WEEKLY SUMMARY (December 2-8): 47 miles (87% easy and 13% 10k paces)
  Sunday: 2 E, 10k race in 40:42 (see report below), .8 E (9 miles total)
  Monday: 6 miles at 7:24/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 13 miles at 7:24/mi.
  Thursday: 6 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:21/mi.
  Saturday: 6 miles at 7:34/mi.

Again I took a day off this week, but still I managed to get a little more than minimum mileage in thanks to a mid-week medium-long run. After Sunday's 10k, which I discussed in my previous post, I recovered well on Monday but had an unrelated stomach problem that prevented me from running on Tuesday. I still felt puny on Wednesday but could manage 13 miles at easy pace well enough. The rest of the week involved ordinary easy runs, with Saturday's extra easy because of another race the following day. So, running-wise, this was a pretty uneventful week between races. I'm quite busy with work right now but am eager, when possible, to quit slacking with running and get back into some more serious training. Next week I hope, once more, to avoid taking any days off, to get back over 50 miles for the week, and to do two quality workouts in addition to the 8k race on Sunday.

DC ROAD RUNNERS CLUB BREAD RUN 10K (race report):

This race marks the beginning of a new attitude toward racing for me. My goal now is to win, rather than just to run some particular time. If I can't win, then my back-up goal is to place as highly as possible. The idea is to use competition to spur me on to running faster and to dictate my pacing strategy (along with how I feel, of course) instead of some pre-race plan. Deploying this attitude is difficult at big races in the Washington, DC area, because they draw elite and semi-professional runners with whom I can't possibly compete, although I find running behind them motivating in a different way (when I can see them). But I can let competitiveness drive me at big races in relation to the runners I find around me at a given point. It's easier to deploy this attitude at smaller races, though, which I do have some realistic hope of winning. My plan at this DCRRC race was to stay at the front as long as possible, unless the leaders were obviously much faster than me, in which case I'd let them go and stay with the fastest runners I could possibly imagine keeping up with. Again, the idea is to push myself through competition, and I realize that going out fast and trying to hang on for your life isn't the best pacing strategy for a fast time, because you're likely to drop off and slow way down. But it's a great strategy for testing your limits and trying to push through them.

I started this race knowing nothing about the course except that about half of it was on the C&O Canal towpath, which is a dirt and gravel trail that's mostly flat and straight. The rest of the course was on an asphalt path and, briefly, roads. Immediately before the race, the starter said something about steep hills, mud, and low tree branches, but it was difficult to tell whether this was truth or bravado. I led the race from the start as the course went up a short hill, turned 180 degrees, and then followed an asphalt bike path for a couple miles. One runner was just off my left shoulder and occasionally I could hear at least one other runner behind him, but I never looked back and had no idea how many others were nearby. My first mile split was 6:13 and I felt comfortable. But I must have slowed a bit after that, because the runner on my shoulder decided to pass me and set the pace after 1.5 miles. At that point I realized that I was in a pack of six runners that was stretched out a bit because of the narrow bike path. Our split for mile 2 was 6:17, and I was still doing fine. Then the course turned off the bike path and onto residential streets that sloped gradually downhill. Another runner moved to the front and pushed the pace down to around 6:00, which felt good to me although I knew that I couldn't do it for very long. Soon, though, we were directed to turn off the street and onto a narrow, dirt path that zigzagged down a steep hill. At the bottom of the hill, we crossed a bridge and careened down a tightly curled spiral walkway that zipped us around 2-3 times before throwing us out onto the towpath. By this point I was getting disoriented. I pretty much always run on asphalt or concrete and haven't been running many hills lately. That steep downhill trail, then the weird spiral thing, and now the loose footing on the towpath left me struggling to stay with the lead pack. Just before halfway I started falling back and never regained contact. Another runner, the one who first passed me, also fell back shortly after I did and stayed about 20 feet ahead of me as the pack maintained its pace and receded down the trail ahead of us. The two of us slowed down at roughly the same rate: my split for mile 4 was 6:32, and mile 5 was 6:43. I had lost my drive once winning was no longer a possibility, but what I should have done was pushed until I caught the guy in front of me. Then we could have had a mini-race of our own to the finish. Instead, I just kind of hung on as the course crossed back over the canal after 5 miles and started up a dirt trail as steep as the one we had flown down before. It was so steep that wooden steps had been built into it so that people don't just slide down the dirt. About halfway up the hill, I figured that I wasn't running much faster than I could walk, so I power-walked up the steps for a little while. This enabled the next runner back to make up some ground on me. I waited until he was about 10 feet away before starting to run again, figuring that I could hold him off once the course leveled out. At the top of the hill, we found ourselves on the bike path again, and the guy ahead of me looked to be doing at least as badly as I was. So I set my sights on passing him and holding off the guy who was closing in on me from behind. But in the end I achieved neither. The guy behind me really got moving on the level path and passed me just before the 6 mile mark. Soon he caught the guy ahead of me too, which galvanized him to speed up and try to hold onto his place (which he also failed to do). No doubt I could have dug deeper and put in more of a fight at the end, but honestly I quit fighting when I lost touch with the lead pack miles earlier, and that steep climb near the end was not the sort of thing I'm used to encountering in a 10k. I coasted across the finish line in seventh place in 40:42 - a time that reflects the nature of the course. It was at least as much a trail run as a road race.

So this was a learning experience. Next time, especially if I don't know the course, I'll try running with the lead group without setting the pace from the start. Even if I had done that today, it wouldn't have helped me deal with that steep off-road downhill and spiral thing that forced me out of my rhythm, which I couldn't get back again on the towpath, in part because of the loose footing. I don't deal well with pace or course changes that break my rhythm, or with trails for that matter. But still, in hindsight I think I could have just suffered for a little while longer in order to stay with the pack and see whether I could find a new rhythm on the towpath at that pace instead of slowing down.

WEEKLY SUMMARY (Nov. 25 - Dec. 1): 40 miles (97.5% E and 2.5% R paces)
  Sunday: 7 miles at 7:26/mi.
  Monday: 2.5 E, 4 x (400R at 79 + 400E), 2.5 E (7 miles total)
  Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:22/mi.
  Wednesday: 7 miles at 7:21/mi.
  Thursday: off
  Friday: 8 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Saturday: 4 miles at 7:33/mi.

Life prevented me from achieving my main goal for this week of not taking any days off. On Thursday, there was nothing wrong with me physically, but I just couldn't fit in a run and unfortunately had a tempo run planned for that day. With a race the following Sunday, and remembering the hole I recently dug myself into by doing workouts too frequently, I decided to skip the tempo run altogether instead of doing it on Friday. Then I did only a short and slower run on Saturday, because I couldn't manage to run until afternoon and had a race the next morning. So for the second week in a row I've now run what I consider the bare minimum weekly mileage (barring injury or, perhaps, marathon recovery). On the positive side, I think I'm getting a lot more out of the miles I do run lately in comparison with before the MCM when I was running as much as twice this volume. My easy runs feel great in this new, faster pace range, and with two days of them in a row I seem able to recover well enough between workouts - at least while my mileage remains low. Monday's repetition workout also felt good. Well, it felt hard and my form was abysmal. But it felt very productive and left me feeling better rather than worn out the next day. A 79 second 400m is 5:18-19/mi. pace, and I took full recoveries (i.e., stood around and stretched for a minute or so) instead of going straight from the recovery lap to the next interval. My bad running form would benefit significantly from doing this workout more often (building up gradually to doing more repetitions). Next week, my main goal is again to avoid taking any days off and to get in around 50 miles. Exactly what runs I do on which days depends on how I recover from Sunday's race, and I'll be careful not to try fitting in too much because I also have a race the following Sunday. One possibility that I'm leaning toward is to do a medium-long run on Wednesday and to do regular easy runs on all the remaining days. Another possibility is to try to fit in another repetition workout mid-week instead, but that may be too much faster running right now with a race on two weekends in a row. We'll see.

WEEKLY SUMMARY (November 18-24): 40 miles (92% easy and 8% 5k paces)

  Sunday: off

  Monday: 6.2 miles at 7:26/mi.

  Tuesday: off

  Wednesday: 5.2 miles at 7:25/mi.

  Thursday: 3 easy, 5k race in 18:44, 2.5 easy (8.6 miles total)

  Friday: 7 miles at 7:34/mi.

  Saturday: 13 miles at 7:28/mi.

I did indeed dig myself into a bit of a hole last week. After taking Sunday off this week, I still felt pretty bad on Monday and wasn't up to doing a tempo run. Then I woke up on Tuesday clearly fighting off a cold and didn't want to get out of bed, let alone run. On Wednesday I felt better but out of shape when running, and I kept things short because of the race on Thursday, which turned out ok. My mile splits from the race tell the story: 5:59, 5:47, and 6:06. I started out fast, maybe in the 5:30's, because I haven't run a 5k in months and got somewhat carried away by the masses who sprint for about half a mile and then jog the rest of the way. I too slowed down early once my body absorbed the fact that I wasn't going to stop very soon, as I had done in the only short intervals I've run at that sort of pace anytime recently (last week). But after I passed the first mile marker in 5:59, it became apparent that I had slowed down too conservatively and could hold a faster pace comfortably enough. This was something new. I don't think I've ever sped up or run that fast (5:47) in the second mile of a 5k. My strength from marathon training seems already to have translated a bit into endurance at higher speeds. But soon I was reminded that when I slow down in a 5k, it's almost always because of stomach discomfort. That once familiar sour ache revisited me in the third mile and prevented me from running under 6:00 pace. I couldn't even manage a finishing kick. But that was nothing new and doesn't worry me. The second mile, on the other hand, was an encouraging sign that I'm in a different place than before I switched to marathon-mode early this past summer, despite my setback earlier in the week. Perhaps I can hold 6:00 pace for longer without setting off my stomach by trying to run faster? Maybe I'll test that hypothesis in next weekend's 10k race. But back to summarizing this past week: on Friday I was somewhat stiff, especially in the hip flexors, which have been tightening up on me a lot lately, perhaps because I kicked my easy pace up a notch. But on Saturday I managed to get through my planned medium-long run in spite of very windy and suddenly colder weather. Next week I want, above all, to avoid taking days off and to keep steadily putting in some miles. I won't do a medium-long run because I want to do two workouts before next weekend's 10k: a short repetition workout with a few 400's at a faster pace than I've yet managed (ideally in the 5:20's), and 4 x 1 mile tempo intervals - with two easy days between these workouts (to avoid falling back into the hole I dug last week). So I might run about 50 miles total next week. 

WEEKLY SUMMARY (November 11-17): 53 miles (89.5% E, 5.5% T, 3% I, and 2% R paces)

  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:20/mi.

  Monday: 2.5 E, 4 x (400m R at 84=5:41/mi. + 400m E), 2.5 E (7 miles total)

  Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:25/mi.

  Wednesday: 2.5 E, 3 x 1 mile T at 6:18/mi. (1 min.), 1.5 E (7 miles total)

  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:24/mi.

  Friday: 2.5 E, 3 x (800m I at 2:51=5:47/mi. + 400m E), 2.5 E (7 miles total)

  Saturday: 12 miles at 7:23/mi.

Let me finally explain these abbreviations, which I take from Daniels' Running Formula. "E" means easy/long pace (which I sometimes write as "E/L"). Descending to faster paces in order: I also sometimes use "M" for marathon race pace, though not this week. "T" means lactate threshold or tempo pace. "I" means VO2 max interval pace, which is around 5k race pace and is used in intervals from 800-1600m, 1200m being my preferred distance for workouts at this pace. "R" means repetition pace, which is supposed to be faster still (Daniels says about 6 seconds per 400m faster than I pace), and which I use mainly in 400m intervals. This week I use "R" loosely for the best pace I could muster at this stage for 400m intervals, even though it's barely faster than my I pace for some 800's a few days later. Finally, when I write something like (1 min.) at the end of my description of some sort of intervals, as I do for Wednesday this week, that means I rest (i.e., stand around) for 1 min. between those intervals. When I don't write that, then I run the intervals continuously without stopping. So on Monday and Friday this week, I didn't stop running between intervals but used the 400m easy jog to recover between the hard intervals. "E" is thus used loosely too. I tend to jog those "easy" recovery laps around 8:15-8:45/mi. pace. My cool down after a workout, which I also mark "E," is not that much slower than my standard easy pace but is still a little bit slower: in the range of 7:30-8:00 these days, depending on how worn out I am. I usually do the warm up miles before a workout in the same pace range that I run the first 2-3 miles of a standard easy run, though before a race my warm up tends to be a bit slower.

This week I did the right sorts of workouts but didn't take enough easy days between them, and as a result I'm a bit tight and worn down now. Monday's workout felt good. I didn't look at my watch during the hard intervals but concentrated on getting the right form and feeling. I also didn't decide in advance how many 400's to do but stopped after my pace lagged on the fourth one. Even though I wasn't running all that fast and didn't do many intervals, I was tired afterwards and should have begun taking two easy days between workouts at that point. Instead, I was back out doing tempo intervals on Wednesday, which was a windy day. I prefer not to do tempo runs on the track and often (including on Wednesday) do these tempo intervals on the same asphalt trail that I do most of my easy runs on, because I can run a full mile (with a couple turns) in one direction, then turn around and run back. When it's windy, running one direction is typically much harder than running the opposite direction, since the wind usually comes from the north (or, sometimes at warmer times of year, the south) and this trail runs north-south. It's also slightly uphill running north, so a strong wind from the north makes running that direction particularly tough. Anyway, I felt good enough but stopped after 3 intervals in order to avoid running uphill into the wind again. I'm glad I did, because on Thursday I woke up feeling tight. Even though I still felt tight on Friday, I went ahead and did another workout that day, thinking again that these workouts aren't hard enough to warrant two days of rest. The tightness in my muscles wasn't a problem during Friday's workout. I was able to do a few 800's at a respectable 5k race pace, but my huffing and puffing showed that my oxygen transport system hasn't been taxed at that level for some time. Saturday's run was nothing special: just a slightly longer easy run. But afterwards my muscles felt alarmingly tired. I'm prepared to take a day off tomorrow (Sunday) if necessary, something I've been hoping to avoid except in emergencies. In any case, it's now clear that I need two easy days between workouts and that I should have been doing that this week. If I haven't dug myself into too deep a hole, then my plan for this coming week is to do tempo intervals (4 x 1 mile) on Monday, and then a 5k race on Thursday (Thanksgiving), with easy runs every other day, including a medium-long run of 13 miles on Saturday. I hadn't originally been planning to do this 5k race but decided last week that I'm far enough along to benefit from doing it in place of an interval workout. I did the race last year and want to support the cause anyway, so I may as well show up and run instead of running around a track by myself. I don't expect to run a fast time but figure that I could benefit from absorbing the shock of a 5k race (for the first time in nearly 5 months) and from using the thrill of the race environment to help me try to hold whatever pace I'm dumb enough to start out with. If nothing else, it'll be a useful demonstration of how much more work I need to do to get into 5k shape, as well as a good initial workout attempting to hold some sort of fast pace for longer than I have been trying to do. 

WEEKLY SUMMARY (November 4-10): 48 miles (94% E, 4% T, and 2% I paces)

  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:28/mi.

  Monday: 7.2 miles at 7:24/mi.

  Tuesday: 6 miles at 7:26/mi.

  Wednesday: 2 E, 2 x 1 mile T @ 6:26/mi. avg., 1.2 E (5.2 miles total)

  Thursday: 6 miles at 7:36/mi.

  Friday: 2.7 E, 2 x (800m I @ 3:01 avg. + 400m E), 2.7 E (6.9 miles total)

  Saturday: 10.7 miles at 7:18/mi.

This turned out to be a fine recovery/transition week - much better than it would have been had I run the second half of the marathon faster. I just ran by feel for the first few days of the week, and I felt pretty good after a week of mostly rest. I ended up running around 10 seconds/mile faster than my typical easy pace before the marathon, but that's to be expected with rest, shorter runs, and no workouts. On Wednesday and Friday I did baby workouts to ease into just a smattering of faster running. It was quite windy both days (as well as Thursday), which added to the unpleasantness of trying to start running faster just a week and a half after a marathon. But it went well enough and I successfully erred on the side of caution. Then the weather changed on Saturday: the wind disappeared and it was much warmer.  I felt great extending the sort of easy run from earlier in the week a bit further. It looks like I ran a notch faster on Saturday, but in a way I didn't. On most easy-paced runs I start out slower and gradually speed up over 3-5 miles as I loosen up (without increasing effort). On a 6-7 mile run, that leaves me with only a couple miles at the faster end of my easy range. But on a slightly longer run like Saturday's, most of the run ends up being at the faster end of that range. This time I was pushing a little more than I normally do on an easy run during the last few miles, because I have a shorter easy run planned for Sunday. Next week I plan to continue with smatterings of speed on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with easy runs in between and another medium-long run on Saturday. I should be able to handle doing speedwork that often while the workouts remain light, though I'll have to space them out more when I can handle tougher workouts. On Monday I plan to continue bringing the pace down with some even shorter intervals (or repetitions in Daniels-speak). Friday's 800's at 6:00/mi. pace felt about the way I want 5:20/mi. pace to feel in a month, but I'm not ready to run that fast yet. On Monday I'll do some 400's in maybe the 5:40's. Then Wednesday and Friday will be the same sort of thing as this past week, but with a couple more intervals depending on how I feel: mile repeats at tempo pace on Wednesday (6:20 this time), and 800's on Friday around (or, this time, just under) 6:00 pace. At least that's my thinking now, which I'll adjust if it feels like too much too soon. I'm not much concerned about overall volume. It'll probably drift upwards into the mid-50's next week as the workouts become a little less brief, and I might bump the easy runs up to 7 miles and the medium-long run up to 12 - again, if it feels right. All of this is aimed at getting fast for some December races, the first of which is a 10k in three weeks. My current 10k PR is 37:48, which is 6:04 pace, on a fast course. I should be capable of getting into faster 10k shape now, but three weeks is a bit soon, and the race is not on a fast course as far as I know (not having done it before). For now I'll target challenging my PR, but really that'll be my warm-up race before I expect to be in better form for the races one and three weeks later. I'm strong right now from marathon training, so it's just a matter of doing the right speed workouts to translate that strength into speed that I can maintain for the relevant distance. But working up gradually to the point where I can do those workouts is the tricky part. It's also one of the parts of running I like best, though: the beginning of a training cycle, when the most rapid changes occur from shifting your focus from one kind of training to another. In general, I get a kick out of planning and executing a series of workouts that enable me, on a target date I specify, to do something (in this case, to run a certain distance around a certain pace) that I could not have come close to doing just a short time earlier. It's even more gratifying to make longer-term comparisons (e.g., I just ran a marathon at a faster pace than I could run a 5k three years ago...and was disappointed), which is why taking down my PR at a given distance is always among my goals. Anyway, next week should be another kind of transition toward doing the sort of workouts the following week from which I'll be able to get an idea of the 10k pace I'll be up to on Dec. 2.

POST-MCM PLANS:

A week after the MCM, I'm still bummed but not very banged up. I took a few days off, then ran 4-5 miles very easy for a couple days and took another day (Saturday) off. I feel ready to ease back into the swing of things this coming week. My mind is recovering less quickly than my body, though. As I said at the end of my last post, I don't know whether I can wait until next Fall for another shot at the marathon. So I registered for the Rock 'n Roll USA Marathon in DC on March 16, 2013, which is the current instantiation of what used to be the National Marathon (which I ran in 2011). My original plan had been to focus on speed at shorter distances this coming Spring, as I did last Spring, and then to shift toward longer distances in the Summer on the way to another Fall marathon. But it's not just a desire to run another marathon sooner that has me second-guessing that plan. It's also a desire to train in a more balanced way. Part of what I called marathon malaise a while back is a dissatisfaction with doing primarily one main kind of training all the time. So why shift from one imbalanced training regime to another one that is imbalanced in the opposite direction? I'm putting this too strongly - there are actually good reasons for so-called periodization in training. In my case, last Spring I made significant gains by focusing primarily on speed for the first time. And my underuse of tempo runs prior to late this summer gave me good reason to base my Fall marathon training around them, and that too was a significant step forward for me. But now it's time to integrate all of these elements into a balanced routine. Since I haven't done speedwork for months now, I'll need to focus disproportionately on that for a while in order to get back into it (carefully). That (along with shorter tempos) will be my focus for the next couple months, and I've registered for some shorter races in December as near-term goals. But once I get some speed back online, my plan now is to reduce the speedwork in January to one element in a more balanced routine that gives equal weight to endurance training - i.e., long runs, marathon-pace runs, longer tempos, and higher overall volume. Those endurance elements, starting in January, will build over 12 weeks or so toward the RnR USA Marathon, while the speed-oriented elements (shorter repetitions or hill repeats, longer VO2 max intervals, and ordinary tempo runs or tempo intervals) follow their own trajectory. This will be my first serious attempt at non-periodized training - I've never tried to do all those things at once. It will probably take a fair amount of trial and error before I hit on a way of integrating all those elements that works for me, if I ever do. But I'd like my priority to be trying to make that work, rather than just preparing for some specific race, whether it's the marathon in March or some other race. I plan on racing a lot over the Winter and Spring anyway, because I love and miss it. So there's no reason to overemphasize any particular race.