Since I haven’t blogged in forever, especially about training, this may be long. I guess its most of the “story before the story” (the story being my upcoming marathon). I realize I have my training log for this marathon, but nothing else really about my training to be able to look back on, so here it goes. It may bore you to tears and I won’t be offended if it does!
Sometime in early to mid December I had a brief wave of fear come over me while thinking about the Houston Marathon – almost butterfly like, as if the Houston Marathon were something I had never done before – a new, kind of scary challenge. Then I stopped and asked myself why I would be worried about that race, considering it will be my 9th marathon (not to mention three 50ks and 4 ironmans). Then I realized that 2010 was the first year since 2003 that I had not run/raced the 26.2 mile distance – most years I had done it 2-3 times, either as a standalone marathon, a 50k, or an Ironman. 2009 was the first year I had not done a standalone marathon since 2003. Hmmmm – now I know why I’m a little scared about it all. It really has been a while since I’ve raced the distance, especially in a standalone marathon. My last one of those was October 4, 2008. Some of you may think I’m crazy to separate a standalone marathon from an ironman marathon, but really, an ironman marathon is not nearly as intimidating (the run part…not the whole 12-15 hour day thing!). In an ironman you run slower, period. Running slower is not nearly as stressful – obviously physically, but emotionally as well. When you toe the line of a marathon, you have one job that day – to run 26.2 miles as fast as you can. With ironman, your job is much different, and simply finishing is often celebrated as much if not more than fast times. Marathons hurt. Bad. Ironmans hurt too, but in a completely different way. The 18 wheeler runs over you anywhere between mile 18 and 24 in a marathon (if you are lucky and it waits that long to hit). In an ironman, the half ton pickup might make its first hit early in your day, but if you are fairly smart and a little lucky, the 18 wheeler may never visit.
I feel a bit like a newbie this time around because it has been so long. I also feel a bit different because I’m training different than I have before, and feel like I have been a bit rushed with it all. I was in 13-15 mile shape for most of the first half of the fall, but took 10 days completely off running after both Halfmax Half Ironman (Oct 2) and Ironstar Half Ironman (Nov 7). When I came back after Ironstar, it was kind of diving in head first with no looking back allowed. My first long run was 12 miles, 2 weeks after Ironstar, and it was awful. I was having flashbacks to fall 2009 when the same thing happened. I raced IMFL in early November and had really hoped to run the Houston full marathon in January 2010. My long runs after IMFL just got more painful each weekend and I finally pulled the plug on the full the weekend before the deadline to switch to the half. It was definitely the right decision to make. I was sad to miss yet another Houston full, after missing 2009 due POTS, but had had such a great year of ironman racing in 2009 I couldn’t really be that upset about it. Hmmm – I think that is another reason I’m a bit nervous – this will be the first time I’ve run the full in Houston in three years. I did it four years in a row before that. Anyways, back to this fall – my 12 mile run sucked. I was scheduled to run 14 Thanksgiving weekend, and that was kind of the do or die run. If it went well, I could continue building the mileage I needed to to train for the full, but if it did not go well, I’d be foolish to think 16 would go well the following weekend. Thankfully, the 14 was good – really, really good actually. I was back in the game. The weekend after that, our training group ran a route known as “The Run from Hell.” They weren’t kidding. I was still a little scared of 16 miles – especially 16 of these miles. The elevation chart is below, and pretty much speaks for itself. Hardest run I have ever done, but also probably one of the prettiest. My motto during that run became “the hardest climbs usually have the greatest rewards (views) at the top.” I knew there was one hill we’d be running up that was over a mile long, and very steep in places. It is legendary around here, and until I found out that is where our group was running that weekend, I would have sworn to you I’d never ride or run up that hill. What I didn’t know is the ~10 miles leading to that hill were nothing but climb after climb after climb as well. On top of all that, we got lost, adding distance to our route. I ended up passing this nearly 17-mile test with flying colors, and was no slower on that route than my usual training runs of that distance had been in Houston for the past several years. Yesssssss.
The next weekend was a down week in mileage but not necessarily effort. I raced the Decker half marathon which is notorious for its wind and hills (it did a very good job of living up to its reputation this year). I think the Run from Hell was scheduled the way it was for a reason – to make the hills at Decker not seem quite so bad. I went into Decker without much of a plan – I knew it would be nice to go somewhere around 2:00, but the fastest I’d done since early 2008 was 2:03 and most were in the 2:05-2:10 range. I also knew this would be the hardest half marathon I’ve run, so I really had no idea what to expect. Around mile 6 in the race I told myself I had better come up with some sort of a plan because I was running far faster than I thought I would be able to. Around mile 9 I was wishing I remembered exactly what my pr was, and what pace it was, because I thought I could possibly come close to beating it. Around mile 9.5 I changed my mind. Just after mile 10 I was running up what I thought was “Quadzilla,” reminiscing about how I had to walk my bike up that hill at my first triathlon in 2003, and giving myself a pat on the back for being so strong and charging up (well, not really…) the hill. FAIL. As I neared the top of the hill I was on, I realized I was not, in fact, on Quadzilla. I was on Quadzilla’s front door step. I did make it up Quadzilla okay, but was feeling pretty done after that. I walked twice during the last 1.5 miles – they just seemed to go up and up and up and up. Surprisingly enough, I negative splited the race by a whopping 2 seconds, and finished in 1:57:30, not far from my pr of 1:56:03 which was set on the Austin Half Marathon course (February 2008) – significantly easier than Decker.
The good thing about Decker is it gave me a really good value to use in the training calculator we use (McMillian) to give me goal paces and training paces to use from there on out. I ran about 2 minutes faster in the half than my blood lactate threshold testing predicted, and the training values were adjusted accordingly. The bad thing about that is those new training/goal paces were all faster! My coach had updated my pace chart before my first workout after Decker. Thanks. The weekend after Decker I did my first goal pace training run – 18 miles with 10 miles at goal pace in the middle. I was scared to death of this concept. People were starting to do it the last time I trained for a standalone, but I kind of ignored it (because it scared me). It became easy to ignore during ironman training because truthfully, if you race ironman at your normal long run training pace, you are doing pretty well (no need to train for a goal pace that is completely unrealistic at the end of a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike). I could not really ignore the whole “train at goal pace” thing any longer because I asked Shawn (PAC coach) for training help, and he gave it to me. That advice included three long runs that incorporate 10 miles at goal pace. I started goal pace 5 miles into my first 18 mile run and even at mile 4.99 I was still scared to death of it. Sure enough though, mile 1, no problem. Mile 2, more of the same. Before I knew it, I’d run 10 miles at goal pace and lived to tell about it. 10 miles is still a long way from 26.2 but hopefully it is a good start.
The weekend after that (Christmas Eve), I ran 20, all at regular long run pace. I had company for miles 6-16, thank God, and the last 4 miles were miserable. My iphone earphones kept turning on voice control instead of playing my music and I probably stopped every quarter mile to fumble with it. All I wanted was some nice music to get me home (which was of course uphill), but nooooo. I managed to survive and it was almost anticlimactic after running the 18 with goal pace the weekend before. Last weekend I did another goal pace run, 17 with 10 in the middle. I had taken 4 days off before that, after declaring that week a cutback week while I was in Beaumont. I tried to do a track workout that Tuesday but my lungs (recently battered by bronchitis) weren’t having anything to do with it, so I hung up the shoes until my long run on Sunday. Um ya, that may have been a bad idea. I did manage to do the workout as prescribed, but wow. I felt like I ran 26 miles at goal pace, not 10. Go me. I got in Barton Springs Monday to try to ice my legs down a little, and got a massage, but they were just plain beat up. Tuesday’s track went pretty well, Wednesday’s easy run was anything but easy, and Thursday’s tempo run may have been the noisiest I’ve ever been. It’s quite possible I woke up half the neighborhood between trying to breathe and cursing Shawn, who was running with me for the last half of our 3 mile interval, but I survived. Today was supposed to be another easy 5, but I think rest is more important than hitting the weekly mileage goal I have in my little spreadsheet. The deadlifts last night might not have helped so much either. Tomorrow is another 20 miler with a good 10 miles in the middle of lovely hills. I like most of the route though (Scenic drive, along Lake Austin with the huge houses and boat houses – one boat house even has a helicopter landing pad on it… I need to look into marrying onto Scenic drive) so hopefully it will be a nice “easy paced” run.
The biggest change this time around - something I’ve never done before – is that I’m only tapering for two weeks. I’ve been a religious three week taperer forever. Shawn is pretty into the two week taper thing and has most of his athletes do it. I figured I would try it now and see how I like it – if it goes okay, I’ll do the same for IMTX, if it does not, I will taper a bit longer for IMTX. It is odd though having one more big week of training – otherwise I’d be on the taper wagon starting at approximately 10:30 tomorrow morning. Next week is slated to be my highest mileage ever (yet pales in comparison to so many runners), ending with a 21 mile run with 10 at goal pace. Then I get to hit the couch. Actually I don’t think I really do – Shawn said there are very specific workouts to do in those last two weeks to kind of wake up my nonexistent fast twitch muscles. We’ll see about that.
So I just have a little over one more week of hell left. Maybe I shouldn’t say that until this time tomorrow, because as of now, I have almost 65 miles to run before the end of next week. I have picked out my race outfit, so there is really nothing else to worry about, right? I’ll give you one guess as to what color it is. I will try to write a little more over the next few weeks of training – for myself if nothing else.
Sometime in early to mid December I had a brief wave of fear come over me while thinking about the Houston Marathon – almost butterfly like, as if the Houston Marathon were something I had never done before – a new, kind of scary challenge. Then I stopped and asked myself why I would be worried about that race, considering it will be my 9th marathon (not to mention three 50ks and 4 ironmans). Then I realized that 2010 was the first year since 2003 that I had not run/raced the 26.2 mile distance – most years I had done it 2-3 times, either as a standalone marathon, a 50k, or an Ironman. 2009 was the first year I had not done a standalone marathon since 2003. Hmmmm – now I know why I’m a little scared about it all. It really has been a while since I’ve raced the distance, especially in a standalone marathon. My last one of those was October 4, 2008. Some of you may think I’m crazy to separate a standalone marathon from an ironman marathon, but really, an ironman marathon is not nearly as intimidating (the run part…not the whole 12-15 hour day thing!). In an ironman you run slower, period. Running slower is not nearly as stressful – obviously physically, but emotionally as well. When you toe the line of a marathon, you have one job that day – to run 26.2 miles as fast as you can. With ironman, your job is much different, and simply finishing is often celebrated as much if not more than fast times. Marathons hurt. Bad. Ironmans hurt too, but in a completely different way. The 18 wheeler runs over you anywhere between mile 18 and 24 in a marathon (if you are lucky and it waits that long to hit). In an ironman, the half ton pickup might make its first hit early in your day, but if you are fairly smart and a little lucky, the 18 wheeler may never visit.
I feel a bit like a newbie this time around because it has been so long. I also feel a bit different because I’m training different than I have before, and feel like I have been a bit rushed with it all. I was in 13-15 mile shape for most of the first half of the fall, but took 10 days completely off running after both Halfmax Half Ironman (Oct 2) and Ironstar Half Ironman (Nov 7). When I came back after Ironstar, it was kind of diving in head first with no looking back allowed. My first long run was 12 miles, 2 weeks after Ironstar, and it was awful. I was having flashbacks to fall 2009 when the same thing happened. I raced IMFL in early November and had really hoped to run the Houston full marathon in January 2010. My long runs after IMFL just got more painful each weekend and I finally pulled the plug on the full the weekend before the deadline to switch to the half. It was definitely the right decision to make. I was sad to miss yet another Houston full, after missing 2009 due POTS, but had had such a great year of ironman racing in 2009 I couldn’t really be that upset about it. Hmmm – I think that is another reason I’m a bit nervous – this will be the first time I’ve run the full in Houston in three years. I did it four years in a row before that. Anyways, back to this fall – my 12 mile run sucked. I was scheduled to run 14 Thanksgiving weekend, and that was kind of the do or die run. If it went well, I could continue building the mileage I needed to to train for the full, but if it did not go well, I’d be foolish to think 16 would go well the following weekend. Thankfully, the 14 was good – really, really good actually. I was back in the game. The weekend after that, our training group ran a route known as “The Run from Hell.” They weren’t kidding. I was still a little scared of 16 miles – especially 16 of these miles. The elevation chart is below, and pretty much speaks for itself. Hardest run I have ever done, but also probably one of the prettiest. My motto during that run became “the hardest climbs usually have the greatest rewards (views) at the top.” I knew there was one hill we’d be running up that was over a mile long, and very steep in places. It is legendary around here, and until I found out that is where our group was running that weekend, I would have sworn to you I’d never ride or run up that hill. What I didn’t know is the ~10 miles leading to that hill were nothing but climb after climb after climb as well. On top of all that, we got lost, adding distance to our route. I ended up passing this nearly 17-mile test with flying colors, and was no slower on that route than my usual training runs of that distance had been in Houston for the past several years. Yesssssss.
The next weekend was a down week in mileage but not necessarily effort. I raced the Decker half marathon which is notorious for its wind and hills (it did a very good job of living up to its reputation this year). I think the Run from Hell was scheduled the way it was for a reason – to make the hills at Decker not seem quite so bad. I went into Decker without much of a plan – I knew it would be nice to go somewhere around 2:00, but the fastest I’d done since early 2008 was 2:03 and most were in the 2:05-2:10 range. I also knew this would be the hardest half marathon I’ve run, so I really had no idea what to expect. Around mile 6 in the race I told myself I had better come up with some sort of a plan because I was running far faster than I thought I would be able to. Around mile 9 I was wishing I remembered exactly what my pr was, and what pace it was, because I thought I could possibly come close to beating it. Around mile 9.5 I changed my mind. Just after mile 10 I was running up what I thought was “Quadzilla,” reminiscing about how I had to walk my bike up that hill at my first triathlon in 2003, and giving myself a pat on the back for being so strong and charging up (well, not really…) the hill. FAIL. As I neared the top of the hill I was on, I realized I was not, in fact, on Quadzilla. I was on Quadzilla’s front door step. I did make it up Quadzilla okay, but was feeling pretty done after that. I walked twice during the last 1.5 miles – they just seemed to go up and up and up and up. Surprisingly enough, I negative splited the race by a whopping 2 seconds, and finished in 1:57:30, not far from my pr of 1:56:03 which was set on the Austin Half Marathon course (February 2008) – significantly easier than Decker.
The good thing about Decker is it gave me a really good value to use in the training calculator we use (McMillian) to give me goal paces and training paces to use from there on out. I ran about 2 minutes faster in the half than my blood lactate threshold testing predicted, and the training values were adjusted accordingly. The bad thing about that is those new training/goal paces were all faster! My coach had updated my pace chart before my first workout after Decker. Thanks. The weekend after Decker I did my first goal pace training run – 18 miles with 10 miles at goal pace in the middle. I was scared to death of this concept. People were starting to do it the last time I trained for a standalone, but I kind of ignored it (because it scared me). It became easy to ignore during ironman training because truthfully, if you race ironman at your normal long run training pace, you are doing pretty well (no need to train for a goal pace that is completely unrealistic at the end of a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike). I could not really ignore the whole “train at goal pace” thing any longer because I asked Shawn (PAC coach) for training help, and he gave it to me. That advice included three long runs that incorporate 10 miles at goal pace. I started goal pace 5 miles into my first 18 mile run and even at mile 4.99 I was still scared to death of it. Sure enough though, mile 1, no problem. Mile 2, more of the same. Before I knew it, I’d run 10 miles at goal pace and lived to tell about it. 10 miles is still a long way from 26.2 but hopefully it is a good start.
The weekend after that (Christmas Eve), I ran 20, all at regular long run pace. I had company for miles 6-16, thank God, and the last 4 miles were miserable. My iphone earphones kept turning on voice control instead of playing my music and I probably stopped every quarter mile to fumble with it. All I wanted was some nice music to get me home (which was of course uphill), but nooooo. I managed to survive and it was almost anticlimactic after running the 18 with goal pace the weekend before. Last weekend I did another goal pace run, 17 with 10 in the middle. I had taken 4 days off before that, after declaring that week a cutback week while I was in Beaumont. I tried to do a track workout that Tuesday but my lungs (recently battered by bronchitis) weren’t having anything to do with it, so I hung up the shoes until my long run on Sunday. Um ya, that may have been a bad idea. I did manage to do the workout as prescribed, but wow. I felt like I ran 26 miles at goal pace, not 10. Go me. I got in Barton Springs Monday to try to ice my legs down a little, and got a massage, but they were just plain beat up. Tuesday’s track went pretty well, Wednesday’s easy run was anything but easy, and Thursday’s tempo run may have been the noisiest I’ve ever been. It’s quite possible I woke up half the neighborhood between trying to breathe and cursing Shawn, who was running with me for the last half of our 3 mile interval, but I survived. Today was supposed to be another easy 5, but I think rest is more important than hitting the weekly mileage goal I have in my little spreadsheet. The deadlifts last night might not have helped so much either. Tomorrow is another 20 miler with a good 10 miles in the middle of lovely hills. I like most of the route though (Scenic drive, along Lake Austin with the huge houses and boat houses – one boat house even has a helicopter landing pad on it… I need to look into marrying onto Scenic drive) so hopefully it will be a nice “easy paced” run.
The biggest change this time around - something I’ve never done before – is that I’m only tapering for two weeks. I’ve been a religious three week taperer forever. Shawn is pretty into the two week taper thing and has most of his athletes do it. I figured I would try it now and see how I like it – if it goes okay, I’ll do the same for IMTX, if it does not, I will taper a bit longer for IMTX. It is odd though having one more big week of training – otherwise I’d be on the taper wagon starting at approximately 10:30 tomorrow morning. Next week is slated to be my highest mileage ever (yet pales in comparison to so many runners), ending with a 21 mile run with 10 at goal pace. Then I get to hit the couch. Actually I don’t think I really do – Shawn said there are very specific workouts to do in those last two weeks to kind of wake up my nonexistent fast twitch muscles. We’ll see about that.
So I just have a little over one more week of hell left. Maybe I shouldn’t say that until this time tomorrow, because as of now, I have almost 65 miles to run before the end of next week. I have picked out my race outfit, so there is really nothing else to worry about, right? I’ll give you one guess as to what color it is. I will try to write a little more over the next few weeks of training – for myself if nothing else.
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