Five weeks since my last race! Five weeks, that is a long time for me. I would normally have raced at the end of February, but we were away in Cagliari, so I have just been getting stuck into training for the last 5 weeks. 2 weeks ago I did my best long run ever, a 36km run with 2x5km just faster than goal marathon pace, some hills and a final average speed of 4:30/km. I was flying all that week, but then the following week I started to feel the fatigue. After a slow 30km run last weekend I was absolutely bushed, so took the week up to Frankfurt half marathon as a down week/ mini-taper to get ready for the race.
I only had 1 half marathon in my schedule before Rotterdam and there is only one goal for me in a half marathon, and that is to run sub1:20. For some reason that has always been more of a dream for me that a sub3 marathon, maybe because it was always close enough to be a realistic long term goal, but was always far enough away that I knew it would be hard work to ever manage it. Last year I surprised myself in Rheinzabern by running a 1:21:51 in a near perfect race for me. That was great, but it was still 112 seconds shy of a sub1:20! This year my best 10k was slightly short of being equivalent of a 1:20HM, so finally breaking through that barrier was not a given. Continue reading “Frankfurt Half Marathon 2016 – PB + Goal Achieved!”