Ran my last PB over the half marathon distance in June 2023, with an official time of 1:44:35. This year I wanted at least to dip under 1:40 to prepare for a marathon in April 2025. I chose the half marathon advanced plan to also see how my body would react to the extra mileage, considering marathontraining in the beginning of 2025. I wanted to challenge myself and had some extra time in the summer holiday to do some serious training.
Physically I had no problems to run this higher mileage. I had some pain in the achilles in weeks 7 untill 10 of the plan, but this went away and didn't become a serious injury. The strength work didn't take up much time and this was fine, since we all love running more.
I tried to stay as consistent as possible with the sessions, this is key for the great results. I only skipped two sessions over the 12 weeks and tried to run the paces advised for a half marathon time of 90 minutes.
For the shorter interval sessions these paces were achievable. However, for the longer runs in the weekend with tempo blocks, it was impossible to reach these advised paces. These longer runs are definitely the harder runs in the program.
On raceday I was hoping for a sub-90 half marathon, but I had no idea if my body had recovered enough and if I even had this speed in my legs. I was surprised of how well the race went and extremely happy with the results! I crushed all my PB's during the race from 2 miles up to the half marathon distance!