One Workout

The 80 Per Cent Kipchoge Challenge

To me, training for the half-marathon isn’t about one workout or one hard week of training: Consistency is key. I’ve made a concerted effort to i ncrease my mileage and have put more care into the details (weights, therapy and physio drills), than ever before. I’ve also been fortunate in that my training has been consistently improving over the past few years – my average workout is better than my average workout from 2017, which is better than my average workout in 2016 and so on. To me, this is the ultimate sign of improvement.

My coach, Richard Lee, has great knowledge, experience, and a strong inherent understanding of how to train for these longer events. His individual workouts are challenging, but the crucial piece of the puzzle isn’t just the workouts themselves, but how he brings the entire program together.

That said, one-and-a-half weeks out of my record half-marathon, I did a solid workout that suggested my fitness was in a good place. It was 4 x 2k–1k with 90 seconds rest between reps and two minutes rest between sets, for a total of 12 kilometres of work. (My coach calls this the “80 per cent Kipchoge” because Olympic gold medallist Eliud Kipchoge, did 5 x 2k–1k going into his marathon training).

There were several factors which made it a good fitness indicator: I wore racing f lats and the rest was active – I had to jog just over 200m get back to the start each time – and it was also done in the middle of a high-volume training week. None of the times were alarmingly fast, but knowing I could hold a pace that was that much faster than goal half-marathon pace for 12 kilometres with little rest and on tired legs gave me confidence going into my record-breaking race.