Archive for November, 2008

This weekend, I had an epiphany, an eye-opener of the widest kind.  But before we get into it, I’ve got some ‘splaining to do.

As you all know, I loved marathon training, found it challenging but not difficult using the plan I’d chosen, Pfitzinger’s 18/55.

I admit that during this period, I fully expected to end up faster in other distances simply by dint of “the marathon training process”.  I’d read enough accounts of easy PRs gained, both during and soon after such training periods, that of course I expected it to happen for me.  How unhappy-making then, that my one race in the midst of the plan (a measly 4-miler) ended up with such disappointing results.

To understand just how disappointing is to look back at my Spring PRs: a 5K in April (23:06) and a 10-miler in May (1:19).  Both of these races are in the same ballpark of McMillan’s calculator.  Yet here was this 4-miler in September at 30:48!  I attributed it to the marathon training process, tired legs and the fact that it was a short race when I’d been training to go long.  I played it down.  But in my critically thinking head, I was a bit dismayed.

Fast forward to this last weekend, my 10K race.  Yes, it was a sizeable PR and I’m genuinely satisfied with my performance, but if I compare it to last Spring’s PRs, it was not good.  In fact, as far as McMillan goes, it’s right on par with my shitty 4-miler!  When I realized this (and that my Marathon time also fits in the same McMillan range as well) I had to recognize it as a trend, not a few unrelated blips.

So I began investigating the Big Picture and it quickly became apparent to me what was going on.

#1 Revelation:
My mileage build for the marathon was no great shakes.
Note: These monthly graphs include all training runs, but exclude races.

Or rather, since I was no stranger to 45-50+ mile weeks, it was stupid for me to expect that doing the same thing would give me some kind of bonus.  Sure, I had a peak month, but the surrounding ones don’t look any different than assorted previous months.  The fact that my marathon training mileage was apportioned differently (spread out across 5 days instead of 6) certainly helped my endurance, but the mileage itself wasn’t a stress factor, and stress (or increases) are how envelopes get pushed.

#2 Revelation:
My average pace got slower…much slower.

See anything notable starting in June?  That’s where marathon training began and with it, recovery and much slower long runs.  Quite an obvious difference, huh?  Back in the Spring, I not only ran all my easy and long runs faster, I was also doing both a speed and a tempo workout each week.  For marathon training, I had weekly speed or tempo, never both.  So no dramatic mileage growth and less fast stuff, too.

How silly, then, to think marathon training should have given me a speed boost, why would it?  I didn’t stress either speed or mileage – just longer long runs.  That said, I gained beautiful endurance which was completely the whole point anyway – I never could have run a marathon back in the Spring.  With this in mind, I consider my marathon training 100% successful, I have no regrets or complaints.

The important and freeing thing though is that I now feel totally OK with where I’m at speedwise, even if it seems I’ve regressed a tad, because I understand why.  It’s not because I’m all washed up, that I started too late or used myself up too soon (yeah, I actually was thinking this crap).  No, it’s an obvious reaction to a lack of stimuli.  Duh!

Does this mean I’m abandoning everything I learned during marathon training?  Well, you can see from the last month on graph #2 that I’m still doing some slower stuff, though honestly, it won’t be doing those 10+min recovery runs unless I really need them.  And expect this month’s avg. pace bar to become a lot shorter starting with next week’s dual quality sessions.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll approach the next marathon much differently, either.  I’ll try to increase the mileage, but a main priority for me is keeping training fun and I’m not sure how many miles it’ll take before fun turns into drudgery.  And I love that I was able to avoid injury the whole cycle, so keeping the fast stuff to once a week sounds wise, too.

The main thing is realizing that everything requires it’s own proper attention, that no one training cycle is going to cover all race bases and to keep expectations in line with that training.  I’m only beginning to understand how all this works, how I work.  As they say, “we’re all an experiment of one.”  It sure is fun figuring it out.

Some days you got it, some days you don’t, some days you’re just a big fat whiner.  I had my 5x1000s today which magically morphed into 4x1000s and 2x400s.

It was one of those self-flagellation workouts where I berated my assumption that 7:15 goal pace was a good idea.  After the second one I told myself 7:20s would be fine, but you know when you say that to yourself, it never really is.

After the 4th one, I was going to pack it in because by that time I was soaked with sweat and grouchy as all get out but then I felt incredibly guilty for contemplating quitting, so I went ahead and started the last interval, got almost halfway, decided to bail, then after a few yards of guilty walking, changed my mind to save it – thus, the 2×400.  Slogged home for 6.5 miles total.

All in all, it was still an effective workout despite the whining, and I feel pretty good now.  Depending where I look (SportTracks or Garmin TC), I either averaged 7:17 or 7:20 pace – a worthy deposit in the speed bank.  Saving those pennies…

My, but the week has flown.  At the risk of alienating readers (because someone got really offended and gave me an earful about my Palin derision a couple months back) YAY OBAMA!!!

Back to running news, something I forgot to mention was my second Steamtown toenail fell off last week.  I drew them back in with nail polish and am astounded at how well that stuff adheres to skin – you seriously would never know I am sporting only 8 toenails at this time.  It’s magic.

I’ve had a couple enjoyable runs this week, even if it has been dark and rainy: 8 on Tues and 7 w/ 10 strides yesterday.  I’ll do a short 5 today, then tomorrow it’s 8 or 9 w/5×1000.  The last time I did 1000s was in September and it was 75 degrees out with 83% humidity.  I’m targeting the same interval pace, so it should be quite a bit nicer this go round.

I posted a question on the RW forums because I wanted to know if I would be screwing myself to stretch those long runs to 12s instead of the single-digit LRs in everybody’s 5K plans. Wcrunner (a favorite of mine, very smart wise man who’s been running for decades) figures I’ll be fine to do it, so I’ll go for it this week and next.  I’ll also add a couple tempos to the plan too, since I was doing speed and tempos weekly last Spring to no ill effect.

All this plan comparison has me thinking about making a radical change for next year’s marathon and using The Ultimate Marathon Training plan.  A couple of our gals from the Women’s thread have used or are using it now, plus a well-loved and SPEEDY poster, Sillie Lillie used it for 3 of her marathons with dramatic improvements.  The quality days look much busier (harder) than Pfitzinger’s but they seem like fun workouts.

I’m even considering the Ultimate Half-Marathon plan for my goal Spring race.  Sure, my lazy side likes the idea of doing one hyped-up pace and distance per speed workout (I’ve never been drawn to cutdowns, for instance) and just reading all the different stuff you’re supposed to do on their speed days looks confusing, but I’m sure it’s hugely effective.  As long as you stay on the uninjured list, anyway.  I just wish it was more than a 9-week plan, I like being on a mission for at least a month longer than that, so we’ll see.

Funny how I can waste this much time ruminating about something that isn’t going to happen for months, or in the marathon’s case, more than half a year away.  Oh why not?  The future is exciting!  Change and Hope – it worked for Obama and it works for me.

My running life is about to flip on its head.

As mentioned before, I have a 5k in 4 weeks, my first 5K since last April.  In order to do the best I can for it, I have to change my modus operandi.  The multi-hour runs of marathon training don’t fit in a 5K plan, and even my medium long runs are too long for optimizing this distance.  Last night, I compared Pfitz, Glover & Higdon 5K advanced plans (the last 4 weeks, since that’s where I’m jumping in) and while Pfitz allows a 10-miler this week, the highest he goes for the next three weeks is 9 miles.  Higdon builds to a high of a 90-minute run the week before the race, while Glover would have me do 8, tops.  Wow.

It’s a weird feeling.  When you’re on a steady diet of one long and one medium long, every week for half a year, it becomes the “way you run” and part of how you identify yourself.  You become a marathoner.  How strange now, to let that go. Kind of sad, actually.

What’s even weirder is that I just looked back at my logs and realized I’ve been running long runs (and mediums, as Pfitz would define) since all the way back to June 2007, when I began training for my first Half.  No wonder I’m feeling off-kilter about shelving them, even if it is for a mere 4 weeks.

The Pfitz 5K schedule is a nice frame, skeletal really (he gives you the quality work for the week and you figure out the rest), but I’ve been having tempo run urges lately (yeah, I can’t believe it either) and Pfitz doesn’t include any in the last 4 weeks of his plan.  He does, however, call for a 2-mile race in a couple weeks (oh yeah, there’s always a 2-mile race going on somewhere!) but even if I was to do a 2-mile time trial, that just sounds like a painfully unfun run to me, so I’ll be replacing it with a 4-mile tempo run.

As for weekly mileage, I’m not willing to see it shrink much, even if I am having a temporary 5K flirtation.   To make it work with the shorter runs, I’ll be going back to 6-day running weeks, same as I was doing before marathon training.

So blindly I tread into this new phase, trying not to mourn the loss of long runs or worrying that my endurance is about to die a nasty death.  Instead, I must Trust.  Trust that my inner speed demon will rise to the surface this month and reward me with a shiny new PR for my trouble.

Yet another fun day at the races – huge this year, 2269 finishers, plus about 1000 walkers.  It’s a 10K that goes over and back on the Ben Franklin Bridge, which takes care of the first 5K, then the next 5K goes into Camden, NJ on the waterfront, ending in a stadium.

I park the car and approach the stadium when some guy jogs by me and says, “Flo?”  It was Progman2000 who I know from the forums and this blog.  We had planned to meet afterwards, but it was lucky that we met up first because we ended up missing each other at the finish line, though amazingly, we caught each other again as he was driving out after the race.  Not to mention, we had separated before the race started, then I turn around and there he is at the start line, right behind me!  Think about it, we’ve never met each other, there are literally thousands of people around, yet we hook up three times.  Freaky.  Anyway, he’s a truly great guy, and I felt really happy to hang out with him before the race.  Thanks Progman!!  Oh, and a shout out to ShoreTurtle, Progman’s cool friend who was standing with him at the start.  Talk about a couple of great guys, they kept my mind from going all nervy on me and the waiting time passed in a flash.

As far as the weather goes, I was a little overzealous when I saw the updated weather report, I thought it’d be near 50, so my race outfit was shorts and tank, but it ended up being low-mid 40s and breezy.  Maybe two other guys were dressed as bare as me, so yeah, I was self conscious and chilly, but it ended up being perfect for racing, so no regrets, though I did wait until the nth moment to check my stuff in.

My wishes for the race were #1) a PR, #2) 48:something, #3) everything-goes-right sub-48.

I was looking at my logs from last year when I ran this race and laughed to myself last night, “Hah! Ain’t no way I’m running a first mile at 8:15 this year!”  This ended up to be true…my first mile today was far worse.  There was a big traffic clog at the start and it took me a long time to feel race-ready, plus you’re going up a bridge, so with all that happening sub-48 was outta the question right off the bat.

Now before the race even started, at the line-up, I see my local nemesis standing right across from me.  She’s actually a nice woman and in my last 10K back in April, we were neck and neck for the whole race.  Anyway, we waved to each other before the start but as soon as the gun went off, she ran ahead, so my main focus on the bridge was to keep her in my sights.  That said, my bridge running was atrocious, so when I saw her getting even farther ahead, I said screw it and let her go without a fight.

By the time I got to mile 5 though, she was right in front of me and I was wondering what to do.  Part of me felt like passing her and saying, “C’mon girl, let’s go for it!” but the other, sneaky, lazy part (because why make this harder than it has to be?) won over.  I ran ahead without a word and hoped to god she didn’t notice me in my hot pink shorts and white tank (impossible).

The race goes on several surfaces, gravel, brick, road and grass, so that’s part of the reason my pacing was a bit crazy (the other part was because…I suck), but here are my splits:

8:25 bridge (I suck)
7:59 bridge (I still suck)
7:37 bridge (better)
7:32 (mo better)
8:00 (gravel, turns and traffic clogs, I suck)
7:41 (almost home)
1:25 (7:05 pace for the last bit)

My time for the race was 48:39, 8th in my AG out of 118.  It’s a 44 second PR and I beat my nemesis by 36 seconds.  No complaints…and coming from me, that’s huge.