Not What I had in Mind

This week seemed to set-up beautifully for a good half marathon. After two nice speed workouts early in the week, things lightened up nicely near the end of the week so I could go into the race feeling somewhat fresh and still get about 90 miles for the week. The weather looked good for the race as well, as temps looked like they would be in the low 60's on race day with low humidity. I was excited.

Then Friday came and I felt the tickle in my throat. By Saturday, the tickle had turned to a full-blown cold with a slight fever. I went to bed Saturday night hoping for a miraculous recovery, but unfortunately, it didn't happen. I figured since the race was paid for I might as well show up and see what happens. Maybe I'd pull a rabbit out of my hat.

No rabbit. I went out at regular pace and by mile 5, I was in decent shape right around 5:38 pace. From there, things got tougher and I quickly started fading badly. I was working as hard as I could but was just barely holding 6 minute pace. To be honest, the only thing keeping me going was that I was in 3rd place and there was some cash for the top 3 runners. I told myself at mile 8, as soon as I drop into 4th place I'm dropping out, but I refuse to hand the guy the money.

That probably isn't the best mindset to have while racing, but I was not feeling good. Mile 9 came and I could hear the cheers for Bronco getting closer. Apparently the 4th place runner was a local favorite with the nickname of Bronco. Mile 10, he was right on my butt and I was praying he would just surge and make it painless, er, less painful. By mile 11, we were running stride for stride, and I had committed to at least finishing at that point.

Finally, we came through mile 12, and I tried to put a surge on. I figured there is no way this guy should be beating me, so if I could just feel good for a few minutes, I could still steal 3rd place. It wasn't meant to be. My surge lasted all of about 25 yards and I realized I was in no position to be surging. He quickly passed me back up and put a little gap on me that I just couldn't respond to. It was frustrating. Here we were, running 6 minute miles and I couldn't respond. I finished around 1:17:20 or so, which wasn't what I had in mind for the day, but it was the best could I do with what I had. Mercifully, I forgot to charge my Garmin yesterday so it fritzed out somewhere around mile 3, so no splits. I just know from mile 5 on, I was around 6 minute miles.

While this is frustrating, I think I can write this off to being sick on the wrong day. I know from past experience that running while congested gives me some problems, especially when I try and go at tempo pace. While that makes it a little easier to stomach, I'm still annoyed that I couldn't conjure up some strength on that last half mile. Oh well. I'd rather get this out of the way in August instead of October. I'm still glad I did the race, despite the results. I know there is no way I would have been able to approach a 5:54 pace for even 6 miles, let alone 13, if it wasn't in a race setting.

Hopefully, recovery will be swift. I don't feel sore right now, just achy all over. I'm hoping as the cold goes away, so will the achiness.

Not Bad

I was under the assumption that after yesterday's two easy runs, I would wake up this morning feeling great with tons of energy and a spring in my step. As you can probably guess by now, it didn't happen. As I was walking to the train this morning, I could tell that the legs just weren't right. I've never really been one to experience the delayed soreness from a workout, so since I didn't feel much of anything yesterday from my mile repeat workout, I was surprised to feel it today. Regardless the schedule called for 12 w/6 @ 36:00 so I was gonna give it a go. It wasn't the most daunting workout in the world and with a half marathon coming up on Sunday I really wanted to have two easy days before it to give the legs as much of a break as possible.

I have a route from work that is about 12 miles with a nice 8 miles on the lakefront path. I've been doing most of my longer tempo runs on that route so I decided this would be a good one to do this run on as well. It's kind of my "tough it up" route, where I kind of equate it with being in some discomfort. I really wanted to stick as close to 6 minute pace as possible on this run though. No sense making things harder than they needed to be. So I hit the first mile dead on 6 minutes. During the two mile mark I go under a bridge and I lost the Garmin reception. When the reception came back it showed me at 12:15 at mile 2. I sped up to try and get back on track and when I came through at mile 3, the Garmin had corrected itself (without telling me), so the 5:37 split for mile 3 wasn't completely necessary (mile 2 wound up being dead on 12:00 I found out after the fact).

After that most of the splits were around 5:55. I just don't have enough confidence in my pacing ability to stick that close to my goal pace. I need some cushion. After 6 miles, I was still feeling relatively good, so I just took the tempo portion out to 8 miles and cruised home. The pace for the 8 miles was 5:54 which wouldn't have been as fast without the quick mile 3, so I'll say mission accomplished.

Now the goal for tomorrow and Saturday is recovery and rest. I'm not sure what to expect on Sunday for the half marathon, but I'd love to give myself a little confidence booster heading into the final 6 weeks before Chicago.

Recovery

The goal today was to recover from the previous two days of speed workouts. Last week I made the mistake of running my "recovery" run at a 6:29 pace. While I was able to still get in a couple of decent workouts later in the week, I know that doing that on a regular basis is a recipe for distaster. Well, disaster might be a bit of an overstatement, but you get my point.

So the goal of today was to do both runs at a pace above 7 min/mile. I'm not sure why, but keeping the pace down on my recovery has been a bit of a challenge lately. When I was doing pure base building, I had no problem doing some of my easier runs at 7:30 pace. You'd think that with the increase in intensity I'd have an easier time taking it easy on the easy days, but that hasn't been the case. I think the cooler weather that we've had lately plays a part in it. It's comforting to see how easy it is to run when the temps are in the low 60's as opposed to the 80's with humidity. It gives me hope.

Anyway, the morning 10 miler was done right at 7:00 minute/mile pace. I had the wind at my back so the effort was definitely easier than a normal 7 minute pace. The afternoon was another 7 miles at an easy pace. I came out of both runs feeling pretty good. With a half marathon coming up on Sunday I have a pretty easy schedule for the rest of the week so I'm hoping to really be able to nail the half.

What I've been Doing

I probably should give a little background on what I've been doing over the summer. Over June and July I was able to log at least 100 miles per week every week. In total I did 9 consecutive 100 mile weeks. Most weeks consisted of a tempo run of about 6-8 miles depending on how I was feeling and what the weather was like. The rest of the runs were done at a recovery pace or just a general areobic pace. I tried to run at least one run per week in the 15 mile range and one run around 20 miles. For the most part, that was my June and July.

Then in the beginning of August I switched gears to more of a race preperation program. Late last year, my training partner Dave and I stumbled on a book called the Self Coached Runner, which was published sometime in the early 80's. For the most part, the programs in there are very speed intensive and little light on the mileage. I followed the program pretty much line for line for my fall marathon and wound up with a PR. While I didn't think the program was perfect, it got me back to the track for the first time since I started doing higher mileage, and the benefits showed in most of my spring race performances.

For the Fall marathon, Dave took the 10 week Self-Coached Runner program and added some elements that we felt were missing from the program. Basically this was tempo runs, marathon paced runs, and just some extra mileage. We stole a lot of the new workouts from a thread on LetsRun that was called 5 Key Marathon Workouts. This left us with an aggressive 10 week program that we felt will allow us to capitalize on the great base we built over the summer (Dave had a similar June and July as I did). So since the first week in August, this is how the weeks have gone:

8/4/2008 - 8/10/2008
Mon: Off
Tues: Off
Wed: 9 Miles with 10 X 400 in 74 Avg
ThursAM: 10 @ 6:35 Pace
ThursPM: 7 easy
FriAM: 9 Miles wth 3 X Mile in 5:09 Avg.
FriPM: 6 Miles
Sat: 20 Miles @ 6:38 Pace
Sun: 10 Miles Slow
71 Miles

8/11/2008-8/17/2008
Mon: 9 @ 6:23 Pace
Tues: 12 W/ 4 Mile 200 fartlek in 5:54 avg. 6:19 overall
WedAM: 9 Miles in 7:00
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 11 Miles with 6 @ 5:34 Pace
Fri: 24 Miles @ 6:28 Pace
Sat: 10 @ 7:14
Sun: 8 Total w/ 4.5 X 800 in 2:33...not good. Stopped after 4 (and a half). Just didn't have it
90 Miles

8/18/2008-8/24/2008
Mon: 7 Miles Easy
Tues: 14 Miles w/ 2 X 3 Miles in 16:54 & 16:58
WedAM: 10 Miles @ 6:29 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 Miles w Pyramid workout of 200 (33)-400(70)-800(2:28)-1200(3:47)-1600 (5:06), 1600 (5:03)-1200(3:49)-800(2:31)-400 (71)-200(33). Good tough workout
Fri: 19 miles w/ 9 @ 5:53 Pace. Humid and dead legs.
Sat: 9 Miles @ 7:39 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:34 Pace
91 Miles

Today was 6 X 1 Mile at 110% of marathon pace with a 400 meter interval between each. For now, I'm saying marathon pace is 5:50, which means the target for these miles repeats would be 5:15. This workout was a little intimidating as I have never done more than 5 mile repeats in a workout and I have never averaged faster than a 5:17 pace for the 5. However, based on some recent workouts, the 5:15 seemed attainable so I decided to go with the recent history and assume I could do this.

The miles wound up going down like this: 5:13, 5:13, 5:09, 5:12, 5:13, 5:13. For the most part, I was in control throughout the workout. If I had to, I felt like I could do two more of these without too much trouble. Of course that’s not to say I could have done all 6 of these faster than what I did. I think I found a comfort zone around 5:13 and was able to cruise with it. When I accidentally let that 3rd repeat go a little fast, I felt it on the next repeat. Also, on the last repeat, I gave myself permission to go as fast as possible, which still turned out to 5:13 so I'd say the pace was about right.

Good Week

Last week was probably one of the better weeks of running I've had in a while...possibly ever. With about 7 weeks until the Chicago marathon, I like where I'm at right now. Last week went down like this:

Mon: 7 Miles Easy
Tues: 14 Miles w/ 2 X 3 Miles in 16:54 & 16:58
WedAM: 10 Miles @ 6:29 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 Miles w Pyramid workout of 200 (33)-400(70)-800(2:28)-1200(3:47)-1600 (5:06), 1600 (5:03)-1200(3:49)-800(2:31)-400 (71)-200(33). Good tough workout
Fri: 19 miles w/ 9 @ 5:53 Pace. Humid and dead legs.
Sat: 9 Miles @ 7:39 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:34 Pace

Tuesdays 2 X 3 mile at a 5:40 pace was surprisingly difficult. For some reason I have problems with the repeat tempo runs. Once I finish that first one, my body just doesn't want to restart for the second one. Plus it was a hot and humid day, which didn't really help things.

Thursday's pyramid workout was a really good workout for me. I was able to keep most of the repeats down around 5 minute pace and finished feeling tired, but not wiped out like I was really expecting.

Friday's marathon paced run was what was really worrying me all week. It's not that I don't think I can hold a 5:50 pace for the marathon, because to be honest, I'm pretty sure that I can. However, after yesterday's tough workout and the brutal humidity that was in the area on that day, I had my doubts about doing it on that day. The workout proved much tougher than it probably should have been, but I was able to tough it out. It would have been ideal to do this workout with a rest day the day before and to have nicer weather, but do to some scheduling constraints, I had to do it Friday. If nothing else, it gave me some confidence that if I can handle the last 9 miles of a 20 miler at 5:53 in the heat and humidity, that's at least the low point for my marathon pace (which would still be a PR).

Today was 16 X 400 in 80 seconds each with a 200 interval at a decent jog in between. This is a nice workout as it's fast enough to get your heart rate up, but not fast enough where your legs are ever in that heavy lactic acid accumulating stage (or whatever it's called). I wound up averaging 77 per 400 for the workout, which was a little fast, but it felt very comfortable. I think some of it had to do with the cooler temps that hit the area yesterday.

7/7/2008-7/13/2008

Struggle of a week. Nothing with any real speed, but I got the miles in...somehow.

Mon: OFF
Tues: 11 Miles @ 6:48 Pace
WedAM: 15 miles @ 6:34 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 12 Miles @ 6:35 Pace W 10 Strides at the end
FriAM: 10 Miles @ 7:05 Pace
FriPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sat: 20 Miles @ 6:49 Pace
SunAM: 13 Miles @ 7:15 Pace w/ 10 Strides at the end
SunPM: 6 Miles Easy

100 Miles

7/14/2008-7/20/2008

Really limped home on this one. The humidity really starting getting to me near the end of the week, and I had very little left by the weekend.

Mon: 11 Miles w/ 8 @ 5:46
TuesAM: 10 @ 7:01
TuesPM: 8 Miles Easy
Wed: 11 @ 6:44 pace
ThursAM: 10 @ 6:35
ThursPM: 7 Miles Easy
Fri: 20 Miles no watch, but very slow (7+ pace probably)
Sat: 9 Miles easy
Sun: 14 Miles

100 Miles

7/21/2008-7/27/2008

Two hardish workouts and a race. I'm getting sick of base building. Just one week left and then I'm shifting gears to more race prep work. Thank God

Mon: 11 Miles w/ 7 @ MP 5:52
Tues: 10 Miles w/ 6 miles alternating between 79 and 96 second quarters (5:51 overall pace)
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:45 pace
WedPM: 7 Miles easy
Thurs: 8 Miles Easy
FriAM: 9 Miles @ 6:45 Paec
FriPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sat: 21 Miles w/ 10 Mile race in 57: 45 (5:45 pace)
SunAM: 13 miles @ 7:18 Pace
SunPM: 7 Miles Easy

Total: 101 Miles