Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Me again. I reread your posts. I think it's possible you're running too much. Are you still biking?

Running is very trendy with fitness influencers right now. Some of their tips are bound to be bad. When you said you were looking at 7 or 8 hours of running -- that sets off an alarm for me. I'm older than you and have been running for a long time. I probably run about 4 hours per week. Two 30-minute runs and two hour-long runs. I don't have any more time than that.

Sorry I didn't see this and both your responses were really helpful. No I haven't been biking, have really eased off everything and have been sitting around wondering how on earth people find time to exercise as much as they say! I have yet to manage that many hours and have been feeling insufficient so this type of 'real people don't do this' is exactly the kind of reality check I needed.

I was doing a lot of concentrated speed work over the summer, 400s and 800s on a track for the 10k. But figured I needed to shift to distance for the half so have been doing much less speed work and more just increasing mileage.

OK, good.

I think you are on the right track, for real. I really encourage you to sign up for a race of any distance, soon. I think you will see nice improvement from that humid summer race.

Anonymous wrote:OP is making this all way too complicated. At your level OP, just find a plan for an event XX weeks out and do that plan. If your A race is too far out, just do the plan twice. That’s it.

All this attempt at fine tuning is a waste of your time. The things holding you back are 1) your cardio engine, and 2) your time experience running. It’s that simple.

As for “speed”-just about everybody after the age of 25 is going to PR in the mile during the build for the longest distance race they train for.

OP here. So, counter intuitively I’m sure, I’m actually trying to simplify.

I know everyone is saying follow a plan and I know this is good advice and that plans work but I have kind of a habit of getting too obsessive about things. Having a schedule laid out will lead me to stick to it with absolute military commitment. I’ll never skip a day. And I’ll be totally burned out and overwhelmed by the commitment by the end.

Having a more general overarching thing to work for in any given week (a long run, a mileage goal) theoretically lets me listen to my body, be easy on myself if I need to take a rest day etc. No one is “telling me what to do” so I don’t get sucked down a bad mental rabbit hole.

So I’m not ignoring the “follow a plan” advice because it’s bad advice, I just personally have fallen into unhealthy behaviors when given a schedule like that.

OP is making this all way too complicated. At your level OP, just find a plan for an event XX weeks out and do that plan. If your A race is too far out, just do the plan twice. That’s it.

All this attempt at fine tuning is a waste of your time. The things holding you back are 1) your cardio engine, and 2) your time experience running. It’s that simple.

As for “speed”-just about everybody after the age of 25 is going to PR in the mile during the build for the longest distance race they train for.