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

Ok.  I'm trying this one more time.  After creating this thread/discussions over in the Sub 3 User Group, it seems like most people wanted to migrate over to the "Racing" section to try to open things up to as many people as possible.  I'm all for that.

This is a continuation, or rebirth, of a thread that was previously on the Runner's World community...and this intro is primarily copied and pasted from that dead thread.  If someone can help embed the google spreadsheet doc in this forum, please let me know (it shows up as I'm creating the post, but doesn't seem to stick around).  Otherwise I'll find another workaround.  And it will probably make the most sense to re-post our intros in this thread, even though we just did that.

I've also added "and beyond!" in case the 2:45 crowd wants to jump in here instead of adding a separate thread.

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Welcome to the 2017 sub3 training thread!

Somewhat by default (everyone else seems to have moved on to faster times, or is too lazy), I'm left to start this thread.  I'll do my best to keep this place lively, but I also look to others to participate regularly.  There are no real rules here, but rather a few suggestions.

First, please let me know your scheduled marathons, PR, and your goals so I can update the sheet below.  Second, as best you can, please post your weeklies and participate in the discussions with others so we can all learn from what seems to work or does not work.  Generally speaking, the more you participate, the more you get out of these threads.  If you don't stick around, or don't keep up, you may not get much feedback when you try to run something by the group.  Even when you are not in the middle of a specific marathon cycle, try to post your weeklies.  It seems as if often times dramatic improvement comes from the running we get done between cycles, so that information is helpful too.  Finally, if possible, please provide a brief running bio, along with a short reflection on last year and goals for this coming year.

If anyone else has some suggestions, please feel free to chime in.  It's not yet clear what's happening on the faster threads, but if this needs to be a sub3 and somewhat faster thread, I'm sure we can accommodate.

Here's a nifty tool to easily copy your weekly Strava activity so that you can post it here:  http://rwol-weekly.appspot.<wbr>com/weekly/ (courtesy of @reglor).  And here's another tool:  https://www.defy.org/hacks/stravahack/ (courtesy of ridemehigh).

The sheet below doesn't appear to work, so here's a link.

<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n3QVx-WvtLNqiVkwxjrcxdRbPuYn6nPEdNFPCWvjAU0/pubhtml?widget=true&amp;headers=false" width="1000" height="500"></iframe>

Here's my week:

Activity Summary: Monday 2017/09/25 to Sunday 2017/10/01

Run Totals: Distance: 51.4mi, Time: 06:54:07, Elevation gain: 655ft

Felt good all week, even though the easy pace is still quite slow for the most part.  Not too worried about it since the weather is still awful here.  Or it was up until Friday morning.  We were having mornings around 80F and full humidity.  My two workouts were low on the work volume, but I was quite pleased with them.  The 300s were probably a bit faster than I needed to do, but I was stuck between two groups, and the slower group would have been way slower than the faster group was fast.  It felt good regardless.  I'm looking forward to my half this weekend, even though I know I'm far from being able to keep a good amount of intensity for 13 miles.  I'll run it hard, but I'm not expecting a lot.  My goal is still to get myself ready to race some shorter stuff several weekends in November, then race the half in Houston in January.

Andres - Good week. I hear you on the heat and humidity, it finally broke for us Thursday night and all my paces have improved substantially. How's the weather looking for your half? In NY, it looks like all the humidity is returning for the weekend unfortunately. Are you targeting a time?

Me - Good week overall as the temperatures and humidity plummeted on Thursday. We went from 91/33 temps and 65/18 dew point down to 62/17 temps and 41/5 dew points in a span of 24 hours. My run on Sunday felt phenomenal compared to how hard every run has been this summer. I was able to get my tempo runs down to around 6:00/3:45 which I haven't seen in about 4 months. I even had trouble keeping my easy runs slow enough. Temps will be climbing back up this week though so it was nice while it lasted. I have 2 more full weeks of training before tapering. Given how good my runs felt in the lower humidity, my confidence is pretty high, but I have to reign myself in and not start thinking about sub 2:55.

Hey everyone. Glad to have this up and running - thanks Andres!

Brief bio to anyone new. I'm 35 y/o male living in DC. Ran in high school and one year of college and then went largely inactive for 13 years or so. Picked up running again in late 2014, ran my first marathon in 2016, and was fortunate enough to BQ on my second attempt this past Spring (3:02:06). Chasing the sub3 goal at Richmond in 40 days. Feeling optimistic and am thankful for all those friends I've met and connected with both from RWOL and the local scene. This outlet is a great motivational tool and provides an important feedback loop.

That all said, this was week 12 / 18. Had a good week overall. Fall conditions arrived and not a moment too soon. My week had a solid interval session, two MLRs and a great 20 miler yesterday with 12 at MP. Averaged 6:47 for those without any water or nutrition. Had 84 miles scheduled with 2 double days, but after having a really low mileage week two weeks ago because of work/life commitments (and a missed LR), I decided to play it safe and keep with singles. I have the Army 10 miler this Sunday followed by the Detroit half the following weekend, so it will be interesting to see how back-to-back race weekends go. I seem to over-perform on tired legs, so I'm optimistic. I think sub 62 is a good goal for the Army 10, though conditions are looking iffy.

Weekly Summary
Monday, Sep 25, 2017 thru Sunday, Oct 01, 2017

My week just finished...

M: weights

T: 6.7km with a few sprints to get the legs going

W: 12.4km easy

Th: 5.6km incl 2km TT (3:15/3:15 for total 6:30, incl. new 1 mile PR @5:14)

F: 12.5km easy

S: 7.7km easy

S: 35.2km long run, incl. 18km at MP (~4:03/km / 6:30/mi)

Sunday's long run was very pleasing.  The weather was pretty horrible, with rain throughout (it got torrential at one point) and strong winds.  I cruised the first 12km or so, included some good hills as the marathon has a hilly start.  Then picked it up through the middle and felt really comfortable at circa 4:05/km, even when I had to deal with strong crosswinds and occasional headwinds.  The legs were getting pretty tired with wet heavy shoes by around 30km so I shut it down and cruised the last 5km or so.

 

How's the competition in the 375-379 AG?  

Non existent?

Thanks for pointing that out.  I guess copy and paste didn't copy and paste the cross outs.

I'll copy this from the other thread:

• I'm Joe (37) from Melbourne, FL and I started running in my late 20's just for health reasons.  I've been building ever since.
• I grew up playing ice hockey (originally from Buffalo, NY), but was never good enough to take it to the next level.  I still play occasionally when I'm not focused on any specific race or to cool off here in the FL heat.
• I started seriously running races about ~6 years ago and was most interested in Half Marathons (HM).  I ran my first HM at Disney and ran a respectable 1:44 and change.
• Trained for and ran my first FM about 4 years ago (again at Disney) and ran just over 3:10 where my training just consisted of a single LR with the other 4-5 days of moderate paced running per week.  Had a hard time running easy paces on my down days and my mileage was probably only 40-50 miles per week max so it wasn't smart.  Surprisingly even though my training has gotten better my race time hasn't dropped all that much (more on that below).
• Kept improving in the HM and finally broke 90 min a year or two later and wanted to give the FM another shot.  Also wanted to see if I could qualify for Boston.  In the fall of 2015 I ran a warm (a common theme for me) FM where the humidity was close to 90% and I was on a solid pace for just around 3 flat, but slowly leaked oil in the final 10K finishing with a 3:07 which was still enough to squeak into Boston 2017.
• Continued to improve in the HM and upped my mileage throughout 2015/2016, but did not run another FM.  My HM time finally improved to just over 80 min in December 2016 after I included lots of threshold work and really started to the structure my training.   Finally learned what easy pace meant!
• Kicked off my Boston 2017 cycle in December 2016 by running the most mileage I've ever run in a cycle hitting a peak of over 90 miles and averaging better than 75-80 throughout that 18 week build.  
• Also ran a PR HM of 1:19:38 (with only a small taper) during this Boston cycle and had some quality pace and hill workouts leading up to Boston.  Unfortunately, tweaked my glute and/or hip about 2-3 weeks before Boston which bothered me before and after the race.   Think I was in shape to easily run in the low to mid 2:50's, but as I well documented on RW we all encountered a very warm race.  Was held back starting in wave 1 corral 7, which kept me to a slower than planned pace for the first 4-5 miles, but even after that I was never able to hit my true goal pace.  Don't think the nagging minor injury played that much of role in the slower pace (didn't really bother me during), except perhaps it was a mental block.  Did pretty well through the Newton hills and was ready to rip down Heartbreak still with an outside shot of going sub 3, but my legs never turned over and I slowly faded through miles 22-26.2.  Was able to speed up the last mile and cross the finish with a 3:03:52 which is still my PR, but left me with unfinished business for 2018.
• After a brief break from FM training I focused on shorter races during the past summer.  Went to the track regularly and focused on 5K stuff for ~4-6 weeks.  Ran 2 impressive 5K's in June and July and even ran a PR of 17:43 -- with a heat index of about 92 which meant my fitness was easily close to low 17 shape at the time.
• Continued through the rest of the summer with my weekly mileage in the 60-75 range and kept the occasional tempo and track workouts as well.  Hurricane Irma canceled my other 5K that I had recenlty scheduled.  Workouts were suggesting another PR, but oh well!
• Just kicked off a 18 week FM training block with my next goal race slated for late Jan 2018 in Orlando.  My A goal is probably sub 2:50 if the conditions are right and sub 2:55 or so either way based on my recent training.  Planning to cap my mileage back into low 80 range with two quality workouts per week following a Daniels type plan.  Also will be running 2 HM's in Nov to see where I'm at and to properly set a goal time.  Looking forward to training in some cooler weather!
• Finally will be running Boston again in April, but thinking of not treating it as a goal race.
• My training can be found at: https://www.strava.com/athletes/12110310
• And good luck to all those running fall races coming up!

Hey sub3!   

... just stopping by to see if squirrel (or squirrell ) was posting yet.