Most of these days were previously mentioned, but whatever:
Monday:6
Tuesday:6
Wednesday:7
Thursday:Rest
Friday:Rest
Saturday:6, wanted to make sure I wasn't cramped after 2 days of car travel, ran around 6:30s
Sunday:35, marathon in the morning, 3 mile cooldown @ 9/mile when I got home, another nearly 6 mile run later at 9 pm just to ensure that I'm not going to cramp and will be good to start reupping mileage tomorrow
Total: 60 miles, though over 58% of the week's mileage was in one day. hah...
Stillwater Marathon Report:
The important stuff: Time: 2:52:55, Place: 3rd/533.
The time may be debatable. Officially it says 2:53:00 right now, but the clock, my watch, and the announcer all said 2:52:55 when I finished, so who knows why it says 2:53:00 online...
I thought I had a sub 2:50 right now and I'm still pretty sure I do, but in hindsight, this was not exactly a PR course, so I'm actually surprised to have beaten my Boston time now that I'm finished. For those of you familiar with the Druid Hills, I'd liken this to a marathon version of Dreaded Druid Hills 1ok; there were some flat sections, but very large portions of the course contained monstrously terrible hills. I counted at least 6 hills that were equal or worse than Heartbreak Hill and a number of other smaller ones that still took their toll. I split 1:25:0x for the first half, but my quads hurt around mile 10 already since the first 10 miles contained a large majority of the terrible uphill sections. The 2nd half could've been relatively fast (other than 2 absolutely atrocious uphills and a few other fairly bad ones), but the first half was so terrible that the 2nd half was more about survival and I ended up doing the second half somewhere around 1:27:50, not the negative split I had envisioned being possible. I managed to run on pace for a 2:50 until around 18 or 19 and it's a good thing that the biggest downhills were in the last quarter because I was just focusing on surviving as best as I could coasting through the last 4 or 5 miles. How did this happen? Well, my legs weren't really a big problem in the 2nd half. I made sure to have elecrolytes pre-race and 1 and 2 hours in, but my energy just got sapped. I took one gel a few minutes before the start and another at 5, but after that, all I had was gatorade. I had planned on one at 5, 10, energy beans at 15, and another gel at 20, but my stomach didn't feel good and any consumption just sounded terrible, so I kept putting off taking any sustenance until "after the next water station", despite my knowledge that doing so was slowly going to kill me. The fact that I was able to run another 9 miles reasonably well later in the day is a testament to how good my legs feel at this point and really shows the importance of taking gels incredibly consistently. I definitely could've gotten more out of my legs if I had more energy, but the lack of gels limited my energy and that directly slowed my race. I have vowed numerous times not to let this happen, but it has happened again. I'm not totally sure if I could've broken 2:50 if I had taken my other 2 gels and the beans, but it sure would've gotten me close. As far as place goes, I was in 4th for quite awhile, though I didn't know this until the half since there were 20-milers, half-marathoners, and 12-kers scattered throughout the course and i wasn't always sure who was who. When someone said I was in 4th around the half, I made up my mind that I absolutely needed to finish on the podium. I held 4th for awhile and bided my time and finally caught 3rd place when he succumbed to a walk in the last monster uphill at mile 19. Unfortunately, someone blew by me at around 22, bumping me back to 4th and another guy took me at 23. Fortunately, the first guy that passed me was apparently just surging as he passed me and he soon dropped back again and I retook him. The guy that passed me at 23 somehow went on to pass everyone else ahead of me and took the win (he ran extremely conservatively and had a ton left in the tank), but I was able to take the guy that had been in 2nd when I was in 3rd) and finally jumped back to 3rd place with a mile to go. I finally was able to run a decent mile for the last mile (as opposed to a bunch of 6:50s to 7s for a handful of miles there), going from 25.2 to 26.2 in the low to mid 6's. I crossed in 2:52:55 and was pretty happy to have a PR and a 3rd place finish after being fairly certain by mile 10 that a PR wasn't going to happen on this ridiculous of a course. Overall, I'd give this a B+. The nutrition stupidity undoubtedly cost me a couple minutes, but I still finished 3rd and missed the win by less than 2 1/2 minutes (winner was 2:50:32). Undoubtedly, a ton of fast guys will try to cherry pick this thing next year and I'm sure a bunch of them will be surprised at the insane hilliness, but I'm also sure that the course record ought to drop with bigger fields and better competition.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Week of 5-11-09, week of 5-18-09 (through Friday), Thoughts about TWSS running
I forgot to post this at the end of the week, so this is a bit late and I decided to just throw together 2 weeks... I'm running the Stillwater Marathon on Sunday, so I'm pretty much just resting yesterday, today, and tomorrow to ensure a proper taper.
Anyway, I took it very easy last week as well as the first half of this week. I was going to do about 10/day all 7 days last week, and I ended up averaging 10/day for 5 days with 2 off days for a total of exactly 50 miles, a very easy taper compared to the last few weeks. I don't like to hit weeks this low, especially right after running so much for a few weeks (it makes me feel quite lazy), but I know that I need to be fresh for Stillwater on Sunday or I will have sacrificed a few more days of hanging out with college friends for the last time for nothing.
Monday 5-11-09: 6 miles: Federal Hill run, harbor loop, somewhere around 6:30/mile, maybe a little faster due to a very fast finish (forgot my watch).
Tuesday 5-12-09: 9 miles: 2.5 there, 2.5 back, 4 on track, broken miles.
Mile 1: 1600 in 5:21, 2-3 min rest,
Mile 2: 1200 in 3:53, 60-90 s rest, 400 in 69, 2-3 min rest
Mile 3: 800 in 2:30, 90 ish rest, 800 in 2:30, 2-3 min rest
Mile 4: 400 in 76, 75 rest, 400 in 73, 75 rest, 400 in 71, 75 rest, 400 in 63
4 miles total of 20:06. I finished this feeling pretty strong still. I was joking that we should've done a 5th and 6th mile comprised of 200s and 100s, which would've been stupid, but I definitely could've kept the pace for a few more miles of longer repeats like the ones in previous miles, as evidenced by my very fast finishing 400. In the future when I have more time before a race, I would like to try a 7 mile version of this, hopefully around the same pace, of 1600, 1200/400, 800/800, 4x400, 800/800, 1200/400, 1600 (ie decrease the intervals the same way and then re-increase them). Workouts like this will definitely help build the type of enduring speed I need for an exceptionally fast fall marathon.
Wednesday 5-13-09: 12 miles: Typical 7 miles in Canton with a 5 mile roundtrip warmup and cooldown. I don't remember the time, but it was probably somewhere around 6:40s to 6:50s. We started somewhere around 7s and a few of us rocked the last couple miles a little faster.
Thursday 5-14-09: 14 miles: Last trail run (perhaps ever? maybe not, but at least in the near future) in Loch Raven. :( I rode out with Dave and we had a nice relatively fast (roughly marathon pace) run somewhere around 6:30s/mile. Somewhere around 10 miles was on trail and the last 4 was on road. I think we started probably more in the range of 6:40s, but we absolutely killed the road section, especially the last 2 miles. By the time we got to the road, it was starting to rain and it was really pretty epic. I definitely had some room to speed up, but it was very slick and dark, so pushing something like 5:30s along the winding and fairly dangerous Seminary Road felt crazy enough. I think both Dave and I were trying to test each other at this point (well, at least I was trying to test him... haha...) and we both held on really well.
Friday 5-15-09: Rest. Legs felt good, but I realized that nothing I could do at this point could really benefit my race that much, so I took an easy day.
Saturday 5-16-09: Rest again. Decided the same thing. :P
Sunday 5-17-09: 9 miles: 8 miles of tempo, relatively fast, around 5:50s, but not fast enough to make it hurt. Finished at campus and just jogged home the mile from there.
Monday 5-18-09: 6 miles: Fed Hill harbor loop for the last time, around 6:30s.
Tuesday 5-19-09: 6 miles: 3 mile warmup, 3 miles on track of 4 x (800, 100 jog rest, 300) on the 7 to 7:30 depending on the set, IE a fairly generous amount of rest, probably more than we needed:
Set 1: 2:34, 54
Set 2: 2:32, 52
Set 3: 2:30, 50
Set 4: 2:28, 49
I ran pretty decent times here, pretty comparable to other track workouts recently, but I honestly just didn't feel that great and it taxed me a bit more than normal. I hadn't eaten since lunch and my lunch was pretty small, so I felt like I was pretty low on energy and that was probably the reason why. The one excellent thing with this workout was that every single split was faster than the previous. I was hoping to line up the 4,4,2,2,0,0,8,8, but I ended up missing the last 300 by 1 second. One interesting note is that the time between sets decreased with every set, but the 100 meter jog was slightly slower each set, so I had less time before the 800s but more time before the 300s as time went on.
Wednesday 5-20-09: 7 miles: Biked to Canton, 7 mile canton run in 6:30s (almost on the nose), biked back. I had previously said I was going to by everyone a beer afterwards but ended up having to jet out to meet my parents back at my apartment, so I fully expect people to hold me to this obligation in the future when we meet up at Boston or some other race. :) This was sadly my last team run with Team TWSS and I'll definitely miss training with them.
Thursday 5-21-09: Graduation! Took the day off on the advice of Ryan who said I should just rest a few days before the marathon due to too much mileage (in his opinion) so far this week. I wouldn't have had time to run anyway, so it all worked out.
Friday: 5-22-09: Traveling all day in the car from Baltimore to Chicago (2/3 of the way back to MN), rest again.
Tomorrow, Saturday 5-23-09, I'll probably just run a few miles to make sure everything's still feeling good and stretch out really well.
Sunday is the big race day...
I could talk about race strategy and all, but it's the same as Boston, just at a pace to go under 2:50. Instead, I should mention how grateful I am to have been able to train with TWSS over the last year or 2. This is a great group of runners with some really inspirationally fast folks and a very large amount of wisdom to go around, so I think I really prospered lately with their help and camaraderie. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been considerably more open to other peoples' advice and I think my Boston time reflects that. I think the speedwork lately ought to help me a lot at Stillwater and I think that Ryan, etc, did an excellent job designing workouts which ought to benefit me very well in the near and distant future. The past month or 2 has honestly been the first time in my life that I have legitimately enjoyed track workouts and I blame/attribute that (whether you consider that to be a good or bad thing) on my much higher mileage base than I've ever had in the past when doing track work. I never did any consistently within the last 2 years, so being much faster on the track and having the endurance to do the workouts and do them well is literally exciting. Anyway, back to the point... Not to sound cheesy, but I really appreciate having been able to run with TWSS and I'm quite convinced that, while I'll have more fun terrain to run on in Utah, I won't have nearly as varied and fun a group of runners to train with.
Anyway, I took it very easy last week as well as the first half of this week. I was going to do about 10/day all 7 days last week, and I ended up averaging 10/day for 5 days with 2 off days for a total of exactly 50 miles, a very easy taper compared to the last few weeks. I don't like to hit weeks this low, especially right after running so much for a few weeks (it makes me feel quite lazy), but I know that I need to be fresh for Stillwater on Sunday or I will have sacrificed a few more days of hanging out with college friends for the last time for nothing.
Monday 5-11-09: 6 miles: Federal Hill run, harbor loop, somewhere around 6:30/mile, maybe a little faster due to a very fast finish (forgot my watch).
Tuesday 5-12-09: 9 miles: 2.5 there, 2.5 back, 4 on track, broken miles.
Mile 1: 1600 in 5:21, 2-3 min rest,
Mile 2: 1200 in 3:53, 60-90 s rest, 400 in 69, 2-3 min rest
Mile 3: 800 in 2:30, 90 ish rest, 800 in 2:30, 2-3 min rest
Mile 4: 400 in 76, 75 rest, 400 in 73, 75 rest, 400 in 71, 75 rest, 400 in 63
4 miles total of 20:06. I finished this feeling pretty strong still. I was joking that we should've done a 5th and 6th mile comprised of 200s and 100s, which would've been stupid, but I definitely could've kept the pace for a few more miles of longer repeats like the ones in previous miles, as evidenced by my very fast finishing 400. In the future when I have more time before a race, I would like to try a 7 mile version of this, hopefully around the same pace, of 1600, 1200/400, 800/800, 4x400, 800/800, 1200/400, 1600 (ie decrease the intervals the same way and then re-increase them). Workouts like this will definitely help build the type of enduring speed I need for an exceptionally fast fall marathon.
Wednesday 5-13-09: 12 miles: Typical 7 miles in Canton with a 5 mile roundtrip warmup and cooldown. I don't remember the time, but it was probably somewhere around 6:40s to 6:50s. We started somewhere around 7s and a few of us rocked the last couple miles a little faster.
Thursday 5-14-09: 14 miles: Last trail run (perhaps ever? maybe not, but at least in the near future) in Loch Raven. :( I rode out with Dave and we had a nice relatively fast (roughly marathon pace) run somewhere around 6:30s/mile. Somewhere around 10 miles was on trail and the last 4 was on road. I think we started probably more in the range of 6:40s, but we absolutely killed the road section, especially the last 2 miles. By the time we got to the road, it was starting to rain and it was really pretty epic. I definitely had some room to speed up, but it was very slick and dark, so pushing something like 5:30s along the winding and fairly dangerous Seminary Road felt crazy enough. I think both Dave and I were trying to test each other at this point (well, at least I was trying to test him... haha...) and we both held on really well.
Friday 5-15-09: Rest. Legs felt good, but I realized that nothing I could do at this point could really benefit my race that much, so I took an easy day.
Saturday 5-16-09: Rest again. Decided the same thing. :P
Sunday 5-17-09: 9 miles: 8 miles of tempo, relatively fast, around 5:50s, but not fast enough to make it hurt. Finished at campus and just jogged home the mile from there.
Monday 5-18-09: 6 miles: Fed Hill harbor loop for the last time, around 6:30s.
Tuesday 5-19-09: 6 miles: 3 mile warmup, 3 miles on track of 4 x (800, 100 jog rest, 300) on the 7 to 7:30 depending on the set, IE a fairly generous amount of rest, probably more than we needed:
Set 1: 2:34, 54
Set 2: 2:32, 52
Set 3: 2:30, 50
Set 4: 2:28, 49
I ran pretty decent times here, pretty comparable to other track workouts recently, but I honestly just didn't feel that great and it taxed me a bit more than normal. I hadn't eaten since lunch and my lunch was pretty small, so I felt like I was pretty low on energy and that was probably the reason why. The one excellent thing with this workout was that every single split was faster than the previous. I was hoping to line up the 4,4,2,2,0,0,8,8, but I ended up missing the last 300 by 1 second. One interesting note is that the time between sets decreased with every set, but the 100 meter jog was slightly slower each set, so I had less time before the 800s but more time before the 300s as time went on.
Wednesday 5-20-09: 7 miles: Biked to Canton, 7 mile canton run in 6:30s (almost on the nose), biked back. I had previously said I was going to by everyone a beer afterwards but ended up having to jet out to meet my parents back at my apartment, so I fully expect people to hold me to this obligation in the future when we meet up at Boston or some other race. :) This was sadly my last team run with Team TWSS and I'll definitely miss training with them.
Thursday 5-21-09: Graduation! Took the day off on the advice of Ryan who said I should just rest a few days before the marathon due to too much mileage (in his opinion) so far this week. I wouldn't have had time to run anyway, so it all worked out.
Friday: 5-22-09: Traveling all day in the car from Baltimore to Chicago (2/3 of the way back to MN), rest again.
Tomorrow, Saturday 5-23-09, I'll probably just run a few miles to make sure everything's still feeling good and stretch out really well.
Sunday is the big race day...
I could talk about race strategy and all, but it's the same as Boston, just at a pace to go under 2:50. Instead, I should mention how grateful I am to have been able to train with TWSS over the last year or 2. This is a great group of runners with some really inspirationally fast folks and a very large amount of wisdom to go around, so I think I really prospered lately with their help and camaraderie. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been considerably more open to other peoples' advice and I think my Boston time reflects that. I think the speedwork lately ought to help me a lot at Stillwater and I think that Ryan, etc, did an excellent job designing workouts which ought to benefit me very well in the near and distant future. The past month or 2 has honestly been the first time in my life that I have legitimately enjoyed track workouts and I blame/attribute that (whether you consider that to be a good or bad thing) on my much higher mileage base than I've ever had in the past when doing track work. I never did any consistently within the last 2 years, so being much faster on the track and having the endurance to do the workouts and do them well is literally exciting. Anyway, back to the point... Not to sound cheesy, but I really appreciate having been able to run with TWSS and I'm quite convinced that, while I'll have more fun terrain to run on in Utah, I won't have nearly as varied and fun a group of runners to train with.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Training, week of 5-4-09
Monday 5-4: 14 miles. 3 mile warmup, 7.25 to 7.5 mile run at Fed Hill in around 6:30/mile (Ben had some crazy route that ran through some ridiculously sketchy areas... I would never have done this run by myself), 3.5 mile cooldown back to JHH (took a longer route to bump up the mileage to 14 or so).
Tuesday 5-5: 10 miles. 3 mile warmup, 4 miles on track, 3 mile cooldown (slightly longer warmup and cooldown in a fruitless attempt to avoid getting muddy in the insane rain). Track workout was 1600, 800, 800, 1600, 800, 800 with 90 seconds rest between each, 140 or so between the 8 and 16. People seemed to think the times would be a bit slow due to the heavy rain and wetness (which subsided as the workout went on), but I still really strong and ran the workout well. My splits were 1600: 5:26, 800: 2:36, 800: 2:35, 1600: 5:16, 800: 2:34, 800: 2:32 and I finished still feeling pretty good, so it was a succesful workout that made me push, but not to the point of serious fatigue, which is what I wanted, given that I wanted to hit fairly high mileage this week and couldn't afford a few days of soreness.
Wednesday 5-6: 12 miles. 2.5 mile warmup, 7 mile canton run in 46:xx (pretty easy), and 2.5 mile cooldown.
Thursday: 5-7: 17 miles. This was definitely the big run of the week. I did a 16.5 mile tempo with a .5 mile cooldown at the end. I went out with the intention of going out too fast and trying my best to hold on as well as I could as a sort of mental trainer for difficult long races. I ended up going out in a little over 6 minutes a mile, but surprisingly, it ended up not being too fast to hold for the whole run and I ended up averaging 6:06/mile for the whole run, which really surprised me. Most of the run (about 13) was on roads and 3.5 was on trails. Both the raods and trails portions contained challenging sections, but I worked my hardest on the trails to keep the same fast pace that I had on the roads. The 2nd half was extremely difficult with hills on both Circle Road and Bellona (absolutely massive uphills), but I was able to hold on and sped back up to a slightly faster pace after the hills were done, hitting a mile that I had tracked out from about 15.4 to 16.4 in 5:50. Overall, I was extremely pleased with the run and I registered for the Stillwater Marathon as soon as I got back.
Friday 5-8: 16 miles: I first did 14 miles around Towson pretty easy. I forgot my watch, but it felt like around a 6:50 per mile. This run was more just to recover from the previous day, so I really tried not to push myself to hard. After the run, I ran into a girl from my church while I was stretching at the gym who was about to go running 2 miles and I was just joking around saying I would pace her, but she took me up on it, so I did another 2 miles, which actually served as a really good cooldown.
Saturday 5-9: 12 miles. I first ran a mile to get to the gym to lift. After lifting, I ran another 11, from the gym along the ROTC trail to Druid Hills, did the longest possible loop around the zoo and then the lake (with a couple cut backs in the trail section), ran back to campus, ran a loop around campus, and then ran home. I couldn't find my watch, but my pace was probably about 6:30/mile and it felt very manageable, which is good considering this is the pace I need to hit for 26.2 miles at the Stillwater Marathon.
Sunday 5-10: 10 miles: I did a very fast 9 mile tempo around Druid Hills from my apartment and then back to the gym before lifting and eventually running a mile back home. I haven't been able to find my watch for a couple days, but I could tell that this was extremely fast for the distance and the difficulty of the course, probably around 5:45/mile.
Total: 91 miles. Overall, this was an excellent week for me. My legs still feel excellent after 2 90+ mile weeks, so I'm feeling really confident going into Stillwater.
I'll do around 70 miles this week, focusing on speed and tempo. I'm definitely feeling like I can top that Boston time and hit a sub-2:50 at Stillwater as long as I'm careful over the next 2 weeks.
Tuesday 5-5: 10 miles. 3 mile warmup, 4 miles on track, 3 mile cooldown (slightly longer warmup and cooldown in a fruitless attempt to avoid getting muddy in the insane rain). Track workout was 1600, 800, 800, 1600, 800, 800 with 90 seconds rest between each, 140 or so between the 8 and 16. People seemed to think the times would be a bit slow due to the heavy rain and wetness (which subsided as the workout went on), but I still really strong and ran the workout well. My splits were 1600: 5:26, 800: 2:36, 800: 2:35, 1600: 5:16, 800: 2:34, 800: 2:32 and I finished still feeling pretty good, so it was a succesful workout that made me push, but not to the point of serious fatigue, which is what I wanted, given that I wanted to hit fairly high mileage this week and couldn't afford a few days of soreness.
Wednesday 5-6: 12 miles. 2.5 mile warmup, 7 mile canton run in 46:xx (pretty easy), and 2.5 mile cooldown.
Thursday: 5-7: 17 miles. This was definitely the big run of the week. I did a 16.5 mile tempo with a .5 mile cooldown at the end. I went out with the intention of going out too fast and trying my best to hold on as well as I could as a sort of mental trainer for difficult long races. I ended up going out in a little over 6 minutes a mile, but surprisingly, it ended up not being too fast to hold for the whole run and I ended up averaging 6:06/mile for the whole run, which really surprised me. Most of the run (about 13) was on roads and 3.5 was on trails. Both the raods and trails portions contained challenging sections, but I worked my hardest on the trails to keep the same fast pace that I had on the roads. The 2nd half was extremely difficult with hills on both Circle Road and Bellona (absolutely massive uphills), but I was able to hold on and sped back up to a slightly faster pace after the hills were done, hitting a mile that I had tracked out from about 15.4 to 16.4 in 5:50. Overall, I was extremely pleased with the run and I registered for the Stillwater Marathon as soon as I got back.
Friday 5-8: 16 miles: I first did 14 miles around Towson pretty easy. I forgot my watch, but it felt like around a 6:50 per mile. This run was more just to recover from the previous day, so I really tried not to push myself to hard. After the run, I ran into a girl from my church while I was stretching at the gym who was about to go running 2 miles and I was just joking around saying I would pace her, but she took me up on it, so I did another 2 miles, which actually served as a really good cooldown.
Saturday 5-9: 12 miles. I first ran a mile to get to the gym to lift. After lifting, I ran another 11, from the gym along the ROTC trail to Druid Hills, did the longest possible loop around the zoo and then the lake (with a couple cut backs in the trail section), ran back to campus, ran a loop around campus, and then ran home. I couldn't find my watch, but my pace was probably about 6:30/mile and it felt very manageable, which is good considering this is the pace I need to hit for 26.2 miles at the Stillwater Marathon.
Sunday 5-10: 10 miles: I did a very fast 9 mile tempo around Druid Hills from my apartment and then back to the gym before lifting and eventually running a mile back home. I haven't been able to find my watch for a couple days, but I could tell that this was extremely fast for the distance and the difficulty of the course, probably around 5:45/mile.
Total: 91 miles. Overall, this was an excellent week for me. My legs still feel excellent after 2 90+ mile weeks, so I'm feeling really confident going into Stillwater.
I'll do around 70 miles this week, focusing on speed and tempo. I'm definitely feeling like I can top that Boston time and hit a sub-2:50 at Stillwater as long as I'm careful over the next 2 weeks.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
You know you're training well when...
... you feel lazy after 12 miles of running and an hour of lifting. Haha... No, but really, I've definitely cracked back into that incredible "more mileage" mindset where I'm actually training hard enough that I get pissed at myself on days when I barely crack the double digits, such as today. I love when I'm in the zone like that because it means that I simply won't allow myself to get lazy and my training is guaranteed to be awesome. I really think I'm going to be very well peaked for the Stillwater Marathon at this point, and I'm really getting excited to race again. That is all... I just thought it was funny that I felt lazy after 12 miles...
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Mid-week post, doing another marathon in 2 1/2 weeks
Quick post... The training has been going exceptionally well in the last 2 weeks or so and I feel that my truest spring peak is coming after Boston. That means I need to run another marathon soon. I've decided to just drive home to MN the day after graduation (4 days earlier than the original plan) so I can run the inaugural Stillwater Marathon on May 24th. Officially, the goal is to break 2:50 and I'm fairly sure it's doable if I run well. I feel like I'm somehow already in much better shape than I was when I ran Boston, probably just due to the fact that I've finally started doing some good honest speed-work on the track. Additionally, I've been doing most of my runs at or faster than marathon pace, so that helps too. Boston was probably a hair conservative, and my 2:53:46 was obviously 80 seconds slower than it should've been with the bathroom break and all. Stillwater won't be an easy course, but it'll be easier than Boston and running my first ever home-state marathon ought to help my cause. As a whole, even dropping 4 minutes in the shape I was in at Boston would be doable if I ran a very good race, but I think I'm in better shape now, so it should definitely be doable. The plan will be to start in a 1:24 and see what happens from there. Also, I'm going to avoid eating something stupid like Wendy's the night before and I'm not going to consume any dairy for a couple days before the race to see if that can help keep me out of the porta-john while I'm running... I'm going to have an awesome post about this week's training in a few days and I'm really looking forward to the last couple runs of the week.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Week of 4-27-09
I'm sort of counting this week 2 ways, Sunday through Saturday, and Monday through Sunday. Sunday through Saturday gives me 100 miles, Monday through Sunday gives me 92.
Sunday 4-26-09: 15 miles AM: Pike's Peek 10k + about a mile warmup (well, very fast run) to get to the start on time: sort of a disaster, wrote about it in the last post, but I ended up running 35:30, 2 minutes off what I wanted. I'm not sure if 33:30 is totally realistic off a track, but I'd like to think that I should've been able to hit 34 if I wasn't still somewhat of a post-Boston cripple. PM: I was angry with myself about my bad run, so I came home and ran another 8 miles in the blazing 90-something degree heat, which was really quite painful since I'm not used to the heat yet this year.
Monday 4-27-09: 13 miles: 3 mile warmup from JHH to fed hill + Shady 7 (started at 7/mile, finished really fast, with everyone sort of just trying their hardest to keep up with Kris Simms and Ben Ingram, hit the finish in 44 high) + 3 mile cooldown. The high of the day was 93 and someone mentioned that it hit the high shortly before we started, so it must've been 93 when I was running over from JHH. I downed 20 ounces of gatorade and 40 ounces of water throughout the 13 miles of running and was probably still a little bit dehydrated when I finished. Man I need to get better with the heat...
Tuesday 4-28-09: 12 miles: 2.5 mile warmup with Jaffe and newcomer Nina to track workout (2 x (mile, 60 rest, 800, 400 jog for rest, 400). Hit the first mile in 5:40, wasn't supposed to be too fast, felt really easy, 800 was in 2:30, felt pretty good, 400 in 71, also felt all right, 5 minutes rest, followed by the next mile in 5:29, still felt good, 800 in 2:34, fell off in the second lap, wasn't so happy with that, 400 jog for rest, 400 in 70, felt pretty good. Most of the team did a 3rd set, but I knew my weekly mileage was going to be high already and I had just decided that morning to do a 5k on Saturday, so I decided to save it. Everyone else said the 3rd set was really what hit them hard, so maybe I should've done it, but no-one else that had done Boston did more than 2 sets, so I guess I can't really be too hard on myself. After the 2.5 mile warmup and 4 miles on track, I jogged home with Jaffe and Nina, but realized when I was within about a half mile that I had forgotten my ipod, so I sprinted 2 miles back, making it a 4 mile cooldown by the time I got back to the track. At that point, I just got a ride back to Hopkins, but had to run home from the opposite side of campus (another 1.5), so my total was about 12.
Wednesday 4-29-09: 12 miles, Canton run, pretty easy, around 48 or 49 for the 7 miles. The warmup and cooldown from JHH were both about 2.5 miles, so the total was 12.
Thursday 4-30-09: 22 miles, Me, being mileage hungry, decided on an easy 15 miler. That turned into a not-so-easy 22 miler. I ran it in just under 2:30, so it just a hair under 7/mile. A few miles were on a fairly technical section of the Robert E Lee trail, so it wasn't really all that easy of a run. Oh, and I found a new section of trail in Robert E Lee that I hadn't known about on the far side from Hopkins. It's not that much extra trail, but either way, there's a beast of an uphill followed by a best of a downhill, so it's a really good way to elevate the heart rate for a few minutes in the middle of a run. As a whole, the run was basically a run to Robert E Lee, the largest loop possible on the inside, cutting out to Falls near the highway, running that little extra chunk I just found, crossing up to Bellona, taking Joppa to the far side of Towson, and then finally running home from Towson. When I finished, I was just getting to that point where I was getting fairly fatigued and happy to be done (not like in a marathon, but maybe how I'd feel about 18-20 miles into a decent marathon), so I pushed it right about as hard as I should've for the distance. I feel like the last chunk of the marathon is usually what does the damage and causes the need for recovery, so pushing until you're feeling about how you would around 18-20 miles in gives a great training run. I was slightly sore afterwards, but not sore enough to really jeapardize my Saturday race, so it worked well.
Friday 5-1-09: 0 miles. I took an off day just to make sure I wouldn't be sore for Saturday's race.
Saturday: 26 miles: ~2 mile warmup plus Fiesta 5k in the morning. That long of a warmup sounds a little obscene considering that it's 2/3 the length of the race, but I really need a lot of time to get a rhythm going, so it's what I have to do... Anyway, the race went somewhat well, in that I took 1st out of 996 runners, but I didn't really feel like I earned a reason to celebrate that much. I ran a 17:02, which isn't really anywhere near what I know I'm capable of, but I got lazy and decided to be satisfied with a healthy win rather than really going all out for time. The course wasn't the same flat fast course as the previous 2 years, so even going all out definitely would not have gotten me the race record (currently 15:58), but I probably should've been able to edge myself to a 16:30 or so there if I had someone pushing me and making me fight harder for the win. As it was, I started off in 1st and momentarily almost lost it when I briefly went off course about 100 meters in, but only 1 guy really stayed with me for long, so I got progressively more lazy as the race went on. It was pretty windy, so some guy drafted off me for the first mile (which we ran in 5:22). After 6 to 7 minutes, I was sick of giving him the advantage of drafting, but I certainly was not going to give up my lead, so I sped up for around 15 to 20 seconds and he just fell off instantly. At that point, I slowed back down to a little slower than the original pace, but he continued to fall behind, so while I definitely had another gear or 2 to kick into, I never really used them. I hit the 2 mile, which was up and over a decent hill, in something like 10:51. I hit the 3 mile in 16:28 or so and realized that I would go under 17 only if I really really kicked the last .1, but I just wasn't feeling that motivated since I couldn't even see the guy behind me anymore, so I coasted into a 17:02 and pretty much instantly regretted not pushing at the end. Either way, a win out of 996 competitors is pretty fun and I have to say, I realized that I really enjoy winning. However, no serious runner is going to say that a 17:02 is a very impressive time, so the fact that I won doesn't really mean that much. In most instances, I'd rather run a 16:30 and take 10th place than run 17:02 and take 1st, but a win is still pretty awesome, so I'm not going to sit here and complain about it too much. Oh, and if it matters, I somehow won by 37 seconds. I don't know why there was no-one faster in a 996 person field, but whatever... Oh, and you might wonder how a 5k and a 2 mile warmup makes 26 miles... It doesn't. I came home and felt bored, so I went for another 21 miles. hahaha... I ran to Hopkins from my apartment, took the Gilman trail followed by Roland and did the same loop inside Robert E Lee that I had done the other day. I then doubled back and took the exit that goes out on the really muddy section near that elitist country club (or whatever it is) that comes out on Ruxton right next to the bridge that hits Bellona, took a left on Ruxton, and did the ultra hilly loop on Circle Road (the uphill here was extremely painful and I was really glad to have a hammer gel with me here...). Next, I popped back onto Bellona, hit another massive uphill going up Bellona and circled back over 695 onto Falls, took the longest route back through Robert E Lee, followed the train tracks out to the left to my sort-of-secret super technical section of trail, took the hill out of Robert E Lee back up to Charles, and then eventually crossed over at Northern Parkway and took Roland home. Whew, sort of hard to keep straight. In other words, to and from Robert E Lee with a loop inside, loop around the back of the outside with a mini loop in the middle of this loop, then another loop on the inside. Complicated, no? When I finished this run, I felt like absolute garbage. My legs were somewhat sore and I was extremely fatigued due to the very high humidity and dehydration from sweat loss. Overall, I hit the run in 2:26, which is almost exactly 7/mile. It was definitely a tough run and it felt a lot harder than Thursday's 22, probably just because I had run somewhat fast in the morning. This afternoon run bumped me to 100 miles in a week, which was pretty nice, since I haven't hit a week that big in a couple months.
Sunday: 7 miles. I took it slow for this short of a run, around 6:30/mile. It was raining (admittedly not terribly hard) and everything was just soaking wet and generally miserable. I would've gone farther, but the weather brought down my motivation low enough to keep my run in the single digits.
Total: 100 miles if you count Sunday through Saturday, 92 if you count Monday through Sunday. I start my weeks on Monday, but it's still important to keep cumulative 7 day stats in the back of my mind, so I'm keeping both stats in my total log just so I remember that I did in fact hit 100 in 1 week at this point.
Next week: I'm debating how much to hit, but it will be at the very least 70 and probably a fair amount more. I'll have 13 on Monday, somewhere around 10-15 on Tuesday, depending on the track workout, and 12-18 on Wednesday, depending on whether the team run is in Canton or Robert E Lee, so I'll be starting the week off well. Assuming I feel good, I'm going to do something massive on Saturday or Sunday (debating between the 39-mile DC run with a train ride back or the 35-40 mile, depending on how I do it, Loch Raven run). In order to hit this, Friday will certainly just be a chump change day and probably one other day will be too, but if I feel good, I'll push for 100-110.
I'm throwing around the idea of splitting my training into very heavy (120-130) and medium (70-80) weeks back to back over and over rather than just consistently trying to hit 100-110, which was my original plan, as I build up for summer ultras, but I guess we'll just have to play it by ear. I do know that I want to shatter my weekly training mileage record of 125 a couple times. Ideally, I'd love to hit a 140 mile week so I can average 20 miles a day for a whole week at some point before August, but I don't really know what kind of toll that would take on my body and I would estimate it being very high, so that's not necessarily going to happen. I've always had in the back of my mind that I would be in "reasonable" endurance shape when I could consider 20-milers incredibly routine and I think being able to do one every single day for a week would constitute them as fairly routine, so we'll see. haha...
One other thing, as far as racing goes, I'm canceling Mohican. I realized that it falls on the Saturday right after I move out to Utah and I am absolutely unwilling to set a horrible precedent by missing my first Friday of grad school lab work to travel to Ohio for running. Quite frankly, having just July's 12-hour and August's 100 miler sets me up better to keep from burning out from too many uber-long races and it gives me more time to just focus on training. I obviously want to destroy Around the Lake's 12-hour course record (66 miles, which I will hopefully beat by at least 10 miles). However, my focus at this point is shifting towards marathons, so I'm treating these 2 races as part of the endurance build-up process so that I will be able to run as fast as possible in a fall marathon. My original goal for the year was to break 2:50, but I've decided to lower than to 2:45 since I don't feel like dropping less than 4 minutes after a summer of training in the mountains and a fall focused on getting fast is a good enough goal, especially if I end up getting a lottery spot in St. George's Marathon, which is MUUUUUUCH faster than Boston, my PR course.
Anyway, this was an absolutely absurdly long post, but what can I say? I love running, I love thinking about running, I love talking about running, I love writing about running... etc... You get the point...
Sunday 4-26-09: 15 miles AM: Pike's Peek 10k + about a mile warmup (well, very fast run) to get to the start on time: sort of a disaster, wrote about it in the last post, but I ended up running 35:30, 2 minutes off what I wanted. I'm not sure if 33:30 is totally realistic off a track, but I'd like to think that I should've been able to hit 34 if I wasn't still somewhat of a post-Boston cripple. PM: I was angry with myself about my bad run, so I came home and ran another 8 miles in the blazing 90-something degree heat, which was really quite painful since I'm not used to the heat yet this year.
Monday 4-27-09: 13 miles: 3 mile warmup from JHH to fed hill + Shady 7 (started at 7/mile, finished really fast, with everyone sort of just trying their hardest to keep up with Kris Simms and Ben Ingram, hit the finish in 44 high) + 3 mile cooldown. The high of the day was 93 and someone mentioned that it hit the high shortly before we started, so it must've been 93 when I was running over from JHH. I downed 20 ounces of gatorade and 40 ounces of water throughout the 13 miles of running and was probably still a little bit dehydrated when I finished. Man I need to get better with the heat...
Tuesday 4-28-09: 12 miles: 2.5 mile warmup with Jaffe and newcomer Nina to track workout (2 x (mile, 60 rest, 800, 400 jog for rest, 400). Hit the first mile in 5:40, wasn't supposed to be too fast, felt really easy, 800 was in 2:30, felt pretty good, 400 in 71, also felt all right, 5 minutes rest, followed by the next mile in 5:29, still felt good, 800 in 2:34, fell off in the second lap, wasn't so happy with that, 400 jog for rest, 400 in 70, felt pretty good. Most of the team did a 3rd set, but I knew my weekly mileage was going to be high already and I had just decided that morning to do a 5k on Saturday, so I decided to save it. Everyone else said the 3rd set was really what hit them hard, so maybe I should've done it, but no-one else that had done Boston did more than 2 sets, so I guess I can't really be too hard on myself. After the 2.5 mile warmup and 4 miles on track, I jogged home with Jaffe and Nina, but realized when I was within about a half mile that I had forgotten my ipod, so I sprinted 2 miles back, making it a 4 mile cooldown by the time I got back to the track. At that point, I just got a ride back to Hopkins, but had to run home from the opposite side of campus (another 1.5), so my total was about 12.
Wednesday 4-29-09: 12 miles, Canton run, pretty easy, around 48 or 49 for the 7 miles. The warmup and cooldown from JHH were both about 2.5 miles, so the total was 12.
Thursday 4-30-09: 22 miles, Me, being mileage hungry, decided on an easy 15 miler. That turned into a not-so-easy 22 miler. I ran it in just under 2:30, so it just a hair under 7/mile. A few miles were on a fairly technical section of the Robert E Lee trail, so it wasn't really all that easy of a run. Oh, and I found a new section of trail in Robert E Lee that I hadn't known about on the far side from Hopkins. It's not that much extra trail, but either way, there's a beast of an uphill followed by a best of a downhill, so it's a really good way to elevate the heart rate for a few minutes in the middle of a run. As a whole, the run was basically a run to Robert E Lee, the largest loop possible on the inside, cutting out to Falls near the highway, running that little extra chunk I just found, crossing up to Bellona, taking Joppa to the far side of Towson, and then finally running home from Towson. When I finished, I was just getting to that point where I was getting fairly fatigued and happy to be done (not like in a marathon, but maybe how I'd feel about 18-20 miles into a decent marathon), so I pushed it right about as hard as I should've for the distance. I feel like the last chunk of the marathon is usually what does the damage and causes the need for recovery, so pushing until you're feeling about how you would around 18-20 miles in gives a great training run. I was slightly sore afterwards, but not sore enough to really jeapardize my Saturday race, so it worked well.
Friday 5-1-09: 0 miles. I took an off day just to make sure I wouldn't be sore for Saturday's race.
Saturday: 26 miles: ~2 mile warmup plus Fiesta 5k in the morning. That long of a warmup sounds a little obscene considering that it's 2/3 the length of the race, but I really need a lot of time to get a rhythm going, so it's what I have to do... Anyway, the race went somewhat well, in that I took 1st out of 996 runners, but I didn't really feel like I earned a reason to celebrate that much. I ran a 17:02, which isn't really anywhere near what I know I'm capable of, but I got lazy and decided to be satisfied with a healthy win rather than really going all out for time. The course wasn't the same flat fast course as the previous 2 years, so even going all out definitely would not have gotten me the race record (currently 15:58), but I probably should've been able to edge myself to a 16:30 or so there if I had someone pushing me and making me fight harder for the win. As it was, I started off in 1st and momentarily almost lost it when I briefly went off course about 100 meters in, but only 1 guy really stayed with me for long, so I got progressively more lazy as the race went on. It was pretty windy, so some guy drafted off me for the first mile (which we ran in 5:22). After 6 to 7 minutes, I was sick of giving him the advantage of drafting, but I certainly was not going to give up my lead, so I sped up for around 15 to 20 seconds and he just fell off instantly. At that point, I slowed back down to a little slower than the original pace, but he continued to fall behind, so while I definitely had another gear or 2 to kick into, I never really used them. I hit the 2 mile, which was up and over a decent hill, in something like 10:51. I hit the 3 mile in 16:28 or so and realized that I would go under 17 only if I really really kicked the last .1, but I just wasn't feeling that motivated since I couldn't even see the guy behind me anymore, so I coasted into a 17:02 and pretty much instantly regretted not pushing at the end. Either way, a win out of 996 competitors is pretty fun and I have to say, I realized that I really enjoy winning. However, no serious runner is going to say that a 17:02 is a very impressive time, so the fact that I won doesn't really mean that much. In most instances, I'd rather run a 16:30 and take 10th place than run 17:02 and take 1st, but a win is still pretty awesome, so I'm not going to sit here and complain about it too much. Oh, and if it matters, I somehow won by 37 seconds. I don't know why there was no-one faster in a 996 person field, but whatever... Oh, and you might wonder how a 5k and a 2 mile warmup makes 26 miles... It doesn't. I came home and felt bored, so I went for another 21 miles. hahaha... I ran to Hopkins from my apartment, took the Gilman trail followed by Roland and did the same loop inside Robert E Lee that I had done the other day. I then doubled back and took the exit that goes out on the really muddy section near that elitist country club (or whatever it is) that comes out on Ruxton right next to the bridge that hits Bellona, took a left on Ruxton, and did the ultra hilly loop on Circle Road (the uphill here was extremely painful and I was really glad to have a hammer gel with me here...). Next, I popped back onto Bellona, hit another massive uphill going up Bellona and circled back over 695 onto Falls, took the longest route back through Robert E Lee, followed the train tracks out to the left to my sort-of-secret super technical section of trail, took the hill out of Robert E Lee back up to Charles, and then eventually crossed over at Northern Parkway and took Roland home. Whew, sort of hard to keep straight. In other words, to and from Robert E Lee with a loop inside, loop around the back of the outside with a mini loop in the middle of this loop, then another loop on the inside. Complicated, no? When I finished this run, I felt like absolute garbage. My legs were somewhat sore and I was extremely fatigued due to the very high humidity and dehydration from sweat loss. Overall, I hit the run in 2:26, which is almost exactly 7/mile. It was definitely a tough run and it felt a lot harder than Thursday's 22, probably just because I had run somewhat fast in the morning. This afternoon run bumped me to 100 miles in a week, which was pretty nice, since I haven't hit a week that big in a couple months.
Sunday: 7 miles. I took it slow for this short of a run, around 6:30/mile. It was raining (admittedly not terribly hard) and everything was just soaking wet and generally miserable. I would've gone farther, but the weather brought down my motivation low enough to keep my run in the single digits.
Total: 100 miles if you count Sunday through Saturday, 92 if you count Monday through Sunday. I start my weeks on Monday, but it's still important to keep cumulative 7 day stats in the back of my mind, so I'm keeping both stats in my total log just so I remember that I did in fact hit 100 in 1 week at this point.
Next week: I'm debating how much to hit, but it will be at the very least 70 and probably a fair amount more. I'll have 13 on Monday, somewhere around 10-15 on Tuesday, depending on the track workout, and 12-18 on Wednesday, depending on whether the team run is in Canton or Robert E Lee, so I'll be starting the week off well. Assuming I feel good, I'm going to do something massive on Saturday or Sunday (debating between the 39-mile DC run with a train ride back or the 35-40 mile, depending on how I do it, Loch Raven run). In order to hit this, Friday will certainly just be a chump change day and probably one other day will be too, but if I feel good, I'll push for 100-110.
I'm throwing around the idea of splitting my training into very heavy (120-130) and medium (70-80) weeks back to back over and over rather than just consistently trying to hit 100-110, which was my original plan, as I build up for summer ultras, but I guess we'll just have to play it by ear. I do know that I want to shatter my weekly training mileage record of 125 a couple times. Ideally, I'd love to hit a 140 mile week so I can average 20 miles a day for a whole week at some point before August, but I don't really know what kind of toll that would take on my body and I would estimate it being very high, so that's not necessarily going to happen. I've always had in the back of my mind that I would be in "reasonable" endurance shape when I could consider 20-milers incredibly routine and I think being able to do one every single day for a week would constitute them as fairly routine, so we'll see. haha...
One other thing, as far as racing goes, I'm canceling Mohican. I realized that it falls on the Saturday right after I move out to Utah and I am absolutely unwilling to set a horrible precedent by missing my first Friday of grad school lab work to travel to Ohio for running. Quite frankly, having just July's 12-hour and August's 100 miler sets me up better to keep from burning out from too many uber-long races and it gives me more time to just focus on training. I obviously want to destroy Around the Lake's 12-hour course record (66 miles, which I will hopefully beat by at least 10 miles). However, my focus at this point is shifting towards marathons, so I'm treating these 2 races as part of the endurance build-up process so that I will be able to run as fast as possible in a fall marathon. My original goal for the year was to break 2:50, but I've decided to lower than to 2:45 since I don't feel like dropping less than 4 minutes after a summer of training in the mountains and a fall focused on getting fast is a good enough goal, especially if I end up getting a lottery spot in St. George's Marathon, which is MUUUUUUCH faster than Boston, my PR course.
Anyway, this was an absolutely absurdly long post, but what can I say? I love running, I love thinking about running, I love talking about running, I love writing about running... etc... You get the point...
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