Forums >Racing>2018 3:20 (and beyond)
pie man
I think what I'm doing is more of a zebra.
sadly the Ol Pejeta conservancy where I took that picture was home to the last 3 northern white rhinos on the planet. They were inside a fence inside a fence.
11:11 3,000 (recent)
Jim: Congrats on the AG podium finish! Impressive given the extended time off recently!
ilana: Hi!
Dwave: Nice LR to finish off your week.
Dad & jamie: Sorry to hear your races didn't go as well as you hoped.
I managed 2.3M today (8 x 400m, then a little barefoot running), to make it a little over 10M for the week.
Well that was pretty ghastly. I pulled a muscle in my inner thigh, and every stride was hurting by about halfway. I was seriously considering a DNF but did not want to freeze to death waiting for the sag bus. I gutted it out, and now I'm trashed. Just walking around is hard. I was startled that this gimpy performance got me 2nd AG. I'll blab more about the race later . It's quite a good marathon .
So much going on.
Jim -- you gutted it out , and 2AG and BQ minus lots. But really, a muscle pull? wff. Hope you are feeling good.
Dad -- not sure what your goal was, but your splits are even. Those short races are cruel.
Jaime -- damn. Running sucks, still your time is solid.
OMR -- congratulations! Progress!
Ace -- killer LR.
DW -- killer LR.
PJ -- good you are listening to your phone. Sounds like a Doctor Who episode. :-)
RLK -- hey.
Fun LR here. I've been running more miles (for me), and have some muscle knots and wear and tear, so I went for calm today. Got through the first 13 at 8:37 at 115 AHR. Wanted to chill through the whole thing, but no; the HR wouldn't cooperate. The last 5 were at 8:10 at 135. 121 overall. My week:
4@ 8:05
6.5@7:09
6.5@7:32
6.5@8:07
10@8:11
4@8:11
18@8:32
56@8:04
m: 2:55:04 | 10k: 37:14 | 50mile: 9:35
Resident Millennial
oh, ckeen you asked about the vo2 thing. first, thanks for checking in! not sure who i told but basically i ran CIM 3 months ago, things were going great until what i think was a true bonk started around mile 21 (i have never "bonked" before). started dropping 8:15s (had previously been doing 7:26s), yada yada, on the final stretch i am trying to hit goal C of sneak in under 3:20. i get myself across the line at 3:19:59, stop, hug a friend who had passed me a few minutes prior and waited for me at the finish, and as soon as my arms went around her shoulders my body just dropped. it was very strange and apparently i said "i'm going down" when it happened. 10 seconds later i wake up and am being wheelchaired to med tent. everything was fine, just passed out. but with some family history stuff, after that i wanted to get bloodwork and an ekg just to rule out anything "real". so on friday i finally had the appointment (there's nothing like the inefficiency of the medical field!), with a cardiologist who has a background in distance running/cycling himself, has worked with the stanford XC/TF teams, etc. (so none of that "omg your RHR is 45 u must be ded!1") my heart is fine, which i expected but just wanted to confirm. probably just passed out due to glycogen depletion (bonk) / stopping on a dime like that (big drop in blood presure).
anyway, part of the analysis was a vo2max test (the treadmill incline type). result is 60 ml/kg/min. i had a test in 2011 and result was 59, so i actually thought it would have improved more since then given my training. but bf reminds me that despite only being 26, "my heart is aging" so without any external influence it would have decreased in the past 7 years. feeling old now!
currently trying to get off the couch to run. happy sunday indeed!
_________________________________________________mile, 5:26 /5k, 19:34 /10k, 41:00 /13.1, 1:31:49 /26.2, 3:12:58
Hi, all,
Here is my race report (poorly written, I know)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lCMlNzpfoZGUo5DPFq5Hultzij7i-6UtrxYlKuxcZf0/edit?usp=sharing
Please excuse me until late tomorrow to interact and participate in current topics, as I need to rest and drive back home.
Fb - I run with three screens, but during training and races. Screen 1 with total distance, time, and pace, screen 2 with lap distance, time, and pace, and screen 3 with my HR. Also, during races I expect to be about 5 seconds off per mile, and the brain gymnastics involved in keeping track of that keeps my mind occupied so I find it ok to deal with. Nice week btw.
Jim - Sorry to hear about the injury, but way to go to gut it out and still get an age group place!
Ace - I bet the end of that long run must have been tiring. Even with easy pace for most of a long run of that distance it's tough to get the legs moving towards the end.
Dad- I'd be very happy with that time, but then again, you're faster than me. Some days are just off days for some sort of reason so I wouldn't worry too much.
PJ - Solid week
Jaime - Solid time. I know that feeling, during some races you have it in you to dig really dip, in others you don't.
Darkwave - Wow, 76 miles for the week is awesome. ANd that tempo workout under the freeway in a storm
Kind of a garbage-y week for me. My two workouts were good, my easy runs were bad or not even there. 29 miles total. Not really marathon-worth mileage but it is what it is. Wednesday will be a big test for me with 11 miles at m-pace so this run will give a good indicator of how fast I should start in 3 weeks.
Weekly SummaryMonday, Feb 26, 2018 thru Sunday, Mar 04, 2018
5k: 20:32 (1/17) | HM: 1:34:37 (2/18) | FM: 3:31:37 (3/18)
Getting back into it
Oh, RLK, 60 is pretty good for VO2max! Remember it's only part of the equation, with running economy being the other part. I bet you have improved some there. I took that test back in high school and I think I ended up at 63, and I wonder where I'm at now. Where did you do the test?
rune- haha, i mean if running performance = vo2max + running economy + bunch of other stuff, and vo2max has stayed somewhat constant, i suppose the others have had to have gotten better! i did it down at stanford. i was probably the youngest person in the cardiologist testing waiting room by 40 years!
Duke Of Bad Judgment
Stopping by, again with the good intentions... One thing that's, um, really nice about this site is how you start on page 35 and can't see how many pages behind you are. It looked like the answer was 6, but it's up to 9 now and I suspect the ultimate answer will be, as always, 42.
I think I haven't posted since Black Canyon, so first of all major kudos to OMR for setting aside his DNS grief and FOMO and coming out to help me (unexpectedly) during the race. It was a little too warm for me and not my best race ever (although better than I understood while I was running it - more later, maybe, if I get around to a rr). It was really nice to come into an aid station midrace and see OMR's smiling face. Thank you. And... well, there's no emoticon here that expresses appreciation...
PJ: I enjoyed your post about rabbit shorts, pockets, no watch, untrustworthy phone. Living big. Too bad about NYC.
Darkwave: I kind of hoped that long run day summary, after the "purchase of 4 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies", would also have said "consumption of 4 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies". That was a long time ago - hopefully you managed to polish them off before they got stale.
Jim's Kat: Wow - congrats on that 5:20 1500. Blazing!
Brew: It seems like you have high winds year-round there, except for that weekend in Sept when the crazies come to town.
OMR: I may have also crossed paths with that vomiting woman. I passed a woman facing uphill on the trail, vomiting at her feet. I suggested that if she turned around she might not splash her feet so much.
Maston! It's good to know that I can summon you almost as effectively as Jim's Kat can summon CalBears. Sorry I wasn't here to welcome you back more quickly - a lot of stuff has happened in the past few months, some of it good.
R&BNick: Awesome picture of you in the balmy conditions.
FB: I'm in the middle of a 10 week effort to stretch my hip flexors. According to the research (according to my PT) it takes 10 weeks of stretching 3-5 minutes every day to get improvement. She has me doing 2 different stretches. I thought pool running was boring but 12 minutes of hip stretches every day may be worse.
Holy sh$t, I've been through 8 pages now and no end in sight...
Sir Jim: Still on the "I raced today" path I see - congrats on that 160-190 team AG win. Oh... bummer about the muscle strain today. I hope it heals quickly.
Ilana: Hi!
GuJaime: 1:28 is pretty good for a half, especially with wind.
So I guess I was 14 pages behind. Hello to the 70% of you that I missed.
I'll be back with a story shortly. Still dealing with stuff. Our dads' deaths prompted us to deal with a lot of clutter in our lives - some physical, some not. After my dad died, someone told me grief is like walking down a long corridor with lots of doors on either side - you've gotta go into those rooms (maybe more than once) and see what is there. Dealing with clutter is also like that - things that were great 20 years ago but not now, things that were never great, gaps between what is important and what actually happens, etc.. Getting to the other end will be good but the journey is taxing and has plenty of opportunity for feeling loss, guilt, stupidity, etc..
So, here's the story I promised. I started coaching a guy a couple days ago (he's in Belgium - Pesto, you might as well retire from running now). 42, hardcore cyclist, decided to transition to running for several reasons. Based on his history - great endurance on the bike, a tiny bit of (hobby) jogging throughout his life but never real run training - it seems like his main short-term challenge is to hold back and get his body used to the pounding of running. Easy runs for a while, plenty of rest so his muscles/skeleton can catch up to his great cardio , gradually weave in some faster running, let him get his ya ya's out on the bike in the meantime (which he still loves). I'm his second coach in as many months. Here was the plan the first coach gave him (with my commentary). Discuss...
Day 1: 50 minutes easy. (Yeah, it's good to start every new runner with 50 minutes.)
Day 2: 40 minutes easy. (Practically a rest day. Slacker...)
Day 3: 50 minutes easy.
Day 4: AM - 8x 90 seconds hard up a 7% hill. PM - 30 minutes easy. (Yes. A double on day 4. With hill repeats in one run.)
Day 5: 50 minutes easy
Day 6: 70 minutes easy. (Longer than most runners will ever run.)
Day 7: Rest. (A rest day??? In the first week?)
Day 8: AM - 60 minutes easy. PM - 40 minutes easy. (Another double...)
Day 9: AM - 50 minutes easy. PM - 40 minutes easy. (A cutback double.)
Day 10: 70 minutes easy. (No double - what did he do with all that extra free time?)
Day 11: AM 8x90 seconds hard uphill on a 10% grade. PM - 30 minutes easy. (He did those hill repeats at a grade-adjusted pace of about 5:20/mile!)
Day 12: 50 minutes easy
Day 13: 90 minutes with a 16k distance goal, i.e. not necessarily easy.
Day 14: Rest. (But his foot/ankle hurt to walk on.)
Day 15: AM - 60 minutes easy. PM - 40 minutes easy. (Walking hurt when he got up, and it hurt for the first few k of each run, but the pain went away after that.)
Day 16: Foot/ankle is very unhappy. (That's odd - I wonder what caused that?)
Days 17-26: Painful walking but slowly getting better. No running. Fortunately biking is fine.
Day 27: Writes "It seems obviously stupid looking back." Hires a new coach, who hopefully will make only subtle mistakes.
Mother of Cats
Smax - at first glance, that initial plan looks like idiocy. I can't help but wonder, how much of that plan was the athlete's input? Sometimes a coach's guidance ends up being a hybrid of what the coach recommends and what the athlete demands.
Jaime - scanned your race report. Some thoughts that came to my mind:
1) you write that at 8K in, you felt great and were thanking volunteers, but in your opinion this showed that you weren't working hard enough. I found this interesting because I take the opposite approach in my races - if I don't feel good at 8K of a half, and if I'm not able to thank volunteers in the first third to half of a race, I've gone out too hard. Being able to thank volunteers and wave at spectators during the first half of a race is one of my self-checks.
2) You also concluded that you didn't push yourself hard enough based on your heart rate. However, you need fresh legs in order to elevate your heart rate. If you came into this race on tired legs, you may have not had enough strength in your muscles to push yourself aerobically. So I wouldn't read too much into HR.
3) We're all individuals, of course. But for me, I've found that that my best races are never 100% efforts. I run much faster at 90-95% effort than at 100%. And since the point is to run fast, not to work hard, I target that 90% level, and don't beat myself up if the race felt too easy.
Everyone's gotta running blog; I'm the only one with a POOL-RUNNING blog.
And...if you want a running Instagram where all the pictures are of cats, I've got you covered.
Max - that is a spectacularly bad plan.
Reminds me I stumbled on a crazy plan billed as The way to run sub 3. I meant to post it so we could have a little fun (it's the opposite--a run less run faster style affair). It's 3 just days a week: one MP tempo on Monday, yasso 800s every Wednesday (called yassos by name), and a fast finish long run every Friday. The comments alternate between a suspicious number of people posting 'I followed his plan and ran 2:58 woohoo' and people asking how they are going to run a fast marathon if they run slow long runs (it maxes out the MP during long runs at 6 miles). Cause that's still a thing that people ask about marathon training.
https://bridgerridgerun.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/how-to-run-a-3-hour-marathon-a-just-enough-training-approach/#comment-9414
There are some good principles buried in the details, but man it seems like just an unpleasant slog. 800s every week. No cut back at all until the taper. I don't doubt that people have run sub 3 that way but feels like a little easy running and some workout variation and they could run faster.
I used the Run Less, Run Faster book for my first BQ attempt. It has similar workouts - tempo, track, long at not so slow pace. But it also emphasizes cross training on the other days. Either biking, swimming, or rowing are recommended. I ended up adding a fourth easy day most weeks and did a good bit of biking and swimming too. Enough that I jumped into a sprint tri for beginners for fun and to try out a triathlon. It was a decent plan if you also enjoy the other activities.
But with that said, I probably wouldn't recommend it for a sub 3 attempt either.
Strict WTF adherent
Did somebody say Yasso?
Run 800, eat a pint. Times 10.
Max - You're totally stealing that plan. We all know it.
My week:
Mon - 6 easy with strides
Tues - 7.3 hills
Wed - 6.2 easy/2.1 dog
Thurs - 6 easy
Fri - 6.2 easy with strides
Sat - 3.2 easy
Sun - 1.7 up and 13.1 race (1:45)
Total - 51.8
The plan for Sunday's race was to go out easy and ease into something tempo-ish. Ran the first five miles around 8:15, then eased down to about 8:00 in mile six, then 7:50 in mile seven. Then came the hills, and the wind, and the hills, and the wind, and the hills. So I basically stuck to that pace. The result was something that felt tempo-ish while I was doing it, so I guess mission accomplished? The key takeaway here is that I'm still not very good at this.