I've been working on my speed on my short base runs. Not actually doing intervals or anything. Just pushing the pace to the point that my heart rate is at the top of the range I'm comfortable with, but making sure I'm still maintaining my form and able to maintain the pace the entire run.

When I started running the best I could do was a 14 minute pace for about 2 miles. Now I'm running 4 miles at about a 10:50 pace. Max I've done is a 6 mile run at a 12 minute pace. I don't really care about the pace, but it's a good metric to show progress. Plus, if I can run faster without increasing effort much then that's less time on my feet, and a faster recovery.

Oh, and finally had to poop in the middle of a run. I think that makes me a legit runner now. Thankfully, I was close enough to a gas station and I didn't have to do it in the middle of a field.

Lol, one time I was deep back in the woods in California all by myself on a long run when the urge to go #2 became so urgent that I had no choice but to get off the trail and go. Unfortunately it was not a totally solid movement and I ended up sacrificing my underpants to wipe and just abandoned them deep in the woods.

Surprisingly, I've not had this happen yet. But my regular trail running friend has. Once, while we were on a city run, she really had to go. In about the worst part of Houston I've ever run in.

We found a recently abandoned homeless area and she went into the shrubs. Came out wearing no socks and we went on about our run.

When they chopped up my liver, they took out my gallbladder. Ever since then I've had some real close calls on runs. Pretty quickly learned to carry one or two single packaged wipes on runs.

In other news, I don't know if any of yall have run Ragnar. But, they're going through some stuff right now. Canceling races and not communicating with teams. It's made for some pretty decent drama as of late.

Also, just signed up for the SA Half Dec 6th. Looking for a PR if I can stay healthy.

Halfs are so much more fun to train for than marathons.

It just feels like the bang for your buck on training workouts is so much more acutely felt. Like I can build speed from 5k to 10k to half and it feels like each step leads to the other logically and then the results matchup with what you expect.

What time are you targeting for the SA half?

I wish that more of the big races were halfs instead of fulls.

I just feel like for the normal person you can still get the actual feeling of a race at the half distance. Like I can compete with other runners and depending on what they do I can change my approach on race day. By contrast the marathon is just me vs. the clock.

I've PR'd on halfs before simply because I attached myself to a pack of fast runners and stuck to them at an aggressive pace. No way I'd ever try that in a marathon because of the danger of totally wiping out on the back half.

I've been doing the "Wind" program in Marathon Excellence for everyone.

Using it for both half and full training.

More so trying to build my volume than anything else.

I'd love to do a half under 1:30.

The key for me to break 90 on a half was to get to the point where my "comfortable pace" on 7-10 mile runs was about 7:45 a mile. Once I hit that comfort level it wasn't hard to turn that into a sub 90 minute half. I had specific things I did with repeat miles and tempo work to make sure I had the speed to run a 6:50 pace for the whole half, but IMO the speed work is only a really small part of the equation.

The same held true when I pushed down to an 85 minute half, I think I was only able to do that because 7:15 began to feel like a relaxed pace.

Note that for me, relaxed pace doesn't = my slow pace. Relaxed for me is the pace I run if I just go out, put on music or an audio book and don't think too much about how far or how fast I'm running.