June, July, August rolled around. The year after that I saw fast times in January and February but I didn’t get excited. I figured that come August I would slow down again and I did. So…in February I can do a 17:15 time in the 5K. Racing in August my goal would be to just break 19:00 in a 5K.
How many years have you been running?
Have you completed multiple years of racing?
Were you able to hold steady times in previous years without the massive decline as the year progressed?
Do you do heart rate training or power training? When I was in Oklahoma I work allowed me time to run at lunch. Some days I would do a 6-7 mile run in the morning at a sub-7 min/mi pace with my HR never going over zone 2. Then in the afternoon I would do a 3-mile recover run and slow things down to about 8:00 min/mile and try to keep my HR under the zone 2 threshold but I usually would have to slow to 8:30 pace or slower to keep my HR from hitting Z3-z4 HR. So in the same day I was slowing down 90 sec/mile or more to run that the same effort.
So…your decline may not be as drastic as you think it is.
It’s hard to go off of the 1:42 versus predicted 1:32. You ran something like a 1:24-1:28 open half in February? Generally you’re going to get decent weather in February. Was the course flat or did you run a downhill half. & then what were conditions like in the 70.3? Hot/humid? What was the course like? How was your pacing? Did you overbike?
You bring up a lot of interesting areas to explore but I would probably check off everything above. It’s very possible that you just overcooked it a little in the 70.3 based on a fast half result. When you get it wrong in a 70.3, the drop off is sharper. Being a little more conservative early in that race probably gets you a significant chunk of time back. Hiring a coach and taking an iron pill every other day seem like good ideas. I would really just think about conditions & be honest with yourself pre-race. Maybe you took the fastest 70.3 prediction from a fast (maybe downhill) half & went out at that pace on a hot/humid day after a hard bike. Idk.
What was your ferritin number when you got testing done?
I would say even mild anemia is going to have a mild to possibly devastating impact on someone doing 20 hours of exercise per week.
It sounds like this probably pairs with some deconditioning running-wise. Once the iron issue is sorted, I’d look at changing up your running routine - the 6 mi tempo run at 98% effort probably is ok as a once-in-a-while thing but shouldn’t be a staple. It’s too close to a race-level stimulus.
There are many avenues you could take - shorter Jack Daniels’-type tempo (20ish minutes), longer (6-8 mi) tempo closer to open marathon pace, cruise intervals of various lengths, etc. Some short intervals aimed at improving running economy might do wonders, especially if you’ve neglected any faster work for a period of time.
Tempo pace is something you can hold longer than 1 hour, some runners confuse it thinking it’s a ,20 min effort… No that is a popular tempo type work out. Dud you mistakenly write your tempo pace as 6:20 instead of 8:20?
It might be that you didn’t read my initial post, or are math impaired.
It feels like you are trying to insult me or make me insecure.
Even another poster desert dude pointed that out…
No he didn’t.
He said “tempo pace” is supposed to be easier than 98% of 10k pace.
(Which is an entirely valid comment).
He did not say that tempo pace is the same as badly paced Ironman running pace.
(Which isn’t).
In my initial post, I said I ran a half marathon in 6:30 pace early in the season, with poor pacing.
I just had a very upsetting race where I ran a half IM at 7:45 pace. I am wondering if I am anemic or have a clogged artery or cancer - or if simple over-training could explain it
And your comment:
“Maybe you are a sh#t ton slower than this most recent (meltdown) would predict.”
Thanks for that!
The phrase…
“You can lose a battle and still win the war” - applies to young people.
I accept that I am going to lose the war.
I am just hoping to win a few battles here and there.
I realize that I have to keep fighting, if I want to win any battles at all.
Losing the war means one will probably suffer some humiliating defeats.
I am hoping, however, to make some adjustments so that these humiliating defeats will be less frequent and less surprising.
You get insulted too easily. Your initial post stated nothing about you doing a 1:25 half marathon. Then yes your paces make sense. Also trail races definitely throw time out the window… pikes peak half marathon just happened today, and I am sure you would have been quite disappointed with the time if you did it! (winner did 2:11)