2018 3:20 (and beyond) (Read 582 times)

I'm not sure I know anyone who runs a 3:07 full off a 1:30 half.

I ran my debut 3:08 off of a 1:29.  Does that count?

(I'm generally even across all distances - jack (jill) of all trades, master of none, I guess).

Vaporfly article: I have lots of thoughts, but in short

a) they do last much more than 100 miles;

b) The article writes: "It’s possible that runners wear Vaporflys only when they know they are going to run faster, or that the act of wearing Vaporflys correlates with other things that indicate a runner is going to run faster. "   To me, this is the big explanation.  Because the shoe is so expensive, and so hard to find, and was (falsely) reported as only being good for 100 miles, people don't bring them out unless the race really matters to them and they feel everything else is aligned to run well.  People don't want to "waste" the shoe.  I heard a lot of chatter before Boston of people who had decided NOT to wear their Vaporflys that day, because they didn't want to put miles on the shoe if they weren't running a fast time.

c) I've run 6 races in them, and PRd two out of six times.  I've done all of my training in other shoes.  I feel that each of my race times has been within the range of what one would expect, given my training and the weather and the race course for that day.

d) The above should not be read to mean that I think the Vaporfly is a slow shoe, or that it doesn't matter. Of course shoe choice mattters.  That's why we wear spikes on the track.  That's why I don't race in my Nike Frees.  That's why most people try to pick the lightest shoe that they can run in for a distance when racing.  I think they are great shoes for the half-full marathon distance.  But they are not magic shoes with little engines in them.

e) There's nothing in them that hasn't been done before.  Adidas had the Boost foam before Nike had the Zoom (and I still prefer the Boost); Hoka was the first one to really push the rocker sole and high stack height.  And Mizuno has had the wave plate for years.  (honestly, the plate in the Vaporfly feels very similar to the plate in the old Mizuno Sayonara, to me).  Nike just put the three of them together, did a big production around the sub-2 attempt, and then successfully whipped consumers into a Cabbage Patch Doll frenzy via limited availability.

***

I raced the Harrisburg Mile last night (race report to come when I get a chance).    Couldn't decide between the 40-49 heat, which I would arguably be too fast for, or the "elite heat," which I qualified for but would almost certainly be DFL in.  So I did both.

Ran 5:44 for the 40-49 heat, (second woman was 6:3x).  Got to break the tape, then turned right around and jogged the mile back to the start line where I had 4 minutes to switch bibs and line up for the elite heat.  (Point to point race, with the elite heat starting exactly 20 minutes after the 40-49 - you do the math).  Elite heat started, and I was dropped immediately, and had no physical or mental energy.  Ran 5:57, for DFL by a full 30 seconds, with the sweep van right behind me.  I got lots of sympathy cheers, though.  And got to experience the highs and lows of racing in just 20 minutes.

Noted: if I'm going to double back in a mile race, I need more than 20 minutes.  And it needs to not be a point-to-point course.

 

Ran a steeple last night.  Kinda enjoy how badly I did my first one as I keep getting a new PR every attempt.  Did mostly hand vault jumps (including the water jump for the first time).  Didn't fall.

All those 6 were full marathons? 

 

I think the elite performances are much more telling, they eliminate a lot of that noise you mention above.  An elite is going to toe the line only when they are in that peak shape for a goal race.  And they have an established history one can check to see if the time jumps.  They aren't going to worry about the cost of the shoe and how many miles they put on for a race since they are sponsored.  And we've had a list of 'once in a decade' type performances from Rupp, Cragg, Hasay, and Flanagan in them in the the last 18-24 months.  Something is going on and the shoes seem the most logical thing.

two 5Ks, two halves, and two fulls.   One full PR (Grandma's) and one half PR (Houston).

Houston was particularly interesting because I have a training partner whose PRs are really almost the exact same as mine (even after excluding the VF).  At Houston, I wore the Vaporflies and she wore the Adios.  She beat me by 2 seconds.

BTW, I don't deny that I run faster in the VF at the half and the full distance than I would in another shoe, but again, I think that holds true for most shoe choices.  Pre-VF, I would have told you that I ran faster in the Adios than any other shoe - that's why I always raced in the Adios.  And why I now use the VF for the half and full distances.  But I get eye-rolly when people talk about setting major PRs at all distances, including the 5K, in those shoes.   It's IMHO mostly hype and hysteria.

You can pick and choose races to prove almost anything.  Someone could note that I ran 3:02 at Grandma's in the Vaporfly but then could only run a 5:44 mile in the Takumi Sen month later, and so obviously the Vaporfly is magic.....

What are the "once in a decade" performances of which you speak?    Yes, they've run really good races and done well, with some major placings and wins and PRs.   But you can contrast that with the fact that the world records in the full marathon still belong to the Adios 2 (no, I'm not counting the sub-2 project as a world record, for obvious reasons).  The woman's world record in the half last year was set in an Adidas shoe; the American record in the half this year was set in a Saucony shoe.

The analysis is also complicated by the fact that Nike really sponsors most of the US world-class top marathoners.  Huddle and Linden are the only ones not in Nike.  Plus Kellyn Taylor if you want to count her now.  Huddle and Linden ran Boston, which is just a complete outlier for tons of reasons.  Taylor just ran 2:24 in a Hoka.  NIke also sponsors the majority of world class marathoners outside of the US, I think.

(fun nostalgic reading about the Adios 2)

To throw some more anecdotes into the mix, I have like 6 teammates who are 1:28-1:30 HM / 3:05-3:09 FM people. Do with that what you will.

steeple- lol @ hand jumps, PJ. that is you on the track not yet hand-steepling, right?
i am uncomfortably excited for Monaco DL. lot of speculation on letsrun re. sub-8 (men) and sub-9 (women) ... not sure if it will happen, but I hope it's a great race nonetheless.

Wondering what y'all think of this: My coach - I think I told you, new coach, actually teammate's dad (whose has a daughter on dwave's team also), the one who recently OTQed - has some sort of superstitious beef with mile repeats. In the proper block of training, he loves 1km repeats or 1200s or even 2000s. It sounds like because he was a competitive miler in his day, he has some stereotype with using the "sacred" mile distance for intervals - "you can only race miles! if you do them in workouts, you'll do them too hard!"

I should mention that I can see a bit of reasoning if this were mile repeats on the track - some of us have cues drilled into us like "it's lap 3, keep your head in the game", "ok, lap 4, pick it up!" - but for mile reps on road I don't feel these cues at all.

This is irritating not only because it's illogical, but also because my team does mile repeats regularly, and I like to join teammates for workouts whenever possible (ie fits in with my training plan). But if his reason to not do mile repeats is due to "superstition" and not because of training / strategy etc ... BS, right?! I don't want to rock the boat, and I really do buy into his philosophy and reasons for pretty much everything else, but I'm wondering if this is something I should probe more.

Also, I've been doing mile repeats for like 8 years so I have a pretty nice historical "log" of how mile repeats correlate to my race fitness.

Thoughts?

Vaporflys - I read somewhere that most of the world class elites who run in the Vaporfly (I have not gone through the records to see who this applies to) have posted faster times in the marathon in other shoes.

Brew, Keen - Regarding the training paces in Jack Daniels' plans, I actually emailed the coaches at the runsmartproject since I purchased a plan from them and asked what their take was. They said that for most people the so-called m-pace training paces would not be sustainable for most people for the full marathon distance, but that they in most cases will hit the right intensity level. They said if you can keep up with the T-sessions ok, the J m-pace will also usually work out well, and that a typical target for your heart rate would be somewhere around 85% of max HR. I went back to the two m-pace workouts I've had so far (8 and 8+2 miles), and my average heart rate for the last mile was 163 and 164 for those two sessions. 85% of my max is 163, so I think I'm pretty much at the correct intensity level right now. So for now I will stick with his paces, increase after 6 weeks, and keep an eye on the intensity level. As for why I even started at paces faster than my goal pace, maybe I'm aiming too low .

Arvind - that's a solid block of training right there. Keep it up and you should be very well prepared for your race.

RLK - That mile reasoning seems a bit odd to me. But lately I have bought into Jack Daniels' philosophy that VO2max intervals (not sure effort you run your repeats as) should not last longer than 5 minutes, otherwise they are just too hard to do properly. So for me that's a little bit farther than a 1200m interval. Looking at my training program now the longest intervals at this pace are just 4 minutes. On the other hand, with your focus on shorter distance, I bet these longer intervals have other effects that help you there. And since you're here, do you know about any good mile races coming up in the Bay Area soon?

Speaking of intervals/repeats, I did my 5x1000 session yesterday. Had to take care of it on a work trip, before my flight home, after I got up at 3:45am in the morning to catch a 5:10am flight (that's way too early for me btw). To make sure I could catch my flight back I cut the planned 5 miles before the intervals to 2, but otherwise did the workout as planned. Managed a 6:19 average pace, but in what's become an annoying habit, I lost my focus on the second to last interval (ran 3:54, 3:53, 3:55, 4:00, 3:56). However, all this talk about paces have made me realize that I have run pretty much all my workouts faster than my "starting fitness" paces. In fact, they all align very well with my goal for my upcoming half. I hope that works out for me...

DWave - "Get both". I like it! Looking forward to the RR(s).

PJ - Way cool that you can run things like the steeple - no such animal in my AO. And thanks to Dad for clarifying the hand vault.

RLK - I'm with you on this one - definitely illogical. What part of the training cycle are we talking about here - what's the goal of them? Threshold work? From my (admittedly limited, and Daniels-based) knowledge set mile (or greater) distances are too far for most people to use for VO2 workouts.
Has the coach given any sort of reason himself, or has he just set repeats of every distance but miles? Maybe you could suggest doing 1,600s!

SClever - So recovering from one injury is what caused another? That's a definite bummer. Glad that the cortisone shot has really helped out.

Rune - That 85% max HR is just about what I've averaged for my marathons - it won't be for another month before I have any M pace stuff in my runs so I'll have to wait a while to see how HR stacks up against pace. And 4 minutes is the max my I workouts get to as well.
Nice workout, even if you did have to short the warm-up. With things going the way they are for you, maybe you'll have good justification to modify your goals come race time.

ETA: Blast! Dad beat me to my 1600m joke. 

keen yeah we got a heat wave this week. It seems like I'd be suited well to run in Oklahoma. I was actually wondering how odd/cool it would be to show up for a race then introduce myself AFTER trying to figure out who you were in the pack. I'd assume you'd be WELL ahead of me in anything shorter than 26.4 miles.

dwave point 4 (or was it d?) reads: "Lawyer speak" to me. I kind of laughed but I kind of don't believe the shoes make the (wo)man or the race.

rune the M pace workouts put me in the correct range which is what I focused on. I don't know how I feel about them giving me a M pace run then in the background saying it's not sustainable for race day. ummm....what the fawking point of giving me M pace workouts I won't be able to keep? Ruin my hopes of hitting a X:XX pace on race day after all this training? like....whats the point of giving me a pace based off my VDOT when you aren't giving me something I can work with. who knows

rlk superstitions are stupid. There is no emphatic evidence wearing orange makes me run faster other than both times I ran CIM ( I think ) I wore orange. Avoiding mile repeats because they're sacred is the same as doing Yasso 800s to support your ambitious marathon goal. If you can't handle running a mile at anything other than a race because you're on a track how do you justify running 1,200s on a track? "last lap fast lap" still comes in to play. I, being an asshole and blunt, would question the logic of avoiding a specific distance for fear of doing them too hard. Isn't this the same group where you had people doing 2 minute rests too fast and the 200m too hard earlier this year before a 5K race? You asked coach and he said "yeah they're doing it wrong" and let them keep doing it. #fuckcoaches #myimaginaryfriendsaremycoaches

I'm still trying to hit 70 MPW. Saturday I'll HAVE to do my workout (12E +3T +1E) because I'll be on a plane at 10:00am heading home. I'm unsure how to count these miles with my weekly goal in the sense they were intended for NEXT week's mileage and I'm only 13 miles short for this week...I think.

In the last two+ years we've gotten an American Olympic Marathon medal, a World Championship Medal, a bunch of Marathon Major wins. A a single one of those is big deal to someone who grew up in the 80's and 90's when those were virtually nonexistent (shout out to Joanie and Steve Spence!).  I mean I still remember the German Silva NYC wins cause it was a North American, at least.  He ran for Fila, and I think those shoes should have been banned, also.  2A Hey!

I think your argument based on improved performances by US citizens would be more effective if the US citizens were the only ones wearing the Vaporfly .  It's not as good an argument when the Americans wearing the VF are beating other runners who are also wearing the VF....

I did a little digging, using the men's race in Chicago 2017 as an example - trying to note what shoe each elite wore either from reports or pictures (if they weren't Nike, I didn't bother to look at the shoe too closely)

1. Galen Rupp - Vaporfly

2. Abel Kirui - Vaporfly

3. Bernard Kipyego - Adidas something

4. Sisay Lemma - Vaporfly

5. Stephen Sambu - Vaporfly

6. Kohei Matsumura - Mizuno something

7. Ezekiel Chebii - Adidas something

8. Zersenay Tadese - Vaporfly

9. Chris Derrick - Vaporfly

10. Michael Shelly - not sure.

So... Rupp's triumph over many of those others can't really be attributed to the shoes.  I'm betting an analysis of other races would show the same.  It's not like Rupp, Cragg, Hasay, and Flanagan are the only ones wearing those shoes

Rune - interesting points on Daniels.

SC - I've heard of frozen shoulder, but never experienced it (fortunately).  Yikes.

Brewing - I honestly don't think it matters too much which week you count the miles for.  In the end, it's not your training log that matters, but your body.

CK - Supposedly my HR averaged 87% for Grandmas.  86% for Boston.

RLK - I've found that it's very easy to project one's own tendencies onto others.  For example, I recommend against other people using races as workouts because I know that for myself, it's important to keep races as races.  And I project that onto others.  Perhaps your coach is doing that here?

The whole don't do miles in training doesn't make sense to me here because a) you don't race the mile terribly frequently or care too much about your performance at that distance; and b) you undoubtedly race other distances that you also run in training.  I do a lot of 5K and 8K tempo workouts. Using your coach's rationale, that's a bad idea.

But...it sounds like that's what you think your coach's reasoning is, not that you're sure of it  So I'd have a conversation with him.  And if he's really really hung up on it, and you otherwise like him, perhaps this is an area where you compromise.

As for the value of mile repeats, and the Jack Daniels limitation on VO2Max stuff longer than 5 minutes, I personally subscribe to the Alex Hutchinson theory that what really matters is getting your heart rate up, and then resting, and then repeating.  The exact distance or duration is a secondary detail - the last 15%.  Not the 85% that us schlubs really need to focus on.

***

Race report is here.

Did 9 "miles" of pool-running yesterday.  Ran 8.5 miles this morning (9:09) plus drills, strides, upper body weights and core.