When I committed to the half marathon for October, I also enabled one of Strava’s Summit training plans to keep me honest on the times and distances I should be ramping up with as I prep for that race. My personal goal isn’t to hit some target time in the half; it’s mostly to finish in a comfortable time frame. I chose a plan that has a 10-week training course, 4 activities per week with rest days and/or cross-training in between.

Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been trying to manage my activities by duration and heart rate zone rather than just running with no plan. Throughout the year up until now I’ve been doing pretty high paces (sub-8-minute miles), but at that level I can’t keep the times up or the HR in the right “tempo” zone. I’ve been consistent with keeping under the threshold zone for my midweek runs for about 30-45 minute lengths. I’m particularly happy that I’ve gone 3 weeks in a row with long runs on the weekend and hour-long continued effort in the right HR zone.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow and this weekend as I kick off the training plan. It’s set to start next week, so my long run this weekend will be the pre-training benchmark for the 10-week program.

I’ve already crested the +20 mile mark over my year’s goal pace with my increased times and efforts this past month. With this lead up to the half marathon, I could be in the +50 territory by mid-October.