RTTC #241 Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 11

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali walks through week 11 of her Proof of Time training block, including how she's adapting her workouts to brutal Las Vegas summer heat. 

She shares the mental strategies she leaned on to push through a tough race-pace speed workout, plus what she learned about pace testing on an unfamiliar treadmill. 

Ali also talks through her decision to take a long run outside instead of on the treadmill, and offers an honest reflection on why it's okay when not every workout on the schedule gets checked off.

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 11. 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. Ali, 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. So this week, pretty good on the workout front. Pretty good. Not great. I did three out of five cardio workouts and I did two strength workouts. Not too shabby. So three out of five cardio, two out of three strength. And actually, the third in my book is a bonus because I'm doing full body strength workouts. So I'm lifting heavy. So I'm only able to do five to eight repetitions, and I'm hitting all major muscle groups that my running body that my body needs. I'm hitting all major muscle groups. I'm hitting different parts of my shoulders. I'm hitting biceps, triceps, glutes, lateral glutes, quads, hamstrings, calf muscles, core, uh, upper back. I'm I'm hitting all majors. So two is great. Third, three is better. I'm aiming to get three in. It's not always happening. And this week I got two out of three. Fine, no problem. I did not get all of my cardio workouts in. I did get one cross training, one speed workout, and my easy run. So Monday was a rest day. Tuesday, I did this run on the treadmill. I did decide to join Planet Fitness, and they had an offer come up for $1 signup and one month free. So if I use this for July and August, I'll only pay one month and it's $15 a month anyway. I can afford that. It has lots of cardio equipment. I haven't really noticed that it's been too busy. And we'll just see how it goes. And if I want to keep it through the year, I'll keep it, but they don't have a contract. So I can cancel at any time. And then I can just sign up again next summer if I need it. And you know, for the past two summers, I haven't needed anything because we have spent our summer out of state. We went to Utah to get into cooler weather. Some of you may know that my husband Royal has medical conditions and he is very, very heat intolerant. And so living in Las Vegas, nine months of the year, it's it's pretty okay. And so we did a trial in the summer of 2024 to see how we liked being in cooler weather in Utah. And it went great. We actually did an Airbnb for two weeks in July, for 4th of July, to get away from fireworks for Levi. And the weather was so nice. We actually contacted the person and was like, hey, can we stay for another week? And we did. And then we decided, you know what? Let's just see what we can do for, you know, for more time for next summer and so on and so forth. And so we ended up doing Utah. We we we were there the following summer as well. So when I was training for Halloween half marathon, actually two course challenge, actually, all three of the races. But when I was training for that, we were in Utah. And so I just made sure that I stayed cool. I think the hottest temperature, it would get to like 85 in the middle of the afternoon. And I work out in the morning. If I don't work out in the morning, it doesn't get done. And so the past two summers, I've been working out in much cooler weather. So this summer, it's it's hot. I mean, it it's just it's hot in Las Vegas. That's just the way it is. That's I have known that I've been here for 10 years. And actually, before we moved into this house, my workout was in a spare bedroom that we had. So my treadmill was there, all of my weights were there. And so I could be in the air conditioning since moving into this house. I have a different kind of setup for my work. Whereas before I would split it and there's a treadmill right next to me. I just, I like this setup better. It works great for me. And we do have the space to be able to have my workout equipment in the garage. That just doesn't work for me in the summer. It's, you know, at the time of recording this, it's gonna be 106 degrees outside today. It hit 109 the other day. It's gonna get even hotter in the next couple of days and weeks. So working out in the garage just is not an option for me right now. And that's okay. So Planet Fitness, it is. So decided to do this workout on the treadmill there. It was hot. By the time I got to the gym, it was a little later than normal. So I ended up having more carbs after my initial carb intake for breakfast. And it was time to do my tempo run. And I have been doing my 10K race pace, and I've been leveling up each week. So this was level four. And based on how this was written, it was six rounds of race pace, an easy pace, another round of race pace, and then followed with an easy pace. And of course, with my run-walk intervals, and I am trying to do two-minute, one-minute, two-minute running, one minute walking. And so I this was almost completion of my of doing all of the race pace intervals. So the way it's gonna level up is next week, I will have one easy run interval left. And it's otherwise, it's all race pace. It was so hard today. And so it was ending with easy pace, which was nice. But just overall, this is hard. I I did catch myself going back to my walk interval early by just a few seconds and starting my race pace as soon as my watch alerted me. So I use an Apple Watch and it haptics me. So it buzzes my wrist to tell me when it's time to run and when it's time to walk. But if I am feeling like I'm dying, I will check my watch and be like, oh, I have five seconds left. Okay, I'll just start walking now. And that's what I was doing in this workout. But then I would wait until the absolute last second of the change from my walk to my run pace. I would wait the absolute latest that I could. So I did lose a few seconds. We're talking like maybe six seconds of running during my running intervals. And I did it on the later rounds. And I was so anxious and could not wait for my easy pace to come up. I noticed I was checking my watch a lot, and I didn't really have much to look at, much to watch. I did have an energetic playlist going. They do have TVs all up that I could watch. They don't all have captions. I happened to be in front of a TV or behind a TV. I don't know how you want to say it. The TV I could see that was right in front of me was not a TV channel I wanted to watch. I was not interested in this news TV channel. And so I just kind of wanted to ignore it. But I didn't have my iPad with me. And I was noticing that I was kind of bargaining with myself. Things like, okay, 10 more seconds. And if you really can't, then you can walk. And I'd say it over and over again. So it was like, okay, 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds. I can do anything for 10 seconds. Okay, 10 more seconds, and then you can walk. Just get through these next 10. And and I just kept, I was like gaslighting myself. I just kept saying it over and over and over again. It kind of worked. Not really. It didn't really work. I did get through it, right? And the ideal situation is I would do the whole run interval and not cut it short. So this was really hard. And I was thinking about it after. I didn't do my pace testing on this treadmill. Every treadmill is just a little bit different. So my easy pace, like my pace testing could be off, which is really interesting. So the pace I'm trying to run right now is not any one of my paces. Well, the easy paces, but it's not a moderate, it's not a hard, it's race pace. It's what I want to run in order to get this sub one hour, eight minute 10K. And really, because I'm gonna go a little bit further than 6.2 miles, I anticipate farther, further, whatever. I anticipate on race day, I'm actually trying to get it so that it's gonna take me one hour, five minutes for 6.2 miles. So on my training schedules that I use, I use the same one that my clients have. It will tell me what my run pace should be based on what my walk pace is and what my run walk intervals are. So right now, I'm trying to run 6.9 miles per hour. Now remember, don't compare your pace to my pace. I'm sharing that because that's part of this journey. Because many runners are asking me, well, how do I know what I'm going to be able to do a 10K in sub one hour, eight minutes? Right now, I don't know all of the data to be able to tell you that. And so I can, I can run 6.9 miles miles per hour for two minutes a couple of times in a row, no problem. But as you're hearing, I start getting into more and more rounds of this. And I'm bargaining with myself and I am really, really challenged. Am I gonna be able to do this on race day? Right now, I don't know. I have never really had a race day goal. Like my first half marathon, I for most of the marathons, I just go out and I want to have fun. I want to finish and I want to have fun, but I've never really said, oh, I want to get a sub two and a half hour half marathon, or I want to get a sub two-hour 20-minute half marathon. Have I done that in the past? I have. I've done, I think, well, I can't remember if it was 219 or 221 half marathon in like 2013. That was 13 years ago. And, or maybe it was 2017, almost 10 years ago. And I I was a different person then. So can I do this now? I I don't know, but I've also never really had a goal for a specific time because that's just not really who I am. I'm doing this to see if I can get a better corral placement with a proof of time and to document, I will be honest, to document this process for you so that when you have struggles and you're like, I'm bargaining with myself. Am I supposed to feel miserable during the speed workout? Well, supposed to, I don't know, but am I feeling miserable during some of these speed workouts? Absolutely. I do believe you should not feel miserable on your long run. But these speed workouts for 25 minutes, I think I can be miserable for every two minutes for a 25 minute time frame, right? Like it's in the grand scheme of things, that's not that much. Like it's two-thirds of the time of 25 minutes. Somebody do the math for me and tell me how many minutes that actually is of the misery. It's it's doable. And let's see if I can actually get this half marathon. Mm-mm. Well, yeah, proof of time for the half marathon in that 10K, right? And then I can track it because then I can see, oh, well, if you can do 6.9 miles per hour, you can or cannot get that proof of time. Maybe. I don't know. Because right now that's the pace I need to be running. And then I can start comparing this to my pace testing and see realistically how far off are we gonna be for a proof of time. Now, of course, this is an N of one, meaning this is one person, but I'm doing it. Some of my clients do some of these things, and we're gonna see if we can start creating some data for it and have something really cool. And so, anyway, I didn't do my pace testing on this. So maybe my numbers, my modern and my hard pace aren't actually what I pace tested. And for the most part, that may not matter because I use pace testing as a guide. Most of the time, runners are using the same treadmill. They have a treadmill at home or they have a preferred treadmill at the gym, or it's something similar if it's at the gym, right? Because the gym we're assuming has regular maintenance. I have not maintained my treadmill. I have actually been thinking about this lately. I should have somebody come look at it just to make sure it's all good. But for the most part, we use those paces to compare against those paces. We don't want to compare one treadmill to another treadmill for pace testing. And we don't want to compare outside to on the treadmill for pace testing because it's not apples to apples, it's apples to oranges. But if I'm doing pace testing on my treadmill, then I will compare my pace testing to my pace testing on my treadmill. I won't do pace testing on Planet Fitness' treadmill. So right now, you know, maybe the comparison is a little off, and I can't do this on my treadmill right now, running in the 95 degree or 100 degrees in the garage, not safe right now. So I will wait until the fall, and maybe I'll still have a Planet Fitness membership and I'll just be able to compare and we'll see how it goes. But the purpose of this is do everything on the same treadmill and then take it with a grain of salt when you transfer it outside. Okay. And so I anyway, I was bargaining with myself. It not a great, great workout. Uh overall, I got it done. I should adjust a I should adjust my carbs for next week. I drank three quarters of a Coke on the way to drop off the exchanges at FedEx, and I don't think it was enough. It was still hot in the gym. At the time of recording this, I have gotten a fan, but I didn't have a fan yet. And so I was relying on the fan from the treadmill, and it just wasn't enough. It wasn't hitting me right. And so next week I'll adjust the carbs and I am going to buy a fan. Spoiler alert, because this is now in the past. I bought a fan and it's flipping amazing. Oh my God. Best, I think it was $25 on Amazon. Best thing ever. Amazing. And so fan, colder water, adjusting the carbs, and do my best to walk more or walk slower on these race pace intervals. And just do the best I can now and hope and see that it pays off on race day. And I don't like relying on hope. Like I'm going to continue to work hard at the thing. But right now, all I can do is hope because I can't predict the future. Then the next day I did cross training and I wanted to use the elliptical. I thought Planet Fitness had arc trainers. The ellipticals they have look like they are arc trainers, but when I got on it, it was not. So I did a 10-minute warm-up on the elliptical, thinking it was an arc trainer, which is a special kind of elliptical. It wasn't. And then I just hopped on the treadmill afterward and I did um, so I did 10 minutes of a warmup on the elliptical. Then I hopped on the treadmill and did an incline walk where it was 2% and increased by 1% every five minutes. So until I got to 6%, made the time go by super fast. And then I did a cool down. I'm getting my physical therapy CEUs before the end of the month. So I watched a course on tendinopathy or continued a course on tendinopathy. It was good. And that one is eight hours. So I just watched part of it. And then I did a whole body strength workout, and that was great. Okay, that brings me to Friday. Friday, I did my long run. It was supposed to be 60 minutes easy because I had done seven and change on the treadmill last week. And that was just so hot on the treadmill and so long on the treadmill. I watched all of Legally Blonde and then the start of Barbie. And I just, I don't need to be on the treadmill that long for the race I'm training for right now. Now, if I was going on to do a half marathon, I may have a different mindset. But right now, I am doing a 10K. I don't have any half marathons I'm signed up for or anything like that. So I don't need to go beyond race distance while I'm training for this 10K. Now remember, I am still in the build phase in this week. The actual race training has not started yet. So I technically can do it. I don't have to. So I'm switching down to 60 or 65 minute easy because that's how long I want race day to take me. 65 minutes, one hour, five minutes. So I'll do my easy run slow and steady for 65 minutes. This particular day I chose 60 minutes just because of time constraints. And when I got to the gym, it's so funny. I drove to the gym, stepped outside, and promptly texted Royal. I think I'm gonna run outside today because it was 79 degrees and it felt so much cooler there than at home. And I'm only like three miles away from my home at this gym. And so I was like, I think I'm just gonna go for this run outside. So I did. So I parked at Planet Fitness. I didn't have a good water bottle to hold. I have small hands, so didn't have a good water bottle to hold. So I went into a grocery store and got a bottle of water and some nerds gummy clusters. They were like the gummy burst or something. So they were a little different, but they were very good. Got that and decided we have this trail. It's a paved path that goes around one of our highways. And I think the goal is to make it wrap all around the city and be miles and miles and miles long. So I ran on that. It was great. Found a great place for hills. That wasn't great for this run. But in the future, I can just go run up and down those hills because were they intense? Holy cow! But I just I listened to a podcast episode and I just kind of zoned out and it was so good. It it was warm. It was 54 or 55% humidity, but I think over there it was like 72 degrees. So maybe it feels like 79. Overall, great. It's probably my last long run outside for a while. So it was nice to just be able to do that outside and not have to go on the treadmill. And so then next week I will do 65 minutes and I'll I'll probably be back on the treadmill. But if for some reason we get some cool front in, if it's windy or if it's raining or something like that here in Vegas, I'll just run outside and maybe I'll just go do that again. I'll go park at Planet Fitness and I'll just go for a run and call it a day. So overall, not a bad week, not a great week. It's it's neutral. My workouts felt good. Speed workouts were hard, cross-training was fine, the long run outside was good. It was easy peasy, just like it should be, not over, overly taxing. And, you know, actually now that I've said this, I'm remembering that I did go back into the gym. So I must have done my strength workout and I just didn't mark it off here. So I'm actually gonna mark that off right now. On my training schedules, I have little check boxes so that when you've done it, when I've done it, you keep track of it. And I didn't do two speed workouts. And honestly, I don't know why. I didn't take very good notes this week, I guess. It just was probably just a busy week. Whatever, I got what I could get done. And this is a reminder that get what you can get done. If you can prioritize the thing that is the most important to you. So for me, typically that would be prioritizing speed workouts. This week it didn't happen because I had two gym days in a row. So it was speed workout, then cross training. And I did not anticipate that Saturday and Sunday I wouldn't go for a run, but that is what happened.