WEEK 5: HALF MARATHON 2020

WEEK 5 HALF MARATHON 2020 WITH ‘SAINTS DAYS 5K&10K TRAINING STARTS.  St. Valentine’s Day is Friday! The true holiday may be the actual date some of you will be running the first of the two ‘SAINT’S DAYS’ tune-up races, the 5K.  A personal, custom-designed competition will allow this, so use Earned Runs bibs if you choose this 5k option.

Most of the organized St. Valentine’s Day themed races are likely to be slated to be run on the Saturday-Sunday part of the weekend. Good luck to all who join happy crowds of others to celebrate this day; have fun!

Congratulations to all who've persevered with training up to this point. If you don’t have a race planned, but still want to cover the 3.1-mile distance on the 14th, swap Thursday’s run or walk session with Friday’s. Treat it like an official tune-up race; it can be a tempo training run/walk performed at less than all-out effort. 
 
Check out the article by Pete Magill about Tune-Up races that was discussed in the original blog post on the topic. The referenced expert, Paul Aufdemberge, explains the way to approach this race.  ”Since it’s not a goal race you should feel like you ran fairly evenly all the way through.  You should feel like you could have run faster.  You don’t want to charge out and die”.  It’s about building confidence.
 
You will then be able to stick with the plan as it builds up mileage and get in a long slow 6-mile run or brisk 5-mile walk on Saturday.
 
Stretch and roll afterwards and look forward to the next goal in your plan, the 10k. Hopefully if you have been paying attention to building strength, improving balance, and increasing speed in the last half of your long runs/walks, you will notice fresher legs, and achieve a strong finish. Good luck.
 
RUN & MOVE HAPPY!
 
https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20811938/tune-up-for-successful-racing/