Myself and Wayne have worked together for sometime now. We always had it in our heads to work towards a fast half marathon time especially after Wayne's 10k pb back in August of 2021 where he ran an awesome 38 mins and 43 seconds. So to follow on from that we decided to target the Oxford Half on the 17th of October 2021 and a time of under 1 hour and 30 mins. In theory off the back of such a fast 10 k this should not be too difficult but chasing fast times in running is always tricky for all manner of reasons.
I decided to train Wayne at 1 hr 28 mins 30 secs, this would give him plenty of time as a safety net should he start to struggle in the later stages of the race. However as we came to the end of our training campaign it was obvious to me that Wayne was able to run much faster. It is always tough to judge for sure what an athlete will run come target especially with an athlete like Wayne because this was his first ever half marathon. I could tell from Wayne's stats that he would probably finish with a time of around 1 hr 26 mins. However I made the decision to keep his training paces at 1 hr 28 mins because there was no point pushing him too hard when all we really wanted in the first place was to go under 1 hr 30 mins.
I am very pleased to announce that despite a slow start in the race Wayne came home with an amazing 1 hr 25 mins 13 secs for a brilliant debut half marathon! He even ran the final mile in 6 mins 8 secs, a credit to his fantastic endurance which he built up over many weeks of quality training. Wayne has been a real pleasure to work with and I know for sure he can run even faster if he continues to be smart in training. I am looking forward to one day working with Wayne again.
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