I am in such a quandary! We have a marathon, hm and 10k event in the city in April. Hubs did the 10k this year and it was busy and well supported. We both planned to maybe do the hm next year. Hubs is out with a chronic knee injury still so I am training alone. Still a newbie really with c25k Oct 2016, 10k March 2017 and up to 10 mile Oct 2017. Now starting a my asics hm plan. I did my 10 mile distance once and it was hard work the last couple of miles both in mind and heavy legs. I have confidence issues too. So my situation is this;
1. Register hm for myself and downgrade to 10k if needed.
2. Offered charity place at work for hm tho can drop to 10k if needed. Cost no different and get t shirt for event. Charity money not huge so would be feasible to raise.
What should I do? Will running for charity put suitable pressure on me to succeed or too much pressure that i wont? I will have to deal with starting nerves either way, loo stops etc.
Only you know how you will feel about the charity collection target. It might spur you on, or it might be a drag, or it might not make any difference.
I've found when I've been raising money for charity that it didn't change my motivation at all (dissapointing, for I had hoped it would spur me on). That said, I've never had a fixed target I had to meet, so that might make a difference.
The one thing I will say though, is that seeing you have already done a 10 miler, you don't need to worry about getting fit for a HM in April. It won't be easy peasy, but you can definitely do it!
I think that is my biggest worry, not completing the distance and letting down the charity (yes I could do the 10k instead). I did do 10 miles but not my legs were lead and I felt tired. I guess I need to know if I can do the hm distance or if I have reached my max distance at 10 miles.
Is running 2 times a week enough and should I be doing other exercises particularly to build leg strength. As you can see I don't know if I am doing enough!
Many people successfully train and complete races on 2 times per week, so there's certainly nothing stopping you from getting to that HM finishing line with your current two runs.
That said, I think doing so will make it harder than it has to be, and believe that running 3 times a week will make your body retain the fitness more from one run to the next, and therefore it would actually be easier rather than harder. But that is entirely a personal choice - there is nothing that will stop you from sticking to your two current runs and finishing.
Regardless of how many times per week you train, HM training is not really different from 10 mile training: You slowly increase your longest weekly run, every 3 weeks or so you consolidate with a recovery week, then you increase the longest run a little more, and you carry on like that until you're race ready. Many plans suggests that if you can run 10 miles as a training run you can also run 13 miles in an event with all the added motivation from the hundreds or thousands of people around you.
Exercises? The same as you should be doing when you trained for 10 miles. The same you should be doing when you train for 10 km. The ones so many of us wish we were doing - I don't do any auxillary training, even though I know some strength and core would probably be excellent. I'm just too lazy and find it too easy to come up with excuses.
Charity places do put pressure on you to get the money, and I know folks have felt it onerous and said so here. If you know all the ins and outs before you commit then there should be no surprises.
You could just stump up the entrance fee and run without the fundraising element. The run is probably for the charity anyway so your entry fee is your donation
If you are training to a plan then You should be ok. There’s nothing much else you can do is there. Have faith in yourself! You know what you’re doing 😃🏃♀️💪✔️ The plan will keep mind and body occupied, plus you’re busy anyway, soyou’ll be too tired to worry. Ten miles is 16k and you have to do 21k. Only 5k more
Ten mile race has been and gone. I bet when you do another one you’ll be fine
The training just takes you further bit by bit and you get fitter as you go You could do some cross training,yes. That could be at home in front of the telly. I do Jillian Michaels dvds. 💪 Walk more, push bike, swim. Whatever you have time for. Every little helps.
There is the core programme running at present with RFC
April is quite a way off, so I think you should definitely be able to do the HM. Whenever I've trained for a race, I've done the math after each long run. OK, I've run e.g. 12 K in x time. If I walked the rest, how long would it take me?
Because you are allowed to walk, you know. In a worst case scenario, you could run 8 miles and walk the rest. It would still be an accomplishment. But I'd be surprised if it was necessary.
I'll be doing my first charity race in April and am busy trying to raise money now. I don't think it will impact on my actual performance though.
I have never run for charity, just a charitable donation with the entry fee. The minimum is £100 which will be no problem to achieve. I wonder if running in their charity t shirt will add good pressure or too much pressure. Obviously with my confidence issues I worry that I cannot run that far and perhaps 10 miles is my limitation! I did 10 miles in 1 hr 46 so a walk for the final 5k (slightly downhill and flat) should be ok on overall time. A good point, thank you.
gosh, I would go for the HM and aim to drop to the 10 if you need to ( no harm done!). As for raising money- that is an extra pressure when you are training. Why not pledge a certain amount of your money to the charity as a celebration of completing the race?
I have no hm experience. In fact I am behind you and only moving towards 14k in the next weeks. That said, I believe you can do it if you don’t put too much pressure on yourself (easier said, I know) Maybe just treat it like a training run and walk the last bit if you need to, but you’ll likely want to push on when the time comes. 🙂 And you can rest in the knowledge that you can drop to 10 if you are not feeing it. The charity is a personal choice like Tomas says. For me it would be added pressure, but thats not everyone.
I would go for the HM, If you can do 10 miles , you can certainly do the HM distance . The longest training run I did for my HM was 17k and I was only running twice a week .
As for the charity , it did give me an extra spur , but thats just my opinion. I understand everyone is different
I normally would not run for charity, as I am not very good at fundraising, and I don't know very many people to ask for money. Although I don't see why anyone should feel obliged to fund-raise, in fact I am in that position! I need to collect some money for charity in order to run in one of my events next year. Surprisingly it's actually been going pretty well, and I've been enjoying doing it! I was a bit daunted, and would be feeling pretty stressed out if I wasn't getting close to my target (actually I have been a bit stressed out about it on and off). It's been nice to help people affected by Alzheimer's Disease, and interesting to talk to random people on the street about their experiences of it. And as you say about your potential target, £100 isn't very much; my goal of £425 isn't a lot either.
All that said, I would feel pretty bad if I hadn't trained enough, in view of the fact that people had donated money to me. If you're worried about that then I wouldn't take the charity place if I were you, as you never know what's going to happen along the way. For me the motivation for training is purely to be strong enough to finish the race, and within a certain standard. Sounds like whatever you do you have the option to drop down to the 10K - but why not try focusing on the half marathon for now, if that's what you really want to do? You have plenty of time to train
It sounds to me that you really want to do the HM, so do it. We're all behind you (figuratively) and you've definitely got it in you. You have loads of time and it sounds like you've already shown that you can work toward increasing your distance / stamina, and it's just a bit more of the same. Be brave and go for it!
I think you should stop thinking about dropping down to the 10k, have more confidence in yourself. If you start thinking I will just do the 10k then you will not go into the HM training in the right frame of mind.
Have confidence in the MyAsics plan I have used as many of us have too, you have plenty of time to build up the distance and get stronger. Yes, the last few miles are hard and they are hard for everyone its just having the challenge to carry on.
Do the half and have confidence you can do it, it will be amazing.
I think the confidence has had an effect on what I think is feasible. The plan doesn't do the hm distance during the training which leaves me to worry, I worry lots! I am also going away to Australia in March for a couple of weeks, the event being on 21 April, will this be an issue with my training?
Of course you can do it! I do agree with Tomas though - I think I run much better when I get out three times a week but I know how hard this can be. For your confidence, would it help to train up to hm distance before the race? I ran the full 13.1 twice before mine but did factor this in to my plans and allowed for a good taper. Also, I found running my first couple of 10 milers harder than my hm - think my running legs had improved by the time I got up to HM,so have faith in yourself.☺
Thank you for your wise words. It is good to hear others experiences and yes to running the full distance before! I have agreed to run the hm and wiĺl be registered in a few days.
My first ever race was a hm and I was concerned about covering the full distance before the race so instead of following a plan to the letter I ran 13 miles a couple of times in training. That gave me the confidence to know I could do it although I'm sure physically it wasn't necessary. Adapting a plan to suit you is fine.
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