Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:47, 6:42, 6:31)
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:29/mi. (12 total)
Fr: 6
Sa: 7, 4
Su: 20 (first half progressing from 8 to 7 minute pace, then averaging 6:56 pace for the last 10 mi.)
Week total: 82
Mo: 5
Tu: 7
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 (plus 6 strides)
Fr: 7
Sa: Navy / Air Force Half Marathon in 1:24:39 (18 total)
Su: 7
Week total: 63
Mo: 7
Tu: 7
We: 12 on hills (last 3 miles 6:56, 6:53, 6:40)
Th: 6 x 800m in 2:59, 2:58, 2:54, 2:52, 2:51, 2:49 (10 total), 5 (pm)
Fr: 7
Sa: 8
Su: off (pain above left knee)
Week total: 56
Mo: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:28/mi. (12 total)
Tu: 7
We: 24
Th: 7
Fr: 7
Sa: Clarendon Day 10k in 38:05 (10.5 total)
Su: 12.5
Week total: 80
I had some good workouts and tune-up races this month, and only one minor set-back. My tempo runs extended to 7 miles in the high 6:20s, and I was able to hold that pace in the Navy / Air Force Half marathon. That's probably the end of tempos at that pace for this training cycle, as I shift to focusing on faster paces for shorter distances and marathon pace. I'm still just beginning to run the faster paces again. The one track workout I did this month went well but was only my first real attempt at speed work since Spring, and the 10k race the following week showed that I still have a ways to go in that department. The new stress of speed work also took its toll by forcing me to take a day off at the end of the third week this month, on a day when I had planned to do a long run. I bounced back just fine after the extra rest, but it did leave me with two lower mileage weeks in a row, since it happened the week after a planned recovery week. No big deal. As for marathon workouts, the big one occurred at the end of the first week. I set out planning to run some unspecified number of miles at marathon pace - I was hoping for at least 5 - at the end of a 20 mile run. But from the beginning I felt good, and the weather had turned to an unusually early Fall crispness. So I went for it and ended up attempting a 10/10 workout, which I'd never done before but have often read of others using as their peak marathon training run. The idea is to progress gradually from a slow start to marathon pace over 10 miles, and then to hold marathon pace for another 10 miles. Somehow I almost pulled this off at sub-3 hour marathon pace a full 10 weeks before my target marathon. It was tough but things were going ok until I reached a mile-long hill in the 17th mile. I was getting tired anyway and didn't even try to run fast up the hill, using it instead to recover enough that I could run the final 3 miles strong. Not including mile 17, which I ran in 7:56, my average pace for the other 9 miles in the second half of this run was 6:49. To run a sub-3 hour marathon, you need to average 6:52 or faster. That one slow mile brought my average pace down to 6:56 for those 10 miles, and my average pace for the entire 20 miles was 7:16. (My current marathon PR of 3:12 from last October is 7:20 pace). After that monster training run, I became worried about overtraining. So I spent the entire next week, which featured a mini-heat wave anyway, running easy and short before the half marathon, after which I spent another 3 days running easy to make sure I was fully recovered. Perhaps even that wasn't enough, since the scare that forced me to take a day off happened after I then returned to doing harder runs. (Two in a row probably wasn't a good idea just then). I've been fine this past week, though, so hopefully that's behind me. At the end of this coming week is my next major marathon workout: the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon, which I'll try to run at around 6:45 pace. Besides that, in October I hope to finish bringing my speed back online with a couple of shorter races and some more track workouts. If all goes well, I'll probably stay around 80 miles per week only for another 2-3 weeks before starting to taper gradually toward mid-November. I find myself looking forward more to running fast in shorter races than to making another attempt at a sub-3 hour marathon. But that may be in part because those shorter races are sooner and frankly don't compare to the pain of running a marathon hard, which I'm not ready to start bracing myself for yet. When the time comes, though, I'll be ready.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Clarendon Day 10k (race report)
Well, that was a disappointing race. Let me go straight to my mile splits, which tell much of the story themselves:
mile 1 - 5:45
mile 2 - 5:32.5
mile 3 - 5:59
mile 4 - 6:12
mile 5 - 6:22
mile 6 - 6:30
finish - 38:05 (6:07/mi.)
It looks pretty obvious that running the second mile in 5:32, when I've never run a 10k faster than a 6:01 average pace, cooked me early on. And it did, but the course also had something to do with it. The Clarendon Day 10k course starts out downhill for the first mile and a half or so. The first mile is a net downhill but not steep. The second mile, however, begins with a steep downhill and then levels off. Knowing this, I just let myself roll through the first couple miles without straining or thinking about pace. My plan was to run 5:57s beginning in mile 3, which is sub-37 minute pace, no matter what my pace turned out to be in the first two miles. In the event, I noticed that my split for mile 1 was 5:45 just before starting the steep downhill. It felt like I coasted faster down that hill, but when I looked at my watch at the bottom of the hill it said 5:49 or something. So I didn't think I was going too fast and let the momentum from the hill propel me through the rest of that second mile at what felt like a fast but not uncomfortable clip. It wasn't until just before 2 miles that I looked at my watch again and realized that I was running 5:30 pace. Tall buildings and trees around the steep downhill must have prevented my watch from calculating the pace correctly earlier. But so far I felt ok, so after two miles I followed my plan and slowed to just under 6:00 pace. The 5k point on the course was not marked, but surely I got there well before my current 5k PR of 17:58, since I was at three miles in 17:16. After the downhill start, the course is mostly flat with low, rolling hills, a turn-around in the fourth mile at the top of a slightly bigger hill, and then an uphill finish. So everyone runs way faster on the first half of this course than the second. The latter two thirds of the course are almost right next to the Potomac river, and there was also some wind that somehow felt like a headwind no matter what direction we were going. Still, in spite of my faster pace in the early miles, I'm disappointed at not being able to stay under 6:00 pace from mile 3. In spite of having done only two speed workouts since March, I expected to be strong enough to run under 37 minutes today on this course and was annoyed that I didn't even get under 38. The three beers I had with and after dinner last night may also have had something to do with it. When it became obvious in mile 4 that I was losing it and saw the people near me start to pull away, I began thinking the same thoughts that often come to mind when I race poorly. How do those other people run so fast? I got 28th place overall, and I'm not delusional enough to think I could ever compete with the guys running sub-5 minute pace. But after those superhumans, there is usually a gap and then some mortals running in the mid- and upper-5s. I do compare myself with those people. It's not so much that I want to beat them as that I want to run with them, to count myself as one of them, partly as a sort of confirmation that, like them, I train hard and in the right ways. So when I see people running that sort of pace ahead of me after a turn-around or pulling away from me when I fall off the pace, my first thought is disbelief: how can those people run faster than me? There is no way they train harder or better than I do. Soon, usually after the race is over, this yields to a second set of thoughts: those people probably do train harder and/or smarter than me. The possibility that they may be more talented or younger than me doesn't detain me, since I choose to compare myself with them because I know that I can run their pace. (There are almost always people older than me who beat me anyway. Today there were four.) So eventually I settle into an attitude of respect for the hard work put in by the people who ran faster than me, and that motivates me to renew my own training efforts. It's useful to have a disappointing race now and then. But of course I didn't do it on purpose.
mile 1 - 5:45
mile 2 - 5:32.5
mile 3 - 5:59
mile 4 - 6:12
mile 5 - 6:22
mile 6 - 6:30
finish - 38:05 (6:07/mi.)
It looks pretty obvious that running the second mile in 5:32, when I've never run a 10k faster than a 6:01 average pace, cooked me early on. And it did, but the course also had something to do with it. The Clarendon Day 10k course starts out downhill for the first mile and a half or so. The first mile is a net downhill but not steep. The second mile, however, begins with a steep downhill and then levels off. Knowing this, I just let myself roll through the first couple miles without straining or thinking about pace. My plan was to run 5:57s beginning in mile 3, which is sub-37 minute pace, no matter what my pace turned out to be in the first two miles. In the event, I noticed that my split for mile 1 was 5:45 just before starting the steep downhill. It felt like I coasted faster down that hill, but when I looked at my watch at the bottom of the hill it said 5:49 or something. So I didn't think I was going too fast and let the momentum from the hill propel me through the rest of that second mile at what felt like a fast but not uncomfortable clip. It wasn't until just before 2 miles that I looked at my watch again and realized that I was running 5:30 pace. Tall buildings and trees around the steep downhill must have prevented my watch from calculating the pace correctly earlier. But so far I felt ok, so after two miles I followed my plan and slowed to just under 6:00 pace. The 5k point on the course was not marked, but surely I got there well before my current 5k PR of 17:58, since I was at three miles in 17:16. After the downhill start, the course is mostly flat with low, rolling hills, a turn-around in the fourth mile at the top of a slightly bigger hill, and then an uphill finish. So everyone runs way faster on the first half of this course than the second. The latter two thirds of the course are almost right next to the Potomac river, and there was also some wind that somehow felt like a headwind no matter what direction we were going. Still, in spite of my faster pace in the early miles, I'm disappointed at not being able to stay under 6:00 pace from mile 3. In spite of having done only two speed workouts since March, I expected to be strong enough to run under 37 minutes today on this course and was annoyed that I didn't even get under 38. The three beers I had with and after dinner last night may also have had something to do with it. When it became obvious in mile 4 that I was losing it and saw the people near me start to pull away, I began thinking the same thoughts that often come to mind when I race poorly. How do those other people run so fast? I got 28th place overall, and I'm not delusional enough to think I could ever compete with the guys running sub-5 minute pace. But after those superhumans, there is usually a gap and then some mortals running in the mid- and upper-5s. I do compare myself with those people. It's not so much that I want to beat them as that I want to run with them, to count myself as one of them, partly as a sort of confirmation that, like them, I train hard and in the right ways. So when I see people running that sort of pace ahead of me after a turn-around or pulling away from me when I fall off the pace, my first thought is disbelief: how can those people run faster than me? There is no way they train harder or better than I do. Soon, usually after the race is over, this yields to a second set of thoughts: those people probably do train harder and/or smarter than me. The possibility that they may be more talented or younger than me doesn't detain me, since I choose to compare myself with them because I know that I can run their pace. (There are almost always people older than me who beat me anyway. Today there were four.) So eventually I settle into an attitude of respect for the hard work put in by the people who ran faster than me, and that motivates me to renew my own training efforts. It's useful to have a disappointing race now and then. But of course I didn't do it on purpose.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Navy - Air Force Half Marathon (race report)
This is the second year that the Navy 5 Miler has fielded a half marathon as well, and my second year doing it as well. The course covered the same ground as last year but in a different order. This year we first went up Rock Creek Parkway and then came back down through Potomac Park, while last year we ran through Potomac Park first and later up Rock Creek Parkway. I like the course itself slightly better in this year's order, but the downside is that this year faster half marathon runners had to share the road with slower 5 Miler runners for the last 4 miles of the race from East Potomac Park to the finish. It wasn't too crowded but did require a little bit of weaving and made it basically impossible for me to get water at the last water stop, which was overwhelmed with 5 Miler runners. No big deal, but I think that running the half marathon course in last year's direction was on the whole preferable, even though it meant running into the almost inevitable headwind from the Northwest off the Potomac river for longer. That said, I enjoyed this year's course and ran a solid race. My main goal was to run strong the whole way, unlike last year, at somewhere around the pace of my tempo runs lately, which have stretched to 7 miles in the high 6:20's. I achieved that goal and felt particularly strong in roughly the second third of the race. I held on to a good pace almost to the end, only slowing down somewhat in the last mile. Here are my paces for each mile, according to Garmin:
mile 1 - 6:27
mile 2 - 6:31
mile 3 - 6:26
mile 4 - 6:33
mile 5 - 6:29
mile 6 - 6:32
mile 7 - 6:24
mile 8 - 6:08 (!)
mile 9 - 6:20
mile 10 - 6:18 (official 10 mile split - 1:04:21)
mile 11 - 6:19
mile 12 - 6:30
mile 13 - 6:43
finish - official time 1:24:39, which is 6:27/mi.
I started out conservatively, in part because after the first mile we were running into a light headwind and the low rolling hills on Rock Creek Parkway involved slightly more uphill than downhill. After 5 miles there was a turn-around and I ate a gel (mainly to practice for the marathon). Once I got the gel down, I started picking up the pace. My eighth mile was not as fast a Garmin says - it included passing under the Kennedy Center overhang, which screws up GPS measurements. But I did run a bit faster there, maybe more like 6:18, in order to get clear of a group of a few runners, including the second place woman, whom I had been running near for most of the race to that point. One of them reappeared at the very end of the race and passed me going up a small hill in the last half mile, but everyone else I passed during the race stayed behind me. I kept up the faster pace until we rounded Haines Point and turned into the light headwind again just as I was beginning to fade anyway. That's when crowds prevented me from getting water and my stomach started feeling sour from a second gel I had eaten at 9 miles (this time solely to practice for marathon fueling) without getting any water afterwards. I felt pretty miserable during the last mile and definitely could not have run any faster than I did. My finishing time was a PR by 2 minutes and roughly what I thought I could run based on how my training has been going. I'm especially happy about how strong I felt during the second third of the race, without totally falling apart afterwards. My 10 mile split is the second fastest 10 mile time I've run, 21 seconds faster than my Cherry Blossom time last year (though I ran 1:03:01 at Cherry Blossom this year). And I also can't but notice that my pace is just a hair slower than 20 minute 5k pace (6:26/mi.). When I first started running seriously in 2009 (not including a little running I did decades earlier as a teenager) my goal for a long time was to run a 5k under 20 minutes, which I finally did for the first time in June 2011. (I also did it once in 1991 as a teenager, which is why that particular goal of beating my then-16-year-old self motivated me.) I made huge strides in 2011 and also broke 19 minutes for the 5k about a month later and ran my first sub-40 minute 10k a few months after that. I haven't been able to keep up quite that rate of progress since then, in part because of injuries in both January 2012 and January 2013 (a pattern that I hope to break this coming January). But it feels good finally to have run this particular pace for a half marathon in my first real Fall race of 2013.
mile 1 - 6:27
mile 2 - 6:31
mile 3 - 6:26
mile 4 - 6:33
mile 5 - 6:29
mile 6 - 6:32
mile 7 - 6:24
mile 8 - 6:08 (!)
mile 9 - 6:20
mile 10 - 6:18 (official 10 mile split - 1:04:21)
mile 11 - 6:19
mile 12 - 6:30
mile 13 - 6:43
finish - official time 1:24:39, which is 6:27/mi.
I started out conservatively, in part because after the first mile we were running into a light headwind and the low rolling hills on Rock Creek Parkway involved slightly more uphill than downhill. After 5 miles there was a turn-around and I ate a gel (mainly to practice for the marathon). Once I got the gel down, I started picking up the pace. My eighth mile was not as fast a Garmin says - it included passing under the Kennedy Center overhang, which screws up GPS measurements. But I did run a bit faster there, maybe more like 6:18, in order to get clear of a group of a few runners, including the second place woman, whom I had been running near for most of the race to that point. One of them reappeared at the very end of the race and passed me going up a small hill in the last half mile, but everyone else I passed during the race stayed behind me. I kept up the faster pace until we rounded Haines Point and turned into the light headwind again just as I was beginning to fade anyway. That's when crowds prevented me from getting water and my stomach started feeling sour from a second gel I had eaten at 9 miles (this time solely to practice for marathon fueling) without getting any water afterwards. I felt pretty miserable during the last mile and definitely could not have run any faster than I did. My finishing time was a PR by 2 minutes and roughly what I thought I could run based on how my training has been going. I'm especially happy about how strong I felt during the second third of the race, without totally falling apart afterwards. My 10 mile split is the second fastest 10 mile time I've run, 21 seconds faster than my Cherry Blossom time last year (though I ran 1:03:01 at Cherry Blossom this year). And I also can't but notice that my pace is just a hair slower than 20 minute 5k pace (6:26/mi.). When I first started running seriously in 2009 (not including a little running I did decades earlier as a teenager) my goal for a long time was to run a 5k under 20 minutes, which I finally did for the first time in June 2011. (I also did it once in 1991 as a teenager, which is why that particular goal of beating my then-16-year-old self motivated me.) I made huge strides in 2011 and also broke 19 minutes for the 5k about a month later and ran my first sub-40 minute 10k a few months after that. I haven't been able to keep up quite that rate of progress since then, in part because of injuries in both January 2012 and January 2013 (a pattern that I hope to break this coming January). But it feels good finally to have run this particular pace for a half marathon in my first real Fall race of 2013.
Monday, September 2, 2013
August 12 - September 1: Transitions
Daily details:
Mo: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:30/mi. in Athens (11 total)
Tu: off (traveling back to the US)
We: 5
Th: 14 on "hills"
Fr: 6
Sa: 6
Su: 20k marathon pace run @ 6:49/mi. (15.5 total)
Week total: 57.5
Mo: 7
Tu: 13 (last 4 miles in the high 6:50's)
We: 7, 5
Th: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:54, 6:53, 6:41)
Fr: 7
Sa: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:27/mi. (12 total)
Su: 10
Week total: 75
Mo: off (tight hamstring)
Tu: 14 on hills
We: 7, 5
Th: 22
Fr: 7
Sa: 11
Su: track workout with 4 x 800 in 3:00, 2:56, 2:53, 2:55 (8.5 total), 5.5 (pm)
Week total: 80
These three weeks were transitional in several ways: I returned to the US and settled back in, my classes started in the third week but I was very busy and stressed with other work-related things (I'm up for tenure) for weeks beforehand, and running-wise I started shifting my focus to getting faster while maintaining my base. Along the way I had a couple set-backs, but nothing major. The first set-back was that I didn't recover well from the long trip back to the US. My weight dropped a bit and I had a migraine on the day before the Leesburg 20k. Often I don't run at all the day after a migraine, and I almost certainly would have skipped it if I had planned to race it all-out. But since the plan was to run marathon pace, I went ahead with it and just managed to stick it out, though it wasn't pretty. I felt fine for about the first third but tired out long before I normally would have and had to struggle to maintain a 6:49/mi. average pace. But I got it done. Afterwards I bounced back quickly and almost automatically found roughly that pace again at the end of both my medium-long runs the following week, which was encouraging. But apparently that and another 6 mi. tempo run were a bit too much too fast for my hamstrings. They were tight on one leg during that second week, and then at the end of the week the hamstrings on the other leg tightened up enough to force me to take a day off. Clearly running even a bit faster more often is the main cause of this, but I suspect that being really stressed out during the same period contributed as well. Most of the stress had passed by the third week, and I was also more careful then to avoid faster running for a little while. Though I'm still tighter than I'd like, by Sunday I was confident enough to go ahead with my first (baby) track workout since March. It was slow and short but served its purpose: to begin the process of slowly re-introducing my body to sub-6 minute mile paces, initially at very short distances. If I can work through this hamstring tightness, then I hope to do another tempo run and track workout in the two weeks before my first real Fall tune-up race, the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon. It's not going to be super fast, judging from my tempo runs lately. But my main goal will be to run a solid and consistent pace throughout, as opposed to last year when I fell apart early in the same race. I also hope to take advantage of the cooler weather that is forecasted to do a hard 20-miler next weekend with a good stretch of marathon-pace miles at the end. Otherwise, I'll keep putting in the miles but will mostly resist the urge to run faster in order to let my hamstrings loosen up. Even though my speed isn't back online yet, I'm feeling confident about the shape I'm in and what it portends for the Fall racing season. I keep repeating the first rule of running to myself: don't get injured.
Mo: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:30/mi. in Athens (11 total)
Tu: off (traveling back to the US)
We: 5
Th: 14 on "hills"
Fr: 6
Sa: 6
Su: 20k marathon pace run @ 6:49/mi. (15.5 total)
Week total: 57.5
Mo: 7
Tu: 13 (last 4 miles in the high 6:50's)
We: 7, 5
Th: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:54, 6:53, 6:41)
Fr: 7
Sa: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:27/mi. (12 total)
Su: 10
Week total: 75
Mo: off (tight hamstring)
Tu: 14 on hills
We: 7, 5
Th: 22
Fr: 7
Sa: 11
Su: track workout with 4 x 800 in 3:00, 2:56, 2:53, 2:55 (8.5 total), 5.5 (pm)
Week total: 80
These three weeks were transitional in several ways: I returned to the US and settled back in, my classes started in the third week but I was very busy and stressed with other work-related things (I'm up for tenure) for weeks beforehand, and running-wise I started shifting my focus to getting faster while maintaining my base. Along the way I had a couple set-backs, but nothing major. The first set-back was that I didn't recover well from the long trip back to the US. My weight dropped a bit and I had a migraine on the day before the Leesburg 20k. Often I don't run at all the day after a migraine, and I almost certainly would have skipped it if I had planned to race it all-out. But since the plan was to run marathon pace, I went ahead with it and just managed to stick it out, though it wasn't pretty. I felt fine for about the first third but tired out long before I normally would have and had to struggle to maintain a 6:49/mi. average pace. But I got it done. Afterwards I bounced back quickly and almost automatically found roughly that pace again at the end of both my medium-long runs the following week, which was encouraging. But apparently that and another 6 mi. tempo run were a bit too much too fast for my hamstrings. They were tight on one leg during that second week, and then at the end of the week the hamstrings on the other leg tightened up enough to force me to take a day off. Clearly running even a bit faster more often is the main cause of this, but I suspect that being really stressed out during the same period contributed as well. Most of the stress had passed by the third week, and I was also more careful then to avoid faster running for a little while. Though I'm still tighter than I'd like, by Sunday I was confident enough to go ahead with my first (baby) track workout since March. It was slow and short but served its purpose: to begin the process of slowly re-introducing my body to sub-6 minute mile paces, initially at very short distances. If I can work through this hamstring tightness, then I hope to do another tempo run and track workout in the two weeks before my first real Fall tune-up race, the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon. It's not going to be super fast, judging from my tempo runs lately. But my main goal will be to run a solid and consistent pace throughout, as opposed to last year when I fell apart early in the same race. I also hope to take advantage of the cooler weather that is forecasted to do a hard 20-miler next weekend with a good stretch of marathon-pace miles at the end. Otherwise, I'll keep putting in the miles but will mostly resist the urge to run faster in order to let my hamstrings loosen up. Even though my speed isn't back online yet, I'm feeling confident about the shape I'm in and what it portends for the Fall racing season. I keep repeating the first rule of running to myself: don't get injured.
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