First race without the garmin nagging me

Running Eye - it seems to be working very well for you. Why change it? On another note - you went from no running to doing a half marathon in 1hr 40min? Blimey - for a newbie like me that is extremely inspiring I thought I should be looking for something more like 2hr 30min lol - but i digress.

Amir I am a little anal with anything I do the 1:40 did not come easy plus I want to be under 1:30 before the body starts to tell me its to old (i am 41)

I started from a low fitness base-plenty of walking but no other exercise since leaving school 20+yrs ago, followed a run walk plan and went out on average 5 times a week all seemed to be going well (to well) so i started to increase distance and speed to quickly and got 2 injurys close to each other -Planter and ITB'S.

After easing off for a while I was able to restart my training plan.

When I could run a couple of miles without stopping I timed myself for a mile at flat out pace-this was end of feb and i did 7.45 mins giving 95%.

I then stook to my plan gradually increasing distance and putting in some faster shorter runs- 17 weeks after just been able to run a mile at 7.45 pace I was able to run 13.1 miles at this pace-all i did was keep to the plan and didn't miss a session.

I think the difficult thing is keeping injury free,setting goals that to yourself are reasonable and not worrying if other think "1:40 HM thats a slow mid week training run for me"

GOOD LUCK

Running Eye - wow!!!! This gets better and better I am 40 too. You know we are both probably having a mid life crisis here right? Your story has inspired me. I am doing run walk too - just done 4 weeks. However it is never enough so i have been tagging 15 min runs on to the end with no ill effects to date. I will carry on with the run walk and will make these add on runs longer and longer. Sorry to have hijacked the thrad - but I had to tell you how inspiring that was

Dylan after your first HM what type of sessions and at what pace did you run to get down to 1:23?

I am a little unsure on what to do, I have to date done most of my runs at a quicker pace than calculators suggest but now want to include at least one quality session so maybe reduce the pace of my longer runs. I keep reading how important easy long runs are and how they should be the vast majority of training.

What you do has obviously paid off if your next aim is sub 1:20!!

I agree that you need 100% commitment, which as I am really enjoying it makes that easier to achieve

Dylan - amazing numbers man six weeks? Wow!

I've used my Garmin for about a year now and previous to that just a stop watch, but two weeks ago accidently set it to autopause for 8 mins but didn't realise till I was on the start line for the local HM!! Couldn't re-set is whilst running so just turned it off and listened to my body.

I ran my fastest HM out of the last 3 I have done since last November and really enjoyed the run, felt great!