Episdoe 25: The Sub-90 Half — What Actually Got Me There

I ran 1:28:29. Sub-90. Done.

But this episode isn't just a race recap — it's the full breakdown of what actually got me there, and why everything you've been told about half marathon training might be wrong.

A few weeks ago I missed my goal at the Hoka Half. The answer wasn't more kilometres. It was smarter ones. I ran 40–45km a week, never once cracked 18km on a long run, kept lifting 3 days a week the entire block, and ran a negative split on race day alongside three crew members who all PB'd on the same start line.

This is a coached outcome, not a lone victory — and in this episode I break down exactly how we got there.

We cover: 
→ Why sub-90 doesn't require 60km+ weeks
→ The one session type that moved the needle most (5km tempo repeats)
→ How I managed strength training without sacrificing run quality
→ The pacing strategy that locked in 4:12/km from gun to tape
→ The mindset shift that changed everything — training like the athlete I actually am

If you're a hybrid athlete chasing a running goal without giving up the barbell, this one's for you.

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

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What's going on everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. I am your host, hybrid coach Mike, and today we are talking about you know, nothing, not a really big deal or anything. But you know, I might have gotten sub 90 uh half marathon. Finally, finally, finally. So yeah, I finally got uh under 90 minutes at uh a half marathon race that I did uh two weeks ago. I don't know if I actually mentioned it on here that I was gonna do it or not, but anyway, in one of the previous episodes, I'm not sure if I did. But long story short, I did the Bayside Running Festival. Oh, I participated in the Bayside Running Festival with some of my clients, uh, and you know, there were four of us, I think, or five of us all together. Uh, and I managed to run one hour 28 minutes and 29 seconds for the half marathon. That is a pace of 412 per kilometer. All three of us, or all four, four, five, four of us PB'd, all of us PB'd. One of the other boys went sub 90, uh, one of the other girls did an hour 42 gen champion. She um like took something like I don't know, like eight or eight to ten minutes. I forgot I don't know how much I should look this up, uh, off her previous half marathon best. So she was flying like way faster than she has ever has. And then Ziana, who actually finished second overall in the female half marathon, she finished also sub-90. Um it was it was awesome. It was awesome. We all had like such a good day, it was uh a good local event. For those that don't know, I actually live close to Bayside. Um, for those that are in Sydney, which is like uh Sutherland Shire area. Uh I love it down here, and it was just good to be a part of a community event and so many good people down there. I think there were 1700 runners, and you know, the suburb I live in is fairly small, and to have a run go on that was so awesome, literally uh not far from where I live, was great. So, overall, just fucking awesome, good vibes. And I'm gonna talk you through now. Sorry, the point of this call or the point of this podcast is what actually got me to the sub-90. Okay, for those of you that don't know, a few weeks ago I had the hocker half marathon where I missed the time that I wanted. I wanted to get sub-90 there. The hocker half marathon, for those that have done it before, don't know, is a much harder race. Okay, way more elevation, a lot more hills uh involved, obviously, tons more people. I think something like 20 or 30,000 people are running on the day. Um, whereas this one, 1700 people, mostly a flat course, uh, weather conditions were actually fucking excellent. So it rained that morning, not that not at the time of the race, but it rained that morning, and it had been raining for a while. The race that we did was actually on a public path, so there were there was it was open to the public for them to walk on it too, and it's usually quite a busy area. But I have a feeling because it rained so much in the days prior, and that that morning, even it meant that the path was mostly clear for us. So we and well, from all the people that I saw that we did the half marathon, had a really good run, no one in the way, um, and weather conditions were awesome. It was cool, not really much wind, which is what you do cop sometimes down here. It was it was fucking great, so really happy. Now, backtrack a little bit, yeah. At the hocker half marathon, I missed my time, I got one hour 31. So somehow I managed, okay, I think it was like one hour 31, 20 or whatever, 30 seconds. I don't even know. Somehow, within a two and a half, three-week time span, I managed to take three minutes off my uh half marathon time. And I'll explain what I did, okay, or what what what has changed and what I did going into this race. Ultimately, I don't think I would have gotten that much fitter in that time frame. Uh, but I may have improved my fitness a little bit, and I think there's a couple things that I did that I realized are just better for me. Uh, and to be honest, I should have done these much earlier in my hawker half marathon prep, and that would have even made my previous prep for that race even easier. So here's a couple things. The goal for me wasn't just training, it wasn't training harder. I'll I'll be honest, not to toot my own horn. Okay, uh, I train pretty hard. I train eight to nine sessions per week. A couple of those uh days of the week, I'm doing two sessions a day, which for many hybrids is actually not that out of the ordinary. Uh, it might sound out of the ordinary to some people, but uh to be honest, a lot of the high-level guys in this space in the hybrid world, um, train sometimes. Man, I I think there's some dudes that maybe even train three times a day. Um, I don't have the capacity to do that. One, because I can't be fucked, and two, for me to do that would actually take away from me from the ability to do my job and be a good partner and all that kind of stuff. My lifestyle slash career isn't set up in such a way that I can train two times a day, every day, or three times a day. Okay, so what I'm doing right now is pretty much at my limit in terms of my uh workload and all that kind of stuff. I still am trying to be a good coach first off, uh, and an athlete second. My first priority is I like to hopefully other people believe this too, is taking care of my clients first, and then all of my other personal endeavors come second to that. So for me, work is a priority. Obviously, my health and all that stuff comes first, but I would say what I'm doing in terms of my training isn't really health anymore, it's it's it's it's performance. But unfortunately, uh, if people are paying you, that should come before most of the more than your own goals, in my opinion. Anyway, point is uh this is what I did. I I trained pretty hard. So the the amount of training on the or the hardness or the intensity of my training, hardness, uh, isn't what the issue was. I think it was probably the distribution. I should have been running five days a week. Okay, I was running four for most of the prep, but then it got to a point when I was doing 60 plus kilometers a week that those runs were getting fucking big, man. And I was still trying to deadlift heavy the whole time, uh, and those runs were really big, and it was like 15Ks at a minimum. Uh, the shortest run of the week would be like a 10 or 12k. Uh, then I'd have like a 17 or 15k, another one of those, and then I'd have a big long run on a weekend, and it's not that much for people that are like really high-level runners, and you know, so it's really not that much for people that are doing, you know, that are doing monster stuff in terms of their running pace and all that kind of stuff. But for someone me who's really trying to lift heavy still and do everything else that's involved in that, um, you know, training hard three days a week in the gym, trying to lift maximally or heavy almost every session or lift heavy loads frequently, it gets really hard to balance the two things. And I can do it, but when you're doing sessions that are you know 15 kilometers at a minimum a pop, uh, you're basically leaving those sessions really fatigued and then carrying that fatigue into your next gym session, which you're then carrying that fatigue into your next running session and then into your next gym session, and and so on. So you don't really ever have a day that's easy uh or a training session that's easy. So all of your sessions basically just feel hard, and you just end up stacking these hard sessions on top of each other. To be fair, like before I was maybe doing like seven sessions a week uh between my lifting and running, but now splitting that up into eight or nine. Sometimes I'll even do six days of running per week, depending on how much my volume is. Uh, I find it's just so much easier to manage. Um, and I find the the shorter runs, although sorry, the more frequent, the more frequent runs, although I'm running more frequently, they are shorter now, they're much easier for me to manage. It's easy for me to do, you know, three uh, you know, nine to twelve K days in a row now. I can do that, no worries. Uh, and then I have a rest day, and then I'll do a 14k day and then a 20k day or something. So, you know, I've done 36ks or so or so in three days, then I'll do another, you know, 10 to hypothetically 10 to 15. I'll I'll literally tell you my training week right now because I've got it on my computer next to me. So uh today or next week will be like 12Ks on Tuesday, then I'll do 8Ks on Wednesday easy run, so that's 20k's all up, then I'll do um 13k's on Thursday, so that's 33k's all up, then I'll do a 14k on Sunday, so what's that 47 Ks all up, and then I'll do uh a 23k long run on the Sunday, so 47, so that ends up being seven. That's a 70 kilometer week next week. Okay, so and that's okay. Like when it's split up like that, yes, it sounds like a lot, and it probably is for some people. I find it way easier to manage, particularly with that like seven or eight kilometer run on the Wednesday. That's like nothing for me now. I'll I'll do that in like 40 minutes, 45 minutes. Um, and I'll do probably I'll do a weight session before that as well. So it's not hard for me anymore doing those kinds of things. Again, I'm I'm not trying to sound like, oh, you know, I'm I'm so cool, this is what I can do. This is just the the work capacity that I have taken time to develop. So doing things like this are no longer hard. Um, so again, splitting it up for me over the course of a week like that, much easier to manage. Anyway, so splitting up my training days, then the other thing is because I split up my training days. Sorry, let me adjust this camera a little bit more, I don't feel like it's straight. Um, the other than splitting up my training days like that, the other thing that that allowed me to do now that I'm running five days a week is it gave me the opportunity to get in another hard run. So I'll do two to three hard runs per week now, which is awesome. So, for example, next week I've got intervals on the Tuesday, an easy run on the Wednesday, Thursday I'll do a basically a tempo run, which has like uh for this is just next week, but next week was is basically like over and unders, which is where I'll do one kilometer at four-minute pace, one kilometer at five minute pace, then one kilometer at four-minute pace, and I'll rotate between those two. Okay. Then on Saturday I'll have another easy run, and then on the Sunday, I'll have a long run. But in that long run, on the Sunday, I'll then have like sections of it where I'm doing tempo work. So uh there's a section in my long run where I'm running at like 410, then another section where I'm running at like 420, and then it still has a lot of easy running within it, but then there's also like sections of it that are that are uh a tempo work. So again, but based off what I've said here, out of my five runs, there's three runs where I can potentially do you know some good pace-based work, some good threshold work, some good interval speed work in there. Uh, so basically adding in that extra speed or tempo session each week got me much more used to uh running faster more frequently. Before, I have done this these kilometers before, but I've been slower last time. And I think the reason why is that by keeping my volume roughly the same, but now focusing on getting in a little bit more speed work, it's enabled me the ability to squeeze a little bit more out of these running sessions. Uh, and it may not be this case for everyone, but sometimes what I do with some of my clients or athletes is I say to them, okay, we're not gonna focus on increasing the volume right now. This might be all that you can handle, but what I want you to focus on now, maybe it's all that you can handle both because of your work capacity or your life capacity. Life capacity meaning this could be the max you can handle because of your work, kids, family, stress, all that kind of shit that's going on. But instead, I'll be like, okay, if that's all you can handle in that regard, what I'm gonna do instead is then let's see how much we can squeeze out of these other runs instead. Let's try to crank them up a little bit and maybe turn that easy run into a little bit more of a tempo run or turn that interval session uh into something else. Like, you know what I mean? So we're we're trying to squeeze more out of the current volume that we're doing as opposed to just continuously adding kilometers. Something to think about. And that's what I've done, and I will say it's 100% worked. Uh, it's 100% worked, one, because I felt like I was just running slow all the time and I realized I was fit but not fast. Then I did a few weeks of doing this, and my speed just came up so much quicker. And the reason why I know my speed got better is because it got so much easier for me to run at these faster paces. Like during the hot like running at 410, 405 used to be quite challenging, like pace used to be quite challenging for me. And then I would do a couple days where I had to run at that either for intervals or for a couple kilometers at a time, and running at those paces were like I was like, Oh, it feels so much easier now. And my volume's the same. I just needed to have more time running at those paces to get more used to them. So something to think about. You might always not eat not need more volume, you could just need to squeeze more out of what you currently have. Now, I will say this though, in in the running world, volume probably is still king, like the best runners in the world are doing like 180 to 220 kilometers a week for a reason. So I'm not saying that it's not uh useful whatsoever here, but I'm just giving you another training option uh that you may want to consider. Now, otherwise, other things that I've done, uh the other thing that I did during that race, I set up my garment, right? I've got a day on here called Bayside Half Marathon, and I did this off my phone and then sent it to my Garmin. If you anyone who has a Garmin, uh this garment was very expensive. I think it was like 1800 bucks or something. I did not buy it, to be clear. Thank you to my girlfriend Jessica. She bought it for me, I think, for my birthday last year. Um, so I didn't pay for this. If you cannot afford it, to be honest, I wouldn't have bought it if someone didn't, if someone else didn't get it for me. So I think it was like 1800 bucks. But this watch, I can program I this is what I do with my training. I program my runs through my phone and I send them to my watch. So I might have my my uh running days already pre-programmed into my watch. Some people that use apps like runner or whatever, I think that automatically does it for you. Um, because I do my own programming, thankfully, I just have to do it myself manually, which is fine, it doesn't take me that long. But for this particular half marathon that I had, I'm like, I want to go sub 90. So what I did was I input pace targets on my watch during this race. So for 21 kilometers, I had pace, uh, a pace kind of notification that would tell me if I've gone above or faster than 410 pace or slower than 420 pace. So I essentially knew I just had to stay within that zone the whole time. Fortunately for me, I had a few situations where I was actually quite comfortably running around 405. So it was telling me that I was running too fast, but I still stayed there, which is why my pace was on the lower end of that range. So I ended up with 412. There were a couple K's where I was running very close to four-minute pace, and honestly, I felt great that day. Um, really happy with that race. It was hard towards the end, don't get me wrong, I was fucking pushing all I had towards the end, but I'm really, really happy with how that race went. And of course, going sub 90 at you know, 91 kilos, I weighed in on the day. Um, I didn't I didn't taper for this event either. I just went into it. I had a full training week that week. I had four days of running before I got to uh that half marathon. So I did Monday through to Thursday, then I took Friday and Saturday off and then ran on Sunday. And you know, I didn't miss a training session, I did everything as normal and I got the time that I wanted. I was really happy. So, you know, hopefully that means that when I do project 300 sub-90, if you don't know what that is, it's the thing where I'm deadlifting 300 kilos and then running a sub-90 half marathon back to back on July 19th. Stay tuned for that. Hopefully that means that if and when I do that, uh I should be pretty much fine to do the sub-90 half marathon now. I don't think I'll really have any issues. If anything, I should be getting fit over the next four or five weeks, which I'm looking forward to. Maybe I can get something closer to like an hour 27 or something. But anyway, we'll see. Point is so pacing was really locked in literally from the beginning. In the beginning, because it's a flat course as well, that worked in my favor. I felt like I could go faster than what I was running, but I didn't. I just sat there and I just cruised the whole way. I was just patient and I just kind of hung out. I just said, bro, you're just gonna stay within this pace no matter how you feel. And I just stayed there, and to be honest, it was pretty much spot on. I reckon it was at my limit. Could I have gone a little bit faster, maybe a fraction faster, but I am not disappointed with how I went. My pace was on point and I felt good, and which is all that I wanted. Um, the other thing is that I ended up moving some of my leg work around in my actual gym program. Uh, so I've gotten rid of squats, barbell squats altogether, and I only do single leg squats now and lunges. Uh, I found that since doing the single leg work, my running has felt a lot more balanced. I did have a little bit of a balance between my right and left leg, and since I've switched over to doing more single leg work, prioritizing the weaknesses in my left leg, my running actually feels a little bit more balanced. And this is something that I didn't realize how bad it was until I rectified it or spent more time doing the single leg work. Um, again, something you may want to consider if you only have barbell movements in your program, you may want to consider adding single leg work. I don't think this has made me made me get faster in the three weeks between my hawker race and this one. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I do feel a little bit better when I'm running now, particularly you know, five weeks later, that I've been doing this between my two legs. Like they feel more even. I didn't realize how uneven they felt before. My left leg, I just realized I wasn't able to push through the floor as much as I thought I was. Uh, now that I've kind of rectified the imbalance, particularly between my left hip flexor and glute, doing some isolation work for both of those areas, um, it's helped a lot. So, again, probably hasn't done a lot for my running times, but I feel better between both legs, which then may indirectly uh affect my running times. Uh, the other thing is, is I just the and this is the last thing I'm gonna say. I didn't have pressure on myself going to this race. I am someone who generally thinks they're the main character of a movie and goes into every race like this is the final showdown of my entire life and everything weighs on it. I can't help it. In my head, that's the place I get to, and actually it helps me stay motivated throughout my training. Some of you may be the same, some of you may not, some of you may be like, bro, it's not that deep. I get it, it's not that deep. I know it's not, but for me, someone who is trying to continuously self-motivate themselves, you know, show up regularly, you know, train hard, blah, blah, blah, do all these things on your own. I program for myself. I have no one else keeping me accountable. It helps me kind of stay locked in. So I like to think that when I'm going into a race, as crazy as this sounds, you know, you know, this is it. You really got to buckle down. This is what you've been working hard for, blah, blah, blah. That's the kind of self-talk that I have. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not so good. Going into this bay side one, I had no self-talk whatsoever. I just said, look, bro, you're just gonna rock up and just see how you go on the day. That's it. I go, I had the pace targets set on my watch, but other than that, I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna get it. I I wasn't super confident. I'm just like, but I'm not gonna put pressure on myself. I just wanted to go into this race mainly because one, it's a local run, and two, I felt like I had more to give when I finished the hawker half marathon, and I wanted to see if I had any more to give here. But I said to myself, you can't, you're not gonna taper for it, you gotta just go into it. That's what I did. Okay, that's it. I just stopped trying to work, like you know, put so much pressure on myself, and I just wanted to go in and just try to give it a good crack. Anyway, you guys have heard me talk a lot. 20 minutes about myself, unbelievable. Uh, thank you for listening as always. Like, comment, subscribe, whatever you gotta do wherever you're watching this. If you're watching this on uh Spotify or wherever, uh, you can give me five stars, that would be awesome. I I realize that I think five stars is the kind of the way to go on these kind of podcast apps, but if you're on YouTube, like, comment, subscribe. Uh, if you guys want any of my programs or to get coached by me, check the links down below. Um, I have new programs that are available right now for you to download if you guys want to go download them. Uh, they're fucking awesome, and I've spent a lot of time making them, and they're exact methods that I use to coach my clients. The only difference is these programs you don't need to get me to help you with. They're one off purchases and you can just go and use them and they tailor to you. Okay, I've spent a lot of time on Google Sheets and I'm shit at it, but I managed to get it to work, and it took me longer than I wanted to. But anyway, thanks so much for listening. Uh, I'll see you guys next time.