Taper Drama

My little knee problem that I casually mentioned in my last blog entry might have been a little more serious that I was letting on. Actually it had me quite worried last week. The pain was coming from the inside of the knee on top of the knee cap. Actually if you look at the picture below it was right where the Vastus Medialis connects into the knee cap. It was a burning sensation that got really screamed at me anytime I tried to do anything near the top of end of my speed range.



After the failed 800's on Tuesday, I was able to do two runs of 9 & 6 on Wednesday, but there was a lot of discomfort on both runs, especially in the first few miles of each one. Then on Thrusday, things started to improve, so rather stupidly, I tried to do the 800's again. Within a tenth of a mile, the burning sensation came back and I had to call it quits. Since I was still about 3 miles from home at that point, I had to try and jog/limp home, which really caused some bad pain in upper quad area.

I iced the heck out of it all night and by Friday morning, it seemed to be doing better. The run turned out to be the best I've had all week as far as comfort was concerned and I was able to run 12 miles with a few near marathon pace without any discomfort. That afternoon I visited a physical therapist who confirmed nothing structural was wrong and then proceeded to stretch and rub and poke at it until I couldn't feel anything.

That all set me up for Sunday's final longish run of 15 miles. I wanted to do the first half of the run at a nice steady pace and then slowly move into marathon pace for the second half. I wasn't sure if the knee would hold up when the pace increased, but I figured it's best to find this stuff out now, 2 weeks before marathon day than a few days before. The run went about as good as could be expected with the first half clocking in at a 6:19 pace and the second half coming in at 5:51 pace. The legs felt great throughout and the knee never really gave me any trouble. There were a few times where I felt like if the pace got any faster I might have some problems, but things felt pretty stable at marathon pace, which I'm happy with.

I don't know if it's worth the risk to try and do anything faster than marathon pace between now and the marathon. On the one hand, I don't know how comfortable I am not knowing what the "breaking point" is for when the pain comes back. The downside is that once the pain does come back, it's comes back hard and it doesn't subside right away, meaning it could last for miles. I'm considering trying to some graduated strides tomorrow just to test it out with some short controlled speed, but even that kind of scares me. I'm going back to the physical therapist on Wednesday, so I'd like to be able to say if I'm still having trouble or not though. I guess I'll make that decision tomorrow. This is how last week went down:

Mon: 10 Miles Easy
Tues: 4 Miles (aborted 800's because of knee)
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:19 Pace
WedPM: 6 Miles Easy
Thurs: 7 Miles (Aborted 800's again because of knee)
FriAM: 12 Miles @ 6:11 Pace
FriPM: 5 Miles Easy
Sat: 6 Miles @ 7:20 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:06 Pace W/ 7.5 @ 5:51

Total: 74 Miles

Three Weeks to Go!

For the most part, the hardest of the work is over now. This weekend marked the 17th week from when I started training in earnest for Chicago. For the most part, training could not have gone much better. I managed to stay mostly injury free and logged my most consistent mileage ever. For the 9 weeks stretching from 6/2 - 8/3, I logged over 100 miles every week. From 8/3 - 9/21, the mileage dropped to around 90 miles a week, but the intensity increased. Overall from the beginning of June until now, I averaged 92.6 miles, which is by far the most I've ever averaged. Additionally, many of those miles were done at an intensity that I haven't done in the past. Overall, I'm very pleased with where I'm at right now.

Of course, I wouldn't be me, if I there still wasn't a certain amount of doubt heading into this weekend's long run. Ever since I struggled home on the half marathon over labor day, I've been a little hesitant to proclaim myself to be in the shape of my life, although the numbers seem to indicate that. I really needed a strong final 20 miler to give myself a good feeling heading into the taper. Luckily, things fell into place Sunday morning and things went very well. I ran it with my friend Dave, which was fitting since we've been pretty much doing the same training program since June. He finished the 17 weeks with a 92.5 average so we were pretty much identical in terms of mileage and intensity.

We thought about going 23 miles, but we both talked ourselevs out of that on Sunday, reasoning that a strong 20 miler would be more important than a 23 miles, with the risk of some struggling in the last 2 miles. Overall we averaged a pretty easy 6:34 pace for the whole thing. As we came down to the final 2 miles, I think we were both pretty jacked up about we accomplished over the summer and the 19th mile came in at 6:07 as we subconsciencly started to turn the screws. Once we saw the 19th mile split, we decided we couldn’t slow down on the last mile so we turned it on a little more and clocked a 5:51 for the final long run mile until race day. What was encouraging was that we were talking most of the way on that last mile. It was comfortable.

This was how the week went down:

Mon: 7 with 10 x 400's @ 76
Tues: 10 with 3 x 2 mile at lunch (10:47, 10:46, 10:45)
Wed: 9 easy in the am, 6 easy in the pm
Thurs: 12, with 10 @ 5:43 pace
Fri: 10 easy in the am, 7 easy in the pm
Sat: 8 easy
Sun: 20 @ 6:34 pace

Week: 90

On Monday I went to go get my marathon shoes during lunch. I ran 5 miles out to the running store, picked up a pair of Saucony Fastwitch Endurance. At about 8oz, these aren't the lightest trainers out there, but for a marathon I think they give me a pretty good blend of support at a nice weight. I ran home in them and they felt great. I'll probably put about 30 miles on them before race day which should work out nicely. Today was an extremely easy 4 miles. I was planning on doing 800's today, but was experiencing some IT Band pain this morning so I decided to keep things conservative and just take it easy. This knee has popped up a few times in the past few weeks, and usually if I give it a day to relax, it goes away pretty quickly. I'm hoping today is no different.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

This has been another tough week of training, but thankfully, the end is in sight. I think I may be butting up close to the edge of overtraining, and if this Sunday wasn't the three-weeks-until-Chicago mark, I'd probably back off things a bit. However, with the taper quickly approaching, I know recovery is on the horizon.

After coming off the marathon paced long run on Sunday, my legs weren't feeling too good on Monday. The schedule called for 10 X 400 in 80 seconds each with a 200 recovery. As much as I wasn't looking forward to fast running, I wasn't really looking forward to slow running either and the change of pace that goes along with intervals seemed to agree with me today. So after another morning of scrubbing the basement and finishing the clean-up, I did the 10 reps in an average of 76 and left feeling better than when I got there. Not a normal recovery day for sure, but it seemed to do the trick.

On Tuesday the schedule called for my 3rd hard day in a row with 3 X 2 mile in 11:00 each. Now, I've done a variation of this workout once before and it was only 2 X 2 mile and it was in 11:20. That workout came a few weeks before my goal spring Marathon and it was a tougher workout than I was expecting. I struggled to hit the pace on both reps, but did finish both in a few seconds under 11:20 each. With this workout adding a rep and paced at 10 seconds per mile faster, I wasn't sure what to expect. Oh yeah, and those legs are still just dragging.

My mind was quickly set at ease as I got through the first mile of the rep. The time said 5:22 and I wasn't working hard at all. I was able to cruise comfortably through the finish of that one and clocked a rather easy 10:47. That was followed with a half mile jog and then I got to work on the second rep. Again, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy the pace felt and again finished in a comfortable 10:46. However, I could tell following the second one that the recovery wasn't going as quickly. I could have used another few minutes to recovery before starting on the final rep, but I stuck to the workout and started up again after a half mile recovery. The last rep was not as comfortable as the first two, but it wasn't bad either. The legs started screaming a bit with 800 to go, but with a half mile to go of a 6 mile workout, that's something I can deal with. I came through the final rep in 10:45. I was pleased with the workout.

Wednesday was a recovery day with runs of 9 and 7 miles at an easy pace. That led up to another tough on Thursday. The plan was to do 10 miles at 102% of race pace. If I calculate race pace out to 5:50 (did I just say that?), that means that 102% of that would be 5:43 or so. Early on Thursday I had thoughts of pushing this workout out one day to give myself an extra day of recovery. I went back and forth about the benefits of doing it today or Friday and hadn't really decided until about 200 meters before it was time to start tempoing (is that a word). I decided I'd give it a go, but call it after 2 miles if things weren't going good. By mile 2, I wasn't fully convinvced that this was gonna be a great run, but I felt good enough to continue so it was on. Splits went like this:

5:48
5:51
5:42
5:41
5:41
5:43
5:47
5:45
5:43
5:30

Overall I was happy with the effort. I am dragging a bit this weekend, as I expected I would be, so I'm happy to be almost done with the hard stuff. Today was two easy runs of 10 and 7. That leaves an easy day tomorrow, and then the final 20+ miler on Sunday. I'm hoping that as the miles start to slowly come down over the next three weeks, the pop will return to my legs. I almost forgot what it feels like to run on fresh legs.

Keeping my Head Above Water (Ha Ha)

It's been a pretty grueling stretch for me since I last updated this thing. On Friday I did 15 miles at a relaxed pace, which turned out to be a 6:39 pace. Coming off a fast 6 mile tempo run the day before, I was pretty happy with how easy this run felt once I got into a rhythm. Everything is so much easier once you get that rhythmic running back.

Then the fun started. Friday night the Chicago area started getting hammered with rain. At about 2:30AM on Saturday morning, I got up and decided to check to see how the basement was holding up. It wasn't. Within a few minutes of me getting into the basement, the sump pump became overwhelmed with water and started overflowing. Kelly and I started working feverishly to get everything out of the basement and onto higher ground. While we were successful in that regard, it was still a frustrating couple of hours as I sat and waited for Home Depot to open as I watched helplessly as my basement filled with water. Luckily I was the first person in line at Home Depot to rent an industrial strength sump pump and by about 8AM the water had been pumped out of the basement. However, since we were forecasted to get rain for the rest of the weekend, the struggles continued to stay on top of everything. At one point, we had 5 sump pumps running in the basement trying to keep the water from overwhelming us. It worked, but it wasn't easy.

Through all that I did get in an easy 10 miler on Saturday. The plan for the weekend was to rest up and do a long run with at least 10 miles at Marathon Pace on Sunday. I was thinking of incorporating Sunday's workout into the Chicago Half Marathon, as it seems much easier to run at MP in a race setting, but with all the excitement on Friday Night/Saturday, I was too tired to even think about going to a race.

So Sunday arrived and I had no option but to try and tackle the run by myself. Since most of the trails around my house were flooded, I had only option for this run and that was to do it on the roads 5 times around a 3.65 mile loop. I did one warmup loop and then tried to settle into marathon pace. It just wasn't happening though. I came through the first fast loop around 5:55 pace. The winds had picked up at this point in the day so I was stuck with about a mile and a half with the wind at my back and then the same distance with the wind in my face. I tried to increase the pace on the second loop, but again, it just wasn't happening. The pace on the Garmin stayed stuck right at 5:55. For some reason, I just couldn't bring it down. Finally on the last loop, I decided to just go as hard as I could for the first mile and see if I could move off of the 5:55 overall pace. It seemed to work as I was able to bring the pace down without working too much harder. I pushed as hard as I could on those last 3.65 mile and finally brought the overall pace down to 5:48 when I hit 11 miles.

I know this isn't the ideal way that this workout should have been done, but after an exhausting couple of days, it was all I could do. I must admit, I've never incoporated marathon pace into my long runs before. To be honest, having done it a few times now during this build-up, I'm not a big fan of it. It's a very difficult workout for me from a mental perspective and I just don't know if the physical benefits are that great. I feel like I could get very similar results from doing a hard tempo run on a Saturday followed by a nicely paced long run on Sunday. Anyway, I'm committed to the program, so I'll continue to do these, including the dreaded 23 miler this weekend with the last 4 at MP. Ugh.

Here's how the week went down:

Mon: 6 Easy miles
Tues: Pyramid Workout Around 5:07 pace for everything 200-400-800-1200-1600 up and down
WedAM: 10 @ 6:52 pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 W/6 @ 5:34
Fri: 15 @ 6:39
Sat: 10 @ 7:05
Sun: 18 W/ 11 @ 5:47 pace

Total: 87 Miles

The Need to Cruise

Yesterday consisted of a two nice and easy runs of 10 and 7 miles. One way that I can tell when I'm in decent shape is when my second runs of the day are easy. In the beginning of a cycle, when I first start incorporating doubles into my routine, I usually struggle mightily on the second run for the day. Part of that is because I don't have a ton of recovery between my first and second run. I usually finish up my first run by about 8AM and am back out there for the second one around noon. That's probably not the ideal way to do it, but with 4 kids, I kind of like to be done with the running by the time I get home from work. This is the only way to do it.

Today was a 6 mile tempo run and while I was hoping the legs would feel great, they were still a bit fatigued. I eased into the tempo with the first two miles coming in at 5:37 and then start getting into a groove with the next 2 miles clocking in at 5:26. With the second half of the run heading into a headwind, it was tough to make up time and actually I was working pretty hard just to maintain the pace and finished out with two more miles at 5:37. Overall pace for the run was a pretty comfortable 5:34.

This was a nice confidence booster. While I can't say the top gear is there right now, I was in a pretty decent cruise gear that felt comfortable. Regular tempo runs are really something I need to do be doing all the time, regardless of what phase of training I am currently in. Putting aside the physiological benefits of the run, I need to be doing these because of the boost in confidence they give me. For some reason, I just don't get the same boost from hammering out repeats.

Could be Worse

After a pretty rough week of running through a cold, I had a fun but tough race to close out the week. Dances with Dirt is a 60 mile off-road relay race that is split up between 5 team members. I was assigned 3 legs of distances at 7, 4.5, and 4.25. All legs were moderately hilly, with the second leg having a water crossing and about a half mile of running through mud pits that could suck you in chest deep. Big fun. I managed a 6:13 pace on leg1, and a 6:33 pace on leg 3. Leg 4 was untimed since I didn't dare wear the Garmin through the mudpits. Our team managed a 10th place finish overall(out of about 400 teams) which was great, considering we went into the race with no expectations of being anywhere near the front of the pack.

Sunday left me sore and tired, so I took the day off. Yesterday was a slow recovery and that left me with my choice of a workout to do today. I have a 6 mile tempo and a pyramid workout scheduled for the weekdays this week and then a long marathon paced run for the weekend. With the marathon less than 5 weeks ago, I'm at the point in my training, where I need to be nailing my tempo runs. Tempo runs give me a lot of confidence, and for me they seem to bring my fitness together. With that in mind, I opted to do the pyramid workout today, thinking that if the legs weren't fully recovered from the schock and awe of Dances with Dirt, I'd rather tank on the pyramid than the tempo run.

The workout was 200-400-800-1200-1600, 1600-1200-800-400-200. Things stayed together pretty good on the way up with times of 34 (200), 72(400), 2:28 (800), 3:47 (1200), 5:06 (1600), but things got noticably more difficult on the way down. The legs were pretty much gone. If I can take comfort in anything, it was that the lungs weren't in too much distress it was just the legs weren't there. Coming down the times went like this: 5:12 (1600), 3:55 (1200), 2:36 (800), 76 (400), 34 (200). Not horrible, but definitely some fading going on there. Overall the average for the 5 miles of repeats (excluding the 200s which were really done more as a warmup and cooldown) was 5:06. While I'd have liked to be stronger during that second half, sometimes you just need to survive workouts like this. Hopefully with an easy day tomorrow, I can come back strong for the tempo run on Thursday.

Slowly coming around

After Sunday's tough race, I felt like death warmed over on Monday so I took the day off. By Tuesday things started to improve enough where I was able to do two runs of 6 and 7 miles. I wouldn't have done the 7 miler except I had about an hour to kill between work and the Cubs game (they lost), so I figured might as well give it a go. The second run of the day felt much better than the first.

Yesterday was supposed to be 6X1200's in 3:45. I did one and started coughing so bad, I had to call it quits. I wound up just doing 10 miles easy. Today was a double of 10 mile and 7 miles. Both runs felt pretty good but at this point, I'm not pushing things. This weekend I have a cross country relay race that usually leaves me feeling pretty wiped out afterwards, so I'd like to go into as fresh as possible.

I guess the best I can really hope for for this week is a punt. That's not what I wanted 6 weeks out from the marathon, but maybe it will wind up being a blessing in disguise. If this down week allows to me finish strong over the next month and a half, it will definitely be worth the frustration.