Forums >Racing>2022 Advanced Racing Thread
Problem Child
I think you hit the nail on the head in two ways: 1) Very different with kids. She didn't really care pre kids because it had zero burden on her. Now, if I disappear for 2.5+ hours, that means 2.5+ hours of no help. 2) I really can't wake up early especially for big long runs. I'm getting better at it (see my run commutes) but I will never be like Keen where he's out the door at 4:45 am. She's already told me if I was able to get up super early and just go for my run, she wouldn't care. She's been incredibly supportive, probably more than I would have if I had the kid burden in reverse. I have zero complaints. She's totally cool with me training for shorter distances: it's the marathon grind of running 70+ MPW where she gets anxious about it, understandably so.
I think you hit the nail on the head in two ways:
1) Very different with kids. She didn't really care pre kids because it had zero burden on her. Now, if I disappear for 2.5+ hours, that means 2.5+ hours of no help.
2) I really can't wake up early especially for big long runs. I'm getting better at it (see my run commutes) but I will never be like Keen where he's out the door at 4:45 am. She's already told me if I was able to get up super early and just go for my run, she wouldn't care.
She's been incredibly supportive, probably more than I would have if I had the kid burden in reverse. I have zero complaints. She's totally cool with me training for shorter distances: it's the marathon grind of running 70+ MPW where she gets anxious about it, understandably so.
I do my weekend long runs at 5 or 5:30 am BECAUSE of the 2.5-3 hours (don't forget about eating/showering/getting dressed) I leave my wife with two kids. As they get older you sacrifice more and more. Either you sleep less, or you run less. 70 mile weeks is possible if you make it possible. Go run at 9pm for a 2.5 hour long run on a Saturday. It still counts.
In 2018 I did almost all of my Saturday runs with my son in a Bob stroller. The rainfly works well to keep cold wind off his face, and I learned to pack snacks. Thankfully I didn't have to change a diaper. He also took it as a chance to nap for an hour or two. The other month I was home solo with the 19 month old and I took him on 3 runs. all about an hour. His "no snack" limit is apparently an hour. I'ts as hard as you make it.
My wife told me she didn't care about me running and leaving her alone with kids as long as I was running. Not going out ther and jogging it or saying it's too hard. April 2018 at Revel Mt. Charleston was the moment where I got some dad strength. I'd spent 3-4 months of training after blowing up at Chicago and the thought of all the time I missed with family and time I made my wife be solo with an infant powered me through the "just quit because it's getting hard" moment.
You might have to discuss your workout days. FOR ME the Hansons Tuesdays/Thursday workouts is easy to schedule. I could get about half of them done at work on lunch. I know not everyone can do this. At some point I told my wife I had to run after work, and I made it closer to bed time. 7:30pm "you're on your own with the kid because I don't want to get home at 9:30pm." I was also doing TRX workouts in the garage. First sub-3.
Many of us aren't sure what the hell point you are trying to make and no matter how we guess, it always seems to be something else. Which usually means a person is doing it on purpose.
VDOT 53.37
5k18:xx | Marathon 2:55:22
Intl. correspondent
Mmerk - it sounds like a good plan. You really only need to read the first 7 chapters, first half of the book. The rest is altitude training and the specific training plans, those you can read as needed in the future.
Keen - I feel like the best plan for you would be to put your race as a workout in your calendar. Then wake up and run your 26 mile workout.Also, I think the stomach thing is more serious and you should probably try to make do with fewer gels. In fact it might be the gels that are making your sick, see what's going on with Eilish McColgan, her body can't process gels correctly she ends up with low blood sugar levels.
Jmac - It's not uncommon to hit world marathon record pace at 10k in a marathon, I think most elites positive split with usually a 61 minute first half and 63 to 70 minute second half.That said, yeah, he probably could have gone out in 62 minute half pace and have a better result. He's young, he'll be back. He's the first true Brazilian marathon talent since Marilson. It's also good that he's training in Kenya, away from distractions.
Brazil also had another marathon phenom in Ronaldo da Costa, who broke the marathon world record in 1998. Ronaldo however got mixed up with some bad people and had his career derail after the world record.
Re: morning vs evening people: I feel like this is akin to a timezone thing. When you first try to make the switch you will feel "jet-lagged" for a few days before your body adapts.The thing is that it's not simply how early someone wakes up. If you slept at 9pm you will be up and bouncy by 6am. If you slept at 1am you will not be up and bouncy by 6am.So if you wish to become a morning person you will have to move a chunk of 3 hours from your evening to your morning. So you're now gonna have dinner at 6 or 7pm and be in bed by 10pm tops.It's doable, but harder if you depend on other people, IIRC your wife cooks your dinner and she's not gonna start cooking at 5pm because you need to eat at 6pm LOL
PRs: 1500 4:54.1 2019 - 5K 17:53 2023 - 10K 37:55 2023 - HM 1:21:59 2021
Up next: some 800m race (or time trials) / Also place in the top 20% in a trail race
Tool to generate Strava weekly
Mother of Cats
Thankfully I'm with an equestrian chick so she can't complain too much about time (and money) spent on my interests. I have had times when my routine is quite set and intense, so it's nice post-marathon to be able to move runs around to fit in with other plans. With summer approaching I'll need to become more of a morning person, which is much easier when it's light at 5am.
Funny thing is that my sig other thinks that equestrian sports are much cooler than running. At times he's made it clear that he wishes I would switch back. I've explained to him that the time commitment for marathon training is NOTHING like the time commitment for equestrian sports.
Books - if we're discussing training references that everyone should read, I'd add "Healthy Intelligent Training - the Proven Principles of Arthur Lydiard" by Keith Livingstone.
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.
Keen - I feel like the best plan for you would be to put your race as a workout in your calendar. Then wake up and run your 26 mile workout.
Lol shots fired.
You're also absolutely right about morning/evening. It is adjustable but takes a lot of work. I stopped being a morning person for awhile because our kids are getting older and their activities were occasionally ending at 9PM at which point we would eat, watch a little TV and catch up. I think I even saw a study that said while people do have a genetic preference, it's not set in stone.
1600 - 5:23 (2018), 5k - 19:33 (2018), 10k - 41:20 (2021), half - 1:38:57 (2018), Marathon - 3:37:17 (2018)
RIP Milkman
Re: morning vs evening people: I feel like this is akin to a timezone thing. When you first try to make the switch you will feel "jet-lagged" for a few days before your body adapts.The thing is that it's not simply how early someone wakes up. If you slept at 9pm you will be up and bouncy by 6am. If you slept at 1am you will not be up and bouncy by 6am.So if you wish to become a morning person you will have to move a chunk of 3 hours from your evening to your morning. So you're now gonna have dinner at 6 or 7pm and be in bed by 10pm tops.
I definitely think you can adjust. I used to be able to stay up til 2 or 3 am with ease on weekends. Now, it's very difficult to make it to midnight. However, I think everything is within a range. I now get up fairly easily at 6:30 am, but that requires me to go to bed at 10 PM, just like you said. That's the thing with me not being a morning person: going to bed earlier just makes me sleep more, I don't pop up out of bed at 5 am, whereas if you put me to put at 2 am, I'd probably get up at 9 am.
All that to say is that I am trending earlier, but I'm just not going to be able to wake up at 4 am every...single...day to get runs in. However, if you asked me to adjust back to staying up until 2 or 3 am every night, I could get back to that within a couple of weeks. It's not set in stone of what time you go to bed/wake up, but you can't completely flip to being a morning or night owl.
5K: 16:37 (11/20) | 10K: 34:49 (10/19) | HM: 1:14:57 (5/22) | FM: 2:36:31 (12/19)
Cobra Commander Keen
Running, kids, mornings, etc. - I wasn't a morning person when I started running, but had to become one to stay a runner. I was liking running but doing it in the evening was difficult. Wake up, get the kids to school, go to work, supper, spend time with kids/wife, get the kids to bed, and by the time I could head out for a run I was tired and didn't want to. Moving to mornings helped that. Yes, I do sacrifice some sleep, but I do it because that's what helps me get the runs in and also minimizes time away from the family.
Flavio - I've thought of just that same thing! 2x 13.1 at M effort, zero recovery between. I've even considered (already) using that for a Strava run title pre CIM. I've also thought of using gels less frequently. I'll be using some during my HM this weekend for further testing, and for at least one more good LR the next weekend and we'll see how that all goes.
NYC 2024 - This could be a great get-together! Should we try booking reservations for Chipotle and acai bowls now, or is it too soon?
I worried my coach a little this morning - oops. We had some really warm/humid air come in a couple days ago and all of a sudden we're back at nearly 140 Kiwi Point and that kinda crushed me. Add in that once I got up to speed for some HMe cruise intervals and I started feeling some fatigue in my legs from that big LR (hadn't felt this before on easy runs) and I pulled the plug after only two intervals. Just a couple minutes after my run hitting Strava I had a text message asking if everything was OK.
I'm not worried about this as my overall cycle has been pretty killer and I've got a good effort at a HM coming this weekend (for which the forecast looks AWESOME).The plan is to go out at ~95% effort (which equates to about 6:30/mi / 4:02/km based on recent training) for at least the first 15k and then perhaps opening things up depending on how I feel, etc.
5k: 17:58 11/22 │ 10k: 37:55 9/21 │ HM: 1:23:22 4/22 │ M: 2:56:05 12/22
Upcoming Races:
OKC Memorial 5k - April 27
Bun Run 5k - May 4
Keen Nothing can be booked this far in advanced. I checked.
Last week I booked a cryo appointment for after CIM. Their website only allowed bookings 2 weeks out, but they said they could manually make one from a month out.
The funny thing is their "new customer" deal is three sessions and the same cost as a single drop-in. So now I'm going to have an "extra" two sessions at a cryo place in Sacramento. I wonder if they'll hold on to those for years for me.
Last week I booked a cryo appointment for after CIM.
I read this as a crypto session after CIM. I was like wow, he's really expecting to be going through a severe life crisis after another crash and burn at CIM that he's ready to sell all his assets and invest in crypto???
Keen - sorry, but I am SO happy to hear people getting crushed by 140 Kiwi Points. It makes me feel so much better about running a marathon at 135 and completely dying. I also have started to really think about my nutrition for marathons. This is two in a row where my stomach went, although the first one could be travel related and this one almost certainly was dehydration related nauseas. I was able to get down 4 gels at CIM so that's what I keep trying, but it seems to me that I should reduce that to 3, i.e. the risk is way higher that an extra gel blows up my stomach than the risk of not taking a gel and bonking.
One thing I noticed with this race is my legs are way more trashed than they've been after my last few. I think that's the effect of dehydration. I've always noticed that even though my summer long runs are much slower than the fall, my legs feel way worse after those efforts.
Jmac sorry I hijacked the strava comments on your race hopefully it doesn't offend you.
Flavio I just googled that Brazilian guy and see he has the fastest marathon time by a non African at 2.04
which is incredible.
The juggling kids thing must be very hard. Mine were a bit older when I ran my marathons but the training apparently made me grumpy
I wonder if the morning versus evening person thing goes back to our childhoods. I used to get up very early as a boy to do stuff on our little farm. Even now I wake at 5am every day.
55+ PBs 5k 18:36 June 3rd TT
" If you don't use it you lose it, but if you use it, it wears out.
Somewhere in between is about right "
piwi I was enjoying the creativity you brought to JMac's race comments.
JMac it snowed on me yesterday during my run. I can't do the dew (points) here.
Nah you didn't offend me, I can stomach it.
You are so forgiving it makes me nauseous 🤢
It's not set in stone of what time you go to bed/wake up, but you can't completely flip to being a morning or night owl.
Maybe. It's probably a very personal thing. The best time of day to run is the time when you run. I became a morning person for running. Morning works best for me because you don't typically get as many people (family, work, friends) competing for your time between 5-7 AM. Evenings it seems like there's a better chance of other things coming up. Plus if you do miss out, that day is gone. If you miss an AM run, there's often an opportunity to get it at lunchtime or in the evening. It does not bother me so much to get up early, even if I was up late. When the alarm goes off (or earlier), I just get up. (DW sets her alarm at least 30 min before she actually has to get up.) If you had told me in my younger days that this would be the case, I would not have believed you. In college and into my 20s, I was very much a night owl. Maybe if given the chance I could revert back to sleeping in later than my current 5-5:30 AM, but I can't imagine I could sleep till noon like I did then.
MTA: oh and I didn't start running till my kids were older. DW is not necessarily crazy about me disappearing for a run every day, but it's not like I'm neglecting childcare duties. She sort of tolerates all my running BS, but sometimes wishes I would do less of it.
Dave