RTTC #243 Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 12

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali shares Week 12 of her Proof of Time half marathon training journey, digging into what it really takes to hit and hold race pace when your body (and the Las Vegas summer heat) is fighting back. 

She explores the experiment of adjusting run/walk intervals versus running straight through, and why testing her own training methods matters before recommending them to clients. 

She also gets honest about missing a long run for reasons that matter more than any training plan, and how deload weeks and a flexible mindset keep one skipped workout from derailing your progress. 

It's a real look at balancing hard training with real life: perfectionism not included.

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Free Resources

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  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

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about half-marathon proof of time training, week 12. 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. So this week was good and bad. So good in the fact that I got four of my five cardio workouts done. I did two speed workouts, I did two cross training. I did not do my long run this week, and I will get to that as to why. Bad in the fact that holy cow was this week hard. So I'm up to level five of my 10K race pace, which means I am completely at running race pace and my, of course, my walking intervals, right? Like I'm doing run walk, so run two minutes, walk one minute, because normally my intervals are run three minutes, walk one minute for race pace. That's just too hard for me. I can't maintain the pace I need to maintain for running three minutes and then walking one minute. And it's interesting because I've just been playing around with it a bit. And you may not know, but I am coming from last Run Disney season of running a mile and then walking half a mile. And it's really hard. And so I'm playing around a bunch with what kind of run walk intervals do I want to be doing on this race? I'm even playing around with just running completely because I have done that in the past and I've been fine. I am, I am relatively new to structured run walk for myself. Within the past, I don't know, three years before that, I was just running and I would walk at lights and stop signs and you know, crosswalks and stuff like that. But other than that, I would just run straight through. I wasn't necessarily fast, but that's how I did it. And I have been playing around with just like, let's let's run, walk, and make it more enjoyable. That's what makes running enjoyable for me. And I've never done a proof of time race before. I've never done a race where I'm like, yep, this is the pace that I want to get. I haven't done that before. So this is all still pretty new to me personally. Have I gotten clients pro help? Have I helped clients get their proof of time? Yes. With the speed workouts that I'm doing, yes. Not this leveling up each week tempo. This is new because if you know, I don't recommend a specific type of workout if I haven't done it myself or I wouldn't do it myself. Now, it's one thing if a client comes to me and be like, yep, I love doing such and such this way. Like burpees is a great example. If they're like, oh my God, I love a burpee, it makes me feel so good. I have yet to have anybody tell me that. But if they were to tell me that, it'd be like, great, okay, we can program it. Same thing if they have a very specific kind of like speed workout. I will consider it, but I'm not going to automatically program it. Now, of course, in Stronger Fast Finisher, I have the four set speed workouts that I recommend because I've seen them work so well with runners who do run walk intervals. I'd say that the former that I was talking about, like, if somebody's like, oh yeah, I love this speed workout, that's more with one-on-one clients. And that's actually been a couple of years since I did that. Because now the clients that I work with, they they don't have speed workouts set in stone already that they're like, oh my God, I love doing this. That the clients that I'm thinking about before are from kind of a different time period. But I would still consider it if somebody came to me and was like, oh my God, I actually absolutely love doing such and such speed workout. That's not happening right now because that's just not who I am working with. But when I am programming something, I want to know how this feels? So then I can know what is enough, what is too much. I can know that when they start saying, oh my God, I wanted to give up, I can say push through or hold back. Let's adjust and where to adjust and everything like that. And so that's what I'm going through. So this level five, 10K race pace tempo run, I thought about giving up more than I'd like to admit. It was so hard. My heart rate got new up to 185 and I felt it. Halfway through, I actually paused my watch, gave myself a three to four minute break to bring my heart rate back down. And I think in the future, actually, I will make a walk break that long halfway through automatically. And I'm gonna use that as like an optional walk walk break. And I'm gonna program that in for my stronger, faster finisher clients as well. Because let here's the option. If you want to take a rest break now, this is okay. Because remember, for a tempo run, we want to maintain that desired pace. And so in this case, it's my race pace for my 10K. And right now in training, I don't care how much I'm walking. I need to be able to hit that pace to know can I hit that pace? Right. Because if I can't even hit that pace and maintain it for any length of time, then I have no business trying to get this proof of time at this 10K race. If I can't maintain it for any length of time, there's no point in even going for it because I'm not there yet, right? Now that's not my case. I can hold it. I can't hold it for the whole race right now. My race, I'm going for one hour and five minutes. And I'm doing that time frame because the the proof of time that I've seen is one hour, eight minutes, sub one hour, eight minutes for a 10K for a half marathon. But as you may know, most of the time when you do a race, you don't actually run the race distance. You run more. And most of the time it's 0.3 or 0.4 miles longer. I took a poll a while ago and I asked everybody to send me information about their 10K, their half marathon, 10 miler, full marathon. Tell me how much your watch says you actually did. And overall, it was like 0.3 to 0.4 miles longer. So I'm accommodating for that. So because I'm gonna have that overage, I have to run faster to still get under that one hour, eight minute time frame for the race, right? Did you follow that? So think of it like this. Plan that if you're gonna do this for a 10K, plan that you're gonna run 6.5 miles instead of 6.2. So the timeframe that you need to get under is still an hour, eight minutes, but for 6.5 miles instead of 6.2, which means you have to go faster in order to reach that finish time, okay? Because you're going longer, because you're not taking the tangents. You're not going in a straight line the whole time. You're weaving and you're bobbing. And that's gonna take time, that's gonna take energy. So I'm planning that I have to run faster. And I'm hoping that race day adrenaline just pulls me forward and that it will come true of what I see in my clients. And my clients on race day typically are running 60, maybe even 90 seconds per mile faster on race day. So I'm hoping that I'm putting in all this work and I'm gonna fly. That that's the hope. But I want to try it out, see what happens when I maintain this particular pace based on my particular run-walk intervals. Right? Like I did the math for a two-minute, one minute for 6.5 miles. And then my spreadsheet that my stronger, faster finisher clients and I use spit out. You need to maintain 6.9 miles per hour. It's also based on how uh fast I walk. I need to maintain 6.9 miles per hour. Now, can I do that during this tempo speed workout? Absolutely. I can a hundred percent hit that. Hitting it is no problem for me. Maintaining it is repeat, repeat, repeat. It's hard. And so, with the speed workouts, what I find with myself and my clients for speed workouts, it's more important to hit that fast pace than to hit your walking pace. It's more important to hit that fast pace and take a walk break halfway through than it is to push through and then have to slow down that running pace. So I want to hit that run pace every single time. And then I'm walking whatever pace I need to walk and walking however often I need to walk in order to keep hitting that pace. And it's hot in the summer. And I was telling Royal that Planet Fitness is not cool. My Planet Fitness is not cool. I bought a fan and I'm having it blow directly on me and I am eating all of my carbs and I'm having carbs and caffeine before my run and I'm doing all of the things, but man, the heat is so hot and I'm I am having ice water. Normally I'm somebody who doesn't add ice to my drinks unless it's July and August in Las Vegas. So I am adding ice to my drinks to have another way to cool myself down because it is hot and it is so hard to hit these paces or to keep hitting these paces over and over and over again for a 45-minute workout. And so I'm pulling out all the stops. So adding in some extra walk breaks. I even pulled out Kelly Clarkson's heartbeat song. It came on at just the right time. I really needed it. I was thinking about doing my last full interval as a run one, walk one, run one, walk one instead of run two, walk one. And that interval, that's when the song hit. And that song pumps me up as does Rachel Platton's fight song. And so I was like, okay, I can do this. I got this. And it, it, it really helped. And so then I could just think about the lyrics. I could think about the song. And during that walk break, I found fight song, the one I just mentioned. And that one tells me just to keep going. Like, this is my fight song. I can do this, I can do hard things. And I finished the whole 10K race pace tempo run hitting all race pace intervals. And I really, I can't imagine how I'm gonna do this on race day. But race day adrenaline is a real thing. I still have two more months at the time of when this workout happened. Two months, one week before race day. I had liquid carbs for breakfast because I didn't feel like eating. So I had water, I had coke, I had a strawberry lemonade pouch, I brought my liquid IV, my scratch, applesauce, I brought Gatorade, my protein drink, and Ritz peanut butter crackers for afterward. I pulled out all of the stops. It, I'm doing just what I have to do to be able to get it done right now. But if you are going through something similar where you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this on race day, keep pushing through. Think of this one week at a time. Think of your workouts one week at a time. Yes, of course, we have to think about the race, but let's not get too anxious about it. Let's not get too stressed out about it. Two months is a long time. And that's until my race right now. And that's September 27th. Your race, not until wine and dine, not until marathon weekend, not until princess weekend, not until springtime surprise, right? Look at one week at a time. If you need to, look at one workout at a time. What is my goal for this one workout? Can I achieve this or not? And really, it's just can I give this the best with what I've got right now? Set yourself up for success. Have caffeine and carbs before the workout. If you don't feel like eating anything, drink your carbs so you can slowly sip on it and take it one step at a time. After this workout, I did 36 minutes of strength training, whole body workout. I was able to do five to eight repetitions of each strength exercise. I stretched before I went home, and I decided to hold off on my protein shake because I wanted to do my fruit protein shake at home, my smoothie. And I, so I didn't have my organe shake that I brought with me, but I lived 10 minutes away. So it didn't really, it wasn't a big deal. So I just waited a little bit of time. You may remember me saying you want at least 30 grams of protein after a workout. And so I do it after my strength workout, but I have a little snack in between to keep me going. So that's where the peanut butter crackers come into play. For me, that one works really well because it's carbs and a little bit of protein and it works well for the strength workout. Then the next day I did cross training and I decided to try out a spin bike. And now I have an Apple Watch, and so I get Apple Fitness Plus workout classes. And so I wanted to try the bike today, just mix it up. I didn't really feel like walking, even though I do love walking. I just I wanted to mix it up. So I did a 10-minute warm-up on the bike, and then I found a 10-minute class, and the class made it go by so quick. I typically don't like cycling, I typically don't like spin class. We basically did two songs, and you work for three and you recover for three, and the time frame is a little bit different. And then they repeated that for each for the second song. And I, since I don't like riding the bike, you kind of have to get used to it, right? Like if you haven't ever ridden a bike and then you go and sit on a bike, it feels like your butt or the bones that you sit on are bruised. And that's partly because you're just not used to doing it. And so you need to get used to it. So I didn't do a full 45-minute workout. I did 10-minute warm-up and 10-minute workout. Then I headed over to the treadmill and I walked for the rest of the time. So normally a cross-training would be 25 minutes of actual work and a five to 10-minute warm up, a five to 10-minute cooldown, just depending on what you're doing, total of 45 minutes. So that middle chunk might actually be 35 minutes. So because I had done that, that meant 15 minutes left for walking at either paced walk or incline walking, and then a 10-minute cooldown. I still had some physical therapy con ed to continue. So I finished up watching one of my classes for that. And I've been so consistent with strength training. Um, I did strength training again after this, and it's been actually really easy to be consistent at my gym because they have a circuit station, which I have since learned that Planet Fitness is doing away with it because people don't use it properly, which I can totally see. People are not using it properly, but they still only take 30 minutes, which is really nice. But you there are, I don't know, 20 stations or something. I haven't actually counted because some of the stations are these steppers. And so there are a bunch of machines, and I basically just go start on a machine, do the workout, go to the next machine, do the workout, go to the next machine, and so on and so forth. Now, I guess I technically am not using it right either. I think what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to do one set, then move to the next machine. Do one set, move to the next machine, and just kind of go along and then do multiple rounds of that, an actual circuit style, like I recommend. But doing my heavy weights, I actually like to just do the five repetitions, take a break, do five repetitions, take a break, and so on and so forth. And with this workout equipment, with how not busy it is, I can do that. But I think technically that's a that's not using it properly, but nobody has come over to say anything. And honestly, that's how everybody else is using it. So I can see why they're probably getting rid of it. But I it so anyway, I did strength training on this day, and I actually did strength training. This is back to back. Now, normally I don't recommend the same strength workout back to back, two back-to-back days in a row. But with how likely I am to skip strength training later in the week because something else has come up, I would rather do two days of strength training to have gotten two days of strength training than to not do it to wait until the next time because I know that with my recovery routine, I'm not really that sore the next day. And I know that I can modify the weight if I need to. So I could do a heavy day on Monday and I could have done a medium or a light day on this day. I still did heavy, but I would have had that option. And for me, it's more important to do the strength workout than for my, for me, this one week, this one time to have a rest day in between. It's not ideal to have back-to-back strength days, same as it's not ideal to have back-to-back speed workout days, not ideal to have back-to-back long run days every single week. But every once in a while, it's okay. And and, you know, with the long run, sometimes that's even part of the plan because if you're doing a challenge, you need to do long runs back to back to get your body used to it. So, not ideal, but to keep consistent with it, that's what worked for me. And then Wednesday, I knew was going to be a day off because I had to go to the dentist. I have a tooth that's chipped and they were supposed to fix it. It didn't happen. I was super nervous about it. I hate the dentist, I hate teeth, I hate I hate just thinking about teeth. And like my dad, when I was growing up, used to knew I didn't like teeth, used to go in depth with his entire tooth cleaning process from start to finish with brushing and flossing and mouthwash and this and that. I'm not gonna go into it. To me, it's disgusting. Like, bless dentists. They can do it, they like it, love it for them. But I think this is also like, I don't mind feet. Like I can remember when my Nana was still alive. She, I went and visited her. I was in high school, I think I was in high school, high school or early college. She passed when I was a sophomore in college. And I went to her home and I brought her her favorite um Dunkin', uh, it was either honeydew donuts or Dunkin' Donuts. And I brought her her favorite coffee and a donut. And then we we'd be sitting around chatting and she needed help with corns on her feet. And so she asked me if I would help her and I said, yeah. And I vividly remember her asking me, does this gross you out? And it didn't. And so maybe that's just I'm I am what dentists are, right? Like most people would be like, oh my God, that's so gross. Like helping somebody with corns on their feet, that's disgusting. Or I could never work with people's feet in the clinic. I love working with feet. It's great, not for everybody. And so, like, I think of that comparison when I think about teeth. And I just, uh, anyway, I I did not want to go to the dentist. And so I for sure was not gonna work out because my anxiety was high, my stress was high, my resting heart rate was like 95. And I get there and I had been talking about how I wanted to whiten my teeth. I've been trying to do it with like the cheap Amazon stuff and it hadn't been working. And the dentist was like, Oh, okay, well, if you want to whiten your teeth, you have to do it before you have your tooth fixed because the way we do it, we put this filler over it, and the filler doesn't change color. So I match it to your current tooth color. So we have to do that first. So we didn't even fix the tooth and decided to do this teeth whitening. And so it delays getting my tooth fixed. It's not that big of a deal. People haven't even noticed it. It's actually on my front tooth. And it it's not that noticeable. Like on camera, it's not that noticeable. I don't think in person, I can, of course, see it. Royal can see it. And my I do need to get it fixed because the cause is because it's worn down. Like the enamel or something is just thin. And it's on my other tooth, which I have chipped in the past. And it's it's just like my teeth aren't good. I've broken three teeth in the past, and it just is the way it is, and it is so it needs to get fixed so that they don't break even more. Anyway, no workout because the anxiety was. Already ridiculous. Then the next day, Thursday, was so I've but I told you I'm playing around with my run walk intervals for race day. And I decided because I did the math, I decided, why don't I try and just run the whole thing? Because I did the math and I have to maintain a 6.9 mile per hour pace for run walk intervals, but I could continuously run at 5.9 miles per hour. Now that's still fast, but it is a lot slower than 6.9. So I was like, let's just see what that feels like. So that today, this day was that for the first time. And it was good. It was hard. It was more doable than I thought it would be. And it's weird because I've been doing the race pace tempo run for a few weeks every week. And it just didn't dawn on me until recently, like, oh, why don't I just try and run straight through? Now I don't recommend somebody else do this, especially if you've been doing run walk intervals the whole time you've been a runner. I have not been doing run-walk intervals the whole time I've been a runner. Run walk intervals are still new to me. And so I just I wanted to see what it would feel like. And I realized it was kind of doable. It was definitely still going to push my limits. And so I, you know, thought I'd give us a try to run straight through without stopping. I did need to stop to take in some hydration. And that one's on me. I screwed up because I brought a blender bottle, which is fine for when I'm doing walk breaks, but not if I'm continuously running to take in my hydration. The mouthpiece is just too big. I splush splash it all over the place. So that was on me. I had to take some breaks to take in the hydration. And overall, the workout was hard. I did take a few seconds to stand on the sides to be able to drink. And then halfway through, I did take a two to three minute walk break to be able to keep going. Because remember, it's more important to be able to maintain that running pace than whatever amount of walking I need to do. And I honestly, I felt more bored at that halfway point than feeling like I was actually tired. And maybe I should have brought my iPad to watch. And I did have my music, my fast pace. I had Kelly Clarkson's heartbeat song again. I had Rachel Platton's fight song again for the last six minutes to keep me really going. But I think visually having something in front of me would have helped because otherwise I'm just standing staring at the treadmill or I'm looking across the room at a TV screen. And they don't really do closed captions on our Planet Fitness screen. So I'm just like watching. And so I don't know, maybe maybe the iPad would have helped me pass the time a little bit better. I'll try it again, maybe slightly faster with the two to three minute walk break worked in. Maybe not. I don't know. And I'll definitely bring my Nathan water bottle so that I can take in fluids more easily. But a huge, huge win was that I brought the stroller fan and 10,000% recommend. It was, it has three or four settings and it clipped to the treadmill just fine. It was great. And I could point it directly at my face. Definitely will use it again. Thank you to my stronger, faster finisher members for the recommendations. This child-free woman never would have thought of a stroller fan. So thank you so much. Then the rest of the week, I did um one more cross training and I did a progressive incline walk, which meant I did five minutes of walking at 2%, incline, then five minutes of walking at 3%, then 4%, then 5%, all the way up to 6%. I had my pace set at 3.5 miles per hour, which is a good pace for me. It's a pretty brisk walk, but not like it's doable, but not too fast, feeling like I was needed to hold on or anything and so that I wouldn't fall off. And it just it overall felt really it felt really good. Then so that that was Friday. Friday normally is a long run for me. And I actually don't quite remember why I didn't do a long run on Friday. I think because nope, I'm not even gonna guess. I don't remember. So I was going to do my long run Saturday, and this is where having the mindset that it's okay to miss a workout comes into play. Because for for those of you who don't know, my husband has chronic illness and it goes up and down. And today was one of those days where you just don't get a workout in because of this. It was one of those days where he said to me that he felt so poorly he did not want to be left alone. So you don't work out. And, you know, I don't know why I'm getting a little choked up talking about it, but that's what happened. And so instead of a 60 or 65-minute long run, I stayed home and I worked on training plans. And that is fine. Not every workout is going to happen. I'm not upset about it. It will not derail my progress. And for anybody who does not have a hundred percent control over their own life, this is where having a flexible mindset comes in. This is where avoiding perfectionist tendencies comes into play. I am a recovering perfectionist. I used to think that I had to hit the gym every day in order for it to be productive, in order to keep my goals, because if I didn't hit one day, I would spiral. And that, you know, many people will say like that kind of mindset goes out the window when you have kids. Well, I don't have kids, but that mindset went out the window. And I'm okay with it. I need to make sure that that doesn't happen every single week. Now, of course, with this reasoning, if it were happening every single week, we need to go talk to a medical provider for him because something isn't going right, right? Like that, that's not having well-managed care. But if it's every once in a while, that's fine. But if it's happening every week and it's for another reason, well, then I would need to look into, well, what's the other reason that I'm missing that particular workout or that particular day every single week? If it's a particular workout that you're missing every single week, to me, the first check is a gut check. Do I even like this workout? Like, do I like it? Meaning, like, do I actually, am I not terribly miserable doing the workout? And do you think it's helping you? If you're doing a workout that you don't think is helping you, you're you're going to start skipping that workout. If it's skipping a specific day of the week, like every time Saturday rolls around and you can't get out the door, well, what is it about Saturday that you can't get out the door? Maybe Saturday is not a good workout day for you. And so you need to start looking at these different things. For me, I know very much why I couldn't do this run. And that's okay, because it doesn't happen all the time. It's actually super rare that he will say something like that to me. So, like that is like red flag, red flag, like Allie, stay home for sure. Like, we don't brush this off. And so that that meant no long run that week. And that's okay. Because even if I miss a long run, my training schedule, A, my training phase for the 10K hasn't even started yet at the time of when this workout happened. But also B, that's what D-load weeks are there for. D-load weeks are actively in there. I purposely put D-Load weeks in there so that your body can adjust as you run more and more and more. That's the main purpose. The secondary purpose is so when a busy week happens and you miss a long run, you don't fall behind in your training. Now, depending on how long your training is, meaning like what race you're training for, a 10K, half marathon, full marathon, 5K, 10 mile, or whatever distance it is, you're going to have a different number of D load weeks in there. And for a 10K, I think there's only one because it's like a six-week time frame training for that 10K. Because you've you're starting at 3.1 miles. For a half marathon, there are more in there. And then a full marathon, there are even more in there. They're strategically placed so that even if things don't get busy, you get a deload week, time for your body to adjust all the miles you've been adding, but it's also there secondarily for when things happen. You go on vacation, you have a busy work week, you have school started again and it's it's busy and you and you just didn't get to it. I call it life being lifey, life getting lifey. It's factored in there. So even if I was actively training for this race, it wouldn't matter because I wouldn't be behind. I would just mark it as a D-load week. And then the next week, my mileage would adjust for me. Maybe it's a little bit more than 10% to adjust for it, maybe not. It may still fall in 10% more than the previous mileage long run. And that's okay. Don't get too down on yourself if you miss the workouts. Life happens. It happens. Do the best you can. Overall, this week was pretty good. Four out of five cross-training workouts, two out of three strength workouts. And actually, the excuse me, three out of three strength workouts. I did it again. I think I talked about it last week where I missed us, where I thought I missed a strength workout. I didn't. Three out of three. Great. Wonderful. That sounds like a solid week for me. It was hard, but we'll see what these hard training workouts mean for race day in the future.