Ok, so I totally forgot to post my training last week and didn't think of it until a few days ago, so I decided to just wait and post 2 weeks all at once.
1/05/09
I kept this week to an average of just under 10 a day. I finally got somewhat acclimated to MN snow training enough that I could successfully do some very good quality long runs without really feeling it the next day, but I definitely wasn't up to how I feel training without snow.
Monday: 5 miles, treadmill, not particularly fast, roughly 7 minutes a mile... There's not a whole lot to be said about this run.
Tuesday: 13 miles in snowy/icy conditions in 1:28:xx. This was actually the same run that took me about 2 hours on the nose a couple weeks before. The conditions were definitely a bit better on this second running of the course and I was definitely pushing much harder, but it still made me pretty darn happy to run it this fast. 1:28:xx is clearly not a very fast time for 13 miles normally, but when running in pretty harsh conditions in a lot of gear, it's not nearly as easy. This was definitely a tempo run and I was pretty exhausted when I finished.
Wednesday: 6 miles, treadmill, easy, 7 minutes a mile or so, mostly just recovering from the previous day.
Thursday: 8 miles, treadmill, a bit faster, 6:30 or so per mile, still not really pushing too hard, mostly just saving up for one last big run in MN during the weekend.
Friday: 8 miles, outside. This run consisted of a couple loops through the hilly Kathryn Abbot Park trails, a loop around the fairly flat, but very snowy OHA elementary trail, and some running on Hilton Trail (an actual street, not a real trail) before returning home. Felt good, kept the pace decently high, well, at least decently high for being in thick snow for a lot of it.
Saturday: 20 miles, outside, Afton State Park. For some reason, I never seem to get out to Afton State Park until I'm about to leave MN. I've only been out there a few times, but I absolutely LOVE running there. The trails are so challenging that, in a 50k race that takes place here, only a couple people have ever broken 4 hours in the nearly 20 years that they've been running the race. Either way, I hammered out the pace on this run, putting in pretty close to 7 minutes a mile despite thick snow and huge hills. Afton State Park snakes around the majority of Afton Alps Ski Resort and has numerous climbs and descents that might as well have been skiing runs in the skiing resort, so it really is a pretty formidable course. I did one massive loop around the entire park with a number of offshoots along the way. When I finished this run, I was pretty much exhausted, but it was still a very enjoyable run and I'm definitely thinking about flying home this July to take part in the Afton 50k Trail Run just so I can race these trails.
Sunday: 8 miles, outside, in Baltimore! I flew home on Sunday and went out for a nice run when I got home. I didn't push too hard since I was pretty sore after Saturday. It was nice to be running on straight-up pavement with only a single layer of clothing.
Weekly Total: 68 miles. The mileage is pretty low, but I still felt like my 2 particularly strong runs made this a decent week of training.
1/12/09
I decided several weeks beforehand that I was going to do a big 35-40 mile trainer, mostly on trails, during this week's weekend, so having that in the back of my head, I focused this week on having a huge run at both the beginning and end of the week with VERY easy days in the middle. My total still hit an average of 12 miles a day despite taking 2 days off and taking another 3 days really easy, so it was a pretty successful week.
Monday: 26 miles. I was definitely still sore on Monday, but I decided to push it hard with a marathon-length run while I was still hurting from my MN training. I completed the run in right around 3:15 for about a 7:30/mile pace. My legs were sore at the beginning, so by the end, I was feeling like absolute crap, but it was still incredibly enjoyable. The course was as follows: Home to Gilman trail, all of the trail to left on Northern Parkway, right on Roland, left on Lake, right on some neighborhood street leading down to Robert E Lee Park, cut through the broken fence blocking the bridge that most certainly is not broken or damaged in any way but is still for some reason labeled as such, run into the park, run one big loop, run a second half loop to get back to the exit by Falls Road a couple blocks from FRRS, take a right on Falls, run Falls until whatever that road is called that bridges over 83 (the first one to cross 83), take that to Bellona, left on Bellona, take Bellona all the way until it merges into Kenilworth, take Kenilworth all the way to York, right on York, cross the circle in Towson and follow York up to Lake, right on Lake, left on Charles, loop around JHU campus before running home. The running in RELee Park was pretty tame and the trails weren't particularly wet or bothersome. When I finished, my legs were all but screaming in pain, but I was really glad to run this whole thing.
Tuesday: 6 miles, easy, over 7 minutes a mile, running around the zoo. Even this was super painful. After Monday, my entire legs, including even my hamstrings, which are never sore, were pretty beat up. After the run, I felt even worse and anyone that saw me walking anywhere that evening must've thought I looked pretty funny.
Wednesday: 0 miles, REST
Thursday: 8 miles, EASY, over 7 minutes a mile, running a Lake Ave loop. This was still pretty painful and my legs were still fairly sore.
Friday: 0 miles, REST
Saturday: 7 miles, run to the gym, run a Northern Parkway loop, run home after lifting, a bit sore still, but not terribly bad.
Sunday: 36 miles. Sunday was the 2nd major run of the week. In fact, this was probably the longest run I've ever done outside of a race. In previous very long ultras, I've always had a couple shorter ultras as my really long training runs for the biggest one, but for Rocky Raccoon, which is now in less than 3 weeks, my last 2 major races were November's Stone Cat 50 mile run and NCR Trail Marathon. Both are certainly helpful for Rocky, but they're a bit too far back now to be directly and completely beneficial. Being a bit worried that, while my mileage has been pretty high, I haven't had a whole lot of runs longer than a marathon to train up, I ran 10 miles more than a marathon on Sunday, running with Dave Ploskonka. We ran to, through, and from Loch Raven and we had a pretty exact mileage measurement with his Nike Plus wristband mileage counter thing. We took trails as much as possible on the way there and back and threw in as many major hills as possible throughout the run. The course was probably, on average, much hillier than Rocky Raccoon, so it'll be nice to run on the very tame Rocky course and not have to deal with tremendous hills like the ones in this run. The first marathon was completed in almost exactly4 hours, and by that time, we were back off the Loch Raven Trail and just on roads for the rest of the way, but unfortunately, neither of us had brought a whole lot of food and Dave suddenly just crashed right around the 4 hour mark. The weather had been decent, around 30-35 degrees, but it started snowing shortly before this point. Dave needed to walk, but I knew we would start to freeze pretty quickly if we didn't run. Dave had only brought a mix of gatorade and protein powders, maybe 150 calories at best, so I gave him the last serving I had left in my 5-serving Hammer Gel container and we walked very slowly for that mile, hitting it in something like 23 minutes. By the time we got to Seminary Road, which meant that we had about 9 miles to go, I said that we really needed to run because I was starting to freeze, so we slowly jogged up the rest of Dulaney Valley Road to Towson area until we got to Superfresh. The lines in Superfresh were absolutely ridiculous, so the stop cost 15-20 minutes, which I was not particuarly happy about. We both bought a couple beverages and some food and the calories alone were enough to get Dave moving again, so we started running again. After pounding down too much food in too short a period of time, I had to stop at the Towson commons to use the bathroom, and by the time I realized that the main public bathroom was locked and I had to convince someone to let me into the theater to use the bathroom, that wasted almost another 10 minutes. By the time the 5th hour and all of its breaks were over, we had gone maybe 2 1/2 miles in one hour, which didn't really make me too happy, but we picked it up pretty hard for the last hour and ran a sub 8 minute mile for the remainder of the run, which very likely was the fastest pace of the entire run. When all was said and done, I had easily enough energy left to tempo the last half mile, which included the really long and fairly steep hill going up 37th, so I was happy with the run. The total time was just over 6 hours, our average pace had slowed to 10 minutes a mile with that joke of a 5th hour, but to hit my goal pace at Rocky, I'll only need to hit 12 minutes a mile, so since I still felt pretty fresh at the end of the run, I'm starting to feel pretty confident about my ability to break 20 hours at Rocky.
Weekly Total: 84 miles. The total is pretty decent, not particularly high, but my 2 long runs this week were some of the best long runs I've had lately, so I'm very satisfied with this week's training. Beforehand, I had contemplated trying to hit considerably more mileage than this, but I realized that I was really sore after training in MN for a few weeks and I really needed Sunday's run to go well, given that it may have been the single most important run of my endurance base buildup for Rocky Raccoon, so I couldn't afford to be absolutely wrecked going into the run.
Next week: This coming week is my last real week of training before I taper for 2 weeks before Rocky Raccoon. Normally, I only taper for 1 week for most major races, but I'll have been pushing myself pretty hard for a few months, having hit nearly 1000 miles in the 3 month buildup to the race, so I'm going to want 2 weeks of easy running to make sure that I'm totally ready to do my best. If I go into the race sore, everything I've done will be far less useful, so I need to really make sure I'm feeling my best. I don't have a direct goal for this week's mileage, but I'm planning on hitting a 30 mile-ish solo run this coming weekend and 1 or 2 other 15-20 milers throughout the week before then in addition to some shorter easier runs, so my mileage ought to be pretty high. I feel like no matter what happens this week, though, the majority of the work for my race is finished and I am going to be ready to throw down a big PR.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Week of 12-29-2008, Summary of December 2008, Summary of 2008 in general, Goals for 2009
I'll start off with the weekly training. I felt like crap almost the entire week. I got very sick to the point that I was sleeping 11-12 hours a day and still feeling exhausted all day. I ended up taking 4 days off running (I had 3 consecutive days off, decided to "stop being lazy" and ran the most miserable 15 miler of my life, and then took another day off). My body was starting to get really run down from pretty heavy training, so it's not surprising. I hadn't mentioned this, but I had been suffering from a nasty cold last week and just didn't let it affect my training, but this week felt like the flu. I never actually threw up, but I felt like I was really close to doing so a number of times and slept with a bucket next to my bed 2 nights in a row. Anyway, here's what happened the 3 days I was able to run:
Monday: 18 miles: I was in Michigan at my grandparents' house and I got a nice 18 in on Monday to make up for my suckage on Sunday night. I did about an hour on this long trail behind his house and then after fooling around and not knowing where I was, I ended up by his house after just over an hour, so I did another 30 out and 30 back on his road, which goes up and over hills for many miles. The whole thing was at a pretty fast clip, the last hour being the faster part for sure though. I tried to take it out pretty hard on the trail, but a good chunk of it was really icy and the shoes I've been running on haven't had good soles in at least a month, so I was slipping around a bit and I slammed pretty hard on the ice 3 or 4 times. I had felt pretty sore after 3 pretty heavy weeks of training, but after only going a few miles on Sunday night due to my headlamp fiasco, I felt good for the majority of Monday's 18.
Tuesday: 10 miles, FAST. This run was a terrible idea. I wasn't going to go 10 miles; it was going to be more like 7 or 8, but I was temopoing at a good clip and I was being totally vain and proud, so I went a few miles more than I intended just to bag a decent 10 mile time. I should mention that I was pretty sore and cramped after Monday's 18 miler and then sitting around in a car for 11 or 12 hours on the way back from Michigan to Minnesota, and then I went fairly close to allout on a treadmill, running 10 miles in almost exactly 60 flat. When I finished, I knew my quads were not going to be good for a few days... I absolutely know that hard tempo runs, ESPECIALLY on treadmills, on super sore legs are ALWAYS a bad idea, but I did it anyway, and sure enough, I was SUPER sore after this run... Hopefully this will be a lesson to me...
Wednesday: 0. I woke up and I could barely walk, so I just decided to keep my running short (I was planning on 7 miles), but I just never started feeling better, and exhaustion started to set in after being awake for only a few hours despite me having slept 11 hours. I eventually decided that a day off was more important than my mileage count, not having skipped a day in awhile, so I just didn't run. Wednesday also happened to be new year's eve and I went to my brother's girlfriend's house with my family. I had maybe 2 glasses of wine and I was just sitting around, but all of a sudden, I just felt INCREDIBLY ill. I felt like I was going to throw up whenever I stood up, so I just had my mom drive me home and I went to bed at 9:45. What a great new year's eve celebration...
Thursday: 0 I slept for 13 hours on Wednesday night and woke up feeling exhausted. I had no energy or motivation and I sat around all day. I think I did like 6 grad school applications while lying on the couch and at one point during the day I think I was lying down on the couch for something like 7 hours without getting up once. Fun times...
Friday: 0 More fun. I started feeling a LITTLE bit better, but I absolutely had no will power to get out in the cold and run. At least I finished my the last of my grad apps by doing another 3 or something.
Saturday: 15 miles. To, from, and around White Bear Lake. I wasn't feeling sick at all anymore, but my energy levels were still super slow. I seriously felt like I was going to fall asleep numerous times during this run, and, despite fairly paved roads, it still took something liked 125 or 130 minutes. I was really worried at this point because I thought that I had just overtrained and I was starting to pound my body into oblivion, but as you'll see more about on my post next week, I don't think this is the case... It was just me being exhausted. I'm a few days late posting this summary for last week and I should mention that today (tuesday) was an absolutely phenomenal run for me, so Saturday was definitely just me being exhausted.
Sunday: 0 Since Saturday was such crap and I woke up on Sunday still exhausted with totally shot quads, I didn't run.
Weekly Total: 43 miles. I know 43 miles is total suckage, but when you're sick, there's nothing you can do about it. Not running more than my 3 times this week was probably the smartest thing I could've done and in hindsight, I probably should've done less on Saturday; it was just that I had been meaning to do that run for a couple weeks and hadn't gotten around to doing it yet. I think having gotten sick will be better for my training in the long run actually... If I had kept up my training without an easy week, I wouldn't have lasted much longer and I probably would've burnt out before Rocky Raccoon. Now that I had an easy week, I'm ready to hit it hard again and if I take this week moderately hard (I'm going to shoot for roughly 70 miles before I fly back to Baltimore on Sunday night), I'll definitely be able to hit 2 more super high mileage weeks back in Baltimore before tapering out for Rocky Raccoon. The 18 miler was really good for me, the 10, while a bad idea, was still a confidence booster since it showed me the kind of conditioning I have right now... If I can run 60 flat for 10 miles with absolutely dead legs, I will be in by far the greatest shape of my life when I taper out. The 15 was a good confidence booster as well I suppose since I very badly wanted to turn around after a few miles and I told myself that I absolutely needed to finish the run. The thing that kept me going is that I knew that I will feel like complete and total crap in the last 15 miles of Rocky Raccoon no matter how well I train. To be in the mindset to keep myself from shutting down near the end of a race, I need these heavily mental runs every once in a while where I have to fight hard to even finish, just like in race conditions.
Summary of December 2008:
Overall, this is the strongest month of training I have ever had. Despite taking the last day of the month off, I ran a total of 348 miles, so basically, I ran 348 miles in 30 days. My previous monthly high was June of 2007 with 346 miles. Since June is only 30 days, I really wanted to break the 346 within the first 30 days anyway, so I was quite happy when I finally did. My one race in December was a 5 miler in 27:55, which is a pretty good time, though I know I'm definitely capable of faster. Next time I race 5 miles (or anything else for that matter), I'll make sure I actually sleep the night before rather than staying up all night playing counter strike... lol... To sum up my weekly mileages in December, I have:
12/1-12/7: 57 miles (couldn't hit a high mileage week due to finals and grad apps)
12/8-12/14: 104 miles (very solid week of training)
12/15-12/21: 85 miles (missed Monday, so it boiled down to 85 miles in 6 straight days, which is quite good)
12/22-12/28: 74 miles (better than it sounds, keep in mind I was running in the snow for most of my runs, which is somewhat like running in sand, only much harder...)
12/29-12/31: 28 miles (last 3 days, obviously not a full week)
Oh, and one other comparison to my next highest month (June 07)... Keep in mind that in June of 2007, I ran 65.73 miles in one day at the FANS 12 hour, so without that particular day, my average daily mileage was MUCH lower than this past month's. Actually, all of the other 4 of my top 5 high mileage months (all 3 summer months of 2007 as well as November 2008) included at least one race of 50 miles or more, which is obviously a huge help for mileage counts.
Overall, I am very happy with December. It wasn't quite as high as I was shooting, but any more mileage honestly would've just screwed me over in the long run. Number games are fun, but I need to remember to always keep my eye on racing performance and/or enjoying my running. If I lose sight of both of those factors and just make it about getting the numbers as high as physically possible, I will not enjoy my running and I will not race as well as I could. Since I did listen to my body reasonably well this month, I know that I will be racing well come February.
Summary of 2008:
2008 was an interesting year to say the least. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to 2007. 2007 was a tremendous success for me... I don't really think a single one of my races went particularly poorly other than the time when I was stupid enough to attempt a 50 mile race 6 days after a 60 mile race (I predictably DNF'd the 50) and the Zoo Zoom 5 miler, where I got terribly lost in the 5th and final mile, dropping from 3rd to something like 10th over an 8 or 9 minute 5th mile, though that obviously wasn't a matter of poor training. None of the times I ran in 2007 would make me particularly happy right now, but at the time, I was running a lot of REALLY big PRs and I was having a blast doing it. Highlights included shattering the Minnesota 19 and under 12 hour distance record by over 20 miles with 65.73 miles in my first ever race longer than a marathon, finishing 100 miles on trails in less than a day in my first attempt at the distance, and running 3 consistent marathons in 5 weeks during the fall, all within a few minutes of each other and all being good enough to qualify me for Boston. Fast-forward to 2008: I honestly didn't train very well in the beginning of 2008, but my solid training from 2007 carried over for a few months and my first few races went reasonably well. I did a 10 miler in 61:xx (xx means I don't remember the change) in February. I was disappointed with the time since I was shooting for a sub 60, but I still have doubts about the accuracy of the time (I ran the first 8 at EXACTLY a 6 even pace and then, despite me feeling like my pace was being perfectly maintained, I ran, according to their mile markers, 8:xx followed by 5 flat over the last 2 miles... right...) Either way, I sucked it up and moved on, still happy to PR since my only other 10 mile race had been in early 2007 in 63:xx on what was probably an easier course. My next race wasn't really a "race" per se for me, but I ran the Greenway Trail marathon+ (supposedly it's 28 or 29 miles) at the beginning of March as a long slow training run for Boston. The trail, while not boasting any massive inclines, was still fairly technical and rolling, so I took it super easy for 20 miles before pushing over the last bit to finish in a super-pedestrian 4:40. I wasn't going in with any goals other than to have fun and I did end up having fun and not feeling in the least bit sore at the end, so I was happy. My next race was a huge success for me: The 2008 Boston Marathon. I was quite scared going in since I knew that I didn't have quality training for the past few months, so I went out at just the pace required to break 3 hours and I ended up finishing in 2:58:57. In hindsight, I was being fairly consistent about my weekend long runs, if nothing else, so I guess I wasn't in as bad of shape as I thought I was. Boston was my first marathon under 3 hours, so I was absolutely ecstatic, especially since I had broken 3 for the first time at, basically, "The marathon of marathons", one that everyone considers to be super prestigious, elite, and all that other nonsense. Anyway, after Boston, things just fell apart. I let my schoolwork consume me and my training was, for all purposes, complete BS for all of May, June, and July. I made an attempt at running 100 miles at the Old Dominion 100 in June, and my lack of preparedness showed. I only had one solid week of training that I was truly happy with and I ended up failing in my quest to conquer the insane course after 81 miles. In July or early August (I forget which), I ran in a 24 hour event and the heat ate me up so fast that I just called it a day after 35 miles, which is absolutely absurd for me. Finally mad at myself enough to actually train for real, I started to be more consistent in August. I ran somewhat well in September's very challenging and super hilly Bachman Valley Half Marathon (83 minutes) and kept training for the Baltimore Marathon. I knew I wasn't in shape since my recovery from the half marathon took a surprising 3 or 4 days, while I can recover from 100 miles in under 48 hours when I'm in top form. Unfortunately, my training effort was too little too late for the Baltimore Marathon, which was an absolute nightmare of pain this year. I was not in shape yet and the course is very tough, so I ran a depressingly slow 3:17, the slowest time I had done in quite some time. After that, I was so pissed off at myself that I finally kicked it in to a much higher degree. I guess I had been training reasonably well before Baltimore, just not for a long enough period of time, so after a few more weeks of good quality training, I raced well at the Stone Cat 50 (more like 52 or 53 miles) 4 weeks later in early November, running 8:42. I could tell that my endurance wasn't totally back up to par yet since the last 12 miles or so were super painful and, while I ran the first 3 12.5 mile loops in just under 6 hours, I finished with a 2:45 12.5 mile (I had to stop numerous times during that loop since I was throwing up, etc...). Either way, 8:42 is a PR for me, despite the race being on pretty tough trails. I am absolutely confident that I will tear off that 42 minutes and even more in April 09's American River 50 in California, but for now, I am content with the time. In late November, another 3 weeks later, I ran the NCR Trail Marathon (emphasis on the word trail), with the intent of besting my Boston time. I had remembered the NCR trail as being a paved trail for some reason, but was shocked to be running on unpacked dirt and gravel the whole time, which definitely slowed me down. I finished in a somewhat disappointing 3:00:42, but NCR is DEFINITELY a harder course than Boston, which is by FAR the easiest marathon course I have ever run or ever will run, despite what anyone will tell you. Heartbreak hill is only 88 feet tall and there are really only 3 major uphills in the entire race (the other 2 being shorter). NCR had a hill at mile TWENTYFIVE that rivaled Heartbreak and I can tell you from experience that it's a lot easier to run a challenging hill after 19 or 20 miles than after 25 miles in a marathon. Either way, I felt that I was definitely in better shape than when I ran Boston; I was only 19 minutes off the winner's time at the NCR Marathon while I was like 50 minutes or something off the winner's time at Boston. OBVIOUSLY, Boston attracts faster runners, but the difference is still evident and I can absolutely assure you that Robert K Cheruiyot would certainly not run a Boston champion quality time at NCR. Also in November, worth noting is that I did a few short-distance time trials on treadmills, pretending that I was under racing conditions. I hit 10 miles in 58:57 (felt like I could've pushed that one maybe a minute faster), 5 miles in 26:59 (no chance I could've gone much faster that day, it took all but a miracle to edge my way under 27), and 5k
in 16:03 (that one could've been a bit faster since I forgot to wait to start until the treadmill had wasted 10 or 15 seconds getting up to speed). Either way, I hadn't had races in any of these in top (or any) conditions in a LONG time, so even though I don't always 100% trust treadmills' speed accuracy, these times felt pretty much sick for me. In December, I raced an actual 5 miler, hitting 27:55. This time was clearly slower, but the course was fairly challenging and hilly compared to an all-flat treadmill and I was racing without having slept a wink the night before (stupidly stayed up all night playing counterstrike). Also, I was playing it safer in the race than I did when I tempo'd on the treadmill due to my need to run a total of 20 miles that day regardless of how much I wrecked myself in the race. I guess that made me fairly confident about the 26:59 accuracy since I was sure that I was running roughly a minute faster on the treadmill.
As a summary, I guess 2008 started off reasonably well, became total crap in the middle, which is usually when I train hardest, and then started to really go well at the tail end of the year. I barely broke 2007's mileage since my summer 2007 training was so strong, but in the end, I hit 2651 miles, compared to 2589 in 2007. I thought at the beginning of the year that I'd do more, but I guess 2009 will have to be my huge breakaway year. Right now, I'm consistently running near the front of the pack in most of my races, but if I can keep my training like it was over November and December 2008, I will finally be able to start to drop times that most other amateur athletes will not be able to keep up with.
My goals for 2009 are the following:
100 miles: Break 20 hours, finish the event 5 times in one year. This is clearly a lofty goal, but 20:00:00 seems to separate the decent runners from the really serious top of the pack runners in a lot of events, so breaking 20 hours is a huge goal of mine. Also, running 100 miles 5 times throughout the year will require incredibly strong base training. I have another few weeks to grind out the miles before February's Rocky Raccoon and I have planned a few absolutely huge weeks in May after April's American River 50 and Boston Marathon to bust myself into absolutely ridiculous shape for my summer races (1 100 mile race in each of June, July, and August, with relatively high mileage training between). I will be running one more 100 in the Fall, but I haven't planned which one yet since it totally depends on where I end up for grad school.
50 miles: Break 8 hours by as much as I possibly can. Ideally I would like to break 7:38 since that would put me under 4 hours per marathon pace and therefore running nearly 2 marathons back to back, on trails, at a half an hour per marathon faster than the average man runs a single marathon on a road course (4:30 is the men's average). That being said, if I could push even a little bit more time off and run under 7:30, I'd be running under 9 minutes a mile, which over a distance of 50 miles, is pretty much awesome. A big part of my ability to run this fast for 50 miles will boil down to my training over the next few weeks since my only planned 50 is the American River in April. I'm going to be doing a 30-40 mile training run the weekend of Jan 17th and the weekend of Jan 24th before tapering for Rocky 100, so if I do these runs well, they will set me up for success in the AR50 in April. If I even break 8 hours, I will be ecstatic, so if I can break 7:38 or even 7:30, that will just be icing on the cake.
Marathon: Break 2:50. I haven't bested my marathon time in 9 months now and it is time to drop that PR. I'm running the B&A Trail (paved trail) Marathon on March 1st and Boston in late April, so I would like to knock off a huge PR at either or both of these. I don't know if I'll be fully ready to hit a 9 minute PR by either of these races, but I'm sure that I'll be able to drop under 2:50 in the fall if I don't do it in the spring.
10 miles: Break 58 minutes. I'm probably only doing 1 10 miler this year and it'll be in February a few weeks after Rocky. I've never "officially" broken 60 minutes, but that seems way too easy, so I'm aiming for a sub 58. If I'm tapered for the event in February, I will probably be able to break 57, maybe even 56 if I'm in SUPER good shape, but 10 miles is not an event that I really focus on much, so sub-58 will make me happy.
5 mile: No official goal since I'm not sure if I'll be racing this distance at any time during the year, but since I know that I can break 27 from unofficial time trials, I'd be shooting to officially break 27 if I run a 5 miler earlier in the year and shooting for a sub 26:30 if I run one later in the year. I guess it all depends on the quality of my tempo work at this point since I definitely have more than enough endurance to properly race a 5 miler.
5k: I want to creep into the 15s this year. It's been a long time since I raced a 5k, nearly 2 years, but my speed in this type of event has definitely gotten better with my increases in endurance. Time trials tell me that this should be possible. The only 5k I'm planning on running at this point is the Blue Jay 5k, which isn't particularly fast, so a 16:30 would make me pretty happy there, but if I can find a fast 5k to run, I'll do it with the aim of breaking 16 minutes.
Oh, one more thing. My main aim for 2009 is to boost my resume so that I will be able to be accepted into Badwater 2010. Basically, this will probably require me hitting my time goals in the 50 and 100 or coming very close to doing so (at the very least finishing all 5 100 mile attempts). I am looking into traveling to Death Valley in July this year so i can crew for any runner that needs another crew member since experience with crewing at Badwater is a tremendous help to any Badwater racing application.
I guess that's about all. This post is crazy long so I'll stop now...
PS, this post is so long that I'm sure no-one will read it in its entirety, but it'll still be good for me to look back on at later times.
Monday: 18 miles: I was in Michigan at my grandparents' house and I got a nice 18 in on Monday to make up for my suckage on Sunday night. I did about an hour on this long trail behind his house and then after fooling around and not knowing where I was, I ended up by his house after just over an hour, so I did another 30 out and 30 back on his road, which goes up and over hills for many miles. The whole thing was at a pretty fast clip, the last hour being the faster part for sure though. I tried to take it out pretty hard on the trail, but a good chunk of it was really icy and the shoes I've been running on haven't had good soles in at least a month, so I was slipping around a bit and I slammed pretty hard on the ice 3 or 4 times. I had felt pretty sore after 3 pretty heavy weeks of training, but after only going a few miles on Sunday night due to my headlamp fiasco, I felt good for the majority of Monday's 18.
Tuesday: 10 miles, FAST. This run was a terrible idea. I wasn't going to go 10 miles; it was going to be more like 7 or 8, but I was temopoing at a good clip and I was being totally vain and proud, so I went a few miles more than I intended just to bag a decent 10 mile time. I should mention that I was pretty sore and cramped after Monday's 18 miler and then sitting around in a car for 11 or 12 hours on the way back from Michigan to Minnesota, and then I went fairly close to allout on a treadmill, running 10 miles in almost exactly 60 flat. When I finished, I knew my quads were not going to be good for a few days... I absolutely know that hard tempo runs, ESPECIALLY on treadmills, on super sore legs are ALWAYS a bad idea, but I did it anyway, and sure enough, I was SUPER sore after this run... Hopefully this will be a lesson to me...
Wednesday: 0. I woke up and I could barely walk, so I just decided to keep my running short (I was planning on 7 miles), but I just never started feeling better, and exhaustion started to set in after being awake for only a few hours despite me having slept 11 hours. I eventually decided that a day off was more important than my mileage count, not having skipped a day in awhile, so I just didn't run. Wednesday also happened to be new year's eve and I went to my brother's girlfriend's house with my family. I had maybe 2 glasses of wine and I was just sitting around, but all of a sudden, I just felt INCREDIBLY ill. I felt like I was going to throw up whenever I stood up, so I just had my mom drive me home and I went to bed at 9:45. What a great new year's eve celebration...
Thursday: 0 I slept for 13 hours on Wednesday night and woke up feeling exhausted. I had no energy or motivation and I sat around all day. I think I did like 6 grad school applications while lying on the couch and at one point during the day I think I was lying down on the couch for something like 7 hours without getting up once. Fun times...
Friday: 0 More fun. I started feeling a LITTLE bit better, but I absolutely had no will power to get out in the cold and run. At least I finished my the last of my grad apps by doing another 3 or something.
Saturday: 15 miles. To, from, and around White Bear Lake. I wasn't feeling sick at all anymore, but my energy levels were still super slow. I seriously felt like I was going to fall asleep numerous times during this run, and, despite fairly paved roads, it still took something liked 125 or 130 minutes. I was really worried at this point because I thought that I had just overtrained and I was starting to pound my body into oblivion, but as you'll see more about on my post next week, I don't think this is the case... It was just me being exhausted. I'm a few days late posting this summary for last week and I should mention that today (tuesday) was an absolutely phenomenal run for me, so Saturday was definitely just me being exhausted.
Sunday: 0 Since Saturday was such crap and I woke up on Sunday still exhausted with totally shot quads, I didn't run.
Weekly Total: 43 miles. I know 43 miles is total suckage, but when you're sick, there's nothing you can do about it. Not running more than my 3 times this week was probably the smartest thing I could've done and in hindsight, I probably should've done less on Saturday; it was just that I had been meaning to do that run for a couple weeks and hadn't gotten around to doing it yet. I think having gotten sick will be better for my training in the long run actually... If I had kept up my training without an easy week, I wouldn't have lasted much longer and I probably would've burnt out before Rocky Raccoon. Now that I had an easy week, I'm ready to hit it hard again and if I take this week moderately hard (I'm going to shoot for roughly 70 miles before I fly back to Baltimore on Sunday night), I'll definitely be able to hit 2 more super high mileage weeks back in Baltimore before tapering out for Rocky Raccoon. The 18 miler was really good for me, the 10, while a bad idea, was still a confidence booster since it showed me the kind of conditioning I have right now... If I can run 60 flat for 10 miles with absolutely dead legs, I will be in by far the greatest shape of my life when I taper out. The 15 was a good confidence booster as well I suppose since I very badly wanted to turn around after a few miles and I told myself that I absolutely needed to finish the run. The thing that kept me going is that I knew that I will feel like complete and total crap in the last 15 miles of Rocky Raccoon no matter how well I train. To be in the mindset to keep myself from shutting down near the end of a race, I need these heavily mental runs every once in a while where I have to fight hard to even finish, just like in race conditions.
Summary of December 2008:
Overall, this is the strongest month of training I have ever had. Despite taking the last day of the month off, I ran a total of 348 miles, so basically, I ran 348 miles in 30 days. My previous monthly high was June of 2007 with 346 miles. Since June is only 30 days, I really wanted to break the 346 within the first 30 days anyway, so I was quite happy when I finally did. My one race in December was a 5 miler in 27:55, which is a pretty good time, though I know I'm definitely capable of faster. Next time I race 5 miles (or anything else for that matter), I'll make sure I actually sleep the night before rather than staying up all night playing counter strike... lol... To sum up my weekly mileages in December, I have:
12/1-12/7: 57 miles (couldn't hit a high mileage week due to finals and grad apps)
12/8-12/14: 104 miles (very solid week of training)
12/15-12/21: 85 miles (missed Monday, so it boiled down to 85 miles in 6 straight days, which is quite good)
12/22-12/28: 74 miles (better than it sounds, keep in mind I was running in the snow for most of my runs, which is somewhat like running in sand, only much harder...)
12/29-12/31: 28 miles (last 3 days, obviously not a full week)
Oh, and one other comparison to my next highest month (June 07)... Keep in mind that in June of 2007, I ran 65.73 miles in one day at the FANS 12 hour, so without that particular day, my average daily mileage was MUCH lower than this past month's. Actually, all of the other 4 of my top 5 high mileage months (all 3 summer months of 2007 as well as November 2008) included at least one race of 50 miles or more, which is obviously a huge help for mileage counts.
Overall, I am very happy with December. It wasn't quite as high as I was shooting, but any more mileage honestly would've just screwed me over in the long run. Number games are fun, but I need to remember to always keep my eye on racing performance and/or enjoying my running. If I lose sight of both of those factors and just make it about getting the numbers as high as physically possible, I will not enjoy my running and I will not race as well as I could. Since I did listen to my body reasonably well this month, I know that I will be racing well come February.
Summary of 2008:
2008 was an interesting year to say the least. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to 2007. 2007 was a tremendous success for me... I don't really think a single one of my races went particularly poorly other than the time when I was stupid enough to attempt a 50 mile race 6 days after a 60 mile race (I predictably DNF'd the 50) and the Zoo Zoom 5 miler, where I got terribly lost in the 5th and final mile, dropping from 3rd to something like 10th over an 8 or 9 minute 5th mile, though that obviously wasn't a matter of poor training. None of the times I ran in 2007 would make me particularly happy right now, but at the time, I was running a lot of REALLY big PRs and I was having a blast doing it. Highlights included shattering the Minnesota 19 and under 12 hour distance record by over 20 miles with 65.73 miles in my first ever race longer than a marathon, finishing 100 miles on trails in less than a day in my first attempt at the distance, and running 3 consistent marathons in 5 weeks during the fall, all within a few minutes of each other and all being good enough to qualify me for Boston. Fast-forward to 2008: I honestly didn't train very well in the beginning of 2008, but my solid training from 2007 carried over for a few months and my first few races went reasonably well. I did a 10 miler in 61:xx (xx means I don't remember the change) in February. I was disappointed with the time since I was shooting for a sub 60, but I still have doubts about the accuracy of the time (I ran the first 8 at EXACTLY a 6 even pace and then, despite me feeling like my pace was being perfectly maintained, I ran, according to their mile markers, 8:xx followed by 5 flat over the last 2 miles... right...) Either way, I sucked it up and moved on, still happy to PR since my only other 10 mile race had been in early 2007 in 63:xx on what was probably an easier course. My next race wasn't really a "race" per se for me, but I ran the Greenway Trail marathon+ (supposedly it's 28 or 29 miles) at the beginning of March as a long slow training run for Boston. The trail, while not boasting any massive inclines, was still fairly technical and rolling, so I took it super easy for 20 miles before pushing over the last bit to finish in a super-pedestrian 4:40. I wasn't going in with any goals other than to have fun and I did end up having fun and not feeling in the least bit sore at the end, so I was happy. My next race was a huge success for me: The 2008 Boston Marathon. I was quite scared going in since I knew that I didn't have quality training for the past few months, so I went out at just the pace required to break 3 hours and I ended up finishing in 2:58:57. In hindsight, I was being fairly consistent about my weekend long runs, if nothing else, so I guess I wasn't in as bad of shape as I thought I was. Boston was my first marathon under 3 hours, so I was absolutely ecstatic, especially since I had broken 3 for the first time at, basically, "The marathon of marathons", one that everyone considers to be super prestigious, elite, and all that other nonsense. Anyway, after Boston, things just fell apart. I let my schoolwork consume me and my training was, for all purposes, complete BS for all of May, June, and July. I made an attempt at running 100 miles at the Old Dominion 100 in June, and my lack of preparedness showed. I only had one solid week of training that I was truly happy with and I ended up failing in my quest to conquer the insane course after 81 miles. In July or early August (I forget which), I ran in a 24 hour event and the heat ate me up so fast that I just called it a day after 35 miles, which is absolutely absurd for me. Finally mad at myself enough to actually train for real, I started to be more consistent in August. I ran somewhat well in September's very challenging and super hilly Bachman Valley Half Marathon (83 minutes) and kept training for the Baltimore Marathon. I knew I wasn't in shape since my recovery from the half marathon took a surprising 3 or 4 days, while I can recover from 100 miles in under 48 hours when I'm in top form. Unfortunately, my training effort was too little too late for the Baltimore Marathon, which was an absolute nightmare of pain this year. I was not in shape yet and the course is very tough, so I ran a depressingly slow 3:17, the slowest time I had done in quite some time. After that, I was so pissed off at myself that I finally kicked it in to a much higher degree. I guess I had been training reasonably well before Baltimore, just not for a long enough period of time, so after a few more weeks of good quality training, I raced well at the Stone Cat 50 (more like 52 or 53 miles) 4 weeks later in early November, running 8:42. I could tell that my endurance wasn't totally back up to par yet since the last 12 miles or so were super painful and, while I ran the first 3 12.5 mile loops in just under 6 hours, I finished with a 2:45 12.5 mile (I had to stop numerous times during that loop since I was throwing up, etc...). Either way, 8:42 is a PR for me, despite the race being on pretty tough trails. I am absolutely confident that I will tear off that 42 minutes and even more in April 09's American River 50 in California, but for now, I am content with the time. In late November, another 3 weeks later, I ran the NCR Trail Marathon (emphasis on the word trail), with the intent of besting my Boston time. I had remembered the NCR trail as being a paved trail for some reason, but was shocked to be running on unpacked dirt and gravel the whole time, which definitely slowed me down. I finished in a somewhat disappointing 3:00:42, but NCR is DEFINITELY a harder course than Boston, which is by FAR the easiest marathon course I have ever run or ever will run, despite what anyone will tell you. Heartbreak hill is only 88 feet tall and there are really only 3 major uphills in the entire race (the other 2 being shorter). NCR had a hill at mile TWENTYFIVE that rivaled Heartbreak and I can tell you from experience that it's a lot easier to run a challenging hill after 19 or 20 miles than after 25 miles in a marathon. Either way, I felt that I was definitely in better shape than when I ran Boston; I was only 19 minutes off the winner's time at the NCR Marathon while I was like 50 minutes or something off the winner's time at Boston. OBVIOUSLY, Boston attracts faster runners, but the difference is still evident and I can absolutely assure you that Robert K Cheruiyot would certainly not run a Boston champion quality time at NCR. Also in November, worth noting is that I did a few short-distance time trials on treadmills, pretending that I was under racing conditions. I hit 10 miles in 58:57 (felt like I could've pushed that one maybe a minute faster), 5 miles in 26:59 (no chance I could've gone much faster that day, it took all but a miracle to edge my way under 27), and 5k
in 16:03 (that one could've been a bit faster since I forgot to wait to start until the treadmill had wasted 10 or 15 seconds getting up to speed). Either way, I hadn't had races in any of these in top (or any) conditions in a LONG time, so even though I don't always 100% trust treadmills' speed accuracy, these times felt pretty much sick for me. In December, I raced an actual 5 miler, hitting 27:55. This time was clearly slower, but the course was fairly challenging and hilly compared to an all-flat treadmill and I was racing without having slept a wink the night before (stupidly stayed up all night playing counterstrike). Also, I was playing it safer in the race than I did when I tempo'd on the treadmill due to my need to run a total of 20 miles that day regardless of how much I wrecked myself in the race. I guess that made me fairly confident about the 26:59 accuracy since I was sure that I was running roughly a minute faster on the treadmill.
As a summary, I guess 2008 started off reasonably well, became total crap in the middle, which is usually when I train hardest, and then started to really go well at the tail end of the year. I barely broke 2007's mileage since my summer 2007 training was so strong, but in the end, I hit 2651 miles, compared to 2589 in 2007. I thought at the beginning of the year that I'd do more, but I guess 2009 will have to be my huge breakaway year. Right now, I'm consistently running near the front of the pack in most of my races, but if I can keep my training like it was over November and December 2008, I will finally be able to start to drop times that most other amateur athletes will not be able to keep up with.
My goals for 2009 are the following:
100 miles: Break 20 hours, finish the event 5 times in one year. This is clearly a lofty goal, but 20:00:00 seems to separate the decent runners from the really serious top of the pack runners in a lot of events, so breaking 20 hours is a huge goal of mine. Also, running 100 miles 5 times throughout the year will require incredibly strong base training. I have another few weeks to grind out the miles before February's Rocky Raccoon and I have planned a few absolutely huge weeks in May after April's American River 50 and Boston Marathon to bust myself into absolutely ridiculous shape for my summer races (1 100 mile race in each of June, July, and August, with relatively high mileage training between). I will be running one more 100 in the Fall, but I haven't planned which one yet since it totally depends on where I end up for grad school.
50 miles: Break 8 hours by as much as I possibly can. Ideally I would like to break 7:38 since that would put me under 4 hours per marathon pace and therefore running nearly 2 marathons back to back, on trails, at a half an hour per marathon faster than the average man runs a single marathon on a road course (4:30 is the men's average). That being said, if I could push even a little bit more time off and run under 7:30, I'd be running under 9 minutes a mile, which over a distance of 50 miles, is pretty much awesome. A big part of my ability to run this fast for 50 miles will boil down to my training over the next few weeks since my only planned 50 is the American River in April. I'm going to be doing a 30-40 mile training run the weekend of Jan 17th and the weekend of Jan 24th before tapering for Rocky 100, so if I do these runs well, they will set me up for success in the AR50 in April. If I even break 8 hours, I will be ecstatic, so if I can break 7:38 or even 7:30, that will just be icing on the cake.
Marathon: Break 2:50. I haven't bested my marathon time in 9 months now and it is time to drop that PR. I'm running the B&A Trail (paved trail) Marathon on March 1st and Boston in late April, so I would like to knock off a huge PR at either or both of these. I don't know if I'll be fully ready to hit a 9 minute PR by either of these races, but I'm sure that I'll be able to drop under 2:50 in the fall if I don't do it in the spring.
10 miles: Break 58 minutes. I'm probably only doing 1 10 miler this year and it'll be in February a few weeks after Rocky. I've never "officially" broken 60 minutes, but that seems way too easy, so I'm aiming for a sub 58. If I'm tapered for the event in February, I will probably be able to break 57, maybe even 56 if I'm in SUPER good shape, but 10 miles is not an event that I really focus on much, so sub-58 will make me happy.
5 mile: No official goal since I'm not sure if I'll be racing this distance at any time during the year, but since I know that I can break 27 from unofficial time trials, I'd be shooting to officially break 27 if I run a 5 miler earlier in the year and shooting for a sub 26:30 if I run one later in the year. I guess it all depends on the quality of my tempo work at this point since I definitely have more than enough endurance to properly race a 5 miler.
5k: I want to creep into the 15s this year. It's been a long time since I raced a 5k, nearly 2 years, but my speed in this type of event has definitely gotten better with my increases in endurance. Time trials tell me that this should be possible. The only 5k I'm planning on running at this point is the Blue Jay 5k, which isn't particularly fast, so a 16:30 would make me pretty happy there, but if I can find a fast 5k to run, I'll do it with the aim of breaking 16 minutes.
Oh, one more thing. My main aim for 2009 is to boost my resume so that I will be able to be accepted into Badwater 2010. Basically, this will probably require me hitting my time goals in the 50 and 100 or coming very close to doing so (at the very least finishing all 5 100 mile attempts). I am looking into traveling to Death Valley in July this year so i can crew for any runner that needs another crew member since experience with crewing at Badwater is a tremendous help to any Badwater racing application.
I guess that's about all. This post is crazy long so I'll stop now...
PS, this post is so long that I'm sure no-one will read it in its entirety, but it'll still be good for me to look back on at later times.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Week of 12-22-08
Total=74 miles
This total sounds pretty low for me, but I was actually quite happy with my training this week. I did all of my training on either snow/slush/ice or on treadmills, both of which seem to break down my legs much faster than a good blacktop road or cushy trail.
Monday: 10 miles: I went outside for a run, but Monday was outrageously cold (the windchill hit -40 at some point early in the morning) and I was totally underdressed, so I turned around after literally a half mile for a total of 1 mile. I hadn't really been outside much at all since coming home, so I just had no idea that the weather was going to instantly brutalize me like that... As soon as I got in, I just hopped on the treadmill in the basement and finished up another 9 miles. I actually ended up running uphill on the steepest possible incline the entire time without realizing it (which was apparently the case of the treadmill run the previous night, which explains why that one was so slow as well...). I figured out the incline thing on the treadmill the next day and was pretty mad at myself for not realizing it previously, but I guess I was just relieved, because I was kinda worried about how slow my pace was...
Tuesday: 13 miles: I had a crazy slow run outside through snow, slush, and ice. Part of it was
on trails with powder being literally near-waist deep in a few spots. Consequently, the run was incredibly slow, taking 2 hours, pretty much exactly on the dot. The temperature was pretty low and my gel pretty much froze in my pocket, but I was super bundled up with a long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, 2 pairs of pants, a pair of shorts, ski socks, a neck gator, underarmour "Bank Robber" mask, hat, 2 pairs of gloves, and a head-lamp, so I didn't get too cold. Running on ice, snow, and slush was SUPER hard on my quads and this 13 miles pretty much felt like the last 13 of an average length ultramarathon on my legs. I didn't catch the temperature, but it must've been a windchill of close to -20.
Wednesday: 10 miles: This was another decent outdoors run. I found one patch that had no ice or snow on the road, so I picked it up to a nice 6 minute/mile tempo for a couple miles, but my overall time was still 70-something due to the really slow parts. The temperature was -11, but I didn't feel that bad... Overall, it was a pretty good run. I was fairly sore, but it wasn't too bad.
Thursday: 7 miles: I ended up just taking a pretty easy day outside. My quads were getting pretty unbelievably sore, so I just ran some good snowy trails for 7 miles or so before ending the run. I took it pretty slow and I ended up just hitting the 7 miles so I could have an average of 10 miles per day so far this week.
Friday: 11 miles: This was split up into 2 treadmill runs, both run at a pretty fast pace. I did a 6 first off before I had to go to Abercrombie to put in a 5 hour shift as a "model" and another 5 when I got home. The first run was at a 6:2x pace and the 2nd was at the max speed on the treadmill, 6:00 flat, discounting the relatively slow start for the treadmill to catch up to pace.
Saturday: 20 miles: Saturday was the big day of the week for me. I went to Lifetime Fitness as a guest of my parents for 3 1/2 hours and just absolutely pounded my body into the ground. I was already really sore coming into the day and I ran 10 miles in 67 minutes on a treadmill, immediately followed by a pretty intense chest workout and then another 10 miles in 68 minutes. The pace between the two runs was pretty much exactly the same, the only difference being that I tempo'd the last mile of the first run and just didn't have the motivation to do so on the second. The 2:15 20 mile total would equate to a 2:56:51 marathon pace, and while I certainly couldn't have run the 2 runs back to back with another 10k at pace on Saturday, I'm sure I could've easily run that time or faster if I had tapered out and got my legs feeling a bit more fresh. If that doesn't sound realistic, just consider the fact that I've been in pain just walking around over the past few days... My marathon PR of the fall was a 3:00:42, but that was on a trail. Granted, the course was very fast for a trail marathon and pretty flat for the most part, but trails are ALWAYS slower than roads. I only did the 2 marathons this fall, and given that I was badly out of shape for Baltimore and didn't start to really run well until early November, I never hit the kind of time I was looking for. I'm most definitely in the best shape I've ever been in right now though, so I'm sure a good fast road marathon like Boston could yield a 2:50 to 2:55 at this point if I gave myself a week off the hard training to freshen up my legs. I really had a hard time feeling motivated to do this training on Saturday since I was feeling quite stale, but I'm really glad that I did since my week would not have been nearly the same without this kind of day.
Sunday: 3 miles: I spent 11 hours in a car driving to Michigan and arrived at 7 PM. It was already dark when I got here, so I just sat around for a couple hours before running. I went out on some trails behind my Grandpa's house and of course my stupid headlamp started going crazy and just dying out on me over and over, so I decided I would rather not get injured and/or lost in a remote set of woods in some part of Michigan that I absolutely do not know at all, so I cut my run off super short. I was pretty irritated at first, but I realized that my legs were hurting so badly that doing any sort of legitimate run probably would've been a pretty stupid idea. Hopefully taking this day incredibly easy will allow me to hit it hard again tomorrow and do a nice icy trail run of at least a half marathon.
Weekly Overall: Like I said, the 74 number seems pretty bad, but I still feel like my quads have gotten quite the workout this week. I'm still fairly pleased with my training and as of a couple days ago, I finally hit more miles in 2008 than I had in 2007. I've always considered 2008 to be somewhat of a failure for my running since I didn't progress very much on the marathon (only dropped my PR a couple minutes to a 2:58:57) and DNF'd my only attempt at 100 miles. Also, my summer training was complete and total BS, especially compared to the incredibly solid training I had in summer 2007, but I did have 3 pretty highly successful races in late 2008 (in a trail 50, trail marathon, and road 5). Additionally, winter 08/09 is finally starting to look like my return to consistent training and extremely high mileage weeks and consistency in training has always proven to be key for consistency in racing, so I'm pretty sure that I'm setting myself up for a highly successful 2009. In fact, on a related note, if I can just put in 27 miles in the last 3 days of this month, December '08 will officially be the highest mileage month I've ever run in my life, which is quite exciting considering that my current monthly high is still standing from something like 18 months ago. My 100 mile every week thing clearly isn't panning out quite like I wanted it to, but in all honesty, I have never in my life consistently averaged over 85 or 90 a week for a very extended amount of time and that kind of mileage has always been enough for my ultramarathon racing since I typically train at a pretty high intensity, so my averaging 90-ish a week for the last 3 weeks is still quite good for me. When I DNF'd a 100 this past summer, I literally only had 1 week of recent training that I had been completely happy with and when I DNF'd the only other race I've DNF'd (a trail 50 in summer '07), I was trying to run a 2nd 50+ mile race within one week 2 days after missing a night of sleep, only sleepign 3 hours the night before the race, having the flu so badly that I couldn't eat chicken noodle soup without throwing up, and running on a very tough course in straight temps over 100 with a very high humidity, ie I had no chance no matter how good my training was. My 85-90 mile weeks that summer clearly served me well, but in hindsight, I'm still amazed that I even got 38 miles before hitting the point that I was on the verge of passing out and having to quit. I guess my main point here is that 85-90 mile a week averages is definitely enough to race ultramarathons well if the intensity is pretty decent. Either way though, if I were in Baltimore, I think I could still be hitting 100 mile weeks and I plan on picking it back up to that when I get back since I feel like my focus and drive is slightly better in Baltimore for some reason or other (probably the weather and running conditions more than anything else). I still have 2 weeks back in the midwest though, so if I can just top 160 miles total in those 2 weeks, I will be quite happy... I'll probably post a year-end blog in a couple days, so that should be oh-so-exciting...
This total sounds pretty low for me, but I was actually quite happy with my training this week. I did all of my training on either snow/slush/ice or on treadmills, both of which seem to break down my legs much faster than a good blacktop road or cushy trail.
Monday: 10 miles: I went outside for a run, but Monday was outrageously cold (the windchill hit -40 at some point early in the morning) and I was totally underdressed, so I turned around after literally a half mile for a total of 1 mile. I hadn't really been outside much at all since coming home, so I just had no idea that the weather was going to instantly brutalize me like that... As soon as I got in, I just hopped on the treadmill in the basement and finished up another 9 miles. I actually ended up running uphill on the steepest possible incline the entire time without realizing it (which was apparently the case of the treadmill run the previous night, which explains why that one was so slow as well...). I figured out the incline thing on the treadmill the next day and was pretty mad at myself for not realizing it previously, but I guess I was just relieved, because I was kinda worried about how slow my pace was...
Tuesday: 13 miles: I had a crazy slow run outside through snow, slush, and ice. Part of it was
on trails with powder being literally near-waist deep in a few spots. Consequently, the run was incredibly slow, taking 2 hours, pretty much exactly on the dot. The temperature was pretty low and my gel pretty much froze in my pocket, but I was super bundled up with a long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, 2 pairs of pants, a pair of shorts, ski socks, a neck gator, underarmour "Bank Robber" mask, hat, 2 pairs of gloves, and a head-lamp, so I didn't get too cold. Running on ice, snow, and slush was SUPER hard on my quads and this 13 miles pretty much felt like the last 13 of an average length ultramarathon on my legs. I didn't catch the temperature, but it must've been a windchill of close to -20.
Wednesday: 10 miles: This was another decent outdoors run. I found one patch that had no ice or snow on the road, so I picked it up to a nice 6 minute/mile tempo for a couple miles, but my overall time was still 70-something due to the really slow parts. The temperature was -11, but I didn't feel that bad... Overall, it was a pretty good run. I was fairly sore, but it wasn't too bad.
Thursday: 7 miles: I ended up just taking a pretty easy day outside. My quads were getting pretty unbelievably sore, so I just ran some good snowy trails for 7 miles or so before ending the run. I took it pretty slow and I ended up just hitting the 7 miles so I could have an average of 10 miles per day so far this week.
Friday: 11 miles: This was split up into 2 treadmill runs, both run at a pretty fast pace. I did a 6 first off before I had to go to Abercrombie to put in a 5 hour shift as a "model" and another 5 when I got home. The first run was at a 6:2x pace and the 2nd was at the max speed on the treadmill, 6:00 flat, discounting the relatively slow start for the treadmill to catch up to pace.
Saturday: 20 miles: Saturday was the big day of the week for me. I went to Lifetime Fitness as a guest of my parents for 3 1/2 hours and just absolutely pounded my body into the ground. I was already really sore coming into the day and I ran 10 miles in 67 minutes on a treadmill, immediately followed by a pretty intense chest workout and then another 10 miles in 68 minutes. The pace between the two runs was pretty much exactly the same, the only difference being that I tempo'd the last mile of the first run and just didn't have the motivation to do so on the second. The 2:15 20 mile total would equate to a 2:56:51 marathon pace, and while I certainly couldn't have run the 2 runs back to back with another 10k at pace on Saturday, I'm sure I could've easily run that time or faster if I had tapered out and got my legs feeling a bit more fresh. If that doesn't sound realistic, just consider the fact that I've been in pain just walking around over the past few days... My marathon PR of the fall was a 3:00:42, but that was on a trail. Granted, the course was very fast for a trail marathon and pretty flat for the most part, but trails are ALWAYS slower than roads. I only did the 2 marathons this fall, and given that I was badly out of shape for Baltimore and didn't start to really run well until early November, I never hit the kind of time I was looking for. I'm most definitely in the best shape I've ever been in right now though, so I'm sure a good fast road marathon like Boston could yield a 2:50 to 2:55 at this point if I gave myself a week off the hard training to freshen up my legs. I really had a hard time feeling motivated to do this training on Saturday since I was feeling quite stale, but I'm really glad that I did since my week would not have been nearly the same without this kind of day.
Sunday: 3 miles: I spent 11 hours in a car driving to Michigan and arrived at 7 PM. It was already dark when I got here, so I just sat around for a couple hours before running. I went out on some trails behind my Grandpa's house and of course my stupid headlamp started going crazy and just dying out on me over and over, so I decided I would rather not get injured and/or lost in a remote set of woods in some part of Michigan that I absolutely do not know at all, so I cut my run off super short. I was pretty irritated at first, but I realized that my legs were hurting so badly that doing any sort of legitimate run probably would've been a pretty stupid idea. Hopefully taking this day incredibly easy will allow me to hit it hard again tomorrow and do a nice icy trail run of at least a half marathon.
Weekly Overall: Like I said, the 74 number seems pretty bad, but I still feel like my quads have gotten quite the workout this week. I'm still fairly pleased with my training and as of a couple days ago, I finally hit more miles in 2008 than I had in 2007. I've always considered 2008 to be somewhat of a failure for my running since I didn't progress very much on the marathon (only dropped my PR a couple minutes to a 2:58:57) and DNF'd my only attempt at 100 miles. Also, my summer training was complete and total BS, especially compared to the incredibly solid training I had in summer 2007, but I did have 3 pretty highly successful races in late 2008 (in a trail 50, trail marathon, and road 5). Additionally, winter 08/09 is finally starting to look like my return to consistent training and extremely high mileage weeks and consistency in training has always proven to be key for consistency in racing, so I'm pretty sure that I'm setting myself up for a highly successful 2009. In fact, on a related note, if I can just put in 27 miles in the last 3 days of this month, December '08 will officially be the highest mileage month I've ever run in my life, which is quite exciting considering that my current monthly high is still standing from something like 18 months ago. My 100 mile every week thing clearly isn't panning out quite like I wanted it to, but in all honesty, I have never in my life consistently averaged over 85 or 90 a week for a very extended amount of time and that kind of mileage has always been enough for my ultramarathon racing since I typically train at a pretty high intensity, so my averaging 90-ish a week for the last 3 weeks is still quite good for me. When I DNF'd a 100 this past summer, I literally only had 1 week of recent training that I had been completely happy with and when I DNF'd the only other race I've DNF'd (a trail 50 in summer '07), I was trying to run a 2nd 50+ mile race within one week 2 days after missing a night of sleep, only sleepign 3 hours the night before the race, having the flu so badly that I couldn't eat chicken noodle soup without throwing up, and running on a very tough course in straight temps over 100 with a very high humidity, ie I had no chance no matter how good my training was. My 85-90 mile weeks that summer clearly served me well, but in hindsight, I'm still amazed that I even got 38 miles before hitting the point that I was on the verge of passing out and having to quit. I guess my main point here is that 85-90 mile a week averages is definitely enough to race ultramarathons well if the intensity is pretty decent. Either way though, if I were in Baltimore, I think I could still be hitting 100 mile weeks and I plan on picking it back up to that when I get back since I feel like my focus and drive is slightly better in Baltimore for some reason or other (probably the weather and running conditions more than anything else). I still have 2 weeks back in the midwest though, so if I can just top 160 miles total in those 2 weeks, I will be quite happy... I'll probably post a year-end blog in a couple days, so that should be oh-so-exciting...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Training in Minnesota, gunning for Badwater '10
I'll make this quick... It's REALLY hard to hit my daily mileage outside here it turns out, but I'm going to do my absolute best to hit my goals. The good thing is, if I can actually pull off 100 miles in these conditions, I'll be MUCH better off than if I were to run 100 miles a week on easy terrain in Baltimore. My quads are getting one heck of a workout running here, so it's just building my conditioning even faster. The temperature today was finally warm enough to where I was at least reasonably acclimated to train outside for a couple hours, of course given that I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, face mask, neck mask, ski hat, headlamp, 1 pair of shorts and 2 pairs of pants, ski socks, and toe warmers. Phew... Anyway, it still took me exactly 2 hours to go 13 miles, which is pretty much absurd for me. I have to run on the side of the road obviously so I won't get hit by cars and the snow is pretty thick everywhere with a nice layer of ice underneath, so I was just slipping around everywhere. My gel packet that I took was nearly completely frozen in my pocket after about an hour, so I had to try to warm it up before I could even eat it. I know, however, that if I can keep this mileage up, especially here in MN, I will be in absolutely extraordinary shape for Rocky Raccoon. The weird thing, though, is that the one race that's been on my mind a lot lately is Badwater 2010, the 135 mile race across Death Valley in July (in nearly as many degrees as the race has miles), from the lowest to the highest point in the continental US (the forest service has banned competitive events from scaling all of Mt Whitney, but the truly crazy competitors just rip off their bibs after 135 miles and continue the additional 11 mile ascent to the top of the mountain). I imagine that this is probably related to the fact that the selection process for 2009 runners (no, I did not and am not going to apply for 09) is about to take place. There is nothing I want more right now than to run Badwater '10 and become one of the youngest people to ever attempt or complete the course. It might sound pretty crazy to want to run this race, but amazing challenges like this seem to provide a feeling for me something like that of nostalgia, only that it's for something that I have yet to do. Before running Lean Horse '07, my first ever 100 mile run, I had a feeling somewhat like this, only to a lesser extent. Badwater is billed as the "ultimate challenge of champions" for a reason and I know that it may seem like sheer stupidity to 99.99999% of people, but it's almost just something that I feel that I "have" to do, if that makes any sense. Badwater is something I want to do solely for me, not really to prove anything to even myself, just something that is strongly beckoning me. I think only a handful of people really grasp and understand my motivation for running the races that I do since it's rather hard to verbalize why I do what I do, but those of you that have some some sort of insight can probably see the attraction to a huge epic race like this for me. I guess it's early to be thinking about 2010, but at the very least, if I ever feel like cutting a day short, I just ask myself, "Do you want to run Badwater in 2010 or not?" and then I finish my run in its complete form, often tacking on extra mileage.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Week of 12-08-08
Well, I have to say; this was a relatively disappointing week for me. I ran 85 miles (12.14 miles a day on average), which would make me pretty happy at most times of the year, but I was hoping to not really have any weeks much under 100 miles between last week and the end of February. A few things got in the way, causing me to have 3 pretty terrible days of running this week (including 1 complete off day...) Here's how the running went:
Monday: 0 miles: I had 2 finals on Tuesday, so Monday was entirely shot. I think I was in the Hopkins Academic Computing Lab (Hac Lab) studying for 13 hours straight or something ridiculous like that, so I just had absolutely no break to even hit a couple miles. I was EXTREMELY disappointed by that, but I ended up doing reasonably well on both finals and cementing a very good GPA with my 22 credits this semester, so I guess that's pretty important too...
Tuesday: 7 miles: I had finals from 9AM-noon and 6PM to 9PM. I was unable to justify running between the two tests since I had to still cram for the second one, so I had to wait until afterwards. My design team was coming over for pizza and beer (well, more like Bailey's since both I and another team member pretty much hate almost all beers... hah...) at 10:30 PM, so I had very little time. Either way though, the rain was IMMENSELY hard and painful in the mid-thirties weather that night and my legs were absolutely bright red when I was done, so I wouldn't have wanted to go much farther anyway... I just did a quick Druid Hills loop, felt like I was going to die with the rain, and turned it in.
Wednesday: 28 miles: After finally being done with classes, I put in a pretty beastly day of training. I think I exercised for something like 4 hours and 30 minutes on Wednesday since I also put in a pretty sick chest day in the gym. I wanted to do one massive marathon plus length run, but I ended up getting out the door a bit late and had to meet Henry Kaldre at the gym to lift at a specific time, so I only had a bit over 2 hours to run before lifting. I ended up throwing together a 19-mile run in that time and arriving at the gym breathless just on time to do an intense lift. Immediately after lifting, I ran back out the door and did another hour or so, putting in 9 more miles. The first run was a somewhat extended Robert E Lee run, hitting pretty much every aspect of the park at least once, while the 2nd was just a good Charles street run at a relatively easy pace since 28 miles in one day is fairly taxing, even when split up, when running at an average of roughly my marathon pace. Splitting up the miles the way I did, even with only a relatively short break, which was filled with other exercise certainly made the mileage much easier, but it was still a fairly grueling day. I have to say; I was incredibly pleased with my mileage on Wednesday and when I finished my 2nd run, I was pleasantly tired. Oh, and one other thing... Robert E Lee was frickin crazy on Wednesday... Tuesday's storm was pretty ridiculous, so many parts of the trail were outrageously flooded. There's one part of the course with incredibly bad maintenance problems and an insane amount of sawbriers, and both legs got pretty shredded when I had to weave in and out of the trail to avoid huge calf-deep puddles. Baltimore's park and trail department (or whatever department is in charge of such things) REALLY needs to get off their butts and clean up that part of the trail... When I'm able to stick EXACTLY to the trail, it's great since it's really rocky and quite technical, but honestly, the sawbriers are getting incredibly out of hand.
Thursday: 16 miles: Thursday was a pretty interesting day for me. I hosted the BME party on Wednesday night and a few people stayed until like 4:45 or so, so I didn't get to bed until 5 AM. I planned on sleeping in SUPER late, but Chris Chiang called me at 9 in the morning to have me look for his girlfriend Karin's credit card and camera, which he thought they left at my party. They ended up not being at my place, but by the time I was done looking and realized that, I had been up for 15 minutes, so I ended up not going back to bed. Running after only 4 hours of sleep
is never particularly fun, but the 16 miler I did wasn't particularly bad. I don't remember the exact time on it, but I remember it being pretty slow, like a 1:50 or something. I did a reasonable length Robert E. Lee loop since I can't seem to get enough of that place lately. It was still pretty wet, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the day before.
Friday: 7 miles: Well, I knew I was racing a 5 miler on Saturday morning, so I played it safe and kept it really light on Friday. I ended up just running to the gym from my apartment (about a mile) and then doing a quick additional 6 miler on the roads instead of coming directly home. I made the mistake of cutting through a quick stretch of woods without any lighting on the way there and I SLAMMED my head into a pretty big tree branch, which literally knocked me flat on the ground. It was bleeding slightly from the blunt force, but I thought it was funny more than anything. Hey, I guess it's no secret that I'm probably some sort of insane masochist. The 6 mile was a pretty good progression run with a pretty slow start building into a second half at a pace that felt pretty even with what I wanted to run in the 5 miler the next day (I was gunning for about 5:30 a mile and a top 10 finish).
Saturday: 17 miles: I'm an idiot. I'm just going to throw that out there. Brian Lange, Steven Houck, and Steven's fiancee Beth Hernandez came over just to hang out for an hour or so right before I was planning on going to bed around 11 or so. Right before they left, the mentioned that they were going to play Counter Strike at the Digital Media Center and I stupidly agreed to go play. Well... we ended up literally staying all night and playing until 6 in the morning. I was supposed to get up for my race at 7 in the morning for the local 8:30 race and 1 hour of sleep is clearly not very useful, so I just worked on grad school apps for an hour before i had to get ready to race. I somehow was able to stay pumped up on adrenaline and sugar until the race and somehow, unbeknownst to all but maybe God, I ended up managing to run a 27:55 5-mile at the hillier-than-expected Celtic Solstice 5 mile. Dave Berdan crushed the course in 25:09 for the win, which pretty much blows my mind; that guy is an absolute machine. According to the preliminary results, I placed 10th out of 1883 runners, but they said a number of chips didn't work properly at either the start or the finish and there were also many hundreds of runners running at a reduced price without a chip. There were something like 2800-3000 runners registered for the race, so I'd bet there were at least 2500 or 2600 running it. I had seen on a different results sheet that I placed 12th, so who knows which one is correct; I'd tend to believe the first one I saw that put me in 12th since I know there are numerous mistakes with the online one... Anyway, being completely honest, the 27:55 was NOT whatsoever a difficult run. I thought that I wasn't going to run particularly well since I hadn't slept, so I just didn't push very hard. According to a treadmill, I have run 5 miles on a completely flat surface in 26:58 (and that includes the 15-20 seconds wasted with the ridiculously slow start-up, so probably more like 26:40 to 26:45) when well-rested, but I thought that time was unbelievably fast. I guess I believe it now based on this time, especially since I was in MUCH more pain after my treadmill 5-mile time trial than I was after Celtic Solstice. Anyway, the entire run was a good progression. I did the first mile in a quite-slow 5:50 just to see how I felt and then the second in something like 5:45. I finally found a good groove around mile 2 and did the next 2 in 11:00 flat (running pretty even 5:30s for both). I knew that I was just a little off pace to break 28 minutes at mile 4 and Falls Road sort of expected me to break 28 minutes when they gave me a comp'd "elite" entry, so I edged up the pace a notch and put in a still-easy 5:20 final mile for a 27:55 finish. One thing that's sort of funny is that my last 3 miles were in a total of 16:20, which would put my last 5k split well under 17 minutes. I haven't raced one in a few years and I've done almost no speed training since well before my last 5k (never even having officially broken 18 minutes), so this just goes to show that I have been absolutely correct all along that my distance training would drastically improve my speed, even if I rarely or even never run at a 5k or 5 mile type pace when training. In the end, I wished I'd pushed a little harder since going sub 5:30 miles in less than 27:30, or probably even breaking 27 wouldn't have killed me, but hey, I was still able to hit a good amount more running that day, so whatever... 5 mile races are certainly not my focus right now, so I guess it was good to take it relatively easy. Anyway, I had to run a mile to and from the race and when I got to the race, I did another 1 mile warmup, so the morning total was 8 miles. I became extremely tired shortly after coming home, but I still managed to throw together another 9 miles later that day before completely crashing and going to bed.
Sunday: 11 miles: I was stalled up at the airport for most of the day, so my run was cut short. I got back to MN super late and it was absolutely freezing outside. The car's thermometer read -6 straight up, but that seems to probably be a bit warm in the winter and I saw a sign outside reading as low as -13. Sometime during the night or tomorrow morning, the windchill is supposed to exceed - 40 degrees, so I decided not to die and just ran on a treadmill. I actually put in 1 mile at the airport to get to the baggage claim rather than taking the shuttle, so I just pegged another 10 miles out at home. I have the feeling my parents' treadmill is pretty inaccurate in terms of pace (it's from the 80's, so who knows...) It was telling me that it took me 69 minutes to run 10 miles, though I'd imagine I hit more like 11 miles in that time. I almost NEVER take more than 62 or 63 to run a 10 and I worked up a REALLY good sweat on this run, so I just felt like there was no way this thing was accurate. I could see myself going even 65 or 66 on an off day, but 69 is ridiculous. Nonetheless, I just logged it as 11 total for the day since I have no real evidence to suggest that the treadmill is wrong other than the fact that it has numerous other ridiculous problems, (such as the fact that it moves forward approximately 5 feet every mile if you don't put a heavy object in front of it, it shakes back and forth uncontrollably if you're going at anything beyond a walk, and the calorie counter is way off... I happen to know that I burn roughly 124 cal/mile, but it was putting me at just over 100 per mile...) Anyway, the next several weeks ought to be interesting... If I get stuck having to run an insane amount on a treadmill since the weather is too crazy to do long runs outside, I might go out of my mind...
Anyway, weekly total = 85... Like I said, it was relatively disappointing, but I still had one 28 mile day thrown in there that I felt pretty great about. It was really more like 85 in 6 days since I took Monday off, so I guess that's not terrible. I just have to make sure I avoid missing entire days in the next month and a half.
Edited last paragraph: blah blah blah me trash talking certain training strategies a bit too much... hahahahaha... The main gist: You pretty much max your ability to do anaerobic work after about a month; that's a physiolgically proven fact. Aerobic training can be improved upon nearly indefinitely. If you want to do speed work, you need the endurance base to do it. My absolute hero, Lydiard, had even his 800 meter runners doing marathon training (over 100 miles a week), for many months before he would allow them on the track. How well did they do? World records and gold medals... seems pretty clear to me that the guy knew his stuff... As Lydiard discusses in "Running to the Top", which, despite its incredibly bad grammar and lack of focus, is the holy grail of running books in my opinion, Kenyans are only the best because all of their top runners were doing literally 100 miles a week as a means of transportation since the age of 10 or even younger. Their only truly legitimate genetic difference is an elongated gluteus maximus, which really only helps them to sprint a bit faster when fatigued, ie shave a couple seconds off max. There is proof that they have better developed endurance simply as a result of training their base for a longer period of time. By the time they start working on speed, their endurance is so through the roof that they are absolutely and utterly ready to crush anyone and everyone. The main lesson, focus on you endurance and get into shape before you run fast. I am doing that for several months this winter (virtually zero speed work between mid-December and mid February), ONLY focusing on building endurance, and I am confident that it will make me much faster in the end once I am finally doing some speed work.
Oh, one other edit: my treadmill was broken on Saturday... hahaha... I didn't realize it two broken wheels and was at a huge incline until after I posted this, so that is a bit of a relief to me. Hurray, I don't suck as much as I thought I did!
Monday: 0 miles: I had 2 finals on Tuesday, so Monday was entirely shot. I think I was in the Hopkins Academic Computing Lab (Hac Lab) studying for 13 hours straight or something ridiculous like that, so I just had absolutely no break to even hit a couple miles. I was EXTREMELY disappointed by that, but I ended up doing reasonably well on both finals and cementing a very good GPA with my 22 credits this semester, so I guess that's pretty important too...
Tuesday: 7 miles: I had finals from 9AM-noon and 6PM to 9PM. I was unable to justify running between the two tests since I had to still cram for the second one, so I had to wait until afterwards. My design team was coming over for pizza and beer (well, more like Bailey's since both I and another team member pretty much hate almost all beers... hah...) at 10:30 PM, so I had very little time. Either way though, the rain was IMMENSELY hard and painful in the mid-thirties weather that night and my legs were absolutely bright red when I was done, so I wouldn't have wanted to go much farther anyway... I just did a quick Druid Hills loop, felt like I was going to die with the rain, and turned it in.
Wednesday: 28 miles: After finally being done with classes, I put in a pretty beastly day of training. I think I exercised for something like 4 hours and 30 minutes on Wednesday since I also put in a pretty sick chest day in the gym. I wanted to do one massive marathon plus length run, but I ended up getting out the door a bit late and had to meet Henry Kaldre at the gym to lift at a specific time, so I only had a bit over 2 hours to run before lifting. I ended up throwing together a 19-mile run in that time and arriving at the gym breathless just on time to do an intense lift. Immediately after lifting, I ran back out the door and did another hour or so, putting in 9 more miles. The first run was a somewhat extended Robert E Lee run, hitting pretty much every aspect of the park at least once, while the 2nd was just a good Charles street run at a relatively easy pace since 28 miles in one day is fairly taxing, even when split up, when running at an average of roughly my marathon pace. Splitting up the miles the way I did, even with only a relatively short break, which was filled with other exercise certainly made the mileage much easier, but it was still a fairly grueling day. I have to say; I was incredibly pleased with my mileage on Wednesday and when I finished my 2nd run, I was pleasantly tired. Oh, and one other thing... Robert E Lee was frickin crazy on Wednesday... Tuesday's storm was pretty ridiculous, so many parts of the trail were outrageously flooded. There's one part of the course with incredibly bad maintenance problems and an insane amount of sawbriers, and both legs got pretty shredded when I had to weave in and out of the trail to avoid huge calf-deep puddles. Baltimore's park and trail department (or whatever department is in charge of such things) REALLY needs to get off their butts and clean up that part of the trail... When I'm able to stick EXACTLY to the trail, it's great since it's really rocky and quite technical, but honestly, the sawbriers are getting incredibly out of hand.
Thursday: 16 miles: Thursday was a pretty interesting day for me. I hosted the BME party on Wednesday night and a few people stayed until like 4:45 or so, so I didn't get to bed until 5 AM. I planned on sleeping in SUPER late, but Chris Chiang called me at 9 in the morning to have me look for his girlfriend Karin's credit card and camera, which he thought they left at my party. They ended up not being at my place, but by the time I was done looking and realized that, I had been up for 15 minutes, so I ended up not going back to bed. Running after only 4 hours of sleep
is never particularly fun, but the 16 miler I did wasn't particularly bad. I don't remember the exact time on it, but I remember it being pretty slow, like a 1:50 or something. I did a reasonable length Robert E. Lee loop since I can't seem to get enough of that place lately. It was still pretty wet, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the day before.
Friday: 7 miles: Well, I knew I was racing a 5 miler on Saturday morning, so I played it safe and kept it really light on Friday. I ended up just running to the gym from my apartment (about a mile) and then doing a quick additional 6 miler on the roads instead of coming directly home. I made the mistake of cutting through a quick stretch of woods without any lighting on the way there and I SLAMMED my head into a pretty big tree branch, which literally knocked me flat on the ground. It was bleeding slightly from the blunt force, but I thought it was funny more than anything. Hey, I guess it's no secret that I'm probably some sort of insane masochist. The 6 mile was a pretty good progression run with a pretty slow start building into a second half at a pace that felt pretty even with what I wanted to run in the 5 miler the next day (I was gunning for about 5:30 a mile and a top 10 finish).
Saturday: 17 miles: I'm an idiot. I'm just going to throw that out there. Brian Lange, Steven Houck, and Steven's fiancee Beth Hernandez came over just to hang out for an hour or so right before I was planning on going to bed around 11 or so. Right before they left, the mentioned that they were going to play Counter Strike at the Digital Media Center and I stupidly agreed to go play. Well... we ended up literally staying all night and playing until 6 in the morning. I was supposed to get up for my race at 7 in the morning for the local 8:30 race and 1 hour of sleep is clearly not very useful, so I just worked on grad school apps for an hour before i had to get ready to race. I somehow was able to stay pumped up on adrenaline and sugar until the race and somehow, unbeknownst to all but maybe God, I ended up managing to run a 27:55 5-mile at the hillier-than-expected Celtic Solstice 5 mile. Dave Berdan crushed the course in 25:09 for the win, which pretty much blows my mind; that guy is an absolute machine. According to the preliminary results, I placed 10th out of 1883 runners, but they said a number of chips didn't work properly at either the start or the finish and there were also many hundreds of runners running at a reduced price without a chip. There were something like 2800-3000 runners registered for the race, so I'd bet there were at least 2500 or 2600 running it. I had seen on a different results sheet that I placed 12th, so who knows which one is correct; I'd tend to believe the first one I saw that put me in 12th since I know there are numerous mistakes with the online one... Anyway, being completely honest, the 27:55 was NOT whatsoever a difficult run. I thought that I wasn't going to run particularly well since I hadn't slept, so I just didn't push very hard. According to a treadmill, I have run 5 miles on a completely flat surface in 26:58 (and that includes the 15-20 seconds wasted with the ridiculously slow start-up, so probably more like 26:40 to 26:45) when well-rested, but I thought that time was unbelievably fast. I guess I believe it now based on this time, especially since I was in MUCH more pain after my treadmill 5-mile time trial than I was after Celtic Solstice. Anyway, the entire run was a good progression. I did the first mile in a quite-slow 5:50 just to see how I felt and then the second in something like 5:45. I finally found a good groove around mile 2 and did the next 2 in 11:00 flat (running pretty even 5:30s for both). I knew that I was just a little off pace to break 28 minutes at mile 4 and Falls Road sort of expected me to break 28 minutes when they gave me a comp'd "elite" entry, so I edged up the pace a notch and put in a still-easy 5:20 final mile for a 27:55 finish. One thing that's sort of funny is that my last 3 miles were in a total of 16:20, which would put my last 5k split well under 17 minutes. I haven't raced one in a few years and I've done almost no speed training since well before my last 5k (never even having officially broken 18 minutes), so this just goes to show that I have been absolutely correct all along that my distance training would drastically improve my speed, even if I rarely or even never run at a 5k or 5 mile type pace when training. In the end, I wished I'd pushed a little harder since going sub 5:30 miles in less than 27:30, or probably even breaking 27 wouldn't have killed me, but hey, I was still able to hit a good amount more running that day, so whatever... 5 mile races are certainly not my focus right now, so I guess it was good to take it relatively easy. Anyway, I had to run a mile to and from the race and when I got to the race, I did another 1 mile warmup, so the morning total was 8 miles. I became extremely tired shortly after coming home, but I still managed to throw together another 9 miles later that day before completely crashing and going to bed.
Sunday: 11 miles: I was stalled up at the airport for most of the day, so my run was cut short. I got back to MN super late and it was absolutely freezing outside. The car's thermometer read -6 straight up, but that seems to probably be a bit warm in the winter and I saw a sign outside reading as low as -13. Sometime during the night or tomorrow morning, the windchill is supposed to exceed - 40 degrees, so I decided not to die and just ran on a treadmill. I actually put in 1 mile at the airport to get to the baggage claim rather than taking the shuttle, so I just pegged another 10 miles out at home. I have the feeling my parents' treadmill is pretty inaccurate in terms of pace (it's from the 80's, so who knows...) It was telling me that it took me 69 minutes to run 10 miles, though I'd imagine I hit more like 11 miles in that time. I almost NEVER take more than 62 or 63 to run a 10 and I worked up a REALLY good sweat on this run, so I just felt like there was no way this thing was accurate. I could see myself going even 65 or 66 on an off day, but 69 is ridiculous. Nonetheless, I just logged it as 11 total for the day since I have no real evidence to suggest that the treadmill is wrong other than the fact that it has numerous other ridiculous problems, (such as the fact that it moves forward approximately 5 feet every mile if you don't put a heavy object in front of it, it shakes back and forth uncontrollably if you're going at anything beyond a walk, and the calorie counter is way off... I happen to know that I burn roughly 124 cal/mile, but it was putting me at just over 100 per mile...) Anyway, the next several weeks ought to be interesting... If I get stuck having to run an insane amount on a treadmill since the weather is too crazy to do long runs outside, I might go out of my mind...
Anyway, weekly total = 85... Like I said, it was relatively disappointing, but I still had one 28 mile day thrown in there that I felt pretty great about. It was really more like 85 in 6 days since I took Monday off, so I guess that's not terrible. I just have to make sure I avoid missing entire days in the next month and a half.
Edited last paragraph: blah blah blah me trash talking certain training strategies a bit too much... hahahahaha... The main gist: You pretty much max your ability to do anaerobic work after about a month; that's a physiolgically proven fact. Aerobic training can be improved upon nearly indefinitely. If you want to do speed work, you need the endurance base to do it. My absolute hero, Lydiard, had even his 800 meter runners doing marathon training (over 100 miles a week), for many months before he would allow them on the track. How well did they do? World records and gold medals... seems pretty clear to me that the guy knew his stuff... As Lydiard discusses in "Running to the Top", which, despite its incredibly bad grammar and lack of focus, is the holy grail of running books in my opinion, Kenyans are only the best because all of their top runners were doing literally 100 miles a week as a means of transportation since the age of 10 or even younger. Their only truly legitimate genetic difference is an elongated gluteus maximus, which really only helps them to sprint a bit faster when fatigued, ie shave a couple seconds off max. There is proof that they have better developed endurance simply as a result of training their base for a longer period of time. By the time they start working on speed, their endurance is so through the roof that they are absolutely and utterly ready to crush anyone and everyone. The main lesson, focus on you endurance and get into shape before you run fast. I am doing that for several months this winter (virtually zero speed work between mid-December and mid February), ONLY focusing on building endurance, and I am confident that it will make me much faster in the end once I am finally doing some speed work.
Oh, one other edit: my treadmill was broken on Saturday... hahaha... I didn't realize it two broken wheels and was at a huge incline until after I posted this, so that is a bit of a relief to me. Hurray, I don't suck as much as I thought I did!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
End of the week training report for the week of 12-8-2008
So my week was as follows:
Monday: 11 miles: Treadmill run at around a 6:15 to 6:20 per mile pace... I was feeling particularly lazy, so I just ran at a modest pace inside on a treadmill rather than braving the elements.
Tuesday: 15 miles: I was going to go out for a nice fast 10 mile tempo run, mostly involving running through and around Druid Hills, but on my way back after about 9 miles of tempo, I ran into fellow Team That's What She Said runner Kris Simms and ran most of his run with him at a slower pace, tacking on some extra miles. I don't have an exact time on the run, but the first 9 miles were probably around 5:50 per mile (I was CRUISING), and the last 6 felt to be somewhere in the 7's range.
Wednesday: 15 miles: I went for about 105 minutes out in the cold soaking rain. My pace was reasonably fast, but relatively easily sustainable. I ran to and from Robert E Lee park with a loop and a half-ish (loops are somewhat hard to define here) and was stupid enough to bring my iPod shuffle, which stopped working partway through the run . Fortunately, after letting it just sit around for a few days, it's working again. The other retarded thing I did on Wednesday was slam my ankle into a downed tree really hard, which has given me a rather painful bruise. I was going on a new trail that I didn't know very well and I was jumping a fallen tree, but it was super slippery and my right foot completely slid out from under me. Unfortunately, I crashed down on the other side and slammed my left ankle into another smaller downed tree on the other side that I didn't initially know was there. I was sort of just laughing at myself at first for being so reckless and stupid, but it's been a little bit painful for the last couple days now. Fortunately, a bruised ankle is nothing more than painful while running; training on it won't screw me over at all.
Thursday: 25 miles: Thursday was a great day of training. I went back to Robert E Lee in another downpour and ran a couple miles more than the previous day in a little under 2 hours for a 17 miler early in the day. Later on, I was feeling good, so I went back out for another 8 miles in Druid Hills with a headlamp in on and off showers around midnight. Shortly into my run, before I hit the park, some dude was walking down the street and was like "Man, that's some dedication", which really helped fuel my run. It's funny how a little comment here or there from someone I don't even know that knows nothing about my training can make me want to keep working hard. I felt really good the whole run since I kept it super slow (spent just under an hour for 8 miles) and I was just super pumped up for a few hours after running and couldn't get to bed until 4:30 AM or something ridiculous.
Friday: 9 miles: By Friday, I had begun to start feeling nervous about the last 2 finals of my undergraduate career (I have both on this coming Tuesday: Models of the Neuron from 9AM - noon and Systems Bioengineering 3 from 6PM to 9PM). I'd done very little for studying and I didn't give myself very much time to running so I could spend more time studying. I just ended up going out for a 9 miler, which I did in about an hour, mostly on the forest trails and hilly paved trails in Druid Hills. I probably would've chopped off a bit of studying and run more, but I was pretty nervous about my 20 mile Loch Raven run on Saturday, since I was running it with Adam Sierakowski who is quite fast. I didn't want to go into it tired and sore, so I just kept Friday pretty short.
Saturday: 20 miles: I did a really great 20 miler on Saturday morning with Adam Sierakowski, the guy who debuted in the marathon in a freakishly fast 2:47. Adam kept assuring me that he was out of shape, but I was imagining that his "out of shape" would be something like my "incredible shape". Fortunately, though, I was able to keep up the whole time and have enough energy left at the end to tempo the crap out of the last 5 miles. We did the first 80 minutes at roughly a 7:30/mile pace on pretty rugged trails including a couple uphills that were so bad that I vowed to never run them again. After about 80 minutes, we were inadvertently right back by his car after probably a little less than 11 miles, so we just ended up doing a much faster out-and-back on Loch Raven Drive. We instantly picked up the pace on the road, which was downhill almost the entire way on the out and the 30 minutes went by very quickly. On the way back, I decided to see what we were made of and I just brought the pace up another notch to a quad-burning rate that was pretty ridiculous after having run 15 or 16 miles already. We're still sort of arguing about what the pace was near the end, but having done a fair amount of treadmill training lately on my lazy days and now having a pretty good idea for exactly how a 6 minute mile feels, I'm pretty sure the last 3 miles were extremely close to, if not under, a 6 minute mile. The back section was mostly a slight gradual uphill with one particularly nasty uphill for what must've been close to a mile near the end, but we both pushed it in pretty hard for a strong finish.
Sunday: 9 miles: Now that I'm really getting scared about my finals (I'm maybe a little over half-way done studying for Models of the Neuron, but I haven't done crap for SBE3), I kept my run pretty darn short. I decided to just run super fast today, so I did a pretty short loop through Druid Hills and then finished by going on an absolute rampage around campus as fast as I possibly could. I wanted to start getting used to training in uncomfortably cold temperatures so I won't absolutely die when I go home to MN for Christmas, so I was super-hardcore-like and ran this thing shirtless despite temperatures somewhere in the low 40s. It must've looked pretty funny to see me running at a barely sustainable pace at the tail-end of daylight in December with no shirt on... haha... I was WAY under 6 minute miles for this crap, so I was good and tired by the end.
Weekly Total: 104 miles
Reflections on the week/a bit about next week: I know I was gunning for about 115 miles, but I decided that anything over 100 was still very good, especially since I really need to keep my mileage up through the end of January and I know that 115 a week is more than I'll be able to sustain for that long. If I can keep my average as close to 100 a week as possible, I'll probably be the most ready I can be for Rocky Raccoon without burning myself out. I'm still debating whether or not to actually race the Celtic Solstice 5 miler this coming Saturday; I know that if I race it without at least 2 days taper, I probably won't be incredibly happy with my time and I also know that regardless of what happens, I really want to run the entire 20 mile NCR trail later in the day on Saturday, so doing that after racing would be fairly painful. That being said, running a good 20 miler after totally fatiguing myself by racing might help with the preparation for Rocky Raccoon, so I might just go ahead and do it. I'm pretty sure that if I race on Saturday, I won't end up tapering for more than a day since tomorrow and Tuesday will probably be crappy days for running due to finals and whatnot. There's a decent chance I won't even get out to run on Tuesday until 10 PM or something since I'll probably want to study more for my 2nd final after taking my first one. That being said, I'm going to want to put in really big days on Wednesday and Thursday to make up. No matter what, I'll probably have to be content with 90 miles this week. I'm going to push for as many miles as I can and try to hit 100, but that'll probably only happen if I do back-to-back 20's on Wednesday and Thursday, run the whole NCR thing on Saturday, and then still hit a reasonable run in MN on Sunday after getting in pretty late. I'm feeling pretty well-motivated as of late though, so I should hopefully be able to make things happen, especially, if I throw in 2-a-days on Wednesday and/or Thursday.
Monday: 11 miles: Treadmill run at around a 6:15 to 6:20 per mile pace... I was feeling particularly lazy, so I just ran at a modest pace inside on a treadmill rather than braving the elements.
Tuesday: 15 miles: I was going to go out for a nice fast 10 mile tempo run, mostly involving running through and around Druid Hills, but on my way back after about 9 miles of tempo, I ran into fellow Team That's What She Said runner Kris Simms and ran most of his run with him at a slower pace, tacking on some extra miles. I don't have an exact time on the run, but the first 9 miles were probably around 5:50 per mile (I was CRUISING), and the last 6 felt to be somewhere in the 7's range.
Wednesday: 15 miles: I went for about 105 minutes out in the cold soaking rain. My pace was reasonably fast, but relatively easily sustainable. I ran to and from Robert E Lee park with a loop and a half-ish (loops are somewhat hard to define here) and was stupid enough to bring my iPod shuffle, which stopped working partway through the run . Fortunately, after letting it just sit around for a few days, it's working again. The other retarded thing I did on Wednesday was slam my ankle into a downed tree really hard, which has given me a rather painful bruise. I was going on a new trail that I didn't know very well and I was jumping a fallen tree, but it was super slippery and my right foot completely slid out from under me. Unfortunately, I crashed down on the other side and slammed my left ankle into another smaller downed tree on the other side that I didn't initially know was there. I was sort of just laughing at myself at first for being so reckless and stupid, but it's been a little bit painful for the last couple days now. Fortunately, a bruised ankle is nothing more than painful while running; training on it won't screw me over at all.
Thursday: 25 miles: Thursday was a great day of training. I went back to Robert E Lee in another downpour and ran a couple miles more than the previous day in a little under 2 hours for a 17 miler early in the day. Later on, I was feeling good, so I went back out for another 8 miles in Druid Hills with a headlamp in on and off showers around midnight. Shortly into my run, before I hit the park, some dude was walking down the street and was like "Man, that's some dedication", which really helped fuel my run. It's funny how a little comment here or there from someone I don't even know that knows nothing about my training can make me want to keep working hard. I felt really good the whole run since I kept it super slow (spent just under an hour for 8 miles) and I was just super pumped up for a few hours after running and couldn't get to bed until 4:30 AM or something ridiculous.
Friday: 9 miles: By Friday, I had begun to start feeling nervous about the last 2 finals of my undergraduate career (I have both on this coming Tuesday: Models of the Neuron from 9AM - noon and Systems Bioengineering 3 from 6PM to 9PM). I'd done very little for studying and I didn't give myself very much time to running so I could spend more time studying. I just ended up going out for a 9 miler, which I did in about an hour, mostly on the forest trails and hilly paved trails in Druid Hills. I probably would've chopped off a bit of studying and run more, but I was pretty nervous about my 20 mile Loch Raven run on Saturday, since I was running it with Adam Sierakowski who is quite fast. I didn't want to go into it tired and sore, so I just kept Friday pretty short.
Saturday: 20 miles: I did a really great 20 miler on Saturday morning with Adam Sierakowski, the guy who debuted in the marathon in a freakishly fast 2:47. Adam kept assuring me that he was out of shape, but I was imagining that his "out of shape" would be something like my "incredible shape". Fortunately, though, I was able to keep up the whole time and have enough energy left at the end to tempo the crap out of the last 5 miles. We did the first 80 minutes at roughly a 7:30/mile pace on pretty rugged trails including a couple uphills that were so bad that I vowed to never run them again. After about 80 minutes, we were inadvertently right back by his car after probably a little less than 11 miles, so we just ended up doing a much faster out-and-back on Loch Raven Drive. We instantly picked up the pace on the road, which was downhill almost the entire way on the out and the 30 minutes went by very quickly. On the way back, I decided to see what we were made of and I just brought the pace up another notch to a quad-burning rate that was pretty ridiculous after having run 15 or 16 miles already. We're still sort of arguing about what the pace was near the end, but having done a fair amount of treadmill training lately on my lazy days and now having a pretty good idea for exactly how a 6 minute mile feels, I'm pretty sure the last 3 miles were extremely close to, if not under, a 6 minute mile. The back section was mostly a slight gradual uphill with one particularly nasty uphill for what must've been close to a mile near the end, but we both pushed it in pretty hard for a strong finish.
Sunday: 9 miles: Now that I'm really getting scared about my finals (I'm maybe a little over half-way done studying for Models of the Neuron, but I haven't done crap for SBE3), I kept my run pretty darn short. I decided to just run super fast today, so I did a pretty short loop through Druid Hills and then finished by going on an absolute rampage around campus as fast as I possibly could. I wanted to start getting used to training in uncomfortably cold temperatures so I won't absolutely die when I go home to MN for Christmas, so I was super-hardcore-like and ran this thing shirtless despite temperatures somewhere in the low 40s. It must've looked pretty funny to see me running at a barely sustainable pace at the tail-end of daylight in December with no shirt on... haha... I was WAY under 6 minute miles for this crap, so I was good and tired by the end.
Weekly Total: 104 miles
Reflections on the week/a bit about next week: I know I was gunning for about 115 miles, but I decided that anything over 100 was still very good, especially since I really need to keep my mileage up through the end of January and I know that 115 a week is more than I'll be able to sustain for that long. If I can keep my average as close to 100 a week as possible, I'll probably be the most ready I can be for Rocky Raccoon without burning myself out. I'm still debating whether or not to actually race the Celtic Solstice 5 miler this coming Saturday; I know that if I race it without at least 2 days taper, I probably won't be incredibly happy with my time and I also know that regardless of what happens, I really want to run the entire 20 mile NCR trail later in the day on Saturday, so doing that after racing would be fairly painful. That being said, running a good 20 miler after totally fatiguing myself by racing might help with the preparation for Rocky Raccoon, so I might just go ahead and do it. I'm pretty sure that if I race on Saturday, I won't end up tapering for more than a day since tomorrow and Tuesday will probably be crappy days for running due to finals and whatnot. There's a decent chance I won't even get out to run on Tuesday until 10 PM or something since I'll probably want to study more for my 2nd final after taking my first one. That being said, I'm going to want to put in really big days on Wednesday and Thursday to make up. No matter what, I'll probably have to be content with 90 miles this week. I'm going to push for as many miles as I can and try to hit 100, but that'll probably only happen if I do back-to-back 20's on Wednesday and Thursday, run the whole NCR thing on Saturday, and then still hit a reasonable run in MN on Sunday after getting in pretty late. I'm feeling pretty well-motivated as of late though, so I should hopefully be able to make things happen, especially, if I throw in 2-a-days on Wednesday and/or Thursday.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
First Post
So, I decided to open up this blog to post my running training. I figure this will 1. keep me training as hard as I can if anyone is reading, and 2. help inspire other runners if my training goes well and my races go well as a result.
I am just finishing my undergrad at Johns Hopkins University, majoring in Biomedical Engineering with minors in music, applied math, and (regular) math and I'm currently applying to various PhD programs in Bioengineering and/or Biomedical Engineering. Between January and August, I'll be working full time as a lab technician, a good (but pretty low paying) job that won't require anything beyond a typical workweek, so compared to the hell of Hopkins BME undergrad, I'll have all the time in the world to train.
About me: I am an endurance runner having raced distances between marathon and 100 miles 17 times thus far. My relevant PRs are:
Marathon: 2:58:57 (Boston '08)
50 Miles: 8:42:25 (Stone Cat '08)
12 Hours: 65.73 miles (F.A.N.S. '07)
100 miles: 23:09:00 (Lean Horse '07)
My goals for 2009 include dropping my 100 mile time below 20 hours (this may or may not be feasible), dropping my 50 mile time below 8 hours, and dropping my marathon below 2:50:00.
I'm currently training via my own system that is quite similar to the Lydiard Method so that I will peak for extreme endurance in February for the Rocky Raccoon 100 mile endurance run and for marathoning in April for the Boston Marathon. This involves running as many miles as I am comfortable running between now and the end of January and then, after Rocky Raccoon, doing 3-4 weeks of speed, 3-4 weeks of hills and strength, and then overall tune-up for a few more weeks before Boston.
Other than Rocky and Boston, I have a few "tune-up races" between these 2: (B&A trail marathon and Seneca Creek Greenway Trail or whatever it's called 50K in back to back weekends in the first week of March, and American River 50 miler in early April, though I'm still tentative on AR50). After Boston, I will be pushing my endurance back to the maximum for a fun-filled summer. I'm planning on doing 3 races this summer, all 100-milers: Old Dominion in June, Vermont in July, and Cascade Crest Classic in August. I DNF'd OD at 81 miles last year, so I've got some vengeance to exact on that course after more proper training (I didn't quite have the time to really train properly for a 100 last summer).
My training has been absolutely excellent lately and I've recently run a gravel and rock trail marathon within 2 minutes of my PR set at Boston and a trail 50 miler in a big PR of 8:42:25, especially good considering that the race director admitted the race was measured in "Horton miles", ie it was probably a few miles long. I've been picking up my mileage quite a bit the last few weeks and have been hitting 20-25 mile training runs like nothing, easily running a 25 miler in 3 hours flat last week and still feeling fine for a decent length run the next day. So far this past week (weeks always starting on a Monday), I have run 11 miles, 15 miles, 15 miles, 25 miles (25 being today and being split into a 17 and an 8). I'm looking at doing a VERY easy 13 or 14 tomorrow morning with a short 3 or 4 mile jog in the evening, a decent 20 on Saturday, and a nice relaxing 12-ish on Sunday to top out the week around 115 miles or so. After a relatively mediocre first week of December due to my last semester of undergrad wrapping up (only running 57 miles), I'm still hoping to hit somewhere around a record 400 miles in December, which will be very tough considering the fact that I'll be spending the last 11 days of the month home in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. I've been training in terrible weather all this week though, so I guess I'm getting used to it.
My biggest relatively long term goal for my running at the moment is to become the youngest person to ever run the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile trek across Death Valley in July, considered the most difficult athletic endeavor in the world. The current record is 24, and if things go well with my 4 100s this year, I'm going to apply for a spot in 2010's run, where I will be a bit shy of 23. If I can break 20 hours in either Rocky or VT (the 2 easier 100s I'm doing this year) and finish all 4 100s, I think I'll have relatively decent odds of getting in, especially considering the fact that Old Dominion's heat rivals Badwater's, according to numerous runners who have finished both races.
Other than running Badwater, I'd like to also run the HURT 100, Western States 100, Arrowhead 135 (the frozen MN february version of Badwater, also put on by Adventure Corps), and Superior 100 at some point, in addition to some other less difficult races.
Please feel free to post any comments you might have about my training, racing schedule, etc. As you can see, I absolutely love to run and I love talking about running. I will try to keep my training updated as carefully as possible on here, but I log it on etraxc.com as well, so if I don't keep up for awhile, it won't be difficult to come back and post a fair amount of time worth of training at any given point in time.
I am just finishing my undergrad at Johns Hopkins University, majoring in Biomedical Engineering with minors in music, applied math, and (regular) math and I'm currently applying to various PhD programs in Bioengineering and/or Biomedical Engineering. Between January and August, I'll be working full time as a lab technician, a good (but pretty low paying) job that won't require anything beyond a typical workweek, so compared to the hell of Hopkins BME undergrad, I'll have all the time in the world to train.
About me: I am an endurance runner having raced distances between marathon and 100 miles 17 times thus far. My relevant PRs are:
Marathon: 2:58:57 (Boston '08)
50 Miles: 8:42:25 (Stone Cat '08)
12 Hours: 65.73 miles (F.A.N.S. '07)
100 miles: 23:09:00 (Lean Horse '07)
My goals for 2009 include dropping my 100 mile time below 20 hours (this may or may not be feasible), dropping my 50 mile time below 8 hours, and dropping my marathon below 2:50:00.
I'm currently training via my own system that is quite similar to the Lydiard Method so that I will peak for extreme endurance in February for the Rocky Raccoon 100 mile endurance run and for marathoning in April for the Boston Marathon. This involves running as many miles as I am comfortable running between now and the end of January and then, after Rocky Raccoon, doing 3-4 weeks of speed, 3-4 weeks of hills and strength, and then overall tune-up for a few more weeks before Boston.
Other than Rocky and Boston, I have a few "tune-up races" between these 2: (B&A trail marathon and Seneca Creek Greenway Trail or whatever it's called 50K in back to back weekends in the first week of March, and American River 50 miler in early April, though I'm still tentative on AR50). After Boston, I will be pushing my endurance back to the maximum for a fun-filled summer. I'm planning on doing 3 races this summer, all 100-milers: Old Dominion in June, Vermont in July, and Cascade Crest Classic in August. I DNF'd OD at 81 miles last year, so I've got some vengeance to exact on that course after more proper training (I didn't quite have the time to really train properly for a 100 last summer).
My training has been absolutely excellent lately and I've recently run a gravel and rock trail marathon within 2 minutes of my PR set at Boston and a trail 50 miler in a big PR of 8:42:25, especially good considering that the race director admitted the race was measured in "Horton miles", ie it was probably a few miles long. I've been picking up my mileage quite a bit the last few weeks and have been hitting 20-25 mile training runs like nothing, easily running a 25 miler in 3 hours flat last week and still feeling fine for a decent length run the next day. So far this past week (weeks always starting on a Monday), I have run 11 miles, 15 miles, 15 miles, 25 miles (25 being today and being split into a 17 and an 8). I'm looking at doing a VERY easy 13 or 14 tomorrow morning with a short 3 or 4 mile jog in the evening, a decent 20 on Saturday, and a nice relaxing 12-ish on Sunday to top out the week around 115 miles or so. After a relatively mediocre first week of December due to my last semester of undergrad wrapping up (only running 57 miles), I'm still hoping to hit somewhere around a record 400 miles in December, which will be very tough considering the fact that I'll be spending the last 11 days of the month home in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. I've been training in terrible weather all this week though, so I guess I'm getting used to it.
My biggest relatively long term goal for my running at the moment is to become the youngest person to ever run the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile trek across Death Valley in July, considered the most difficult athletic endeavor in the world. The current record is 24, and if things go well with my 4 100s this year, I'm going to apply for a spot in 2010's run, where I will be a bit shy of 23. If I can break 20 hours in either Rocky or VT (the 2 easier 100s I'm doing this year) and finish all 4 100s, I think I'll have relatively decent odds of getting in, especially considering the fact that Old Dominion's heat rivals Badwater's, according to numerous runners who have finished both races.
Other than running Badwater, I'd like to also run the HURT 100, Western States 100, Arrowhead 135 (the frozen MN february version of Badwater, also put on by Adventure Corps), and Superior 100 at some point, in addition to some other less difficult races.
Please feel free to post any comments you might have about my training, racing schedule, etc. As you can see, I absolutely love to run and I love talking about running. I will try to keep my training updated as carefully as possible on here, but I log it on etraxc.com as well, so if I don't keep up for awhile, it won't be difficult to come back and post a fair amount of time worth of training at any given point in time.
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