Half marathon training – Week 4 – Tune up race tomorrow

23/07	-	Rest day
24/07	5.0 miles	Easy run: avg 10:08 min/mile
25/07	5.0 miles	Easy run: avg 9:59 min/mile
26/07	5.0 miles	Easy run: avg 9:43 min/mile
27/07	-	Rest day
28/07	8.0 km	Torchlight Run
29/07	-	Rest and recovery day
Total	20.0 miles	YTD: 638.5 miles

This week was supposed to be a step back week but by the end of it I will have done the exact same mileage as last week. Oops. I didn’t do any speedwork or tempo runs though so in that way it has been an easy week. I did three easy 5 milers this week at a slightly faster than normal training pace. I like to think of the 5 miler as a cornerstone of my training. It’s a very manegable distance. It takes less than an hour to do and I can run it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. In other words, not a lot of planning has to go into knocking out a 5-miler. I like that.

I have a very different sort of 5 miler coming up tomorrow though. I’m running the Torchlight Run 8K. I did this race last year as an “A” race in a very speedy time of 40:53. I don’t think I can pull that off this again this year so I’ve chosed to use the race as a tune up race. My goal is to run at my goal half marathon race pace. That means somewhere between and 8:46 and 9:09 min/mile corresponding to half marathon times of 1:55:00 and 1:59:59, respectively. We’ll see how that goes. It will be a good way to guage where I’m at in my training. Stay tuned for a race report to be posted either tomorrow night or Sunday morning!