I have run before, but it was purely for regular exercise. I had never trained for a race, and had never run more than 10 miles in a single run. So in May of 2018 when I decided to attempt to do the 2019 Pikes Peak Ascent, it meant I had about 14 months to get ready. The first step was to get into shape to run a half-marathon in under 2:25:00. The Ascent has a qualification requirement in order to register for it. There is a second option which is to sign up for the triple crown race series, which is a 10 mile race in June, a half marathon in July and then the Ascent in August. This format still requires that you have a qualifying time on the June or July race. So my plan was to qualify in the fall of 2018 so that I could concentrate on training for the Ascent from November to August.
In order to get running again, I started with an 8 week 10K training program from www.halhigdon.com. After completing that and then taking a rest week. I started the Novice 2 Half Marathon Training program, again from www.halhigdon.com. I did have to adjust the training to remove one week in order to line up with the half-marathon that I registered for. I decided to remove week 10 from the training plan in order to match up with the schedule.
I chose to have a goal of 2:10:00 for the half-marathon. My thinking was that this would give me some extra time in case race day was hot, or if I was not prepared for some reason and had a bad day. This goal is basically a 10 minute pace. During the training, I would set my goal at 10 minutes per mile for any run that was 5 miles or longer and would attempt to run faster on the shorter run days. I think this approach worked pretty well, although, I would say that keeping a good attitude when I did not reach the goal pace was really a key. You can see in the image that many of the long run days I was not able to complete the run in the 10 min pace. I really tried to stay positive after those runs, often the weather was a big factor in those times, which helped my attitude. The worse times were often on days that were pretty warm out. The week 7 run was another big positive week. I completed the 9 miles at a 9:57 pace and felt great after finishing. We even went on a 6 mile hike just a couple hours after finishing that run! I must admit, I was a bit nervous after the 12-mile run, the pace was much slower than I wanted on that run, at 10:36.
You may notice some much slower paces in the image. Since the Ascent is a hike up a mountain, I decided to do trial runs on Wednesdays, when I could. Some of those included long uphill sections, leading to much slower average paces.
In the end this training led to a race day pace of 9:46 per mile.
Here is the image of my notes from the training:
