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 26th
is just too late for me. I’ve got the Hollis 5k on June 16th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 7th 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!
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