Brooklyn Half Marathon, Canova-flavored
Race Information
- Name: RBC Brooklyn Half Marathon
- Date: May 16th, 2026
- Distance: 13.1 miles
- Location: New York, NY
- Website: https://events.nyrr.org/rbc-brooklyn-half
- Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/18528643722/
- Time: 1:18:26
Goals
| Goal | Description | Completed? |
|---|---|---|
| A | Sub 1:18 | No |
| B | PR (1:19:15) | Yes |
| C | NYCQ (Sub 1:23) | Yes |
Splits
| Marker | Time | Split |
|---|---|---|
| 5k | 18:42 | - |
| 10k | 37:37 | 18:55 |
| 15k | 55:57 | 18:20 |
| 20k | 1:14:22 | 18:25 |
| Finish | 1:18:26 | 4:02 |
Background
After some less-structured training to start the year, I chose Brooklyn Half as my 1st A Goal race of the year - it had been a while since I ran a true "A Goal" half, and I wanted a NYC qualifier time. Ran a 17:12 solo 5k TT (tiny PR) right before the start of the block as a fitness test.
Training
Having had great success following a Canova-style approach for Chicago Marathon build, I decided to design a similar approach for this block. Most of the inspiration came from /u/running_writings great writeup of HM blocks. I added some of my own favorite sessions, but with the same goals of starting from speed/endurance and building towards race specificity. My full spreadsheet is here, and my strava log with splits here
Compared to other Half blocks I had done, this meant doing more work at the 90-95%HMP range, which did feel effective. On the flip side, that also meant fewer of the traditional steady weekly LR - the last (and longest) was 16.5 miles on week 6, and after that largely was on a "quality day every 3rd day" schedule (though many of those quality days were 13-15 miles of running). Overall I averaged 64mpw with a 2 week peak of 74.
This was going great until week 4 when some post-travel fatigue + unseasonably warm SF weather meant I totally failed a workout and felt like crap all week.... and then week 5 when I decided I didn't have too bad of a cold and did my hard LR anyways (which went fine) only to get some serious chills/light hypothermia afterward that took me out for 2 days. In total I was sick 3 times this build, and ended up feeling crummy on quite a few workouts. Was this overtraining / underrecovery? The overall volumes were well below what I've handled in prior marathon blocks, but I can't rule it out. I think in reality a few sessions that were doable on paper fresh ended up being just a touch too hard in reality.
If there is a blessing in disguise, this taught me that:
- Generally no point in over-planning in advance. While you should have a good overall idea of the structure/progression of a training block, the individual weeks are by necessity going to have to be tweaked based on feeling, and workouts will have to be adjusted or moved around. Don't get wedded to any specifics
- Its worth going into every workout with a pre-determined difficulty level of how it should feel/how hard to push, and be honest about keeping yourself to that. I bailed on 2 of my 3 alternation workouts early because I felt I was going to overreach completing them as originally planned.
Prerace
Same shit(s), different race. Thankfully was staying with my sister a mile away from the start which made race morning easier. Despite the concern in /r/runnyc that security/bathrooms would be a nightmare, it seemed well-run for an event of this size.
Race
Not going to spend a novel going through this but will say I think I paced it reasonably well given the crowding and hills on the early miles, and finished feeling like I had gotten most out of what I could've on the day - maybe could've hit the downhills a tad harder.
I will say this is likely "one and done" for me doing massive races shorter than marathons. Besides the usual annoying logistics, the lack of a real proper warmup felt like a legitimate hindrance - I had some serious tightness in my right calf that didn't go away until mile 5 or so.
Post-race
If you hang out chatting with friends post-race it means you miss the free AlphaFlys.
Recap
Despite a non-optimal training and not quite hitting my A goal, I'd definitely recommend this sort of Canova-style approach for a HM block if you're a sicko like me who find this stuff fun/interesting (if not, maybe just do r/norwegianSinglesRun/)