I have no idea whether this was a good month or a bad month...either way, it’s over.

My mileage came way down this month from January. I only ran 146.72 miles in 17:32:16 this month. To some extent I expected the cutback; over the 4 years that I’ve been logging my running I’ve only averaged 106 miles in February. 146.72 miles is about 10 miles over my average monthly mileage from 2012 but down 58 miles from January.

The cutback from January has a couple of reasons:

1. There are 3 fewer days in February than January
2. I replaced 2x long runs with races.
3. I lost a long run and a tempo run to a 6am Saturday to 6pm Sunday flight + cab trip from Boston, MA to Suwon, Korea.
4. While in Korea, I had to skip a run and abort 2x other runs at <3 miles thanks to dehydration and GI issues.
5. There was a blizzard which shortened a couple runs.
6. And if you're wondering about my last run of the month...that one taught me that if you're at all lactose in tolerant, don't eat a big bowl of chowder in your work's cafeteria just because it's the only thing left when you finally get out of the lab...I will not go into any more detail...

All these are just excuses though; I only ran 19 of 28 days this month.

Track Work

The only bright spot this month (other than the 2 PRs) was my track work. I had 3x workouts (lost one to the Korea trip) which I never even would have thought of attempting last fall when I ran my 3:17:30 marathon PR. I had a 3x Mile at 5:24 (5:26-5:22) + 6x 400m at 1:17 (1:19-1:14) night, a 10x 800m at 2:38 (2:39-2:35) night and a 16x 400m at 1:17 (1:21-1:12) night. That 10x 800m night probably was the biggest reason why I felt strong all the way though Jones. 

Races

I ran a 15km and a 10 Miler this month. At the 15km I managed to run it a second per mile faster than my 10km PR from 2012 and then at the 10 Miler a few weeks later I was another 2 seconds faster than I was at the 15k. Both races were quite hilly so I’m a little worried about how I’ll be able to manage on the flattish course in New Bedford; I don’t lose a lot on the up hills and can pick it way up on the down hills.

So in summary:

I survived a rough month and made it through two pretty good tune-up races. I didn’t do any runs over 15 miles this month so that’s going to need to be fixed in March. My goals for March are:

1. Get long run up >18 miles.
2. Get MP run up >10 miles.
3. Stay consistent on the track.
4. Complete all 4 planned hill workouts on Park St.
5. Run <1:21:00 at the New Bedford Half Marathon.

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

Well, Jones, at least you haven't forgotten how to show a lady a good time.

Where to start? The storm that came through New England this weekend pushed back the start of the race but the course for the Jones 10 Miler was in pretty decent condition. Of course the bibs were the talk of the day.

To what should I compare the bibs? It would be an exaggeration to say that they were the size of Texas. They were more like Rhode Island. Rhode Island is tiny as far as states go. The next smallest state (Delaware) has ~1000 more square miles of land area than Rhode Island but at ~1500 square miles Rhode Island is enormous as far as race bibs usually go.

Last year Kevin Johnson (WMDP, then running for GBTC) won in 51:12 and this year he repeated his victory in 51:48. There have been some rumors that Kevin just had a “crappy” race this year but I’m going to assume that everyone’s finish was just delayed 36 seconds by the massive bibs.

Enough about the bibs: now for the race.

Sarah and I got delayed on the way out to Amherst by some snow plows so I didn’t get to warm up with the rest of GLRR but there was a real flock of Angry Chickens all ready to go when I got to the start.

I couldn’t make out a word from the announcer before the race but eventually it started and for the stretch from the start out to the first turn it was the normal confusion as everyone got themselves sorted to their proper paces. I went out with the plan of just doing a tempo run; I was thinking a 1:02:30-1:03:00 finish time which was all I thought I needed to be on track for my 2:55:00 May marathon goal.

I was standing just a bit behind Mike at the start so I basically followed him through the first mile in 6:11. We were running on the left side of the road; EJ was over to the right and ended up getting caught up in traffic and falling back a bit. Mike caught Bui first and I thought I was going to fall back and let them go but mile 2 was downhill and thanks to relatively long legs I can cruise downhill at a pretty competitive pace without having to work and the three of us went through mile 2 together in about 11:54.

 

 

I was hoping for more snow + free sleds at mile 6.

 

Then we hit the first real hill of the course. I took the lead for a few moments but Bui ended up moving to the front and pushing the pace up the hill. Somewhere up the hill there was a water stop; Bui said he was going for water so I went wide to give him room and tried to push the pace a little but Jason’s a bit stronger on the hills so he was back to leading the way by the time we got to the mud.

We passed mile 3 in about 18:22 and pushed into the off road bit. Last year it was all frozen ruts and this year it was mud. Fortunately the ground was solid below a thin layer of mud so it wasn’t as bad of a slog as it could have been. Bui and I traded off leading a few times until I pushed ahead around the 5 mile marker.

I missed my split at mile 4; mile 5 was a few seconds on the slow side of 31 minutes. 1:02:30, I thought, that’s okay: it will be a PR. At mile 6 I had worked my way to a few seconds faster than 37 minutes and soon we hit the end of the mud.

Hitting the tarmac on the far side of the mud felt like I hit one of those boost strips in Mario Kart. I worked my way down to 42:44 for mile 7 and then 48:29 for mile 8. I felt as strong as I ever have in a race and was passing people left and right…actually mostly on the left because we were running on the right side of the road at this point but the colloquialism remains. Somewhere in there Mike Smith and I traded places a few times and I reeled in Matt Theodoros and wished him best of luck with the rest of the course. When I went through mile 9 in 54:16 I thought I might have a legitimate shot at breaking 60.

Then there was the last hill. I kept passing people up the hill, but it felt like a death march. The clock will show I ran a 6:14 for that mile but no 6:14 mile has ever felt that hard to me. I managed to pass Titus Mutinda toward the middle of that last mile making this the first time I’ve ever finished ahead of him.

I crossed the finish line in 1:00:30 for a 0:06:09 PR and wrapped my race bib around my shoulders to keep warm. I found Sarah and we found out that Sully crushed the course to the tune of 56:22 and we watched Mike Smith, Mike Girouard and Jason Bui all come in within 5 seconds of each other (1:01:08, 1:01:09, 1:01:13) and Matt Theodoros finish not far behind in 1:01:52.

We gathered by the finish and I found out that Cody Freihofer had dominated in 58:46. I met Justin Patronick (59:11) and Andrew Downey (1:00:17) and congratulated EJ Hrynowski when he came in at 1:03:26 a bit ahead of Jim Garcia (1:04:00) and Kevin Carnabucci at 1:06:06. Despite the massive bibs it was getting really cold so when Fil Faria finished in 1:08:29 I abandoned the finish line to get back to the school for coffee, food and heat. Back at the school I ran into Jim Pawlicki (CMS) and found out he had run a solid 58:26.

In team results GLRR took 8th place in Men’s Open. Top 3 were WMDP, GBTC and CMS. GLRR Women in 10th. GLRR Masters Men and Women both in 5th. EJ led the GLRR Senior team to 2nd place! GLRR Veteran Men took 3rd!

In all despite the weather and the hills it was a day of inspiring performances. SMAC definitely made the right call by keeping the race on.

 

Here are the results:

 

 

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

Weekly Update

One more week down; this is just my weekly log. There were so many good runs at Jones that I’ll do a post dedicated to just the race in a day or two.

02/18/13 – 02/24/13: 5 Runs, 1 Missed Run, 2 Aborted Runs, 1 Race, 0 Injuries, 34.08 Miles, 3:56:07.

New 10 Mile PR

• Monday:  6.6 miles in 0:50:00 in the morning and 4.75 miles in 0:35:00 in the evening. In the morning I was very sluggish but I figured that I would slog my way through it and put in a good run after work. After work the jetlag was hitting me hard and I just wanted to go to bed so I took an hour long nap then did an easy run on the treadmill. Then I went back up to my room to try to work on getting over the 14 hour time difference between Boston and Suwon.
• Tuesday: 2.8 miles in 0:21:32 in the morning, aborted it early. The dehydration I always get is Asia is really starting to set in. I’m trying to drink as much water as I can but it’s not so easy around here and the air is super dry.
• Wednesday: I was too dehydrated to even try to run in the AM. In the evening we went out to dinner to discuss how the meetings went this week and drink Soju and eat Sashimi. No PM run.
• Thursday: 2 miles in 0:14:55. Soju and Sashimi do not make for good GI happiness at 6am the next morning so I aborted this run early. Had a 6pm flight back to Boston so no PM run.
• Friday: I slept all day. Well, I got up and worked for a bit but no running.
• Saturday: 6.43 miles in 0:44:40. When I finished this easy run at <7 pace I started thinking that I might not have given up as much fitness while in Korea as I had thought.
• Sunday: 9:30 up with race pace and some strides. PR at the Jones Realty 10 Miler in 1:00:30.

I didn’t run as much as I had hoped this week, but Jones was a >6 minute PR so I’ll call it a good week. Jones was 2 seconds per mile faster than my 15km PR pace and 3 seconds per mile faster than my 10km PR…looks like I’ve got some other PRs to chase down this spring.

There were some huge performances today at Jones by GLRR but the results aren’t up yet so I’ll put together something in a few days about the race with proper shout-outs. Cheers and awesome job by all who braved the roads to get out to Jones today!

6 week down and 11 weeks left until Maine Coast!

 

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

I'm coming home from Korea early!

First, I have to say that I am a bit biased towards liking Korea. The biggest customer of our most successful products is a major company in Korea so basically, Korea pays my bills.

I don’t feel as at home here as I do in Germany (and to a lesser extent the Netherlands) but I actually like that. When I go out to a pub in Dresden it doesn’t feel like I’m visiting somewhere exotic. I’m not going to claim that my German is perfect, but I can usually understand most of what people around me are saying and I can order my beer in German. Most of those beers are the same ones available in Boston. In Korea everything is different.

Actually, everywhere in Asia, everything is different. Even in Singapore where everyone speaks English. The beer is different, the food is different, the clothes are different, and the cars are different and so forth. I like to visit exotic places but there is a point where I draw a line. The diagram below explains why I like Korea so much.



This is true.

The Korean Barbeque (or as they call it here: barbeque) is really good and if I was writing a food blog I would have plenty of fodder to talk about the raw chili crab, the live octopus, the black bean-paste sauce on noodles, the acorn gelatin, and the dried anchovies: all very delicious.

There is a downside to Korea though and that is the dehydration. The coffee here is the best coffee I have ever had (better than Peru, France or Italy so that’s saying something) but the problem is that I drink too much of it and not enough water. The result is dehydration and a rapid decrease in my ability to keep running the miles I had planned.

The moral of the story is that Korea is awesome. You should visit (but not in the winter, it’s about as cold here as it is back in Boston). Just be sure you’re not coming here right in the heart of marathon training or else you won’t be able to enjoy as much of the coffee.

I’m on my way home on Thursday so here’s to hoping that I can get enough water back into me by Sunday to get after it at the Jones 10 Miler!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

Another week.

Okay, so this week has been a bit tumultuous.

First: I’ve officially decided that I’m going to run the Maine Coast Marathon instead of the Providence Marathon (or Vermont City). I made this decision because of all of the “Oh, god, no! Mile 24 of Providence sucks!” reactions that I get when telling people who have run Providence that I’m planning on running it. Apparently there’s something with an overpass and a tight, winding descent from the path to the ground that’s just retched at that point in the race. Brad recommended I run Vermont City, but May 26^th is just too late for me. I’ve got the Hollis 5k on June 16^th and I don’t think I’d have enough turnaround time to get ready for the <16:45 goal that I have for Hollis.

Second: I flew to Korea. I’ve kind of known for a while that this trip was going to happen but kept hoping that I could hold all of my meetings via video conferencing to (a) save Axcelis some travel dollars and (b) keep my training on track. Well, our customers wanted face to face meetings so here I am at the Ramada in Suwon.

A lot of thought went into selecting this hotel. The last time I was in Korea I spent about 3 weeks in Dongtan and 2 weeks in Suwon; I was at the Ramada both times. The Dongtan hotel was more convenient to a large complex of bars and restaurants and was right across the street from a park with a ~5km long rubber running track that looped though a small forested area.

It's nice that there's a track, but I wish they'd mark of splits in smaller intervals than every km.

 

At most times of year, the Dongtan Ramada would be the obvious choice for the runner because of access to the outdoor track and the lighter traffic than you find in Suwon, but not in February. This time of year there is the real possibility of snow and a low probability of Dongtan prioritizing clearing the snow from the running track over clearing the snow from the road. So I needed to consider the hotel treadmills when making my decision.

I have not visited either the Dongtan or Suwon Ramadas since November 2010 so some of the facilities may have changed but the fitness room at the Dongtan Ramada was not good. It had two treadmills which gave me a false sense of awesome racing speed due to what I can only describe as incredibly poor calibration. I had assumed that the treadmill would read-back in kilometers and kilometers per hour (but it did not actually specify the units). On my first run on it I started it at speed 12 and ran for about an hour. At the end of the workout it told me that I had run 12 (units) in one hour which would be ~7.5 miles at 8:00min/mile if the treadmill was properly calibrated and measuring kilometers. The “workout” felt painfully slow but I hadn’t run an 8 minute mile in a while so I figured maybe I was in better shape than I thought. The next day, I decided to check my fitness by doing a 5km time trial on the treadmill. I started the belt at 16 and eventually got it up to 22 and finished my 5 units in ~14:55.

As of October 2010, my 5k PR was 17:31 and the fastest I had run in 2010 was 17:51 with my most recent 5k (September) coming in at 18:57. Even accounting for the treadmill being easier than the road, there was no possible way that I was running a 4:47min/mile pace for 3.1 miles (given that my mile PR was and is 4:55). If I assume that I did that run just as fast as the fastest I ran in a race that year it means that the distance I covered in 14:55 was 2.6 miles. If 5 units on the treadmill are equal to 2.6 miles it means that 1 unit on the treadmill is approximately equal to 0.84 kilometers. I could adjust my workout plans around this number but honestly, I don’t know that I was running at the same effort in that time trial as I was at the Gorilla Chase 5k that year. All I know is that the calibration is off.

Suwon had newer treadmills which may or may not be properly calibrated but at least they were close enough that my paces looked comparable to my efforts. Also, the Suwon Ramada has a better breakfast than the Dongtan Ramada and the market outside the Hwaseong Fortress near the Suwon hotel sells pig faces.

 

Yummy?

So enough about Korea and on to this week’s training:

 

02/11/13 – 02/17/13: 3 Runs, 2 Missed Workouts, 1 Modified Workout, 0 Injurys, 1 Scheduled Rest Days, 23.04 Miles, 2:42:25.

• Monday: 5.41 miles in 0:40:00. This was scheduled as 30 minutes easy recovery from last week’s Sunday long run. My long run last week was shortened by a setting sun icing up the roads. As a result I felt fresher for this workout than I might otherwise have. On the drive home, the 40°F air temperature was causing a thick fog to rise from the piles of snow cutting down my visibility. Since I couldn’t see very well while driving, I decided to run on the treadmill rather than get hit by a car. I decided to extend my run by 10 minutes because of my fresh legs and the ease of running on the treadmill (I kept the incline set to 1.5 but even that didn’t feel the same as flat road).
• Tuesday: Track Workout at Reggie Lewis with Mike. Scheduled workout: 10x 800m at 2:40 with 2:30 rest. Actual workout: 2.125 mile warm-up. 2x 200m Strides in 0:39 and 0:41 with 60 sec rest. 10x 800m in 2:39, 2:38, 2:39, 2:37, 2:38, 2:38, 2:39, 2:38, 2:38, 2:35 with 2:30 rest. 2.125 mile cool-down. This workout started feeling hard after the 7^th 800, but I managed to keep steady and finish up the workout. It helped that in the back of my mind I knew that I won’t be getting in a good track workout next week because of jetlag and the lack of access to a track in Suwon.
• Wednesday: This was when this week really fell apart. I was supposed to do 2 up, 6 at marathon pace and 2 down. I didn’t. I got stuck at work late working on the presentation I’m giving in Korea next week. When I got home it was super nice out. Or at least it was warm and I didn’t want to waste a warm night on the treadmill so I went out to look for some clear road to do my tempo on. The snow banks crept into the street and the footing on the sidewalks was sketchy at best so after a 3.16 mile loop in 25:14 I shut it down and went inside to grab some gear to head to the gym for my tempo but when I checked the time I saw I didn’t have time to go to the gym before I needed to pick Sarah up from Zumba. It’s more important to be a good husband than a good runner so I settled for the 3.16 miles.
• Thursday: Valentine’s Day. Sarah and I had big plans for the night so I packed a bag so that I could do hills at lunch. Unfortunately, I was too busy working on the Korea project to take lunch so I lost the day.
• Friday: I planned on moving my long run from Sunday to Friday because of my flight to Korea and promptly missed the run by getting stuck at work until 7pm.
• Saturday:  I had to get to Logan by 4am for my flight which wasn’t going to land until 4pm on Sunday so I planned on a rest day. This was the first day I took as planned since Tuesday.
• Sunday: The plan was just do something. It was a long flight and I was exhausted so I jumped on the treadmill right when I got the hotel and put in 5 miles in 38:24. It’s not much but it is something.

They say that you need a cut-back week every now and then and it looks like work is giving me mine this week and probably also next week. I will be running Jones as scheduled at the end of next week but it looks like I’ll be doing it as MP or Tempo rather than a race just judging by the fact that I’ll won’t be landing back in Boston until less than 12 hours before the race start.

Call my goal for the Jones 10 Miler a Tempo Run at 6:20. Target finish of 1:03:20. If I run that, I’ll be disappointed about how much faster I think I could have run based on the Stew Chase, but with my 1:06:39 PR for the 10 Mile, I expect to PR regardless of how my jetlag is doing.

It’s (maybe) worth noting that this is the first week since I started this blog that I didn’t post mid-week. That all just came down to the fact that if I don’t have time to run then I don’t have time to write. The exception to that rule is that I wrote most of this post (other than Sunday’s entry and my weekly stats) from my seat on the flight from San Francisco to Incheon. They seem to frown on you running on international flights.

 

5 week down and 12 weeks left until Maine Coast!

 

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

Fourth week down.

Well, if my 15km PR of 56:42 last week whispered that I have more PRs to come this spring, my track workout on Tuesday shouted in agreement. I’m officially keeping my Marathon Goal at <2:55:00 for now but Mike and I will revisit that in March after the New Bedford Half Marathon. Based on that goal, my MP and Tempo Run speeds will stay the same for now, but based on this week’s track workout I should be able to adjust those paces next month if I can get my long run on track.

02/04/13 – 02/10/13: 6 Runs, 0 Injurys, 1 Scheduled Rest Days, 53.23 Miles, 6:40:13.

• Monday: 4.08 miles in 0:32:26. The Stew Chase 15km felt easy while I was running it but I was definitely sore on Monday morning. Mike scheduled me for 30 minutes at Recovery Pace (~8 min/mile). In terms of my running, I started feeling a lot better during this run and at 2 miles I briefly thought about going for 5 instead of the prescribed ~4. By the time I was running towards Spy Pond into the wind my fingers and face had gone a bit numb from the cold so I was grateful that I could stop at 4 miles without cutting short the scheduled workout.
• Tuesday: Track Workout at Reggie Lewis with Mike. Scheduled workout: 3x Mile at 5:40, 6x 400m at 1:20 with 3:00-4:00 rest after the miles and 1:30 rest after the 400s. Actual workout: 2.75 mile warm up (the HS track meet would not end so I kept warming up longer than I usually would). 2x 400m Strides in 1:27 and 1:21 with 60 sec rest. 3x Mile in 5:26, 5:22 and 5:24 with 3:30 rest. 6x 400m in 1:14, 1:19, 1:17, 1:16, 1:18 and 1:17 with 90 sec rest. 1.5 mile cool down (it was late and I wanted to go home so I did .5 less than I usually would). The ~5:24 miles felt smooth and easy despite racing just 2 days before and left me feeling like I need to get out and race again to start picking up some new PRs.
• Wednesday: 7.50 miles in 0:51:02. This was a Marathon Pace day. I did 2 miles warm up, 5 miles at 6:40 and then 0.5 miles of cool down. I had planned for a 2 mile cool down but hit a “mile 14” a bit early and by the time I returned from my Pit Stop I decided that I was fully cooled down and that doing another 1.5 would have been miles simply for the sake of miles so I called it a day.
• Thursday: Thanks to the storm I got out of work late and then stuck in traffic which pushed my hill run to Friday.
• Friday: 10.05 miles in 1:25:48. I did 4x Park Ave for my first hill workout in a long time and it reminded me of that fact. This was a tough one but I made myself do the whole thing even though it was slower than I wanted.
• Saturday:  What blizzard? I drove some screws into my old Pure Flows and did 10.07 on Mass Ave in 1:19:40. I tried to do some Fartleks up in Lexington but even with the screws I was sliding around a little on the slush so I backed it down and made it an easy pace run.
• Sunday: 12.29 miles in 1:32:12. I had no motivation to run today. I finally made it out in the afternoon and did a 3 mile loop around Spy Pond. I was in danger of running a couple more laps for 9 and calling it a day but fortunately I ran into EJ on Mass Ave and we took a loop through Somerville up and over Winter Hill a couple times and back through Davis. The sun was setting as we were getting back to Arlington and it was getting slick so I called it a day a bit short.

The screws worked okay, but I hear that sheet metal screws would have given me better traction.

I officially found out that I’m off to Korea next weekend. I’m going to try to get back late Saturday night before the Jones 10 Miler so I should still be in for the race but we’ll see how I run with jet-lag  I’ll be staying in Seoul this time so we’ll see if I can find anywhere to run outside.

4 week down and 13 weeks left until Providence (or the Maine Coast Marathon if I pull the trigger on the switch)!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one…” Ernest Hemingway.

I’m quoting Ernest Hemingway in the title of today’s post not so much because of how that quote starts but for how it ends:

“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’.…(The man who first said that) was probably a coward.…He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Farwell to Arms

I like this quote because it makes me feel less bad about being afraid of Nemo.

As runners we don’t die a thousand deaths but we do sprain a dozen ankles, pull a dozen muscles, get stress fractures in a dozen places all in our minds before we take the first step out on our run. We fear those injuries and we fear frostbite and we are afraid that we’ll hit the wall 10 miles from home and get pneumonia or hypothermia on the walk home.

Nemo means “no one” in Latin but if you believe the projections coming in from the news and the weather channel Nemo is going to be a significant storm this weekend and already in my mind I’ve had all of those calamities listed above.

Going back to Hemingway’s quote I can remind myself that I have these worries about the storm not because I am a coward but because I am intelligent enough to understand the risks of running in it. The coward takes the weekend off because of the storm. The idiot runs exactly as planned without regard for the conditions and the intelligent runner adapts his or her plan around the storm.

I am trying to be an intelligent runner. Trying to train smart is already paying dividends this year such as the 15k PR and what I would have thought of as a monster workout this past Tuesday feeling easy. To date the training smart thing has meant taking my rest days when they are prescribed rather than waiting until I burn out to take a day off and has meant holding back (as much as I can) on my intervals so that I can do the entire workout at an even pace and not running add-ons.

Now, training smart means reassessing my plan for the weekend:

Thursday: Took me a while to get out of work and then was stuck in traffic and didn’t get home until about 8. I decided to make dinner and push off my hills to Friday morning before the storm.

Friday: This was scheduled to be a rest day. Instead of resting I did Thursday’s hills: 10.05 miles in 1:2548.

Saturday: Tempo Run. The plan was to do 2.5 easy to get to the Porter Square City Sports and do the 5 mile loop at ~6:18 pace then go easy for the 2.5 mile run home. I’m switching this to the treadmill because I don’t think the roads will be in any kind of shape for me to run at a 6:18 pace. The new plan is 2 mile warm-up, 5 miles at 6:18, 2 miles cool down. This will shave a mile off of my weekly total but the workout is the 5 mile Tempo; I had only planned on 2.5 up and 2.5 down because I live that far from City Sports.

Sunday: Long Run. I had planned on running 17.5 miles with 12.5 coming from around Fresh Pond at 7:20-7:40 pace. The trail section of the Fresh Pond loop will not be clear by Sunday morning and I cannot bring myself to do another long run on the treadmill. I’m going to cut my pace for this one back to 8min/mile and run 1:12:00 out Pleasant Street and Trapelo Rd then turn around and run home. This should give me ~18 miles total but I’ll be happy to just keep running for 2:24:00 regardless of total distance.

I hope you’re all safe this weekend!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

3 Weeks Down, Race #1 Done

Today I ran my first race of 2013 this week, but more on that later. The Stew Chase was a race, but the training this week is what matters.

Here are the details from this week:

1/28/13 – 2/03/13: 6 Runs, 0 Injurys, 1 Missed Workout, 1 Scheduled Rest Days, 55.34 Miles, 6:28:15.

1 New PR.

Monday: 15.32 miles in 1:50:35. After how frustrating work was on Sunday it felt really good to get in a long workout. We had an ice storm come through Saratoga Springs so I couldn’t run outside. This was the first time I’ve ever used a treadmill for a long run. Talk about boring. I had the incline set to 0.5 to try to mimic running outside but it still felt like I was running down-hill. I always have a hard time trusting that the distance, speed and level are all accurate on these things. I’m just glad that after my workout, I learned that the Hilton has an agreement with the local Y which has an indoor track so that my Tuesday track workout didn’t need to be on the treadmill.

Tuesday: Saratoga Springs YMCA Track (workout provided by Coach Toomey). 6x 1000m at target pace 3:25 with 2:30 rest. Actual: 2 mile warm-up in 15:28. 2x 200m strides: 39, 42 with 60sec rest. 6x 1000m: 3:31, 3:23, 3:26, 3:24, 3:26, 3:30 with 2:30 rest. 2 mile cool-down in 15:02. Almost killed a kid who thought it was a good idea to step into lane 1 without looking 5m in front of me 600m into my last 1000. I guess I learned that my breaks are working.

Wednesday: 9.34 miles in 1:05:00. MP workout on the Saratoga Springs Hilton Treadmill. 2 mile warm-up, 5 miles at MP, 2.34 mile cool-down.

Thursday: 3.88 miles in 0:30:00 shake out from the MP run. I was supposed to do hills in the evening but my meeting was rescheduled for the end of the day and after that and the drive back to Arlington it was too late to get the workout in.

Friday: Rest day to get ready for the Stew Chase. I needed this even after missing the hill workout. Long, track and MP on consecutive days got to me.

Saturday: 5 miles in 38:56 with Erica at the Porter City Sports Run Club. We were both looking to run 8s and stayed on target until the Charles where we picked it up just a bit. Mary from Mizuno brought the Evo Cursoris for us to try out. My god…I have never tried on a more comfortable running shoe. The Cursoris turned out to be a bit too wide in the toe box for me, but if you have a wide forefoot this might be a good shoe for you. Mary recommended trying the Levitas which has a slightly narrower toe box. Maybe I’ll review that one next when I finish up with the Adios.

Sunday: The Great Stew Chase 15k. ~2 mile warm up in 15:06, 15km Stew Chase in 56:42, ~2.5 mile cool down in Lynn Woods with Mike in 19:25. I wanted to be down around 56:00 for the 15k, but I’ll take the PR at 1 sec/mile faster than my current 10km PR. I went out easy with Mike (GLRR) over the first 2 miles and then picked up the pace to catch up Mike (Wicked) by mile 3. I ran with Mike through the hill and to mile 7 where I picked it up again to try to catch a CMS runner. I passed him and finished in 7^th. Shout-outs to Jim Pawlicki (54:27) in 3^rd, Mike Paulin (57:10), Mike Girouard (57:57), Billy Jackson (1:00:28), Tara Paulin (1:02:13) 3^rd Woman, Tim Short (1:02:41), Suzanne Chaves (1:04:20) 6^th Woman, Aaron Toleos (1:05:53), Dean Malerba (1:08:59), Jay Curry (1:10:41), Pat Smith (1:10:47), Holly Fitzgerald (1:11:49), Meghan Toomey (1:14:55), Angel Green (1:30:00, also congrats to Angel on her new 5k PR this week!), who all also ran the Stew Chase! My apologies to anyone who I missed in the results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/13/ma/Feb3_39thAn_set1.shtml

Up in Lowell, props to Chris Soucy (17:27) and EJ Hrynowski (17:53, 2^nd in AG) at the Super 5k!

I tapered a bit Thursday-Saturday to get ready for the Stew Chase but back to the “grind” tomorrow.

3 week down and 14 weeks left until Providence!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!

January happened

I ran more miles in 2012 than I have ever run in a year. My total was 1641.52 at an average pace of 7:22.0 min/mile. My next highest mileage year was 2010 when I ran 1167.26 at an average pace of 7:32.3 min/mile. Despite tracking these statistics (and every other statistic that I can think of), I’m not actually all that concerned with annual mileage.

One year, I might be injured for January-June, but come back and run great over the second half of the year. Another year, I might never be injured but just alternate high-mileage months with months of no running just because I get lazy. Another year, I might run every day and have a high total mileage at a relatively decent pace, but never do a long run or track workout or tempo run and thus never really get into racing shape.

What I want to accomplish is consecutive weeks and months of consistent and increasingly challenging training leading into a race. In this case the Providence Marathon.

So, I’m going to look back at January to try to compare it to what I've done historically and what my goals were for the month.

Days

I ran 24 out of 31 days in January. My goal was to run 27 days. Of my 3 missing days, two were attributed to mild Achilles Tendinitis that came from going too fast at a track workout and not rehydrating before bed. The third missing day was due to having to work all day on a Sunday, leaving no time for my long run which pushed it a day and cutting a Monday easy run from the schedule.

Long Runs:

The long run was the weakest part of my training this month.

I was scheduled for 4 long runs. The plan was to have 1x 16 mile long run, 1x 17.5 mile long run and 2x 18 mile long runs.

I did my 16 mile long run on Mass Ave through Lexington and into Bedford, MA. It was cold, but it felt good.

My 17.5 mile long run was supposed to be a run to Fresh Pond in Cambridge with 5 laps of the pond. This was 4 days after my Achilles injury and turned into a slow 10 mile run. It didn't help that I was running in the mud.

My first 18 mile long run was supposed to be around a reservoir in Southern Pines, NC. I reaggravated my Achilles the day before this run and it did not feel good. I ended up settling for 8.2 miles.

For my last long run, I was planning on doing that 17.5 mile run at Fresh Pond that I was going to do a couple weeks back. I just could not get out of work that Sunday so it pushed a day and I ended up having to do it on a Monday in Saratoga Springs, NY after meeting with a customer. It ended up being 15.32 miles on the treadmill. It wasn't everything that I was hoping for, but at least it was something.

Tempo/MP Runs

Other than my track work, I think that my next strongest workouts were the tempo/marathon pace runs. I didn't miss any and I increased the volume from the start of the month to the end.

I planned on doing 7 workouts at Marathon Pace or at Tempo pace. The plan was one MP workout on Saturday for the first two weeks before turning Wednesday into a MP day and Saturday into Tempo for the last two weeks of the month. The “extra” MP workout was because the month ended on a Thursday.

My first Saturday was 4 easy, 2 at MP, 4 easy. I ran it with the City Sports Run Club, but ended up running alone for the whole thing because no one else was running up pace.

My second Saturday was 5 miles at which I planned on doing at MP. This was 3 days after the Achilles injury so I just couldn't get the pace down where I wanted to be. I ended up averaging 7:18 min/mile.

After that run, I moved my Tempo/MP runs to the treadmill so that it could hold me to target pace. On my first Wednesday I did a MP workout of 4.44 miles at 6:45 pace. The goal is to get MP to 6:40, but I was still struggling with my turnover coming off the Achilles thing.

Saturday (1/19) was my first planned Tempo workout and without a treadmill at Sarah’s grandparents’ place in NC I did it as laps of the reservoir. I did 2 miles of warm-up, 6.3 miles of something kind of like Tempo and then finished with a 2 mile cool down. I ended up with an average pace of 7:11 min/mile. I couldn't get mile splits during this run so I don’t know my actual pace on each Tempo mile but the average looks okay.

Next was a MP run on the treadmill at the Porter Square Planet Fitness. The total run was 8.56 miles at average pace of 7:01 min/mile. The heart of the workout was 5 miles at 6:39 min/mile pace.

On Saturday, I was a bit frustrated by having to work all day so I locked into my Tempo pace (6:18 min/mile) and cruised for 9.52 miles.

My last MP workout was in the fitness room at the Saratoga Springs Hilton; 2 up, 5 miles at MP, 2.34 down.

Hills

These were the heart and soul of my training in 2012 but I only managed to do 2 of 5 planned hill workouts. They were all supposed to be 8.5 miles on Park Ave in Arlington Heights with ~800 ft of elevation gain over the workout.

I did my first Hill workout exactly as planned, and then I missed my second one due to the Achilles. My third planned hill workout felt so good that I tacked on a few extra hill reps for a total of 11.6 miles. I skipped my next hill day because of black ice in Arlington and did an easy run instead.

My last hill workout was replaced by an easy run. My final meeting in NY got pushed to late on Thursday and with the 4 hour drive home I didn't have time to fit in this run when I got home. Fortunately, I was worried about this happening so I did an easy run at the hotel in the morning before going to work. I might have pushed these Hills to Friday, but with the Stew Chase looming just a few days away I wasn't interested in putting too much quality so close to the race.

Track Work

Track work was the linchpin that held my training together this month. I did all 5 of 5 planned track workouts. My trouble on the track was holding back to the specified paces. The biggest struggle with going as slow as I was supposed to was that Reggie Lewis keeps lane 1 closed so I’m always kind of guessing at where to take my 100m and 200m splits. To be on the “safe side” I usually take my splits a little farther than I probably should and typically end up ~1 sec fast per 200m.

My last workout was on the Saratoga Springs YMCA track. I had 6x 1000m at 3:25 pace on the schedule. My first lap was 1sec per 200m slow as I got used to the track. The straights were longer and the turns were tighter than usual. The track also wasn't banked and the flow was clock-wise (because it was a Tuesday, apparently they alternate direction each day because they like collisions?). In the “infield” there was a Zumba studio, a spinning studio, bathrooms and a weight training area. There were kids everywhere because their parents were taking classes in the infield. The kids seemed to like playing Frogger; I very nearly killed one.

Some days you're the frog, other days you're the car. I'm not sure which is worse.

So here is January:

204.81 miles in 24:51:51. Average pace: 7:17.0 min/mile.

This was the most I’ve ever run in the month of January (actually more miles than I logged in the previous 2 Januarys combined; last January I logged only 48.89 miles in 6:33:19). The only other time that I’ve logged over 200 miles in a month was last October and that included the Cape Cod Marathon on the 28^th (203.3 miles in 25:29:52). My third highest mileage month was July 2012 with 197.34 miles (23:59:38) but my median run was much shorter as I ran all 31 days that month.

Despite my general loathing of the treadmill, it saved my ass more than a couple times this month. I’m hoping not to need it as much in February, but you need every tool in your kit to build a good marathon so I’ve got no intention of completely abandoning the treadmill.

I was a bit short of where I wanted to be in terms of total mileage, total days of running, number of Hill workouts and length of longest long run, but all in all I’m fairly happy with this month. I did manage to set a personal best for monthly mileage and had only 1 fewer run longer than 10 miles than I had in all of 2011.

That said, being week on hills and long runs is not a good way to get ready for a marathon. Next month is all about keeping the speed work strong while improving the strength and endurance runs and adding some strength training. I’ll get my first fitness tests at the Stew Chase 15k in a couple days and see where I really am. Bring on February!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!