Saturday, August 29, 2015

Reflections on summer racing

Since it has been nearly two months since I’ve written anything here, I won’t conform to my past practice of posting all of my training details, which are pretty boring anyway. Instead I want to reflect a bit on this entire “season” of summer races. After the Boston Marathon, I decided to focus for the summer on 5k-10k training and racing, before shifting back into marathon mode in the fall. My ambition was to attack my PRs of 17:58 (5k) and 37:23 (10k), which as it turned out I got nowhere close to this summer. Here are all my racing results from this summer (defined as June-July-August):

2015 summer races:
6/13/15 – PRR Twilight 4 miler (DNF)
7/4/15 – PRR Firecracker 5k (19:11) – some hills
8/1/15 – Crime Solvers 5k (19:19) – hilly
8/15/15 – PG Running Club 5k (18:41)
8/23/15 – South Lakes 10k (39:15) – hilly

These times are slow for me. Granted, I was recovering from an injury scare on July 4 when I ran the Firecracker 5k; and I was jet-lagged on August 1 when I ran the Crime Solvers 5k, having just returned from spending three weeks in Greece. Both of those courses were hilly as well, especially the Crime Solvers 5k. Still, I didn’t expect to have trouble breaking 19 minutes in a 5k even on a hilly course. The next 5k was a little faster because it was flat. I was in good shape for that and for the South Lakes 10k, which again was hilly. I wimped out in the PGRC 5k and didn’t push as hard as I could have in the final mile, but in the South Lakes 10k I ran hard the entire way. Still, my times in those races ended up being only my 6th fastest at each of those distances. What the heck? Is age catching up with me? (I’m 40).

Well, when I looked back at the five faster races I’ve run at each distance, I discovered that only one race at each distance occurred in the summer, and not surprisingly neither of those was hilly. Both were from 2012, which is the last time I ran any short races in the summer. Here are all my results from short races in the summer of 2012:

2012 summer races:
6/9/12 – Lawyers Have Heart 10k (38:49)
6/17/12 – Dash4Dad 4 miler (24:08) – some hills
6/30/12 – Semper Fi 5k (18:26)

The Lawyers Have Heart 10k course is mostly flat. So I think my 39:15 at South Lakes is pretty clearly superior to 38:49 at Lawyers Have Heart. My 18:26 5k at Semper Fi was at the time only one second off my PR from a few months earlier, and it was a hot day. But I think that’s roughly equivalent to 18:41 on the PGRC course, which has more turns and registered on my Garmin as slightly longer. Four miles in 24:08 is basically equivalent to those 5k times. So on the whole I think my summer race results this year were actually not worse and may be slightly better than any I’ve had before, such as they are.

But let’s put all this in a bit more context. I really started running in 2009 but concentrated at first on running further, not faster, until my first marathon in October 2010. That was far enough for me, and I shifted my attention in 2011 to trying to get faster (mainly at shorter distances, but while still running marathons). I knew very little about how to train properly at the time. My idea of training in 2011 was basically to run a race almost every weekend and to jog when possible during the week. I ran 17 5ks in 2011 in addition to many longer races. My initial goal in the 5k was to break 20 minutes, which I first accomplished in June. Then I broke 19 minutes in July and shifted my attention to trying to break 40 minutes in the 10k, which I did in October, two weeks before my fourth marathon (3:19). Two weeks after that marathon, I was back to running 5ks every weekend, but at that point I started doing track workouts during the week from Jack Daniels’ Running Formula book. This led to a breakthrough in early January 2012, when I ran 18:25 for 5k, and shortly after that to a hamstring injury, which still plagues me today.

I soon recovered from the acute phase of that injury and got back to following a more realistic training plan based on Daniels’ book and focused exclusively on 5k through 10 miles. I did not run a spring marathon in 2012. But I ran 37:48 for 10k and 1:04:42 for 10 miles in April, then two 5ks just under my then-PR (18:27 in May and 18:26 in June, which is listed above) before shifting my focus to the marathon in the summer. This is the context for my summer 2012 races listed above: they came at the tail end of a long period focused on training for and racing shorter distances.

Since then my PRs at shorter distances have improved slightly. I ran my current PR of 17:58 for 5k in January 2013, after a short burst of track workouts following my 2012 fall marathon (3:12). A few months later, in April 2013, I ran my current PR of 37:23 for 10k, as well as 1:03:01 for 10 miles, which I improved to 1:02:49 in October of 2013 (my current 10 mile PR). But starting in the summer of 2012, my main focus has been the marathon, as it continues to be today. After recovering from marathons, I have put in a few periods of intense track workouts aimed at improving my PRs at shorter distances, especially just before the 2012 races listed above and in early 2013 before my current 5k and 10k PRs. But those short bursts of intense training were not sustainable and led to injuries in short order. The present summer of 2015 has been the first time – under the wiser guidance of my coach since July 2014, Ryan Vail – that I’ve taken some time out to focus on speed in a more sustainable way. I did have a minor injury scare in late June of this year, but that was mostly a consequence of less intelligent training in past years and the chronic injuries that resulted from it. Now I’m in it, more intelligently, for the long run.

Viewed in this context, the fact that my results in shorter races this summer are comparable to those in the summer of 2012 is very encouraging. My summer 2015 times are way off my PRs, just as they were in the summer of 2012, because temperature and humidity make a huge difference. But these times on hilly courses in the summer are basically equivalent to my shorter distance PRs in ideal conditions, which is to say on flat courses at any time of year other than summer. I’m running these times now off of training that is less intense, less likely to lead to injury, and more focused on long-term results than what I was doing before. Moreover, the long-term results I’m focused on now are mainly at the marathon distance that has captivated me since the summer of 2012. I’ve been having fun with a summer season focused on shorter distances, but the real work of marathon training is about to begin again in earnest now. Getting good at anything takes longer than a few months. It takes years of the kind of training that one can sustain not just for months but for years without injury. I didn’t really expect the payoff to be PRs at shorter distances this summer, although that was a useful short-term goal. The fact that my results this summer have been comparable to my best ever at shorter distances in the summer indicates that I’m on track to take some big steps forward this coming fall.

PRs are set in ideal conditions, and ideal conditions in distance running are usually found in the fall and spring. It sucks that one must train mainly in the summer and winter for races in the ideal conditions of fall and spring, but it is what it is. The season with the best conditions for distance running, namely fall, is upon us. I have some speed work under my belt, after which I’ve taken a week to recover mentally and physically. Ahead of me is a marathon build-up that, I expect, will finally take me to a new level – to the level that my training and racing have pointed to for years but that I wasn’t smart or patient enough to reach on my own. My coach has consented to allowing me to run some shorter races this fall during my marathon build-up: a 5k in mid-September, a 10-miler in mid-October, and a 10k in early November. Optimist that I am, I hope to challenge my PRs in each of these races – especially in the 10 mile race, which I’ve long dreamed of running one day in under an hour.

But when the chips are down, I’m all in for the marathon. I was on 2:56-7 pace last fall in Pisa before dropping out, and wow do I regret not slowing down and hanging on until the finish. After that I had a rough training block over the winter but still ran strong in Boston for a small PR. My next marathon will be Philadelphia in November, and I will be disappointed with anything less than a big PR there. Training for Philadelphia begins today, twelve weeks out from the race. I hope to run some fast times and hopefully some PRs in shorter races before then, but I’ll take anything less than that in stride as I build up to the main event.

One thing I’ve learned well from my few years of distance running is that somehow, once you get to a certain point, the physical rigors of the sport determine less than the mental aspect. It’s not all in your head. In fact, it’s pretty obviously mostly a matter of what your body can do when the gun goes off. But what your body can do is limited to a surprising extent by what you think it can do because of your innate talent, your training, your age, or whatever. I believe that my best days in distance running are ahead of me, especially in the marathon but also in other distances. I expect this belief to be vindicated beginning in the next few months as the weather cools.

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