Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Dallas Running Club Half Marathon done Primal!

 

I completed my last Half Marathon, The BIG D, in April with a time of 2:8:12 and weighed 220 lbs.  I had prepared for it using the Hal Higdon Intermediate plan which had a 12 week cycle and peaked at ~30 miles per week. After the Big D I figured that this was about as fast as I could run and I had lost almost all hope of ever losing any more weight.

For the DRC Half marathon that I just ran last Sunday, I began following the diet (low carb), health and fitness concepts laid out by Mark Sisson at Marksdailyapple.com and in his book “The Primal Blueprint”.  By following the diet plan, my weight dropped effortlessly to 195 lbs.  I changed my running habits as well to reflect his Primal Blueprint Fitness advice. 

The majority my runs were done at a low heart rate (50 – 75% max), I did short sprints (less than 30 mins) once a week.  These sprints varied from 100m, 200m, 400m, 800, Mile repeats and a few fartleks. I also did an occasional 30 minute tempo run.  I tried to get 5 days a week of running in when I could, but sometimes I only got three days and, I missed two weeks of running when I went to China. I think my highest weekly mileage total was something like 25 miles. I thought the DRC Half marathon was going to be a train wreck and I was prepared to not run a 1/2 anymore.

Well long story short, I ran my best 1/2 so far, last weekend with a time of 1:53:28!  That is 15 minutes faster than I ran last April!  More importantly, I was able to finish the last 5 k strong and fast.

The moral of this story?  Yes, You can run some endurance events and be Primal.  Just be smart about it! Maybe my next post will address how I did it. 

Grok On!

2 comments:

robison52 said...

Great job in getting that half-marathon PR, at 15 minute improvement is HUGE!! You're a tease as it would be very interesting to read how you did it.

vmJoe said...

Okay Bruce. I'll get that post up quick.

-Joe