For any who think they're not missing anything with lower mileage run training

3 minutes on a 90 minute race on two different courses with dozens of other factors involved and n=1.

Want to know if your hypothesis MIGHT hold water?  Stick to the 20 mpw for 3 more weeks and run another HM.

What were the weather conditions in HM #1 and HM #2?  Same temperature?  Same elevation above sea level? 

Could this also have been cumulative?

Found this little calculator/estimator for weather conditions:

http://www.runworks.com/calculator.html

Using the 1:30 time, I assumed 70 deg for your 1:30 time.  This calculator also won't let you adjust for pressure and temperature, so this is all at the same atmospheric pressure.  I read an article recently about cross country running performance and atmospheric pressure.  A couple coaches noticed the trend, after they had some record finishes one day with students who had run the same course many times.  They found that the atmospheric pressure that day was unusually high.  Denser air means more drag, but for running more importantly, more oxygen that can be exchanged in the lungs.

Temperature                                                                    Finish time

For all the doubters, I did think about this quite carefully before posting. 

1) I'm not a beginner by any means in running. (Triathlon yes, but not running.) I'm extremely good at pacing and I can usually call my race result even as I'm running it down to the minute based upon my RPE. And I worked harder today that my HIM or HM#1 - I almost shut it down at mile 8, and it was a huge mental battle all the way to the end today whereas my last HM, I was continuously accelerating to the finish since my legs could hold up. 

2) 15 degrees cooler today than the other race, 20 degrees cooler at the start. I was hot in the faster race #1 a few weeks ago, was actually cold at the start of today's race and never got hot - very comfortable today.

3) Overall flat courses, but more rollers in race #1 by a small amount. Todays' course was flat as a pancake, a slightly easier course for sure.

4) The most telling thing about my race today - the amount of agony my legs are in right now. I can barely walk they hurt so much! After both the HIM, and the HM #1, I was only a bit sore, but could even do more running if I wanted to that same day - I definitely cannot run today! This is by far the most telling thing to me - I should NOT feel this beatdown if I was in the same fitness as race #1 for running a good 3 mins slower.

I'm also not sure why this story is so hard to believe. You cut your mileage in 50% for 3-4 weeks, and I'll bet you'll also have a 3+ minute dropoff in your half marathon pace, as that's a race long enough to really pay dividends for the miles. It's like people want to believe that those low miles are enough to perform at your peak - it's simply not true. (For a mortal like myself and most others, 20mpw is a pretty paltry amount of volume to race a standalone 13.1.)

(I do agree with the n=1 criticism, but again, I've been running for long enough that when something like this happens, it's quite unusual, but in retrospect shouldn't be given that I've never cut training mileage by 50% for weeks between races before.)

Yup - I wasn't planning on PRing - was more of an experiment to see if I would lose much in short time with the dropoff in training. I'm going to sacrifice some run speed for swim gains if possible this winter. 

I wouldn't call a 3 week 50% dropoff in training a taper as well. Some pros can get away with it and do better because they're often pushing the brink of overtraining even before that point, but for a typical AGer, if you drop your training by 50% 3 weeks before race day, you're definitely going to underperform relative to if you'd kept it up until a week before. 

For most of us (on BT) It's not about "missing anything" it's about preventing injury. 

AdventureBear - 2012-10-13 11:19 PM

the bear - 2012-10-13 8:57 PM Folks cut their mileage by 50% (and more) for 3-4 weeks prior to a race all the time, and often get FASTER. It's called tapering.

50% x 3-4 weeks sounds like a step, not a taper.

Splitting hairs here, but Ihave in mind a typical marathon training program, like Higdon's intermediate, not counting race day:

 Average training mileage over last three weeks is <50% of week 15.

the bear - 2012-10-14 5:19 AM

AdventureBear - 2012-10-13 11:19 PM

the bear - 2012-10-13 8:57 PM Folks cut their mileage by 50% (and more) for 3-4 weeks prior to a race all the time, and often get FASTER. It's called tapering.

50% x 3-4 weeks sounds like a step, not a taper.

Splitting hairs here, but Ihave in mind a typical marathon training program, like Higdon's intermediate, not counting race day:

Week	mpw
15	43
16	32	74%
17	22	51%
18	9	21%

 Average training mileage over last three weeks is

Higdon's taper is particularly steep for marathons.

Compare to Pfitzinger's 55mpw max programs (which are probably regarded as better than the Higdon plans, as they've been tried and tested for huge #s of aspiring BQers), where on the 55mpw schedule he drops to 22-25 miles on race week, only a 50% drop, and on weeks 2 and 3 before he's at 32, and 45, which is pretty much 90% of normal weekly volume.

Also, we're talking folks like me who are x-training for triathlon here not pure marathon. And I'm one of the higher mileage AG runners for triathlon training. Take your typical triathlon starting at 25-30mpw, and cut that in 50%, and you're going to see a significant dropoff. Someone recently asked how much to cut back volume on SBR for a HIM on ST.com and the answer from a lot of really good coaches and athletes there was that in tri-training, you're pretty much near your typical max volume even 2 weeks before race day for a HIM, even for the run.

I've actually done an approximate 50% volume dropoff for pure marathons for 4 weeks out due to a partially sprained ankle ( a bit longer than the Higdon plan) and it did NOT work well at all. Yes, I still could run the full marathon, but I was a good 30 minutes slower than my race target time, based on an 18 mile race run only 6 weeks before race day. I've never run that much slower than my race target when not steeply tapering.

+1

Also, I think for most of us, it's the oposite question, will more millage make us that much faster?

And also, for all of us doing triathlon, we should also ask, where can I make the biggest improvement? For you, you said it, swimming, for me it's probably bike, and then the run. So, your run on the next HIM may be slower but you might get a head start with faster swim, in that case, you made a good investment of your time.

Not sure of your point.  We are just suppose to agree or say nothing? 

I'd say in the vast majority of BT cases, the answer to "will more mileage make me faster" is an undoubted YES. 

Most BTers (and most AG triathletes) don't run more than 25mpw. I'll add that 25mpw is nothing to sneeze at when you add the bike and swim on top - that works out to a lot of training hours! But still, to think you're maxxing your run performance on 25 (or signfiicantly less) miles per week is simply not correct.  

I see folks posting here bemoaning their run meltdowns in HIMs or even Olys, and invariably they've been doing very low run mileage. It's not the speedwork, it's not the quality - it's the mileage or lack thereof for most BTers who are run-limited. Avoiding injury is important, but running less and then shooting for  a big race actually increases your risk of injury (ask Scout). Ramp up mileage with more shorter runs and you'll be a lot more injury resistant AND faster.

I'll def agree with you that for me, I'm so swim-limited that it would make sense for me to completely ditch run/bike for 10 weeks and just swim swim swim! I wish I could do that - my schedule simply doesn't permit it with the logistics of the limited pool hours I can attend.

In a general sense.. of course,you are right. 

If I over do with events though or try to build up my running too quickly,  overuse injury really puts a crimp in things. 

It's the greatest frustration many of us have. Our bodies won't cooperate with what we want them to do, the amount of mileage we want to build, as quick as we want to build it. 

I have to be so careful and schedule my events accordingly.

Many of my friends tried to do too much too fast, got hurt, and ended up frustrated and disheartened with the sport.

I am not talking about you Yaz.. It sounds like you are a seasoned athlete and able to handle the load. But that is simply not the case for many of us. 

We need to take things, especially running, very slow and steady. 

No, but on threads like this it feels like there's a lot of piling on.  To me the posts read, "You're wrong!  Here's why!"  "Yeah, you're wrong!  Here's why again!" and then "Yeah, you're wrong!  I'm repeating what the other guys said!"  It just feels really random when everyone jumps on one thing- what I meant was that this thread feels like one that could just as easily have gone "yeah, running lots is important.  Everyone knows that."

 But I think AdventureBear nailed it on the head.

Since it's a forum and everyone has a different perspective, sometimes it is random... and repetitive... Sometimes someone explains the same thing.. in a different way and I get it. 

^^this. As always, Bear nails it.

Actually he could have injured himself more because his legs were killing him during the race.  So it's sounds like the legs lost some (distance) fitness.