Where does 'steady' fit in between easy and tempo?

I did my 3rd half marathon last year in the Great North Run,got a 1.57,should I stick with the intermediate or try advanced plan,I want to go near 1.50 this year?

Hi, I did my first marathon (brighton) in april using your intermediate plan and was very happy with my 3h 57, I have just done my 6th half marathon yesterday (in 12 months) 1h 57, doing another one in 4 weeks want to try and get a new pb (1h 52 at the moment) shall i try this plan?

Stuart - go with what you feel comfortable with, I would stick with the intermediate. Have a look at the advanced plan as well if there are sessions that you feel you can do on there instead of the intermediate then do that.

Amanda - Similar to what I said to Stuart, go with what you feel comfortable with, you may find some of the more intense sessions such as reps, fartlek, tempo and hills a bit tough, so just adjust the number you do or increase the recovery between each effort but by no more than 20 seconds!

Hope this heps

HI Rob, try using this Borg scale. With a little practice, it makes you focus on your effort of breathing and ergo, your pace. Because of this, it allows adjustment of pace for hills. As there is no point in nailing a steep hill at the same pace or stride length as on the flat.  From my experience, 'steady' pace should be at a pace where you can speak to a running partner when you are running, or 3-4 on the scale, where your breathing is easy/moderate to somewhat difficult.

www.srrunners.org/.../5k_advanced.pdf

Hope this helps! Of course, where I find it helpful, others may find it a heap of keech!

Started this a while ago. quite enjoying the speed sessions in this programme as thet are a wee bit diferent than wot uve come accross before

Hi, what do the times in brackets mean in the Tempo sessions.

times in brackets are the recovery times between hard efforts (speed or tempo).

Edinburgh Dave - Thanks for the reply!

I am into the sixth week of the half marathon training plan and I have a question. At what point will I know what pace I should be aiming to run the half marathon in? Will I have run this pace before on the training plan?

The reason I am asking this is because all the paces on the running bug site are based on percentage of heart rate.

I don't know if I am wimping out or of my HR is just abnormal, but I don't think I could run at 85% of my max HR for 10k, never mind a half marathon!

I just did 2 x 20 mins going pretty hard (for me) and they were both the same HR for the last 10 mins of each - 149 bpm - in comparison to my max HR of 176.

OR does it work out that it's a 'one off' event in that the distance and the speed comes together 'on the day' to perform at a higher heart rate and greater speed than before???

I am confused as to what I am aiming to do!

I have just looked ahead a couple of weeks and think that on the Sunday for week 7 there may be (hopefully) a mistake - 15 miles 'steady' - all the other Sunday runs are long runs which the pace key states that these should be run at 'Slow' pace. It seems a bit of a jump to run 15 at 'Steady' when the previous highest was for 7 at steady in mid-week?

Hi, I followed this plan, just with a few changes( sometimes cross training instead of one the easier runs, and often taking an extra rest day- due to time constraints. I wanted a sub 1.50, and I got 1.43.09. The tempo runs really helped, as I was able to treat the last three miles of the race just like one( and was able to pass alot of runners) . Also having run 16 miles meant that13.1 didn't feel that long on race day.