A fishy PR

In my previous post four and a half months ago (what a blogger I am!), I congratulated myself for setting a half-marathon PR at the end of March, which was my first non-marathon PR since 2013 and my first PR at any distance since 2015; I wrote about finally managing to run an ok marathon again at Buffalo in May; and I wondered whether my body is still up to the sort of training I'd need to do to seriously target another sub-3:00 marathon this Fall.

Since then I've made some pretty significant changes, or rather I've reverted to some old ways of mine from many years past, and so far I'm having good results. It's not to do with the MRI or PT exercises I mentioned in my last post. I did get the MRI, which sure enough showed all kinds of gnarly stuff in my lower back. But afterwards my doctor repeated what he told me when I asked him for the referral: at my age (44) almost everyone has lots of gnarly stuff in their lower back that will show up on an MRI, but my level of activity is such that none of it warrants pursuing any of the available treatment options, almost all of which are very invasive. So that was a dead end. I also completely stopped doing any supplementary exercises after concluding that I spend enough time running as it is and they weren't helping anyway. But I did not give up on the goal of solving the muscle tightness problem that I've been complaining about for some time. It had gotten bad enough that I decided to try something that for me was more drastic than any attempted solution I had yet considered: I started eating fish again after seven years as a vegetarian. For some time I wondered whether my problem was nutritional, so I tried making various dietary adjustments consistent with my then-vegetarianism, such as eating more plant-based protein, adding more ground flax seed and Udo's Oil to my food, and taking regular B-complex and iron supplements. Yet the increasing muscle tightness and difficulty recovering from workouts continued. Of course it could simply have been aging, but eventually I decided that I needed to find out whether eating fish again would make any difference. This was a difficult decision for me, because I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but I've always thought it (ethically) better not to eat meat only if a vegetarian diet can be at least as healthy as a non-vegetarian diet. I still believe it can be, at least for some people, perhaps including me again at some point. But it is impossible to deny that since I started eating fish again this summer my recent muscle tightness and recovery problems have basically vanished. I don't mean, of course, that my muscles never get tight anymore or that I don't need any recovery time after workouts. But these are no longer anything close to the problems they had recently become. For the first time in years, I can do two shorter workouts during the week (usually a short tempo run and some intervals) instead of one (or the other), because I don't need several days to recover from each workout anymore. And I don't just recover well enough from a workout to get through the next one - I feel stronger and run better after recovering from workouts (which happens faster) because my body is actually absorbing the training now. It sounds silly, but I had almost forgotten how it feels to benefit from workouts instead of just doing them as some kind of end in itself. On the weekends, I can also pick up the pace on long runs again and even do long, 10+ mile tempos without my hip muscles locking up. I don't know whether it's because I digest protein from animal meat better (than even whey protein, which is also animal based), whether I needed an animal source of omega-3 (which you can get from supplements without actually eating meat), or what is making the difference. Nor, strictly speaking, do I know whether my vegetarian diet caused the problems I had been experiencing in the first place. But I do know that eating fish again is helping - a lot - to solve them.

So eating fish again is the biggest of the changes I've made lately, and I think it has made it possible for me to handle and benefit from the other changes, which are changes in my training. I already mentioned in my previous post that I intended to start trying to do faster interval workouts in order to improve my speed. Almost every week for a few months now I've been doing this: usually 12 x 400m or 10 x 500m with 1:00 or 1:15 recoveries. I run these intervals at a pace that averages in the high 5:30s, which is faster than my 5k PR pace (5:47) and much faster than I've run a 5k for years. Most weeks I also do a 3 mile, 4 mile, or 2 x 2 mile tempo run, which lately have gotten down below 6:10 average pace. In addition to those two types of workouts, which I usually do on Tuesdays (tempos) and Thursdays (intervals), on weekends I not only have been doing a lot of marathon pace work during long runs, but I've also squeezed down my marathon pace in training to the low 6:40s or high 6:30s. I've done a 10 mile tempo, a 12 mile tempo, 2 x 4 miles, and several long runs with sections of push miles in that pace range over the last couple of months. Any one of these variables - more frequent workouts in general, more intervals in particular, faster intervals, faster short tempos, more marathon pace running, a faster marathon pace - would mark a significant change for the better in my training. But all of them are happening at the same time. Once again I very much doubt that any of this, let alone all of it, would be possible if I weren't eating fish again.

Intervals are improving my hip extension

Since Buffalo I've run several summer club races, which were fun but hot and slow, and two 10 mile races. Near the end of August I ran the Annapolis Ten Miler in 1:06:35. It was my first time running that race and apparently the weather (in late August!) was better than anyone can remember. But all the hills were still there, and it's not a fast course. I ran well, though, and was pleased with how strong I felt on the hills after a shorter than usual stint of training in hilly Greece this summer. But the improvements in my training that I mentioned above really got going after the A10. My first opportunity to put them to use in a race was at the Army Ten Miler last weekend (on October 13). Again we had great weather, and the ATM course is fast. In 2013 I ran 1:02:49 (6:17 pace) at the ATM, which was my 10 mile PR until last weekend. Because my weekly short tempo runs have gotten down to 1:01 flat 10 mile pace (6:06) lately, I knew I was in PR shape. But I haven't been doing longer lactate threshold workouts, because my current schedule gives me only one recovery day between tempo and interval workouts, and I don't want to get too worn out on tempo day. Not really knowing what sort of pace I'd be able to handle in the latter part of a 10 mile race, I decided to aim for sub-1:02 (sub-6:12 pace). According to my Garmin, I ran the first 5 miles of the race in 6:04, 6:07, 6:05, 5:59, and 6:08. But, as often happens, my Garmin was measuring the course long, and I crossed the halfway point in exactly 31 minutes. I slowed down a bit from there, especially in miles 8-10, and finished in 1:02:43 (6:16 average). So I averaged 6:12 pace in the first half and 6:20 in the second. It's not the time I set out to run and think I can run with more LT-focused training, but it was still a PR - 6 seconds faster than I've ever run 10 miles, 19 seconds faster than I ran the same race in similar weather six weeks before setting my current marathon PR in 2015, and almost 2 minutes faster than I've covered that distance since then.

Adidas Adios, then air, then the ground

By the way, I ran the ATM in Adidas Adios, the same shoes I wear for short workouts, and the same shoes (but a later version of them) that I wore at the ATM in 2013 and 2015. I mention this because everybody is talking these days about the supposed performance advantage of the Nike Vaporfly 4% (and now the Next %). I wore Vaporflys when I ran my 1:23:45 half-marathon PR in March. According to McMillan, my new 10 mile PR converts to a 1:23:39 half marathon. So either the shoes don't make me faster (at least at those distances) or I'm in better shape now than I was in March. I think it's probably a little of both. I'm certainly in better shape now than I was in March, but I felt like I didn't run as well at the ATM as I did at the B&A half in March relative to my fitness at those times. But the shoes might help a little bit too. As I've written here before, I think the Vaporflys are best suited to the marathon, not to shorter distances. It probably depends on your running style, but I don't think they make me faster at all - in fact, I find trying to run fast in them more difficult than in proper racing flats like Adios (which are on the heavy side for racing flats). But over long distances the lightness and squish of the Zoom X foam in Vaporflys reduces fatigue and helps me avoid slowing down, as well as aiding recovery. It's possible that I could have run a little bit faster in them even over 10 miles than in Adios, but if so I don't think the difference would be very big at all. They're really just shoes, not magic, whatever the Nike marketing division would have you believe.

Some of the DC Road Runners after the Army Ten Miler

My next races will be the Veterans' Day 10k on November 10 and the Philadelphia Marathon two weeks later on November 24. I've run Philly twice before and PR'd both times, including my current PR of 2:58:56. Maybe the third time will be even more charming.  

Back on track?

In my previous post I described my DNF in Richmond last November, chalked it up to not enough marathon pace training runs, worried about my trend of stinker marathons for the past couple years, and pledged to run conservatively in my next marathon, which I identified as the Buffalo Marathon, after enjoying some Winter club races and then taking aim at non-marathon PRs.

Since then more than six months have passed, which did indeed begin with some very fun Winter club races, where I especially benefitted from competing with my friend and fellow age-grouper Shawn Zeller (whom I never managed to beat, however). Those races gave me a good base of fitness from which to target either my half marathon or ten mile PR in late March or early April. I registered for both the B&A Half Marathon on March 31 and the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler the following weekend, intending to target the first of these unless the weather or something else was off that day, in which case I could change my target to Cherry Blossom at the last minute. The training for 10 miles and the half marathon is essentially the same in any case (emphasizing lactate threshold workouts). I ended up going for it at the B&A Half Marathon and took down my old PR of 1:24:39 (6:27 pace) from 2013 by almost a minute, running 1:23:45 (6:24 pace). This was my first PR at any distance in three and a half years, since the SI-joint injury in early 2016 from which I seem never to have fully recovered. I knew that my old half marathon PR was the lowest hanging fruit among all my PRs, which is one reason why I targeted it, and had no doubt that I could beat it when in shape and in good conditions. My various chronic injuries are also such that lactate threshold workouts are the easiest for me to do, unlike faster intervals which require more recovery time and are more likely to cause acute injuries, and unlike very long runs during which I've increasingly been experiencing a lot of muscle tightness lately. Still it was very gratifying to set an all-time PR after such a long dry spell and at the age of 44 (after running regularly for 10 years). I think I can go faster still in the half marathon but will take aim first at my ten mile PR of 1:02:49 (6:17 pace), which according to McMillan is basically equivalent to my new half marathon PR anyway. Or at least I'll do so if we ever get good weather again at the Army Ten Miler in October (where I set my ten mile PR in 2013 and am registered to run again in 2019).

After the B&A Half, I turned my attention to preparing for the Buffalo Marathon on May 26. Since my goal was not to attempt to run especially fast but just to finish without completely falling apart, after my recent marathon DNFs, I did not end up emphasizing marathon pace training runs after all. I'll explain why below. But first, here are my training details for the 16 weeks leading up to the Buffalo Marathon:

February 4-10 (week 16)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 4 mile tempo averaging 6:44/mi.
We: 6 miles
Th: 16 miles @ 7:33/mi.
Fr: 4 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 6 x 4:00 (averaging 6:08/mi. pace) with 2:30 recoveries
Week total: 58 miles

February 11-17 (week 15)
Mo: off
Tu: 7 miles
We: 7 miles
Th: 5 mile tempo averaging 6:26/mi.
Fr: 7.5 miles
Sa: 20 miles @ 7:25/mi.
Su: 7.5 miles
Week total: 60 miles

February 18-24 (week 14)
Mo: off
Tu: 10 miles with 1 mile pick-up
We: 8 miles
Th: 3 x (2, 3, 4 min.) with 1, 2, 3 min. recoveries
Fr: 9 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: Club Challenge 10-miler (hilly) in 1:05:29
Week total: 57.5 miles

February 25-March 3 (week 13)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 9 miles
We: 8 miles
Th: 18 miles @ 7:23/mi.
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 7 miles
Su: Burke Lake 12k (offroad, muddy) in 48:17
Week total: 63.5 miles

March 4-10 (week 12)
Mo: 7 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park (hilly)
We: off
Th: off
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: Fort Hunt 10k in 38:59 (6:17/mi.)
Week total: 41 miles

March 11-17 (week 11)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 8 miles
We: 18 miles @ 7:28/mi.
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: off
Su: 3 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile averaging 6:22/mi.
Week total: 58 miles

March 18-24 (week 10)
Mo: 6.5 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
We: 6 miles
Th: 8 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries
Fr: 5 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 20 miles @ 7:29/mi. with Greenbelt Park near the end
Week total: 65.5 miles

March 25-31 (week 9)
Mo: off
Tu: 10 miles
We: 8 miles
Th: 10 x 500m averaging 1:50 with 1:15 rests
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: B&A Half Marathon in 1:23:45 (PR!)
Week total: 60 miles

April 1-7 (week 8)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: off
We: 9 miles
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: off (sick)
Su: off (sick)
Week total: 28 miles

April 8-14 (week 7)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 10 miles
We: 6 miles
Th: 6 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 10 miles
Week total: 55 miles

April 15-21 (week 6)
Mo: off
Tu: 19 miles @ 7:26/mi. twice through Greenbelt Park
We: 6.5 miles
Th: 10.5 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: off
Su: planned 8 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries (aborted after 3.5x)
Week total: 51 miles

April 22-28 (week 5)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 7 mile progression from 7:12 down to 6:34/mi.
We: 6 miles
Th: 20 miles @ 7:38/mi.
Fr: 4 miles
Sa: off
Su: Pike's Peak 10k in 38:34 (6:12/mi.)
Week total: 54 miles

April 29-May 5 (week 4)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 7 miles
We: off
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 22 miles @ 7:26/mi.
Week total: 55 miles

May 6-12 (week 3)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 6 miles
We: 2 x 3 miles (2 min. rest) averaging 6:36/mi.
Th: off
Fr: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
Sa: 6 miles
Su: off
Week total: 37.5 miles

May 13-19 (week 2)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: off
We: 4 miles
Th: off (back freaking out)
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 4 miles
Su: off (left foot hurting)
Week total: 20 miles

May 20-26 (week 1)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
We: off
Th: 4 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 2 miles
Su: Buffalo Marathon in 3:09:43 (7:14/mi.)
Week total: 47 miles
16 week average: 50.7 miles

I was still racing myself into shape at club races through week 12, and the B&A Half was at the end of week 9. But already in week 15 I started doing the main type of training run that I did in preparation for Buffalo: long runs in the 7:20s, in which I tried to incorporate more and more hills as I progressed (because I expected the Buffalo course to be hillier than it turned out to be). I ended up running Buffalo only slightly faster than my typical pace on these long training runs: officially 7:14 pace for 26.2 miles, although there were so many turns in the course that I believe my Garmin which tells me that I actually ran 26.56 miles at 7:08 pace. So I averaged somewhere between 10-20 seconds faster per mile than I ran on most of my long training runs, which is a difference that can easily be accounted for by advantages afforded by tapering and a race environment. Here are my mile splits:

Mile 1 - 7:08
Mile 2 - 6:46
Mile 3 - 6:47
Mile 4 - 7:05
Mile 5 - 7:03
Mile 6 - 7:01
Mile 7 - 6:54
Mile 8 - 6:59
Mile 9 - 7:04
Mile 10 - 7:02
Mile 11 - 7:02
Mile 12 - 6:46
Mile 13 - 6:53
[Halfway - 1:32:??]
Mile 14 - 6:54
Mile 15 - 7:12
Mile 16 - 6:59
Mile 17 - 6:51
Mile 18 - 7:23
Mile 19 - 7:12
Mile 20 - 7:10
Mile 21 - 7:09
Mile 22 - 7:24
Mile 23 - 7:37
Mile 24 - 7:42
Mile 25 - 7:56
Mile 26 - 7:26
Finish - 3:09:43

My average pace through 21 miles was 7:00-01. I slowed down the last 5 miles but didn't completely fall apart. Before then I found myself running a bit faster than I had expected but went with it because I felt good and my heart rate stayed below 160 until halfway, after which it hovered just over 160 until mile 18, and it never hit 170. My pace fluctuations before mile 22 correspond mainly with undulations in the course, although in the upper teens I hit a low point when the course went through an area with little tree coverage and the sun was bearing down on us. But I soon rallied when a clever volunteer shouted that I was probably second master, and then he repeated probably, which in my marathon haze I believed but which turned out to be completely false. (I finished 55th overall and 8th in the male 40-44 group, with four more older men ahead of me). That stirred enough competitive juices to keep my head in the game until mile 22, when just putting one foot in front of the other became difficult. There were enough people around me suffering more than I was, however, that I was able to stay motivated to pick off as many people as possible before the finish line. I don't recall anyone passing me during almost the entire race, after the first 10k or so.

The day before the race, I told my wife that I predicted a 3:10 finish and pretty much nailed it. Although this is not historically a fast time for me, it's (barely) the fastest I've run since my 2:58 PR in 2015 and the ensuing string of injuries (I also ran 3:10:57 at Chicago in 2017). It's what I needed after my DNF in Richmond and other recent stinker marathons in order to give me some confidence again that I can handle this distance. So I'm quite happy with this result.

I think my training was appropriate for this sort of goal, because I basically just needed to coax my body into tolerating a moderate pace for longer and longer distances, over increasingly hilly terrain, up to some point just a bit short of the marathon distance. This is how first time marathoners train. The speed work is sprinkled in mainly just to make your normal training pace feel easy and to increase efficiency. Otherwise, it's all about the long run, which gradually increases in length and either (for first timers, surprisingly) pace or (for me) hilliness. I needed to do that sort of training in order to get back to a baseline, which apparently is roughly 3:09-10 marathon shape for me, from which I can now hope to progress (again) toward more advanced marathon training.

I stand by the main point of my previous entry after my DNF in Richmond: the key element of advanced marathon training is marathon pace running. After running a half marathon at 6:24 pace at the end of March, which pegs my lactate threshold around 6:20 or so, my true marathon pace should have been in the 6:40s, assuming I was properly trained for the marathon. The right way to train for a marathon that optimized my abilities at that point would have been to throw in blocks of push miles in the 6:40s during every long run, especially towards the end, and occasionally to replace midweek speed or tempo workouts with something like 2 x 4 miles or 3 x 3 miles in the 6:40s. I've done this in the past, but my plan for Buffalo was not to attempt to run that fast. Physiologically, there didn't seem to be much point to replacing tempo workouts with runs at 7:00 or 7:10 pace, since that would not have been much of a workout for me. It would have made sense to throw in blocks of push miles around 7:00 or 7:10 during long runs, and sometimes I did manage to do this. But, again, I've been struggling lately with muscle tightness during the latter part of long runs, which often prevented me from accelerating to the pace that (somehow) I actually ran in Buffalo. Evidently this didn't matter as far as my preparations for Buffalo were concerned. But going forward, I'm going to need to solve this muscle tightness problem if I want to get back to more advanced marathon training and to targeting a marathon time under 3:00 again.

At the end of my previous post, I mentioned that I intended to make a point of regularly doing exercises to strengthen my right glute medius, which two PTs had suggested was the focal point of my recent injuries and muscle imbalances. To this end, for the past six months or so I have done the following supplementary exercises 2-3 times per week in the evenings: front and side planks, clam shells (with resistance band), lying side leg raises (weighted), single leg squats, and standing hip abduction (with resistance band). Sometimes I threw in a few upper body exercises as well, and I always did some stretching afterwards. I realize that muscle building and strengthening takes time, and that there's going to be a period of adaptation during which the muscles you're trying to strengthen actually feel worse because of the increased stress of the supplementary exercises on top of regular training. Nevertheless, after six months I think it's safe to say that the verdict is now in: strengthening my right glute medius did not solve the problem, which means that a weak right glute medius was not the (primary) problem. On May 13, during my (steeper than intended) taper for Buffalo, I visited yet another PT who suggested a different explanation for the muscle tightness I've been experiencing in my right hip. He suggested that it may stem from a bulging disc or two in my lower back and suggested that I get an MRI, which I've never had. To be honest, I've always suspected this, so I made an (upcoming) appointment with my primary physician at which I will try to persuade him to give me a referral for an MRI. This PT also gave me a new regime of lower back and (especially) abdominal exercises to do every day on the suspicion that I have a minor disc problem in my lower back. I started trying to do these exercises after my May 13 appointment but immediately realized that I couldn't handle them yet. So I set them aside until after Buffalo and have now just begun doing part every other day of what this PT says I should be doing every day. So I expect a period of adjustment to these new supplementary exercises, which should at least partially coincide with my recovery from Buffalo anyway. We'll see whether, after a period of adjustment, this new supplementary exercise regime helps address my right hip muscle tightness problem.

As for the future, there's not much to do in the summer running-wise besides working on speed and turnover. I mean, you can't run fast for very long in the heat and humidity. I realize that there are many physiological benefits to running moderately far and slowly in the heat, and to doing some limited tempo work in warm weather as well. But, really, where's the pleasure in that? You need to do it, and it'll pay off in the Fall. But the fun in summer running comes from running fast over short distances. This is something I have done little of recently. As I mentioned, fast interval workouts require a lot of recovery time for me these days, so I don't do them very often. As a result, I can't run faster than 5:50 or so pace over any distance to save my life, which means in a 5k (the shortest race distance I've ever run) I'm basically running flat out the whole time. I hope to get some better speed back this summer by patiently prioritizing speed workouts and the supplementary workouts I mentioned earlier. I'll do some short club races over the next couple of months to orient me in this direction.

After that, I'll spend less time in Greece this summer than usual, and I've registered for two ten milers in late Summer and early Fall: the hilly Annapolis Ten Miler on August 25, and the Army Ten Miler on October 13. Ten mile races are excellent targets because your ten mile race pace is basically your lactate threshold, and long distance running in basically about lowering your lactate threshold. So by signing up for these races I'm not really committing myself to anything other than trying to get better at long distance running in general. And to be honest I'm kind of on the fence about what to do in the Fall. I'd love to target a 2:5x marathon again, but I don't know whether my body can handle the training I'd need to do to seriously pursue that goal. Maybe this new regime of supplementary exercises will work and I'll be able to get back on track with harder workouts and higher mileage. Or maybe I'm just grasping at straws and getting too old for this crap. Again, we'll find out. I'm not much interested in running another 3:09 marathon, though. So either I need to be convinced that my body can handle the training for another sub-3 marathon in the Fall, or I'm going to focus instead on the 10k through half marathon, not only because my PRs for those distances are still just barely in range, but also because frankly I'm just better at those distances and training for them hurts me less. I love the marathon and will pursue it for as long as I have any hope of success, but for me success in the marathon begins with a 2. Can I ever run that fast again?