How I Took 22 Minutes Off My Half Marathon Time
By: William Hazel
Tags: Inspiration, Running Tips, Running, Life Lessons, Motivation

At least, this is how I think I did it

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

I was shocked when I crossed the 10K mark. I triple checked I wasn’t making some sort of mistake. My trusted timepiece agreed with the digital clock in the street, so I embraced the truth I was moving that fast. It had been eight months since my last half marathon and now I was indulged in a fantasy about beating that race’s time by half an hour.

Let me first clarify my interpretation of speed. That race from eight months previous was my first half marathon. As a newbie running on a freezing, rain-filled mid-March morning, I managed to haul myself from start to end in 2:31.51. An average pace of 11:35 minutes spent enjoying each mile. I was pretty pleased with myself that day, for I had missed my goal time by only a pair of minutes. I felt doubly proud as the run took place in a torrential nor'easter storm that brought enough rain and wind to turn the 9,000 scheduled runners into 6,000 at the line. It still stands, now four years past, as the worst conditions I’ve ever experienced in a race.

And then, on a freezing November morning that same year, I crossed the line in my second half marathon with a chip time of 2:09:25. An average pace of 9:53 for each of those thirteen miles. Twenty-two minutes and twenty-six seconds had been removed from my newbie half. I had somehow gone from running mid elevens to high nines. As a middle aged, mid corral runner that first set foot to pavement only a year before, I was confused.

My friends bombarded me for weeks with questions of how I managed to go so much faster in such a short period of time. I had no answers. I had no idea. Perhaps that’s the first important point.

I wasn’t that worried about my speed. Naturally, my desire was to go faster than two hours and another thirty minutes. After the first event came a burning motivation to explore how fast I might be able to move across a distance genuinely unimaginable a mere year before. I never approached the notion, however, that speed would be how I defined my success in completing my second half marathon. I honestly viewed my result that day as purely accidental. Not necessarily as a fluke, but merely as an unplanned reward.

But it wasn’t an accident. Something notable, something worth remembering happened during those months between races. I will always reminisce these nascent months as when I made the transition from running to becoming a runner. I hesitate to put it this way, for it appears my conclusion delves from the PR. The specific time, though, has no root in my personal narrative. It’s simply a day when things went well. The process of finding a new pace within my capabilities finally revealed by the ticker that morning. With a bit of rearview mirror reflection, I can theorize a few reasons that probably contributed and probably didn’t. Some stuff that didn’t matter included:

The course. Half marathon one was run on a long, flat, open course. A lot of runners make the trip for the race since both the half and full marathon courses are known for producing PRs. The faster half was accomplished on a twisty, city course, with more than sixty turns. No one goes there for speed records. So the course, without a doubt, didn’t factor in.

The workouts. I did insert a handful of speed workouts and tempo runs during my training schedule, but never pursued them with any gusto or regularity. Nor did I add any cross training core sessions, leg training, or any type of relative weight training that could have improved my overall strength and fitness. In fact, very little had changed since my first half marathon schedule. I still used a novice plan and only added some extra miles here and there.

The weather may have contributed, though I’m doubtful it played a key role. Although the faster day was without horrendous precipitation, the high 30s, mid 40s temperatures, 30mph winds, and below freezing wind chills were painfully similar. A few items on the review checklist, however, do stand as points of pretty decent advice for new runners, or even for experienced distance seekers with a healthy desire to question current training methods.

I trained slowly.

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

In eight months I was living proof of the myriad and multitudes of athletic study and data showing that running much slower than you’re capable of during training miles, makes you a swifter competitor. I can literally list dozens of sources, but since your on Medium following the Runner’s Life Blog, you have most likely already seen quotes like:

“The body makes more blood to transport oxygen more efficiently and the number of energy power plants in the muscle cells increases, so they become even more effective. New capillaries (small blood vessels) ensure that the blood and thus also more oxygen can get everywhere in the muscles.”

Health sections of major newspapers like the Washington Post will cite and source how “Your maximum aerobic benefit is going to be running slowly.”

I know it’s hard, especially for us ‘Mericans, to accept that science is, indeed, worth acknowledging, but the folks that are much smarter than I have shown with repeated conclusion that something incredible happens to our body’s ability to process oxygen when the body is running slowly.

Cultural jokes aside, I have yet to fist bump a fellow runner that argues against this data. Something very important is happening to our muscular structure as well. We’re also improving the flexibility and agility of our joints when we are running miles, let’s all say it out loud, slowly.

It works. I didn’t mean to prove it works, but my example is certainly worth a mention. I’m going to credit my wife for making it happen. She was training for the same half marathon, so our schedules were always in synch. Sharing easy pace long runs together has become a simple joy we share in our adventures. She runs a slower race pace and adjusted her training miles accordingly. She took the slower pace approach, vs monitoring heart rates. Our long runs were at least a minute to 90 seconds slower than her goal pace. Add the factor that our side by side weekend long runs usually took place on the soft trails of a nearby State Park, and it wasn’t unusual for our trail run pace to be in the thirteens or fourteens. Instead of constantly monitoring our watches, we simply made certain our conversations continued in a normal breath.

Although I don’t meet many runners that dispute the slow data, I also don’t know many runners that are willing to slow down that much on their training runs. Day after day, whether it’s the mid-week short run, or the weekend ten miler, I see runners posting their very fast, very comparable race paces on the social scroll of keep up. That brings up a second reason I’m certain contributed to improving my time, and it could improve yours too:

I spent less time on social media.

Photo by Erik Zünder on Unsplash

Again, this was more accidental than purposeful. At the time I was managing a small nonprofit and a series of fall fundraisers kept me at a steady six-day, sixty-hour week schedule. Since I was also producing four different channels of social media content for the organization, I slowed down how much I was on my personal feeds.

Much like the benefits of slow running, a wealth of data has been amassed at how detrimental too many social media hours are for our emotional health. I wish there were studies to prove my hunch of how the atmosphere of social media comparisons keeps us from achieving our best race times.

The self-inflicted pressure of posting our pace on social media every day is making us slower.

And I don’t think that’s oversimplified. If I start worrying about knocking out nine-minute miles for my Garmin screenshots on Insta-Me my accumulated fatigue will ensure my pace suffers on race day.

The final reason I feel my run was so successful that morning, and probably the more salient point:

I didn’t worry about my time.

I still regret looking at my watch at the 10K line, but the big red numbers in the sign made it hard to avoid. I knew I was going to go faster than my initiation race, but I never really set a goal time. I just wanted to run. And that’s what I did. I ran. I ran hard. Pushed myself, yes, but always made certain I wasn’t overstraining. I simply accepted I’d be happy whatever the end result.

And that’s it. There’s my miracle, magic, push the easy button method I unwillingly used to cross a half marathon finish line a full 22 minutes faster than I had before.

Slow down your training runs. Get away from comparing yourself on social media. Stop worrying about your time.

I’m still doing well with my running and have it in the back of my mind and on some days the front of my mind, that I could run a half marathon in under two hours. My current 10K times suggest that the possibility is genuine. I’m not 100% sure, of course. I’m going to have to work through practicing all these theories I’m preaching, and begin to believe in my running just a little bit more than I do right now.

And I’m not 100% assured I can slow down enough to run that fast.