My fall racing goals....and a change to the path to get there

GOALS:

So here I am, 29 June 2010, 109 days from Marathon Morning and I have not chosen a marathon time goal as of yet. I was waiting to see how my training developed and where I felt I’d be. It was never to be a game-day decision, but I wanted to really get a feel for my workouts and my fitness. Also, I want to place any goal a little out of my reach. Just enough to get me out of bed on those early Sunday mornings; enough to push me through the first few reps of a speed workout; enough to keep me honest on effort based workouts. As a result my time goal for RnR Philadelphia was also in limbo. Per my coach’s recommendation, I’ll just run this race as a GMP workout. I’m hoping to push GMP in the early miles and race the end at a full effort. And with no further ado…

For Baltimore, my goal is to run with an overall average pace of 8:30 min/mile; for a net time of 3:42.30. With the training that I have upcoming and the challenge of this specific course, I believe this goal to be reasonable and attainable, but not overly easy. I still reserve the right to edit this time over the next 108 days! As my training progresses or regresses, this time will surely change. However, this is my start point. This goal finishing time will be the litmus test that I will use to judge my workouts. I won’t be changing my paces until my fitness shows the change is needed; we train against current ability, not perceived ability. The Baltimore course profile shows significant up hills early and pretty good down hills toward the end. But is rolling throughout.

 

As my ‘Cherry Marathon’ I want to enjoy the course and experience as much as possible; I also want to run a good race though. If I was just looking for a way to go sightseeing around Baltimore, I’d drive the 45 minutes and skip the 4 months of training, hundreds of running miles, and inability to not talk about running to anyone that will listen.

That brings me to RnR Philadelphia. With it being four weeks out from Baltimore, I don’t get to race it as I normally would to fully test my fitness. The race will be a hybrid of a Goal Marathon Effort Run and a Speedy Tempo Session; I hope. Ideally, I’d run the first 10 miles at Goal Marathon Effort then drop down to HM or even 10k pace for the last 5k. So if I’m saying 8:30 for the first 10 miles, that will put me around 1:25:00 at the 10 mile point. Finishing between HM-10k pace would bring the last 5k or so around 7:49 for 24:20. All together that would put me on a perfect race day goal for Philly being at or right under 1:50:00. Philly is a fairly flat course with several former national and world records having been set on it.

The new road ahead:

Not much has changed in my training since my last blog. I emailed my coach about increasing my weekly mileage, and she agreed. As a result, I will have slightly more volume, mainly because I responded well to the intensity that we had been working on. The beginnings of that was my 5-miler this morning (as opposed to the 4 miles I had scheduled previously). Coach Nicole answered my question swiftly and without any reservations to my request. I am gaining more and more respect and trust for her with every passing workout. Online coaches are hit and miss, I really lucked out with mine. No complaints.

Upcoming workouts:

Tuesday, 29 June

5 miles easy

Wednesday, 30 June

9 miles moderate with 4 x (1mile @ HM Effort followed by 400m @ 5k effort)

Thursday, 1 July

Rest (or 3-4 recovery miles)

Friday, 2 July

3-4 miles easy

Saturday, 2 July

16 miles moderate with 4 x Strides, 10 x Sprints, then 5 x 200m, 3 miles at LT-HM Effort, finish with 5 x 200m

Sunday, 2 July

3 recovery miles

You have to believe that you can achieve it and then work your ass off to get there.

~ Jaymee Marty

My first LSD (Long, Slow, Distance run), nope this isn’t a good thing…

This would be a good thing and a great accomplishment as a beginning runner training for my first road race. However, neither am I a beginning runner nor am I training for my first road race. But, those things aside, this could be commendable if I was actually going for a slow run. In fact, most training plans call for Long Run’s to be done at/around your Easy Pace,  but my Training Plan calls for all of my Long Runs to have quality (faster, pre-determined speed) runs in them. Happily, I didn’t have any problem with the quality of today’s training run.

When I started running this morning, I took a glance at my watch, and saw a ‘10’ in the minute-per-mile block, I was pretty shocked. I started to think that today’s run might actually be a waste. The ‘non-quality’ portions of today’s run should have been run at either a moderate or easy pace (9:20-9:25/9:40-9:45) but I could not get the times below that dreaded 10min/mile for the first few miles. Odd. I figured if I couldn’t run easy at 9:xx how could I do sprints and strides? But my uphill strides came through really well. Odd; why would running fast be really easy but running slow be hard? So, I continued with the workout and began the section for flying sprints. Again, spot on! The running felt relatively easy. Oh well, I kinda gave up thinking about it. After all, I’ve still got some Marathon Effort coming up.

My Coach wanted me to do 30-45 minutes worth of Marathon Effort running. She took special note to make sure that I knew to run on effort not pace. Cool. For training, she defines “Marathon Effort” as: “moderate hard but comfortable, breathing is labored but able to continue pace for an hour or more in training” (not to be confused with tempo runs). I figured I’d start out around 9:00 min/mile and adjust for the feeling of what I could hold for this length of running. Let’s back up a bit. How much of this was I gonna do? 30 minutes or 45 minutes, some undetermined distance (because I'm a rebel)? It worked out that I was ready for this part of the workout right before the 10 mile mark. I decided to run through until either 13 miles or 30 minutes, which ever came last. I managed to get in a little over 4 miles with an average of ~8:54 min/mile. BTW, the 13 miles came last. I finished the workout thinking that I could have (maybe even wanted) to put in more miles. That is the right way to leave a workout…I think???

Upcoming workouts:

Monday, 28 June

3 miles easy

Tuesday, 29 June

4 miles easy

Wednesday, 30 June

8 miles moderate with 4 x (1mile @ HM Effort followed by 400m @ 5k effort)

Thursday, 1 July

Rest (or 2-3 recovery miles)

Friday, 2 July

3 miles easy

Saturday, 2 July

16 miles moderate with 4 x Strides, 10 x Sprints, then 5 x 200m, 3 miles at LT-HM Effort, finish with 5 x 200m

Sunday, 2 July

2-3 recovery miles

"Man imposes his own limitations, don't set any"

~Anthony Bailey

Mulligan; Re-do, Make-up…This workout went very well….

Today was my first quality workout since my horrid run on Monday. While this run may have been 10 miles shorter (well actually 6 miles shorter), I needed to hit it re build my confidence. The planned workout called for a total of 6 miles with a ladder of 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 minute runs, with active recovery for half the distance of previous interval. Simple right? Damn right! The workout should be run at 10k pace (8:10-8:15) but because I’m pigheaded and because of my crappy run on Monday, I decided to make each interval beat that time. And so I did, the splits for the run were 8:10, 8:07, 8:10, 8:14, 8:03, 8:06, 6:25 (Max HR Test).

In the thought of even-pacing and training, this workout sucked. I beat my goal on each interval, but that was all I did right! However, this workout was even more effective than you could think. Why? Simple; because I completed it. Not only that, but I did really well running the paces on a warm desert day. I gained back the confidence I lost on Monday. Also, I played with the paces a little. The first two sets I went out hard and just held on through the full time. The next three I ran steady through the time. The last one I started out slowly and blasted the end of the run. I tested my system on this short run and built some well-needed validation that my training is paying off and that my coach knows what she is doing.

One of the odd things about this run is that I hadn’t prepped like I planned on. I tried to get to sleep early last night, but I didn’t. I did drink a little better, but not as much as I wanted. I had crackers by my bedside, but I didn’t eat them. I need to work on these little things continuously in order to improve. I’m well satisfied with my performance and I look forward to more of it.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life”

~Muhammad Ali

My first actual bad workout.

I think that I actually mean my first bad workout ever. Even while in training for the RnR Chicago last year I never had to actually stop a workout short of the goal mileage. I could usually adjust pace and be ok. Even with some of the hard workouts in the Hall HM Training Plan, I was able to complete each workout.

Today I was not so lucky. Today’s (actually yesterday’s) schedule called for 16 miles with a 30 minute Progression Run and some Hill Sprints. I was able to get in all of the ‘quality’ work, but my wheels fell off as I was finishing the workout mileage. I made it to a little over 12 miles when I stopped for the day. I had drunk 2 liters (about 67.5 ounces) of water during the run. I meant to check the weather after the run but it slipped my mind; although at 1200 pm it was 111 degrees. Yes, that is One Hundred and Eleven degrees. Damn! Also, I seemed to be very tired this morning after the run. I escaped to my room to rest after lunch and ended up sleeping for about 3 hours, oops.

Originally I was really upset that I wasn’t able to finish the workout. I thought I had given up on the training but after the really long nap this afternoon, I realized that my body just wasn’t into it today. Hell it is surprising that I was able to push through as far as I did. All in all, I guess all wasn’t lost. I will start all of my LR’s way earlier from now on as well.

Workouts this week:

Tuesday, 22 June

Rest (or 2-3 recovery miles)

Wednesday, June 16

6 miles moderate with ladder of progressions

Thursday, June 17

Rest (or 2-3 recovery miles)

Friday, June 18

5 miles easy with strides

Saturday, June 19

3 miles easy

Sunday, June 20

13 miles moderate run with uphill strides and then sprints. Full Recovery 30-45 min @ Marathon Effort

"The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat.”

~Bill Squires