Posts Tagged ‘marathon training’

An evening update to my last post.  I’m feeling much better now after a major decision.  Thanks to an email from Dog that said, “Girl, if you don’t like marathons, don’t run them!” and when I replied saying I felt like a wuss, she  responded “You’re not a wuss. Hell. look at Loren, she’s the best runner I know and I doubt she’ll ever run a marathon. Marathoning doesn’t make you a runner, it makes you a marathoner.”

What a great sentence, “Marathoning doesn’t make you a runner, it makes you a marathoner“.  I think that’s what’s been ripping me up, that I’ve been equating the two.  It’s particularly difficult because all my internet running friends are marathoners.  But the honest-to-god truth, no bullshit at all, is that I don’t particularly like marathon training. In fact, if I never run another 20 miler, I’d be happy.  Hah!  Can’t believe I just said that.

Seriously, if I was going to name the longest Long Run I actually enjoy doing, it’d be 15 or 16, 17 peak, with an average daily run of 7-10.  That spells H.A.L.F.  And you know what?  That’s cool by me!

So here’s what’s going to happen.  I’m going to train for Boston with a little less mileage than I did for Philly.  I had 3 peak weeks at low 80s, this time I’m going to peak at 75 tops. I’m going to average high 60s instead of mid-70s.  And you know what? If I end up slower for it, then whoop-de-doop, que sera sera.  After scoffing at Jim’s comment to perhaps take it easy and target a 3:30, well I may just end up there because I’m not going to bust a gut over this cycle.

I’m still not going to “run for fun”, that’s simply not in my DNA, but I will race at wherever that training puts me.  If I regress a tad, so be it.  Because this is going to be my last marathon.  What better place to give a swan song than Boston?  It might suck again, but who gives a crap, it’d just confirm what I already know…that long distance is not my deal.  So here’s to having fun in whatever size package it comes in.  All I really want to do is love running until I can’t do it anymore.

I didn’t get a chance to wish everyone a happy holiday, sorry about that.  I had a great couple of days with friends, hope you all had fun, too.

Yesterday should have started my Boston cycle.  I like 16-week cycles and always get excited when I start a new one, but I’m having a really hard time wrapping my head around marathon training again.  Racing in any form is not appealing to me at all right now.

Philly fucked me up.  I’ve lost a huge chunk of confidence and I’m not sure when it’s coming back.  It’s one thing to fuck up a race, it’s another to have absolutely no clue as to why it happened or what to adjust so it doesn’t happen the next time.  Those last miles are etched on my brain indelibly with no signs of dimming, and this is the first time in my running life that I don’t have hope.

I’m supposed to sign up for the Shamrock Half in March with my gal pals but I’m not feeling it.  Chicago, which I’d said I wanted to do because the course is fabulous and it’d be another huge social event, is sounding to me like just another chance to bomb in a major way.  I’m thinking I probably should stick with Boston as my one marathon this year since even that is tinged with dread.

So here I am, 16 weeks from Boston and I haven’t a clue as to how to proceed.  I started doing fartleks this week because I need to get my legs moving but it’s hard to imagine wanting to do quality sessions again.  I know it’s stupid but I feel like all those tempos and intervals betrayed me last cycle so putting out the effort now doesn’t seem worth it.  I’ll get over it, I’m sure.

As for what to do, this being the first time I’ve hit 16-weeks out without a plan firmly in place, if I follow Hudson, you’re supposed to adjust each cycle to tweak what was lacking in the previous one, but frankly, I don’t know what that is!  I don’t know what went wrong and what was right.  Maybe I’ll just buy Pfitzinger’s 2nd edition of Advanced Marathoning so I don’t have to think about it and can just follow blindly.  I don’t have the energy for much more than that right now.

Thanks to fellow blogger Joe who kindly alerted me to a thread on LetsRun, it appears that the finish for the Philadelphia marathon is going to be an honest to goodness clusterfuck.  Here’s the image the original poster supplied.
Green – half marathon,  Red – marathon at half way,  Blue – marathon finish

As you can see, it appears that the marathon finishers will be forced to actually cross through the slower marathoners reaching their halfway point!  I can’t. believe. this.  But then, it’s Philly, so yes I can.

I’m hanging in there, though not without a quadruple dose of taper angst.  My run today was 7 w/2x(10min@HP, 2min rec) and my HR was just too damned high at 90 and 92% max on the Half pace portions.  I’m hoping it’s just overall anxiety, which I truly have in excess now, but it’s really putting a fear into me that I wish I didn’t have.

The rest of the week is 6 tomorrow, rest day, 5 and 4, then race.  The weather looks good at this point, so that’s a wonderful bonus.

Beyond my worried mood, I am so excited for this weekend because I’m finally going to meet several of the ladies I’ve been “talking to” for over a year in the Women’s BQ thread.  A bunch of gals are coming in for the race, both the Full and Half, as well as cheering section, and to actually meet these gals in the flesh (we know so much about each other by now) is going to be incredible.

Plus, Audra and Kat (I ran Steamtown with Audra and the Lehigh Half with Kat) are going to be staying with me, not racing but will be cheer support so I’ll have my own personal pit crew the night before.  Pre-race pillow fights!! Woohoo!!  So there’s a lot to be excited about, if I can just take my mind off my stupid heart for a while.

Thanks everyone for such cool comments to my little mishap on Sunday.  You guys and gals are stupendously great.  One good thing I got out of that run was that it was my gel dress rehearsal because my most favorite shorts only have a key pocket (Race Ready shorts are dumpy on me, so no one even suggest that, please).

My original plan was to do the pinning thing (for the uninformed, you pin the gels to the outer waistband of your shorts then tuck them inside your shorts so they don’t bounce, then you rip them off when you need one)  but because I’ll have a bottle in one hand, that makes ripping the gels off too difficult.  Then I remembered I had that detachable pocket I bought for Steamtown and didn’t end up using.  It works a treat!! Weighs an ounce, you can put it where you want and it’s very easy to take a gel out while on the run.  I put 3 in there and 2 in my handheld and didn’t even notice it was there.  Though maybe that’s because I was in pain from my weeping open wound.

Anyway, that’s one less thing on my mind.  Now if I could only unload the other 2 tons of mental garbage…

I was today, when I got home from my Long Run all covered in gnats.  Crazy run, btw.

Catching up the last few days, I got out late on Friday for my 12.  Not genuinely late, but with daylight savings time it was, I ran the last hour or so in the dark, which was really fun!  I’d always wanted to do that but was too scared of rapists and murderers in the park at night, but since I finished around 6pm, it wasn’t really freaky, still lots of people around.

Yesterday, I did 10 easy but was not feeling it.  First run in a long while that I just wanted to pack it in early, but I’m stubborn, so I completed it.  This is when I realized that I am officially tired now.  So I was wondering how I’d do today.

Today’s run was 17 “Steady” as per Hudson.  I swiped my aforementioned mentor’s (A Muse) recipe for his last LR before taper: MP+5%-10%, though again, I was feeling on the tired side and gave myself a pass to go slower if needed.  I ended up with 8:05 avg for the run, though the funny thing was I had done a hard reset on my Garmin 205 but forgot to turn autolap on, so as the run progressed, I was all “damn, but I am steady!” because the lap pace hardly veered.  Turned out it was one long lap for the whole run, and when I put it in Sporttracks, saw that I’d done some 7:50s and 7:45s in there.

The bad part of the run was I brought my small water bottle which I emptied at around mile 11, and by mile 13 I was ready for a fountain, but the stupid Parks commission removed them all, as they do each year, so I was dying of thirst for a major portion.  Luckily, about 1 mile before home, there’s one fountain they leave on longer which saved me for the final trudge.

And with that, finishing off an 81.57 mile week, I’m finally entering taperland for real.  Bring it on, baby!

On to my most favorite new ingenious item that I recently bought: Now that I live in a tiny apartment, when I wash my running clothes there aren’t places for me to hang them in their wet state, so I was putting them in the dryer for a while there but that’s the quickest way to ruin sportsbras and other stretchy stuff (you know when elastic gets crispy? no gooda).  I was looking at drying racks on Amazon, but those accordion floor ones suck, they don’t hold that much.   And then I found it…Drying Rack Mecca!

This cheap thing ($8.96 before shipping) is sturdy, holds 20 items and doesn’t take up a bit of space.   Me love.

Due to the forecast (windy tomorrow) I switched up my week a bit.  Yesterday was an 8 mile progression, which was a pleasure since for months now, short runs have been relegated to recovery, so it was nice to put a little energy into it.  I started with an 8:58 then got down to a couple 7:40s, so average was 8:17.

Today was my final continuous GMP run – 14 miles with 10MP.  Weather report for the day was 56 degrees, cloudy with 10mph wind.  Carried my small handheld and took a gel at mile 7, just to check that I wouldn’t choke at pace.  Avg for the total run 7:51.

I wisely removed the HR data window from my Garmin so I had no idea what was going on till I got home. The run itself was fine, the MP miles weren’t an easy glide, but then they’re not expected to be at this point.  In fact, that was another thing I enjoyed reading in Jaymee Marty’s blog -  down the page you’ll see her observation on GMP runs and how she once had a coach who told her they should feel very easy yet they never were, giving her unnecessary mental baggage she carried with her for a while.

Anyway, it wasn’t easy but it wasn’t super hard either.  The cool part turns out to be the HR data, of all things (this is why I don’t ditch it completely, there’s still useful info to be found).  Yes, I’m still elevated on whole by about 5bpm, but here’s the deal.  I did another MP run back in September, which I’d somehow forgotten about.  It was 14 miles with 8 at GMP.  Both today and September’s run averaged 7:27 for the MP miles. (not by design, btw, I’m still targeting 7:30s)

The run in September averaged 76% HRR for the first mile and finished at 83.4%, so it rose 7.4% during the run.  Today’s run however, averaged 82% in the first mile but finished at 83% – a 1% rise.  And it actually was highest on the 2nd and 3rd mile, so it went down from there.   This is progress.  In full disclosure, I should mention that September’s run was 10 degrees warmer at 66, but I don’t think that speaks for today’s lovely flat profile.

Anyway, glad it’s done.  Aside from some progression runs, the rest of my workouts aren’t too challenging from here on in (can’t say I’m sorry about that, either).  Feels great to be over the workload hump and now into calmer waters, because I really am a lazy ass at heart.

Great run today, 12.2 with 4 x .8 of hills (a.k.a. .4mi up, turnaround and repeat) then 8 fartleks at HP (2 min. on, 1 off), avg 8:22 for the run.  Coming off that final downhill made the fartlek transition so easy, since I already had the leg turnover going.  And Doggie, for the record, looks like Hudson’s usage of the term fartlek (as opposed to the untimed, freeform original definition) is pretty standard, since I saw Ryan Hall talking about doing fartleks using timed intervals to describe them, too.   So no more fartlek apologies from me.  Unless I really stink up the room.

My HR continues to stymie me, the water seemed to make a difference, but I’m still elusively avoiding my usual resting rate by a few points and it differs for my runs though the weather’s been pretty steady.  Anyway, thanks to Julie (aka Races Like A Girl), who recently posted a link to a kick-ass masters runner’s blog, Jaymee Marty: a 42 year old woman who’s training for the Olympic Trials, I found something that made me feel better about the whole HR situation.

She posted a cool list of “marathon lessons learned” from Twin Cities (where she ran a 2:46…only been running seriously for the last 5 years, too).  Number 7 in particular could have been written just for me – it’s also the only one all in bold.

7. “Don’t trust heart rate. Maybe this one should read: don’t spaz out like a monkey in the weeks leading up to the race because you all of a sudden start measuring your heart rate and it isn’t in the range the books say it should be leading you to think that you are not trained to go out and run at your goal marathon pace. Enough said.”

I have definitely been spazzing out like a monkey and to see this written before my eyes was a lovely sight. I know I’m faster than I was before the start of this cycle, I know I’m not overtrained, I know I’m hitting the workouts so…screw my heart, trust the work.

A few other juicy tidbits in Jaymee’s blog have to do with weight – at 5’5″ and 124, she’s not at all the usual waif which is very helpful for some of my fellow running gals to see, like LARunner, who has been in weight-questioning mode recently.  The takeaway from this is, you really have to test and see what works for you.  There’s no one number for everybody.

Speaking of weight, with 3 weeks to go, it’s time to get serious with my eating again.  I’ve had cookies and candy daily for the last couple months which is actually pretty cool, because it shouldn’t be too hard to lose a couple lbs before the race simply by eliminating that stuff from my diet.  I also bought cottage cheese again after a long hiatus and fruit is also back in my fridge, though I’m not a big fruit lover (who needs fruit when there are so many yummy candies and cookies in the world?) but I will be enjoying Nature’s bounty for the next few weeks.

I’m not looking to lose anything big, just a couple lbs, btw. I’m usually 117.5, though now that I’m drinking more water, I’m closer to 119.  Got no problems with either, though it’ll be fun to have that little boost if I can be 115 on raceday.

And that’s it for now. Later, sweet peeps.