Mikes Middle Distance Magic: Race shoes at the ready!

The first race of 2019 is upon me!  My famous saying on this blog is “time is flying” and it is no exception now!

I’m really excited about 2019 and really keen to get the first race under my belt. It’s a low key event with not many participants and it has been 4 years since I raced a half marathon.

Run training has gone pretty well since September when starting with Ray and I’ve consistently increased mileage up to 11.3miles on the 17 December 2018. That was my last long run as I’ve struggled to get the last couple of scheduled long sessions in over the Christmas period. Despite this though on the runs I’ve done I’ve performed pretty well.  With my 5k TT I was 16 seconds slower than my PB, and that was 48 hours after my 11.3 mile run with still pretty achy legs! I also did a pretty good threshold session last week consisting of 4 x 5 mins with 1 min RI and managed under 8:30 pace for all intervals and produced my 8th fastest time ever for 5k, including the resting intervals so my confidence is high going into the race!

My PB for the half marathon distance was back in 2012 with a 2:04:16 and a 9:30 a mile average. I’ve looked back over that data and I completely blew up on that run 10 miles in, dropping pace by 2 minutes a mile in the last third! So my plan is to just do what I’ve been doing in training. I know I can comfortably hold just under 10 min mile pace so I’m going to hold that for 10 miles and see how I feel. Then hopefully step up the pace and finish strong over the last 5km. If I can finish strong on a half marathon this early in 2019 it will give me a massive confidence boost for the rest of the winter period and building into the tri season early April. On that note I’m going to lace up my trainers and get out for my last run before the race.

Thanks for reading and hopefully next week’s blog will be a positive race report.

– Mike Catton