I haven't posted here in a long time since my training never really got going again after the Philadelphia Marathon last November. In brief, I was too lazy, busy, distracted, and (in late winter) sick to train properly for a spring racing season. But still I had registered for several races and ran them as well as I could. Here are my race results so far in 2014:
March 19: St. Patrick's Day 8k in 36:05 (7:16 pace)
March 23: ChrisForLife Scope It Out 5k in 19:35 (6:18 pace)
April 6: Cherry Blossom 10-miler in 1:05:30 (6:33 pace)
April 27: Pike's Peek 10k in 38:35 (6:12 pace)
May 18: Capitol Hill Classic 10k in 39:48 (6:24 pace)
June 21: Grandma's Marathon in 3:10:33 (7:16 pace)
When I jogged the St. Patrick's Day 8k, which kind of signals the beginning of spring racing season in DC, I had been running again for about a week after having been sick for about a month in February. Four weeks later I let down my team at Cherry Blossom with a sub-par performance on only 5 weeks of not entirely healthy or focused training. My run at Pike's Peek was more encouraging but still slower than both of the previous two years. On the hilly Capitol Hill Classic course, my time was about 20 seconds slower than last year, when I ran it somewhere between race and tempo effort. To put all of this in a bit of perspective, during this time I was not only recovering from a string of February bugs but also buying my first house and nervously awaiting the results of my tenure application (I eventually got tenure). Often in the past I had used running as a way to distract myself from sources of stress in my life, but so far this year I haven't had enough energy even to use running as a distraction. It was at most an afterthought, insofar as I did it at all.
This brings me to Grandma's Marathon. I registered for it months earlier because I wanted to do a marathon before fall but didn't expect to be ready for a spring marathon. So I chose Grandma's because it's in Minnesota, where the weather is still suitable for running a good marathon in late June. But I never got around to training properly for it. My average weekly mileage for the 20 weeks before Grandma's was 34 miles, compared with 65 miles per week for the 20 weeks before my previous marathon last November (Philadelphia) and 61 miles per week for the marathon before that (the MCM in October of 2012). At least my long runs had progressed to 20 miles, and somehow I managed one 20-miler at 6:58 pace 3 weeks before Grandma's. But other than that I was basically just jogging when I could and not really doing any faster running except for the races mentioned above and a couple light workouts in the month or so before Grandma's. So the race became basically a test of two things: my residual fitness from past training, and my new fueling plan developed after Philly and from reading Matt Fitzgerald's book "The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition." In short, as I wrote here in my Philly race report, I decided that I hadn't been running up to my potential (such as it is) in the marathon because I hadn't been fueling adequately during marathon races. So my main objective after Philly was to figure out how to get more carbs into my body during marathons. I didn't do much training since Philly, but I did find time to study and practice this. The result was that at Grandma's I ran only 4 minutes slower than at Philly on about half the mileage and probably much less than half of the training effort. Far from being discouraged by my first non-PR in a marathon after seven attempts, I think that I may have found one - I don't say "the" - key to running a faster marathon, for me at least.
Here is what my fueling plan was at Grandma's. Beginning at mile 3, there were aid stations every 2 miles until mile 19, after which they were every mile. At each aid station, volunteers gave out water and Powerade. I ate a gel immediately before the start of the race, and then I ate a gel with water at every odd numbered aid station (miles 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19) until they started coming every mile. At even numbered aid stations in between those I just drank a cup of Powerade. Let's count carbs for a moment. One packet of my preferred gel (strawberry-banana GU) has 22g. of carbs. I figure that the sports drink served on this course gave me about 7g. of carbs per cup. So at 6:52 pace (3:00 marathon pace), my plan gave me roughly 160g. of carbs in a little over 2 hours, which is basically right in the middle of the 60-90g. range recommended by Fitzgerald's book. After 19 miles my plan was simply to go by how I felt. I had 2 more gels in my pocket but ended up just drinking Powerade every mile instead of eating any more gels. So I ate a total of 6 gels, including the one just before the start, and drank maybe 20 cups of Powerade, which adds up to approximately 272g. of carbs over 3:10 or 86g. of carbs per hour. According to Fitzgerald, that's close to the maximum amount of carbs the human body can absorb (90g.). No wonder I had a gut cramp near the finish line!
Now isn't that a bit extreme? Yes, of course. Given my very limited training, I wanted to come as close as I could to testing, as if in a controlled experiment, the effect of maximizing carb intake during a marathon race. The result, I think, is pretty clear. Through 23 miles I was ahead of my marathon PR, such as it is, on approximately half the training. I began fading in mile 17, just as I did in Philly, but not nearly as much as I did then - from 6:52 pace to under 7:10 pace at Grandma's, versus fading immediately to the 7:30s after 17 miles in Philly. By mile 20 I did fade to the 7:30s at Grandma's, but that was 3 miles later than in Philly, which means I was still ahead of my Philly pace, given that I went through the half only 30 seconds slower at Grandma's (1:29:56) than in Philly (1:29:27). According to my Garmin, at the end of mile 23 I was 27 seconds ahead at Grandma's of my Philly time: 2:41:44 versus 2:42:11. Given my pathetic training for the previous 7 months, compared with the shape I was in at Philly, that is incredible and to be attributed substantially, I think, to all the carbs I took in at Grandma's prior to that point. Yes, the residual effect of prior training must be factored in too. But I think that if I had fueled at Grandma's exactly the same way I did in Philly, then I would have finished in a time much slower than 3:10, if at all.
Even taking in maximal carbs does not, by itself, enable you - or me, at least - to run a full marathon well, however. At the 23rd mile marker, I felt dizzy and had to stop. I started running again, or really just shuffling, only when a friend passed me after I had been standing there dazed and then eventually walking for maybe a minute or so. In the final 3 miles I stopped 2 more times: once to walk up a short hill, and then because of a gut pain (probably from all the carbs I had been consuming) shortly before the finish line. I probably lost 5 minutes (versus my Philly time) in those last 3 miles. By 23 miles I was just done, and by then no amount of carbs could compensate for my lack of training. But those first 23 miles were the fastest I have ever run.
So what now? It seems that if I just trained like I did before Philly, and fueled like I did at Grandma's, then I should be able to run a (perhaps significantly) faster marathon than I have done before. That seems so obviously true to me that I won't bother trying to test it as if in a controlled experiment. Of course I will try to take in at least almost as many carbs as I did at Grandma's in future marathons. But I hope to train in the future even better than I did before Philly. My first task, of course, is just to get serious about running again, once I recover from Grandma's. But having done that, I don't plan simply to duplicate the training I did before Philly. That would be too boring. Variables must be manipulated in new ways, and right now I'm inclined to do that mainly by increasing strength work while keeping average mileage about where it was then (which means increasing it back up to that level) but keeping it basically steady instead of taking recovery weeks every few weeks as I did last year. I have ideas about how to do this but will wait to post them when I start putting them into action.
March 19: St. Patrick's Day 8k in 36:05 (7:16 pace)
March 23: ChrisForLife Scope It Out 5k in 19:35 (6:18 pace)
April 6: Cherry Blossom 10-miler in 1:05:30 (6:33 pace)
April 27: Pike's Peek 10k in 38:35 (6:12 pace)
May 18: Capitol Hill Classic 10k in 39:48 (6:24 pace)
June 21: Grandma's Marathon in 3:10:33 (7:16 pace)
When I jogged the St. Patrick's Day 8k, which kind of signals the beginning of spring racing season in DC, I had been running again for about a week after having been sick for about a month in February. Four weeks later I let down my team at Cherry Blossom with a sub-par performance on only 5 weeks of not entirely healthy or focused training. My run at Pike's Peek was more encouraging but still slower than both of the previous two years. On the hilly Capitol Hill Classic course, my time was about 20 seconds slower than last year, when I ran it somewhere between race and tempo effort. To put all of this in a bit of perspective, during this time I was not only recovering from a string of February bugs but also buying my first house and nervously awaiting the results of my tenure application (I eventually got tenure). Often in the past I had used running as a way to distract myself from sources of stress in my life, but so far this year I haven't had enough energy even to use running as a distraction. It was at most an afterthought, insofar as I did it at all.
This brings me to Grandma's Marathon. I registered for it months earlier because I wanted to do a marathon before fall but didn't expect to be ready for a spring marathon. So I chose Grandma's because it's in Minnesota, where the weather is still suitable for running a good marathon in late June. But I never got around to training properly for it. My average weekly mileage for the 20 weeks before Grandma's was 34 miles, compared with 65 miles per week for the 20 weeks before my previous marathon last November (Philadelphia) and 61 miles per week for the marathon before that (the MCM in October of 2012). At least my long runs had progressed to 20 miles, and somehow I managed one 20-miler at 6:58 pace 3 weeks before Grandma's. But other than that I was basically just jogging when I could and not really doing any faster running except for the races mentioned above and a couple light workouts in the month or so before Grandma's. So the race became basically a test of two things: my residual fitness from past training, and my new fueling plan developed after Philly and from reading Matt Fitzgerald's book "The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition." In short, as I wrote here in my Philly race report, I decided that I hadn't been running up to my potential (such as it is) in the marathon because I hadn't been fueling adequately during marathon races. So my main objective after Philly was to figure out how to get more carbs into my body during marathons. I didn't do much training since Philly, but I did find time to study and practice this. The result was that at Grandma's I ran only 4 minutes slower than at Philly on about half the mileage and probably much less than half of the training effort. Far from being discouraged by my first non-PR in a marathon after seven attempts, I think that I may have found one - I don't say "the" - key to running a faster marathon, for me at least.
Here is what my fueling plan was at Grandma's. Beginning at mile 3, there were aid stations every 2 miles until mile 19, after which they were every mile. At each aid station, volunteers gave out water and Powerade. I ate a gel immediately before the start of the race, and then I ate a gel with water at every odd numbered aid station (miles 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19) until they started coming every mile. At even numbered aid stations in between those I just drank a cup of Powerade. Let's count carbs for a moment. One packet of my preferred gel (strawberry-banana GU) has 22g. of carbs. I figure that the sports drink served on this course gave me about 7g. of carbs per cup. So at 6:52 pace (3:00 marathon pace), my plan gave me roughly 160g. of carbs in a little over 2 hours, which is basically right in the middle of the 60-90g. range recommended by Fitzgerald's book. After 19 miles my plan was simply to go by how I felt. I had 2 more gels in my pocket but ended up just drinking Powerade every mile instead of eating any more gels. So I ate a total of 6 gels, including the one just before the start, and drank maybe 20 cups of Powerade, which adds up to approximately 272g. of carbs over 3:10 or 86g. of carbs per hour. According to Fitzgerald, that's close to the maximum amount of carbs the human body can absorb (90g.). No wonder I had a gut cramp near the finish line!
Now isn't that a bit extreme? Yes, of course. Given my very limited training, I wanted to come as close as I could to testing, as if in a controlled experiment, the effect of maximizing carb intake during a marathon race. The result, I think, is pretty clear. Through 23 miles I was ahead of my marathon PR, such as it is, on approximately half the training. I began fading in mile 17, just as I did in Philly, but not nearly as much as I did then - from 6:52 pace to under 7:10 pace at Grandma's, versus fading immediately to the 7:30s after 17 miles in Philly. By mile 20 I did fade to the 7:30s at Grandma's, but that was 3 miles later than in Philly, which means I was still ahead of my Philly pace, given that I went through the half only 30 seconds slower at Grandma's (1:29:56) than in Philly (1:29:27). According to my Garmin, at the end of mile 23 I was 27 seconds ahead at Grandma's of my Philly time: 2:41:44 versus 2:42:11. Given my pathetic training for the previous 7 months, compared with the shape I was in at Philly, that is incredible and to be attributed substantially, I think, to all the carbs I took in at Grandma's prior to that point. Yes, the residual effect of prior training must be factored in too. But I think that if I had fueled at Grandma's exactly the same way I did in Philly, then I would have finished in a time much slower than 3:10, if at all.
Even taking in maximal carbs does not, by itself, enable you - or me, at least - to run a full marathon well, however. At the 23rd mile marker, I felt dizzy and had to stop. I started running again, or really just shuffling, only when a friend passed me after I had been standing there dazed and then eventually walking for maybe a minute or so. In the final 3 miles I stopped 2 more times: once to walk up a short hill, and then because of a gut pain (probably from all the carbs I had been consuming) shortly before the finish line. I probably lost 5 minutes (versus my Philly time) in those last 3 miles. By 23 miles I was just done, and by then no amount of carbs could compensate for my lack of training. But those first 23 miles were the fastest I have ever run.
So what now? It seems that if I just trained like I did before Philly, and fueled like I did at Grandma's, then I should be able to run a (perhaps significantly) faster marathon than I have done before. That seems so obviously true to me that I won't bother trying to test it as if in a controlled experiment. Of course I will try to take in at least almost as many carbs as I did at Grandma's in future marathons. But I hope to train in the future even better than I did before Philly. My first task, of course, is just to get serious about running again, once I recover from Grandma's. But having done that, I don't plan simply to duplicate the training I did before Philly. That would be too boring. Variables must be manipulated in new ways, and right now I'm inclined to do that mainly by increasing strength work while keeping average mileage about where it was then (which means increasing it back up to that level) but keeping it basically steady instead of taking recovery weeks every few weeks as I did last year. I have ideas about how to do this but will wait to post them when I start putting them into action.
