Ask the Coach: How can I train to reach my goal of a sub-two-hour half-marathon?

Do you ever listen to Nirvana? I used to a lot when I was younger, don't judge. My first CD in fact was Nirvana MTV Unplugged. It was incredible and I knew all the songs by heart after a few days. My favorite song on the CD was "Plateau." Why am I sharing this all with you? Well it sounds like you've hit a plateau with your racing and possibly with your training.

In college I experienced a plateau for the first three years. No matter how hard I trained or how many miles I ran in practice my races would always be within a few hundredths of a second. It was beyond frustrating! Luckily that coach left and the new one I got understood something very important: no two people are the same and no two people should be trained completely the same. Sounds so simple right?

Any training, for the most part, is better than not training. Finding the right balance of something different that will allow you to have a breakthrough is a difficult task. That's why we offer so many programs and a really great coaching staff here at Fleet Feet Sports, Syracuse.

Like the last few lines of "Plateau" say: but those are all just guesses, wouldn't help you if they could. Without knowing your current training schedule and paces it's tough to say where to make those adjustments but we are all here to help you find that groove. Just let one of us know the deets and how we'll help you from there!