So after a long hiatus from racing, I have my first half marathon in almost a year. Last year I ran 60:00 and finished third at the World Half Marathon Championships and it will be interesting to see how the race goes considering the how much different my build-up is for the Great North Run which is in just over a week in Newcastle UK. Last year I came off having a great track season and I was running less volume than I am now. A lot of people say you don’t run your best half marathon off marathon training, but I feel like I am not that far off the fitness I was then. My long workouts have been getting close to those of my pre-world half workouts but the biggest difference is not having ripping fast short intervals. I do think that the effort of the half marathon is closer to a 10k than a marathon but it I think you can run great half marathons off marathon training. For me the biggest difference has been the recovery days. Since my volume has been up higher than last fall, it has taken me longer to recover from the hard workouts. If you are only running 90 miles a week, you can run 10-12 miles on easy days(even doubling) but when you are in marathon training you have to still get in 15-17 miles on easy days to get your weekly volume high. That seems to be the biggest difference to me, just now feeling snappy on easy days, but the workouts have been great. I am very excited to get back in and race some of the greatest marathoners in history, Geb and Lel, along with many others. It will be a great test for me since they are both running NYC Marathon. I take a lot of confidence to this race with my recent workouts and look forward to lacing up the racing shoes finally!Ritz blogs on Competitor
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