2017 Sub 3 Marathons...and beyond! (Read 403 times)

I was worried about crashing mid-week, but held it together and finished off the week well. My legs were semi-compliant on Tuesday morning, but pretty beat up after the morning workout. This week the reps in that went from 7 -> 8, and the last one was pretty tough. 1 mile into the fast part of the Tuesday PM workout I thought I was going to fail to hit the target, but managed to find another gear and hold onto it. (When debriefing it with coach later in the week, he asked "do you realize that you had a 18:30 5k in the middle of your 2nd workout on Tuesday?" I of course did not.) 

I felt really dead-legged on Thursday, and told coach I was fried after that one. He had a look at the data and sent this back:

"4x11 Last week RE 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04. Power: 257 260 260 261. This week: RE 1.03 1.04 1.03 1.03. Power: 262 264 262 261 !!!

So yes, fatigue consistent with where you are in the training cycle. However, great numbers. Really work on the recovery - sleep, easy running."

We agreed that I'd try to get a lot of sleep over the next couple of days and reassess after my LR. I managed to get like 9 hours of sleep Fri -> Sat (all the cool kids go to bed at 8:45 on Friday night, right?), and I did feel much better on Saturday morning. I made pretty much the same mistake as in last week's LR, where I ran the initial part on the faster side of sporty (I almost certainly shouldn't be dropping a 1:28 HM as the warmup of a LR, but here we are). Again, I thought I was going to pay for it during the W/O parts, but managed to hold on really well even when it got uncomfortable. My garmin told me afterwards that the LR had a 1:21 HM and a 37:10 10k in it ... which was unexpected, to say the least.

I felt surprisingly OK this morning. I put a calendar reminder for this Thursday that says "you feel like shite. you'll be OK".

ThreeDB - Awesome race.  I'm looking forward to hear about it.

IAM - Another monster week.  What's the plan leading up to the race?  Tapering at all?

My week:

I skipped out on doing track work Tuesday afternoon since my calves were still rather sore - I guess from the half race 10 days earlier???  I then decided on a relatively easy 6 mile tempo at something faster than MP, but slower than HMP.  I thought the effort was about right, and the pace seemed about right, but looking at the HR data after, it seems like I went a little easy--my HR never really got up to MP HR.

Next weekend is looking like it'll be good weather, with a front blowing in Friday night.  There's a 5k on Saturday that's fast with fast runners, and then a decent half marathon on Sunday.  I'm leaning towards the 5k.  I really want to break 17 this year.  It won't happen this weekend, but the more races I can get, the better my chances that it will happen.  I'll race a few more 5k's in November.  But I'm also not thrilled with my half performance from two weeks ago, so it would be kind of nice to get a redo when I'm not getting over a sickness.  Not sure what to do!

3DB: Great race today!  Congrats on the excellent time.

IAM: Tremendous week (as usual). That long run is a beaut. Getting some extra sleep Friday night seems to have paid off well!

Andres: Nice looking 6 mile tempo. I think you should do the 5k race; that's what you wanted to go after this fall and as you said, the more races you do the more chances to break 17. You might surprise yourself how close you already are to that.

Swim: Amazing week and that 15 @ 6:20, at that altitude, is incredible; great job!

After a couple weeks of little running I got back at it this week. My primary goal for the next 4-6 weeks is to break 18 in the 5k, whether by a time trial on the track or in a road race. I had a decent track session Wednesday. I would like to get to a 5:40 avg pace for the 1600s eventually, so a 5:45 average for the first track workout was a decent starting point. My son wanted to do a mile time trial and get under 6 minutes (he ran a 6:03 this summer), so we went yesterday to the track and did a sort of dual time trial. I gave him a 200m head start, figuring that might put us about even at the end. 200m was too much: he ran a 5:47 and was about 50m ahead of me when he finished!  I ran a painful 5:16.9. Despite the pain I want to give it another try and see what I can do. I figure these short time trials can only help 5k performance.

3DB  - awesome race! Congratulations!

IAM - man you nail some awesome weeks.  You are more like triple my total this week (although I am tapering!).

Andres, JTReeves - nice weeks guys.

Andres - I agree with IAM in terms of giving yourself a few cracks at the 5km.  I had a 10km 3-race series earlier this year... exactly the same course each time and my times were 35:41, 34:44, and 35:11.  I think just slightly different weather conditions, and prep made a quite a big difference.  Also I was in a foul mood before race 2 so that fired me up a bit (I went out FAR too fast and still ran a massive PR).

Me - total of 50km while on holiday - that was the first week of a 2 week taper with the marathon coming up this Sunday.  Mostly easy, with one longer 10km tempo effort.  That is the first week since April that I've been under 65km for the week!  I haven't had any really huge weeks, maxing out in the mid-90's, but I'm hopeful that consistency pays off come Sunday.  Also clicked over 3000km for the year in the process.  Looking like a pretty easy week this week with one short hard effort tomorrow.

JMac I’ve been avg ing over 100 mpw s in marathon cycles for 3 years at this point.  I don’t have the kinda talent some guys my speed do so I have to outwork them.  If I would have had a legit half tune up in the 1:16 low range instead of my 34:30 10k TT I’m confident I could NS my way to 2:39 but without that I’m in no mans land, so I’m going out on feel and plan to devastate the race late.  I don’t just shoot for numbers anymore because it’s caused me to blow up once before  and that will never happen again.  I feel like I have another 2 years to get better so I just don’t want to blow opportunities.  100 plus mpw doesn’t always translate to ridiculous race times but it closes the gap on faster guys that aren’t.

The NYC guys best of luck with the taper.  That course is a beast

Thanks all.  Very happy to drop from 2:49 to 2:45, whole cycle has been a big leap forward.  Fingers crossed that I didn’t cut it too close for Boston 1/1.  My time would have been good enough every year except 2014, so...

Didn’t feel great for the first 8 miles or so, then found a groove and finally just relaxed.  As my pace oscillated, I realized that I got a lot out of the 5 in/out workouts this cycle, which forced me to learn to "recover" at 6:20 pace.  Then, at mile 23, out of the blue I felt like I was hit by a truck, probably nutrition-related (only took one gel, whereas usually I'd take 3).  Weather warmed up but didn't feel humid so not too much of a factor.

It was awful to get through the final 3.2 miles.  It felt like a kind of training run where I was brute-force pushing out the walls of my capacity.  For all of that, I don't feel beaten up right now like I would usually feel after a marathon -- strength training (light, but consistent) has made a huge difference.  If family would allow it, I would jump into Philly and believe I'd run it faster.

Next cycle I'll need to get more out of the weekly LR, to be able to hang on better while in the pain tunnel.  This 18-week cycle had only 6 runs of 20 or more miles, I might increase that to 12 runs next time, including more marathon-duration (time, not distance) fast-finish LR’s.  I'll also resume strength training this coming week, and anticipate good returns from another cycle of that.  Boston cycle begins in ~6 weeks.

Thanks again everyone, looking forward to following you and your races through year end.

Monday, Oct 16, 2017 thru Sunday, Oct 22, 2017

Another fun week in the books. Legs were definitely tired after after 22 on Saturday, but my Monday 1.5 mile repeats went well. My Tempo on Wednesday was definitely the highlight of the week for me. I've never run a tempo that long and that fast before. So it was a huge confidence builder for me.

Then with a couple of easy days I was able to hop into a 5k race on Saturday. It was a Halloween race so I dressed up as the Flash and essentially called my shot with my costume. There was some prize money involved and I really wanted to win. Due to the fact that my wife is in the middle of her half marathon training as well, I got a late start heading to the race and found myself parking about 5 minutes before the race was supposed to start. No warm up, flash costume on, prize money on the line, here goes nothing!  As it turned out, no one else felt like dressing up, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. Also, no one told the fast guys about the race, so I was able to get the easy win even though I took a quarter mile detour. Made for a fun morning. Overall, great week.