RTTC #237 Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 9

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali breaks down week 9 of her Proof of Time half marathon training, a week that was far from perfect but still delivered real progress. 

She walks through a Level 2 Tempo Run interrupted by a mid-workout treadmill shut down, a heavy strength training session, and a stress-driven decision to skip her long run entirely. 

Dr. Ali also shares her latest pace test results and explains how to know when it's time to retest and why consistency over months matters more than any single week.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

• Follow me on Instagram @rundisneydpt
• Join the Facebook Community to get training support
• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 9. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Ally, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney parks. This week was good and bad, right? Those are very subjective. Remember, we are taking this information with a grain of salt. We are just focusing on 80% is good enough. So it was good in the fact that I did my pace testing, I did a speed workout, and I did one cross-training run. And I did one strength workout this week. So overall, three out of five cardio workouts, one out of three strength workouts. Did I get it all? No. Is it the end of the world? No. And this episode is going to show you how you can still make progress, especially if you have a speed or a proof of time goal, even if training has not been perfect. So I am a recovering perfectionist. I everything used to need to be so perfect, get it right. I'm a former gymnast. We used to have to do 10 perfect routines, no wobbles, or you had to start the whole thing over. I liked to get straight A's. If it was possible to get an A plus in a class, I wanted to get that A plus. I like when things are in order. I like when things are done right, and I like to do absolutely every single thing that I can. As life has gone on, that's just not possible. And so some things are in my control and some things are out of my control. And it it has changed the way I think of things. And 80% is good enough. Did I actually hit 80% this week? I have no idea. But whatever I got done was good enough. Okay. But a motto in my life is 80% is good enough. It's good enough. It's good enough. Okay. So this week, I'm actually gonna start at the end of the week first and work my way backward because I want to spend a lot of the time talking about what happened on Monday and less time later in the week. So I will say this week we had our backyard done, and that involved the landscapers possibly showing up at 7 a.m. every day. Spoiler alert, they did not. Some days they showed up at nine, some days they showed up at 7:30, some days they showed up at 8:30. There was no rhyme or reason. Monday was a you know what show. So I'm not gonna start there. I'm gonna start Tuesday was a rest day, so we can skip over that quickly. Uh Wednesday was a speed workout. I did have a few hiccups in this run, but I did a level two 10K race pace tempo run. You may be thinking, Allie, what is a level two 10K race pace tempo run? So it's a brand new thing that I just invented for me. And if it goes well, I it was just invented for you as well. And I will talk about it and I will put it into place if I think that it's worth having other runners do it. So I'll start off to say I did have a few hiccups in this run. And it started, I mean, I started it, I got delayed because of the landscapers. Then, you know, whatever, I got started. Got into my first run interval. So I'd gone through my warm-up, getting into my first run interval, which was race pace. So my 10K race pace. And if you're wondering, what does that mean? That means the pace I'm going to have to run during my 10K in order to get my proof of time. So for a proof of time in a 10K for Run Disney, it's the theory is that I need to get at least a one-hour, eight-minute or faster time in order to get placed in at least Corral C, uh, in at least corral C, likely Corral B, but if I want A, I need it even faster than that. So my goal is Corral B. So I'm aiming for 107.59. But if you have heard my episodes previously, I've talked about that you rarely run race distance on race day on the course because of the way they have to map it out to make minimum requirements. So I likely am going to be running 6.4 miles, 6.5 miles, maybe 6.6 miles on my 10K race day. So, in order to still get my hour and eight minute time frame, I need to anticipate that I actually need to run faster during my running intervals or walk faster during my walk intervals than whatever it is an hour eight divided by 6.2. And even doing that, that would be my average, right? So we have to plan that I need to run 6.6 miles in an hour eight minutes. So that means my running intervals are going to be faster. So my race pace run intervals are that new pace. Okay. So I had just started my first run interval for my race pace. I don't even remember how far into it I was, but my treadmill shut off mid-run. It was so freaky. And thank goodness I pay attention because I was able to adjust. I didn't fall off the treadmill. I didn't hyperextend my knee. I didn't roll my ankle because all of that can happen if the treadmill just shuts off on you. Turns out I have lost power. And we we think it was likely because of the landscapers. They were using power tools. They probably plugged into an outlet that was related to and connected to the ones I was plugged into. Took me 40 minutes to figure out what was going on because I went over to our power box, which is in our garage, and nothing was tripped. And Royal was in a meeting. So I couldn't just like blanket statement, turn everything off, turn everything back on again because I would risk interrupting that meeting. So I ended up calling my sister, FaceTiming her, asking her questions. There was a CGFI, sorry if I said that wrong, but you know, one of those outlets with the test re reset buttons on it. We had one in the garage, and I clicked reset on it, but it wasn't red. So it didn't even look like it need to be reset. I thought we only had one in the garage. Turns out we have two, and the other one tripped at the outlet. So nothing in the box was actually tripped. Figured it out, reset it, and it worked fine. I ended up plugging the treadmill in to a different outlet anyway, just to be safe, but that happened. And so then finally got into my run again. I started all over again. I literally had to go all the way back to carb carbing up for it because all the carbs I had eaten by this time it had been hours. So I was like, well, need to add some more carbs again. Started over, started my warmup walk because that had cooled down, got into my running. Felt good. And I had a new easy pace to do. Race pace stayed the same, easy pace had changed, but I'm trying to build up on the specific speed workout to being able to run the race pace for all of my running intervals. So for a tempo run right now, you run a fast pace and then you drop down to an easy pace. And then you run a fast pace and then you drop down to an easy pace. Now, of course, with your run walk intervals mixed in there. So I'm running my, I actually dropped it to two minutes running, one minute walking, because if you've listened to the past couple of episodes, running three minutes at race pace is too long for me. I can't do it. It's not manageable. So doing two minutes running, one minute walking. And so I did that for the first time on this uh inter um on this speed workout. But I'm also, if you notice this was called level two, I'm also increasing how many run intervals in a row are race pace before I have an easy pace. And the goal is to get all of the run intervals in that 45 minute workout to be race pace. Once I hit that 45 minute time frame, then I'm gonna increase the time frame from 45 minutes to 50 minutes and then 50 to 55, 55 to 60, 60 to 65 minutes. So level two means that I've added one more race pace run interval before I hit my easy pace run. Level three next week is going to be doing three run intervals at race pace before I hit an easy pace, and so on and so forth for how many run intervals I have in that 45 minute workout. Now remember, a 45-minute workout still has 10-minute warm-up, 10-minute cooldown. So the actual running that I'm doing is 25 minutes and I'm doing two-minute, one minute, two-minute running, one minute walking. So if you do 30, 30 intervals, you're you aren't going to do the same number of running intervals as me. You are going to do the the number that you need, right? Because 30, 30 intervals, you're gonna have more intervals than I have at two minutes, one minute. And so I have decided that I'm going to get up to running all of race pace for the 45 minutes and then get into 50, 55, 60, 65 in order to build up my speed, my pace tolerance for my total 10K. Now you may be thinking 65 minutes of a tempo run. Well, the race is an hour and eight. So that's gonna be 68 minutes. That's practically running the 10K. And then I'm just gonna be keep doing that. That doesn't make sense, Allie. That doesn't align with what you've said in the past. You're right, it doesn't. But remember that if the race is gonna be 68 minutes, my tempo runs still have a 10-minute warm-up, 10-minute cooldown. So a 65-minute total workout minus 10 minutes warmup, minus 10 minutes cool down, that's still 45 minutes of runtime. So I still will be maintaining what I recommend where you do not run race distance, training for your race. So that will still hold true. I will not be swaying from that because by the time I get up to the 65 minutes for the tempo run, I will be in training for my race. Like it will be a training phase. Right now it's in the build phase, the build block, right? Some people call it block. I call it phases. I'm in my training, excuse me, I'm in my build phase right now. I'll be in training phase starting in August. I also did a whole body strength workout on the machines. And I did a heavy workout because I believe that if my legs or my body are going to be trashed from a workout, I might as well lean into it and keep going. Like I had the time, I was gonna do a strength workout anyway. Why do just the speed workout and then tomorrow do a heavy strength workout? Because then my legs are trashed from the speed workout. And then the next day my legs get trashed from the heavy strength workout. Why not, if I have the time and I can fuel for it, why not just do those all in one go? So I do. And so I did that. Goal with a heavy weight workout is to be able to do between five and eight repetitions, closer to five if you can get it. But some of those sets, you may be getting up to the eight reps in the first, like one first set, right? You may get to eight reps or close to it. When you can do eight reps without struggling in those last two to three reps, that's when it's time to increase the weight. So once a runner does a one rep max test, you take that information and you can create, and then you know what your heavy, your medium, and your lightweight days are. But many runners will ask me, well, how do I know when to increase the weight? Should I just do another one rep max test? And I don't recommend it. What you do instead is once you've created those heavy, medium, and lightweight days, once the last two to three repetitions aren't challenging anymore, you're not struggling through, you're not, you know, taking more time between repetitions, that's when it's time to increase your weight. For most people, that's gonna be two, maybe three weeks of doing the workout. If you are having no problem with your weight right now, the weights that you're lifting, you probably can increase them. And if you haven't done a one rep max test, I really do recommend doing that. But we're not gonna go into too much detail on that because this is about the proof of time training. So anyway, I did that strength workout. As I get closer to race day, I will bring the weights down. And I instead of doing heavyweight days, I'll do medium or light when I'm in taper and definitely when I'm in race week, I won't be doing strength training. Maybe a couple of light repetitions just to keep myself moving, but really not doing a 10 to 15 repetition set of a lightweight. It will be like five to just keep things feeling good, loosey goosey, feeling mobile for race day. But going heavy now can help my muscles later. So then even later, medium weight, a medium weight day could be heck, it could be my current heavyweight day. We don't know. Time will tell how often I stay consistent with my heavy lifting. So that was Wednesday. Thursday and Friday became rest days. Um, Saturday became a rest day as well. I just had a lot going on this week. Um, Royal got bit by a couple of bugs last week and it turned into cellulitis. So we that just stressed me out. So we've been watching it, being careful. We drove down to his office a couple of times. We had to grab a few things. Fourth of July, just it was a big old stress ball. So when that happens, I usually break out in hives. My heart rate is elevated, my body temperature is elevated, my histamine reaction is elevated. And doing a long run and then going into a hot Epsom salt bath after that, that's just a recipe for disaster. So Royal actually caught it and he's like, I'm making the executive decision here. You are not doing your long run this weekend. I was like, okay, that's fine. You're right. It was going to be a deload week anyway. And because of the holiday, we were gonna drive out of town, get away from the fireworks. That didn't happen, but it it worked out well because I can just drop it, do a D-load week. And with a D-load week, you can either do the D-load miles that are written on there, which for me would have been 4.84, or you don't, or you don't do it at all. And that's fine. And then Sunday cross-training, 45-minute walk on the treadmill. I did, I don't know, my lower than my warm-up pace, slower than my warm-up pace, I mean. And goal was just to move my body for 45 minutes and that was it. And then I did my 15 minutes of stretching, called it a day. So that brings us to the end of the week. Let's go back to the beginning of the week. I decided, since it had been a while, I was gonna pace test. This was an ideal time frame. So I recommend pace testing every six to eight weeks. Sooner than six weeks, you haven't practiced your speed workouts enough to be able to see results. And you can do it anytime after that time frame. So because I had a couple of weeks where I really didn't work out as much as I had wanted to, as much as was on the schedule, I decided to do this speed test, this pace test in week nine. It's still within that relative time frame. I didn't wait too long. And I actually I still could have waited longer if I wanted to. You can always wait longer. It's time to pace test when you start wondering, hmm, these paces have gotten easier. Or I wonder what my easy pace would be like now. I wonder how fast I could go in a 30-second or 60-second sprint. If you're starting to question those things, that's the time to pace test. And so I last pace tested at the beginning of this, so May 4th, and I pace tested again. This was June 29th. So that was a great time frame to pace test again. And it is so interesting because many runners will ask me, well, how do I decide what paces to look at or to test for by second, third, fourth, fifth pace test? Okay. So what I recommend doing is look at your previous pace test numbers and then also look at your speed workouts. Look at the paces you've been hitting, especially for your 10 second pace or your highest level in your progression run and think about how those paces feel. If you do the paces outside and they are just blowing your previous pace numbers out of the water, maybe you don't do that exact number because that's for 10 seconds at a time, right? And your hard test interval may be 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds. Maybe aim for something a little bit lower. Okay. So I'm going to share my pace numbers with you, but remember, my pace numbers are mine. Please do not compare yours to mine, but I'm gonna use them so that we have some context here. So in pace testing number one on May 4th for me, my hard test was 8.5 miles per hour. And I actually had made a note afterward that I probably could have gone faster, but I was nervous about flying off the back of the treadmill. I'm not used to going that fast. And so after practicing doing a little bit faster on the treadmill from what my hard pace is, because that's what the 10-second sprint is. I knew I knew I felt comfortable enough to do at least 8.6. So I did 8.7. And unfortunately, I didn't take very good notes this week. So I don't remember how I felt doing that pace test, which is very unfortunate for this conversation. But that's what I did. And then when I chose my moderate pace, I looked at how I felt on the different segments of my progression runs because a progression run starts 0.1 mile per hour faster than what your moderate pace test came out to be. So I knew that a little bit faster, I would have done it on a progression run a couple of times. And my race pace run interval is close to what my new moderate pace is, but it was a little bit faster than my old moderate pace. So I had an idea of what my body felt like doing that because I've been practicing it for a while. So when you go to pace test again, I do recommend look at your old pace test numbers. Look at your recent speed workouts in the past six to eight weeks that you've been doing and come and compare it. Just choose, like, okay, pace test number one says this. And then on my speed workouts, I've been doing this. And this is how I felt doing those on the speed test. Excuse me, my speed workouts. So now I know how my body feels, and you can do more of an educated guess on how to do it. I do recommend when you pace test, do it the same way you did before. If you did it outside before, do it outside again. If you did it on the treadmill before, do it on the treadmill again because the numbers are not a hundred percent correlating, right? Many runners will go faster outside, but some runners will go slower outside. Some runners don't feel comfortable on the treadmill. All of these will factor into what your pace test results show. And we cannot compare apples to oranges. So if you did your first pace test outside and you do your second one on the treadmill and your paces are slower on the treadmill, I can't say for sure that your paces are actually slower now because you didn't do them in the same fashion, because it it is different. You also have to take into account Account the temperature and the environment that you're in. If it's now hot outside, let's say you did your first pace test in February and now you're doing your second pace test in June. It is much warmer in June. And if you are somebody who is affected by heat, you are going to run slower. Does that mean you actually are slower? No, it does not. It does not because now you are in warmer temperatures. Your body is already working harder. So your numbers are not going to match very well. And what that means is it's not that you don't pace test in the summer. It's we keep these numbers as summer numbers. And then we pace test again when it's starting to get cooler again in September, as an example. And we just keep those numbers and we just overall see how we're doing. What the ideal situation is, is you get multiple months over the course of a year at different temperatures and you start seeing the overall trend. Like if you remember devising a slope in math class ages and ages ago, what is that? Algebra, algebra two, something like that. And you create a slope so that you can see the overall trend. Sometimes it will go down, sometimes it will go up. And then we look at the overall trend over the course of six months, a year. Because if you pace test, let's just say you pace test every eight weeks, that's three pace tests in a six-month period, right? And so then that's six over the course of a year. That's a lot of data. And so we don't want to just look at the one. In my case, I did get faster on all of my paces. And that was a really cool feeling. So on my warmup walk, I got faster by 0.2 miles per hour, which at the pace that I was going for a warm-up walk is almost one minute per mile faster. That was 50 seconds per mile faster. And I say that because I want you to compare that to my hard pace. I also went to 0.2 miles per hour faster on my hard pace. And that was a 10-second difference. So I make that point because if you have ever looked at if you're in stronger, faster finisher, you see that I have both mile per hour and minute per mile paces. And I have that listed out there for somebody so that they know the mile per hour and they know the minute per mile in case they're doing it outside versus on the treadmill for their easy run, their speed workouts, things like that. I also use that as a comparison because you might look at that and think, oh, well, I'm only getting 0.2 mile per hour faster on everything. That's that's not a big jump. The faster you are, the the less of a gap that will be, right? On my hard pace, I went 0.2 mile per hour faster. That was only a 10-second change, but it was 0.2 mile per hour faster. And based on where I already was on the mile per hour, that that was 10 seconds, but 0.2 mile per hour faster at my slower warm-up pace, that was 50 seconds faster. See? So we don't want to just look and see, oh, it's just 0.2, or I'm only getting 0.2 mile per hour faster. Well, no, we have to look at what that cuts off in time for our workouts, potentially for race day. And please remember in the opposite vein that a hard pace, if you quote unquote, only got 10 seconds per mile faster, that's still 0.2 mile per hour faster, right? Like we can look at it both ways. So if you see, oh, I only got 10 seconds per mile per mile faster, what a bummer. It's not that big of a jump. Well, you're already so much faster. So the jump is going to be smaller. So it's it's relative. The overall goal is to progressively be getting faster. And we need to look at months and months and months worth of data to see the overall picture. We don't just look from one to the next if we have more data than that. And sometimes we just wait for more data to be available to start noticing trends. Because, you know, I got faster this time, but what about next time? Maybe I won't, maybe I won't get faster at all. I hope I don't get slower. I shouldn't get slower, as long as I maintain my my workouts, right? And I fuel properly and I hydrate properly and I make sure I'm ready for the pace test. I will say that's one of the main things that goes into play. If you are showing that you are slower, if you're doing it on the treadmill, question would be, well, why did you choose a slower pace? Why didn't you just choose the pace that you were at before? And if the reason is, oh, I did choose that and I couldn't keep up, my next questions would be, okay, well, how has training been in the past six to eight weeks? Oh, I haven't trained at all. I'm starting all over. Okay, well, then maybe you are slower now. And that that's just where you're at. That's just the fact of right now, right? If you say, oh, training's been going pretty good, you know, I've I've missed a few, but it overall it's it's been doing more workouts than than I was missing. And so then I would start looking at, well, what was your heat like? What was your stress like that day? What was your fueling and your hydration that day and the days leading up to it? How tired and prepared were you? You know, if you say normally I work out in the day and I actually pace test it at 8 p.m. at night and normally I'm in bed at nine o'clock, you know, that's another factor too. So we have to look at multiple factors, but sometimes it does just it, it it takes some months worth to see overall changes. But if you have gotten significantly slower, I'd start looking at some of those other things that I just mentioned. But I will say overall, I got, let's see, 50 seconds per mile faster on my warm-up, 23 seconds faster, 23 seconds per mile faster on my easy run. I got 24 seconds faster on my moderate run. I got 10 seconds faster on my hard run, and then my recovery and my walk intervals, I kept the same. I didn't want to change those. So I kept those the same. So overall, solid pace test results. And this shows your workouts don't need to be perfect to make gains. I missed practically three weeks of workouts in the past nine weeks. So again, goes to show you need at least six weeks worth of solid speed workouts. That's why I waited until week nine to do this pace test. But also, that goes to show that only six weeks of speed workouts can get you gains. On average, my runners see one minute per mile faster from their first pace test to their second. Many see faster than that. Part of that is just being comfortable pace testing. I admit that is part of it. But another part is you have massive gains once you start training strategically. Start training, and your easy runs are easy and you go hard and actually going hard and reaching and exceeding, going beyond your upper limits, going past your ceiling, pushing your limits to make physiologic changes in your body. And just from May 4th to June 29th, I saw significant gains. Now, none of them were a minute per mile faster, but I didn't expect that. I've been doing this for years. I'm not seeing that minute per mile faster pace now. I've I saw that years ago, but I don't need to see that. Small incremental changes over time are what are going to make me be more successful. And so that is my week nine of training, going heavy on that pace testing, getting new numbers for me. My race pace number doesn't change because I have a goal for that race pace. Excuse me, I have a goal for that race, and it's to get faster than one hour, eight minutes. And we're gonna continue this journey to see how I do it, what I do for it, and if I actually succeed on race day. Because I could do all of this and maybe I still don't get it on race day. I don't know. Time will tell because you can plan and strategically train, and then race day still doesn't happen. That's okay, but I'm going to give it my best. Because if I don't give it my best now, I definitely won't make it on race day. And we'll see what happens.