Half Marathon Preparation Time

I’ve been getting ready for the Marathon of the Palm Beaches Half Marathon which will be on December 6, 2015. I’m trying to up my mileage a bit and I have been doing Half Marathon specific workouts. What that means is my Tempo runs and such are being done at around or a bit faster than my Half Marathon Pace. The course this year is being changed. I am assuming that it is because of road work going on along a stretch of road normally used for this race. But assuming is not always a good thing to do.

I keep checking the races website to see if they have posted the new course but nothing yet. I did notice however a comment on the site about being able to see the ocean along a portion of the course. In years past the race directors have tried to work with the Town of Palm Beach to have part of the course run through their town on the Island. Maybe they finally succeeded. Anyway it would be nice to know what it is so I and I’m sure others can run a portion of it before the race.

Below is what I have been doing up to this point:

1.The week after my 10 mile race I just ran easy for a total of 21 miles.

2. The following week I started my Half Marathon training with a 4 X one mile on a Wednesday and a 12 miler fast finish on Saturday for a total of 35 plus miles for the week.

3. The next week was 35 miles with a 4 mile Tempo run at 7:21 average pace and 8 X ½ mile repeats. Saturday did a 10.63 miler

4. Today was a 7 mile easy run. The plan for this week is a 2 X 3 mile Tempo on Wednesday and a 15 mile fast finish on Saturday.

I hope to get a couple 40 mile weeks and some good work outs before I taper during the last week before race day. I do my runs on the week days after work, being its getting dark early now it gets dark part way through my runs so I carry a flashlight and use one of those clip-on lights for my visor. The lights help somewhat so I can see and hopefully so someone else running or biking avoids hitting me.

And what is really nice now is the temperature is dropping just a little, not much but you can feel the difference. Another month or two and it should be nice.