It's So Nice When Things Start to Fall into Place (and a Half Marathon PR!)

You know sometimes things just come together in life and running when you don't really expect them too. At the beginning of this year I set significant PRs in everything from the 5K to the marathon. Honestly, I saw it coming. After 2006, I had been suffering with a hip injury for much of a year and my running, or at least mileage had been spotty at best. I really approached 2008 with a conservative mindset just to get me healthy enough to run marathons again and I accomplished that in NYC 2008 in November. At the same time, however, I wasn't training as much as I wanted to and was doing little speedwork and taking extra off days or cross training days. So while I ran a respectable 3:15, just 3 minutes off my first marathon time, I certainly knew that if I could ramp up my training just a bit and spend a little more time in training with some speedwork and get beyond the 40 mile weeks I had been doing that I was going to have a big leap in my race performances. So when I started running PRs all over the place early in the year it didn't really surprise me that much, even if some of my particular races like the 1:00:55 10 miler I ran were beyond the expectations I had for that training cycle.

My winter/spring training cycle was thus relatively easy. There was nothing too complicated about it. I started running more, running faster, and running more consistently and that's all I needed to do. This past summer has been a different story. There was no obvious next step. Of course I could always add more mileage or harder workouts or just build off the previous cycle and assume that more running over time would take me where I needed to go. But frankly there were no guarantees and I desperately wanted another shot at going under 3 hours this fall on a tough course in NYC after I had only managed a strep-throat induced 3:02 on a very flat course in May. I basically made the decision to up my mileage even more or at least to keep it at the highest levels I had done for a longer period of time and farther out from the marathon and then drop my mileage down and do more faster running closer to race day. It was a luxury I had never really had before to start without having to really build up my mileage to what I considered an acceptable level for the marathon.

Still, I didn't expect my summer running to be as tough as it was. Part of this may have been that I didn't give myself enough time to rest after the May 3 marathon because I wanted to do the 5 borough NYRR half-marathon series this year and had to get back on track for a May 30 half in Brooklyn. Regardless, I plugged away all summer and was consistently hitting 75-85 mile weeks with an occassional down week from late June through early September, topping out with one 93 mile week. Without looking at the data specifically, I'm sure I ran at least twice as many 70+ mile weeks as I ever had building up to a marathon even before I was into the final 10 weeks of training. While more mileage seemed like a great idea, it didn't really seem to be working for me after awhile. The Brooklyn Half went fine and was an OK race in 1:25:59---two minutes off my PR, and the weekend after that I ran a 18:07 5K, just three seconds off my PR. But after that it seemed to go downhill as I added all the mileage and all my race times just started to spiral downward as the weather warmed and I added more mileage. Really the biggest problem was that I started to feel very clueless about my training, believing that I had not given myself a necessary down period after the previous marathon and that there was now nothing I could do about it in time for NYC in Novemeber. It all hit the fan more or less when I ran an awful side-stitch and agony filled 1:29:54 in the NYC Half Marathon in mid-August. At that point I kind of felt resigned to the fact that this was just going to be a failed training cycle in terms of improving my running and getting back into the conversation for a sub three time.

Regardless, I was determined to stick out what I had set out to do until the end. So I kept plugging away at my high mileage weeks until the beginning of September when I planned on cutting back the mileage and upping the intensity and hoped that along with cooler weather would see my plan through even though I didn't have much hope for it. One signficant change I did make in my running in about August, I should mention is that I started doing my long runs at a slower pace, perhaps even at what some would consider too slow at around 8:30/mile. Frankly, the end of all my long runs had become a struggle and I used to relish the longest run of the week more than any other and it was getting to the point that I wasn't enjoying them at all. So I decided to make them more fun by running with someone a bit slower who I thought would keep me company a bit and perhaps make the running more fun for me just from the company and by not pushing the pace at all. So she started to join me for the second half or so of my 20 milers and I started to have fun doing them again even if I didn't really think at first that this really had much of a benefit to it from a training perspective, but I didn't think it would do any harm either since it seemed an improvement over bonking at the end of 18-20 mile training runs.

As fortune would have it, I fell in love with my new long-run partner. Literally, head over heels in love, though it had much much more of a foundation than just the running we did together. As our relationship grew, I really became much happier and I thought a lot less about running and in a sense it became much less important to me because I was just so incredibly happy and running stopped being the most important thing in my life, which it may have started to become without me realizing it. At the end of the day this all my made my running come together finally in the last couple months before the NYC marathon. I'm sure the slower long runs helped as did making running more fun. The two bigger factors probably were though that my training plan of doing heavy mileage and then starting to cut back the miles actually gave me a really strong foundation and proved to be a decent plan particularly as the weather made it easier for me as well, and that I stopped focussing on running so much and was just so happy with the rest of my life to an extent I didn't realize was possible.

Three weeks ago I ran a 1:24:30 in the Queens Half Marathon on a day I wasn't even really shooting for a fast time and didn't expect to do well after all the bad races I had had all summer. It wasn't a PR, but it was only about 40 seconds off, and on a very hilly course with lots of turns and I had not focussed on it as a goal race at all with any sort of taper aside from the gradual reduction in mileage I was starting leading up to November. Thus I think that that race was an indication to me at least that I might be headed in the right direction and at least wouldn't be awful in NYC. Then two weeks later I did a little 1.7 mile race and placed very high up in the overall standings while maintaining a 5:30/mile pace. Since I hadn't been doing a lot of fast running, it felt really good to know that I could do that and I started to believe more. Then yesterday I went out to run my goal/tune-up half marathon on Staten Island three weeks out from the NYC Marathon and ended up running 1:21:45, which was a 2+ minute PR on a day that frankly my legs didn't feel all that fresh or great. I have no idea what marathon day will bring for me and I know it might just not be my day etc. but I certainly know again that it is at least possible to think about breaking 3 hours and frankly less than 2 months that was starting to sound crazy. I think the best part is that if I have a bad day I'm also more OK with that than I would have been in the past. But yes I really do want to break 3, it seems like a long road from my first marathon three years ago when I foolishly thought I could do that. But hey for the moment, I'm pretty happy with the half marathon time!

Finally Some Success

It has been too long since I posted here and I finally have something positive to post from a running perspective again so I thought I would give a quick update. For the last five weeks since an ugly 1:29:50 at the NYC Half, I have held off the racing. I started off with hitting some high mileage weeks in the upper 70s to mid 80s and have curtailed my mileage a bit lately. Didn't taper or anything this week before the Queens Half Marathon, which I ran in 1:24:30 on a hilly and extremely turny course. I felt very good about it because I have had some really sub-par races in the last few months and this at least allows me to keep the dream alive of breaking 3 hours in NYC this fall. I really went into the race with the mindset of keeping things relaxed throughout the entire race, not really pushing as hard as I could, but also trying to avoid side stitches which have been my foible in longer distances as of late. I definitely accomplished that and managed to have enough left for a 6:05 final mile while only averaging 6:27 for the day, so there was definitely something left there and I passed a lot of people in the last 4 miles to move up near 50th place. I may go for a slightly faster time in the Staten Island Half marathon three weeks from now when I wrap up the NYRR 5 borough series, but I do hope that maybe all this mileage I've been putting in is coming together for me. Sorry, don't have time to say much more for now as I have been quite busy, just wanted to give an update.

So hot, So Slow...

Today was one of those races I'd like to forget. It was hot, yes. It was humid, yes. A lot of other people in the race struggled, yes. But I had tapered this week for a half, which I've never really done before. With the weather forecast I went out conservatively and was going pretty slowly in the first hilly 7.5 miles and then expected to pass lots of people in the flats. Then the side stitch from hell hit again around mile 9 and it just hurt so damn much and I had no goal that I was shooting for anymore that I basically jogged in the last 3 miles of the race at 7:15 to 7:30 pace. So that was the story of today's NYC Half and my awesome 1:29:54, which was in case anyone cared six seconds slower than my half split in the Jersey Marathon in May. I've only failed to break 1:30 in two of my 11 half marathons, and it was in my first and third ones ever---the first time before I had ever run 13 miles before and the other one after I had taken two weeks off running and it was equally hot.

 I could live with this all but I feel like it's becoming too much of a trend this summer with these slower times. I haven't run a good race since the marathon in May and that was already a step down from where I was in April. I ran one respectable 5K in 18:08 at the beginning of June and a half the weekend before that which all things considered wasn't so bad in 1:25:59 but suffered from a side stitch in that too. I don't feel beaten up or tired or anything right now I'm just slower than I should be. Every time I think all is lost I run a workout like the 16 miles at 7 minute pace that I did two weekends ago or the three one mile repeats a month ago in 5:42 average that make me think all is still well or at least might not be awful. But all these side stitches (this has been going on in longer races for years now) and all these slow races recently really have me questioning things. I guess I'm going to stick the course but maybe I should bag the marathon for this fall or just sort of do it and chill and wait until Boston next year because I sure don't see how I'm breaking 3 hours in New York this year right now. Sorry to vent, I'll get over it I promise!

The Seduction of Mileage

You know I've always been one of those runners who always laughs a little under his breath when people get obsessed with their Garmins, heart rate monitors, or fixating on a certain weekly, monthly, or yearly mileage goal. In fact as late as January or February of this year I was still in the camp of avoiding too much mileage just for the sake of mileage and taking a day or two of the week to cross train on the eliptical or stationary bike and not really caring or trying to figure out how that fit into my total "mileage." I guess that in part was why my weekly "mileage" number was a bit meaningless to me because even if I was running 50 or 60 miles I was still doing more than a typical 50 or 60 mile per week runner because I was doing it on just 5 runs a week and I had extra training I wasn't even including but must have counted for something. Anyway I have to officially admit I have been seduced a bit by the mileage game since I have upped my mileage and started running doubles recently. A few weeks ago I added an extra mile here or there just to hit 80 instead of 78 for the week, this week I just hit 83 and I will probably take tomorrow off because that is what I would normally do with the number of days I've run and the work I've put in but it is tempting to go out for an easy run and hit 90 for the first time. The real change in my thinking though is that I do judge my weeks some right now on how much mileage I run, which is something I never did in the past. I'm not sure if I like this development or not but I guess it will all come down to how I race later this year in some half marathons and in the marathon. There is also no question that if possible I would like to hit 3,000 miles for the year as I'm just a couple miles shy of 1,800 right now.

Anyway for those interested today's organized long training run with New York Roadrunners went reasonably well as I stuck with the 7 minute per mile group for 16 miles and ran an easy 3+ miles each way to and from the start for a total of 22.5 miles today. The run was nothing to write home about and I would have started struggling with a couple more miles at 7 minute pace but I felt reasonably good at least for the temperature climbing towards 80 degrees (the lower humidity made such a difference though) and having run my highest mileage week ever. Now if I can just drop 10 seconds off that per mile pace and hold it for an additional 10 miles by November 1 in hopefully much cooler conditions when I'm rested and I'll be all set.

Treadmill, oh Treadmill

Hidden in my last blog entry is a little tidbit that if you weren't looking for you wouldn't have picked up on. I have a well documented historical aversion to treadmills. But alas I think I actually like them now that I do doubles for some of my second short runs. There's just something about walking a couple blocks to the gym, running easy on a treadmill, glancing at a tv, and being back home in 45 minutes to hour that has an appeal to it. Of course it always helps that it's a million degrees and humid in the late afternoon/early evening and that I've already been drenched once during the day and would quickly run out of dry running shoes otherwise but...

Summer Doldrums (Still!)

So the summer has been raging on here in NYC and the irony is that it hasn't even been a particularly hot summer yet (unfortunately given that it was cold in April like it should have been in March, and rainy in June like it should have been in April, I'm pretty sure it's going to be hot here all the way into September and October, and I'm just hoping it all cools down by marathon day, November 1) by typical NYC standards but from a running perspective it feels absolutely awful to me. The humidity has been pretty steadily in the 90% range and the temps ranging from low 70s to high 80s over the course of the day for the last two weeks now, so it really feels like summer is finally here to stay with no more breaks of a cooler day or two here or there.

With summer the running has gotten tough for me. I have still been logging in all the miles and in fact more than I ever have before with the addition of doubles over the last couple months and July will mark my highest mileage month ever as it currently sits at 319 with one day to go, and whether I run or not tomorrow (either Friday, Sunday, or Monday will be an off day) it has already surpassed the 317 I totalled back in March (which was of course had no doubles to pad the mileage). But the pace of my runs is SLOW. I could go back to June when I failed to break 6 minutes in a couple of 5 mile races, something I could do consistently in the late winter or spring, but the 4 mile race two Saturdays ago (subject of the previous blog entry) was the real wake up call that I simply just can't compete right now with the times I was running earlier this year.

I thought that July 18 4 miler might simply have been a bad day but last week was really tough. Friday I did a tempo run with my normal Friday night training group (note these Friday runs are the only time I do primary run at night and try to run fast at night and I find it very difficult to do regardless of the time of year) and over the course of a 5 mile tempo I was a good 2 to 3 minutes behind people who I was even with or within a minute of in the winter, but this didn't come as a huge shock to me as I hadn't been running my tempos as hard lately and they had all beaten me in the race the previous weekend too. It was my Sunday group long run (usually the only run I do during the week with others as I only do the Friday tempo once or twice a month) that really shocked me. We were going relatively harder than we should have on a long run and up some pretty tough hills and trails but I was struggling a bit to keep pace with everyone (and I'm not one of the weaker runners in this group) and after about 10 miles of a planned 16-18 I just called it a day. I was absolutely totally exhausted and honestly I don't think I could have run another 6 miles at any pace if I had wanted to. I can't even remember the last time I cut a long run short because of fatigue, in fact I'm not sure I ever have.

Since last Sunday I have felt a little bit more refreshed and am not as concerned that something is wrong and that I'm about to have a complete running meltdown/slowdown but all I have been doing is easy running (a lot of it for sure as I should hit 80+ miles this week) and I know my faster paces are still going to struggle next time I try to push it, but I'm just hoping that last Sunday's failed long run was a complete and utter anomaly and nothing at all resembling a trend. I will have a good indicator though this Saturday as I'm signed up for an organized long training run by New York Roadrunners in which people go off in pace groups and have gatorade, gels, etc. available. Given that I hate carrying stuff and usually just sip water from water fountains on my runs I wanted to use this as a real opportunity to do some sort of more challenging long run though I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. After last weekend there is honestly the little thought in the back of my mind that running 20+ miles in the heat is going to be a major struggle in itself. I think I will probably either run between 10-16 miles with the 7 minute pace group and tack on the extra mileage to reach 20 at a much slower pace before/after or that I will run 20 with the 7:30 group (and maybe tack on an extra couple miles to the start).

After last Sunday's failed long run I've been mulling over the possibility if I'm overtained, slightly anemic etc. or if my body is just reacting to the heat and the increased mileage I've been running. Part of my problem is that I love running so much that I basically never mentally burnout from it the way a lot of other people often do, so given that that is usually a major symptom of overtraining it is hard for me to determine if my body is feeling overtrained because mind certainly is not (sure I get tired of racing etc. sometimes but I have almost never not wanted to run on a given day). I'm also not injured (fingers crossed) and my legs aren't aching any more than usual, I'm just running and racing slowly and on a couple of runs, most notably last Sunday's long run, I have just felt completely exhausted long before I should have given the distance and pace.

So until I have another setback or particularly bad run I'm just going to keep plugging along. It has been my plan all along to build a large mileage base in the summer, run a lot of shorter races, train through them and not care about my times and then come out glowingly once the cooler weather hits in the fall and as I get closer to marathon day. I just don't think I expected to be struggling quite as much right now and slowing down at shorter distances. The reality is of course that I do have explanations and excuses that make perfect sense, I just don't know if I'm tricking myself into believing them because I don't want to tone down my training or if they are really in fact valid.

My first excuse is the weather and the fact that I just don't run and train well in the heat. My second excuse is the increased mileage and the doubles and consistently running 70+ mile weeks (and creeping up to the low 80s) for two months now (with only one cutback week below 65) which is something I haven't even done in the last couple months before my marathons in the past. My third and final excuse of course is that I planned it this way and just like I did last winter before a very successful spring of running, I increased my mileage, held off the speed work and just accepted that I was going to be slower for a period of time while building up to something greater. The only difference in the winter was that I felt really strong and like I was improving and building towards something each and every week and I'm not convinced that is the case now (I also didn't really race for those two months from late November through early January so I didn't have the feedback of poor race times).

But here's the big thing/excuse/unknown. I have never really done this before. I am in uncharted waters a bit right now---and I'm not talking about the doubles and the slightly increased mileage/longer buildup. I've been running for ten years now and started my first marathon training 3 to 4 years ago but this is the first time I have ever gone into a summer of racing/training after running heavy marathon mileage in the winter and having successful races that are frankly quite difficult for me to live up to. The first summer I trained for a marathon in 2006, I had hardly run any halfs and I was doing much longer runs than I had ever done before and adding speedwork back into the mix for the first time in almost four years so of course I was going to get faster and improve from what I had been doing the previous year and the previous winter. Then I was hurt for most of the first half of 2007 so when I matched a couple of my times in shorter races in the summer it seemed like a great accomplishment (and they were in fact my goal races as I wasn't building up towards a fall marathon), for the summer of 2008 my focus was just rebuilding my mileage back to the point where I could run half marathons and marathons again without getting injured so I had relatively low expectations for my summer race times and matching what I had done in the past seemed like a great accomplishment as well and I didn't have any race times from the previous winter to try and live up to. Of course right now that is all changed because I am coming off of my first spring marathon ever and I have 15K and 10 mile times from the early spring that I simply could not even run in the same ballpark as right now and a half marathon time from January that will be a tough challenge to beat in my upcoming halfs in the next few months. So I really don't know how much I should expect to be slowing down in the summer simply because of the weather and I'm also not totally familiar with having a relatively successful running season and then plateauing/declining/rebuilding a bit before seeing renewed gains.

That at least is my optimistic approach to my current training/struggles and I hope it is the case. Only time will tell I suppose. First I have to get through this weekend's 20 miler to make sure last weekend's run was in fact an anomaly in how absolutely awful it was. Then I have a 5K and half marathon coming up the two weekends after. In March and even again in early June I was right on the verge of breaking 18 minutes in the 5K and I don't expect to be there anymore so I'm just going to more or less train through next week and see what happens but then I'm going to taper significantly for a week before the half and see what happens. It will still be summer, it will still be hot, and I don't expect to magically improve over the next two and a half weeks but I do think it will be a telltale sign of where my training is at right now because I think all of these extra miles I've been running have been hurting my shorter race times as I adjust but I don't know what impact it will all have when I'm racing further than 5 miles. Even though I won't have trained with that half in mind as a goal race and I will still have just been slogging through miles for the most part, particularly with an easy week beforehand it would be a confidence boost or at least a mild reassurance in my training if I did not have another awful race. I can save up the good ones for the fall, and November 1, but I also could do without too many more bad races or days in the process.

Here I Come Penguins!

It's official after today's race I have decided to move to Antarctica. I don't know what the race time temperature was but it was very humid and at least in the 70s---the high today is supposed to be 86. First of all racing at 9 o clock in the summer is awful. I am an early morning runner and I run best when it's within my typical routine which doesn't involve mulling around 3 or 4 hours in the morning before I go out to run hard. Throw in the higher temps and sun you get at 9 o' clock versus 6 when I'm used to running and it's not too pleasant.

Well anyway today's 4 miler seemed fine warming up and at the start and I was OK in the first mile holding down a 5:49 pace which was the average I was more or less shooting for, though it was probably too fast given that the mile was uphill. In mile 2 I started to get a stomach cramp and just felt crappy, when I went through the downhill mile at 6:06 I sort of lost motivation. If I wasn't going to break my old 23:54 PR, it was very hard to find motivation in the heat. Mile 3 is by far the hilliest mile and I knew I wasn't going to hold under 6 minute pace which meant that I was probably going to have close in 5:40 for the last mile no matter how hard I was pushing in the third. Early in the third mile I saw a faster friend of mine who had decided to stop because of feeling sick in the heat and waited for me. At this point I decided just to run with him more or less and not to push it, there really was no point---it was just too hot, I felt crappy, and there was nothing much to gain. I cruised in the last two miles (and they still didn't feel too great!) and finished in just under 24:50 I think.

Yes that's right I ran faster by almost 20 seconds per mile in last weekend's 5K when I was in the middle of an 80 mile week and had more of a tempo run than race mindset. It was also almost ten seconds per mile slower than I ran 10 miles in April!

I've said I didn't care about what kinds of times I run in the summer and that's why I'm loading on all the mileage etc. but I thought with a little cutback this week I would do better than this. It was sort of disappointing, but at the same time I realize I made a decision somewhere around 2-3 miles that it wasn't worth pushing myself today. I mean I feel like hardly took anything at all out of my legs and I feel like I'm ready to enter another one of my three heavy weeks of training before a cutback week before my half marathon, which at least starts at 7 AM!

Anyway this is why I am moving to Antarctica (might I remind you my half PR was in 8 degree weather). I will send postcards and pictures with the penguins.

Quick Update

Sorry folks it's been too long (two whole weeks). I've been busy running I guess. Actually the truth of it is that I'm base building, logging heavy miles, and not doing anything that's all too exciting on the running front. Well I did just log my two highest mileage weeks ever at 80 and 79 miles respectively to get July off to a good start. 

On the speed work front I've done two workouts in the last two weeks, plus one race that was basically a glorified workout. Last week I did 6 x 800 at around a 2:45 average per interval (400 rest in between), Saturday I raced a 5K in Pennsylvania in 18:15 (spending much of my time battling the wind in the second half of the race) and trained through it and didn't kill myself as I faded in the last mile or so, then Sunday I ran 20 miles in the mid-afternoon 85 degree heat and really struggled. So I was quite happy to bounce back two days later today and average 5:41 for 3 x 1 mile repeats with an 800 recovery in between. I'm taking a lower mileage week this week with a 4 mile race coming up on Saturday that I am hoping to do well at. My PR is 23:54, the oldest one on the books going back to 2006 (way back when before ever really getting injured and before ever having run a marathon!). I'd rather break 23:30, and if I broke 23 I will do a little cyber dance for you all, but that would be faster per mile than my 5K PR so I don't think that will be happening, but you never know. Stay tuned for a report this weekend!

Wow, I Ran A Lot This Month

Another month of running in the books. I hit 268 miles for June. That's the second highest mileage month I have ever completed.

Just to put that in perspective, my highest monthly mileage ever was this past March when I logged 317 in training for the Jersey Marathon. I ran between 212 and 238 in all the other months from December through April and 189 in May the month after the marathon. The highest mileage month I hit in training for my first marathon in 2006 was 267 and the highest mileage month I hit training for my second marathon in 2008 (bouncing back from injury) was 200. When I realize that my other highest mileage months have all included at least 2 20 milers and have come while in marathon training and that I never surpassed more than 14 miles in a run this past month I definitely have to say I'm a step ahead of where I have ever been in my training in the past, at least mileage wise---I don't know that my shorter race times are quite where I think they should be right now based on what I was doing this past winter/spring. And while I really only did one or two speed workouts this month, it's not like I've just been slogging through slow miles, I race two 5 milers, a 5K and a 1500/3000 double in June plus a half marathon on May 30. Hope this all leads me to where I want to be this fall and beyond...

Also I'm at 1,448 miles at the halfway point of 2009. 3,000 sure sounds tempting but it might be hard if I plan on taking some down time after the fall marathoning.

Another Race....

Quick report this past Saturday's 5 Mile race in Central Park:

I wasn't necessarily planning on racing again this weekend but after doing the 5 miler last weekend I felt like I had left something out on the table, in terms of race strategy and my overall feelings about the race. So I went out this weekend with the goal of doing the race as a hard tempo, but frankly the differences between my race and "tempo race" efforts aren't that significant, it's more of just a difference in training the week leading up to the race and mentality once it starts. For "tempo races" I don't curtail my mileage at all the week of the race, and in fact might end up running a lot of mileage because my biggest speed work session comes at the end of the week in the form of the race, and I'm just a lot more relaxed about things on race day. In any case that is what Saturday was. I was reasonably happy with finishing in 30:25, which was only 15 seconds off of last week's race. I felt a lot stronger out there though this time and really felt in control as I kept telling myself during the race, it's ok to save up for the last mile or mile and a half to really work on a good kick and getting a strong feeling about the race. It was also a good bit hotter than last week and without cloud cover as the temps hit the upper 70s. Anyway I finished the race feeling pretty good (except for this darn hip stiffness after I finished again) and was able to outkick five or six people in the last quarter mile to move into the top 50 in the race.

The Summer Racing Doldrums

I don't have a whole lot to say (by my standards) about today's 5 mile race. I don't feel like I ran badly and I don't feel like I ran well either. I've just felt a bit out of shape recently---I added 5-7 pounds or so over the last year and I ran really well this winter in spite of that but as it gets hotter outside it just makes me feel kind of crappy when I run and like I could make my running so much easier by just being a little lighter. My times are still a still step up compared to where I was year ago, but my cardio fitness is much better and I'm running a lot more than a year ago so I don't really want to compare myself to then because I know there is so much more out there for me to improve and I just don't feel race fit if that makes sense. The fact also is that I'm not in the shape I was in April and I just feel like I'm slogging through some of these shorter races right now, even some of the fast running I've been doing just doesn't feel very fast and I just don't have the sense of my muscles being full of energy and propelling a fine-tuned body over the ground (LOL).

On that note I ran a 30:11 today in my 5 mile race. Only 15 seconds off the PR I set in January, but basically the same pace I ran for 10 miles and a 15K in March and April. I went out too fast in the first mile trying to hang with someone who I used to be at the same fitness as in the winter and went through mile 1 in 5:48, then I hit 5:58, 6:19 in the hills, 6:06, and 6:00.

I think I need to start doing my core workouts and leg weights in the gym again so that I feel strong and explosive like I did at the beginning of the winter season. Maybe the problem is the summer weather and that I didn't really take much time after the marathon to recover and regroup, or that I've been racing a lot lately including track races midweek, but as I run through this summer heat particularly it is obvious that getting a little lighter would probably go a long way to making me feel sharp again. I sort of feel like I'm getting by in shorter races while feeling out of shape but if I were to run another long race I would really struggle. In spite of all that the plan is to just keep running more, try to lose a little of that added weight, get my core muscles back into shape, and do a lot of shorter races. I'd like my times to drop in the summer and fall but that's not really my goal right now, I just want to get that sense of being a well-oiled fit machine back that I've had at other times in my running life. My best racing and improvements have usually come in the winter anyway so I just want to prepare myself well for then and put in myself in a position to succeed and keep running healthy. I'll do something with a fall marathon probably but I'm just going to go for it and not really let whatever the race or races are dictate or consume my training and hopefully I might be able to pick off 3 hours (which wouldn't be a fitness improvement from where I was in March and April for sure or even in May minus the week of race strep throat), but I'm not looking for anything too special until the winter of next spring, I just want to get my running mojo back right now.

Giving My Almost Best: Do I Still Have What it Takes?

I've lost my running killer instinct. I'm not sure when exactly it went away and if I really care to have it back. I'm not saying I'm not still extremely competitive. I'm not saying that I don't have the motivation to run or train hard anymore. On the contrary I am more motivated to improve and work harder than ever, I've just stopped caring as much about what happens at the end of races and a few seconds or even a minute here or there.

There was a time when I would kick into the finish line of almost every race as hard as I could, particularly if it was going head to head with another runner, as if one or two seconds or one place would significantly change the outcome of my race. I just can't make myself do that anymore. This mentality definitely started at some point after my return to consistent racing after an injury riddled year of limited running and almost no racing. In order to return to racing shape without continually re-injuring myself I had to come to accept that it was not worth running every race as hard as I could and that I would have to run in races when not totally fit or at my old levels to get back to where I had been. I know most people who run and race do this---some races are goal races but others are just workouts or tune-ups---but I had always raced every race trying to set a PR and to accomplish the best time I could on that day.

What started out as a mechanism to avoid injury during my comeback has gradually evolved into my thought process in all races. I still have goal races, which I will taper for and push myself both mentally and physically harder and become disappointed if I don't do well in them and races which don't mean as much which I will train through. For awhile I thought I had an on-off switch and that when it really mattered for some purpose I would turn on that switch and really push myself to my absolute limits for a few extra seconds at the end of a race. But I've come to realize that that may not be the case any longer. In all the race reports I have written over the last year or so I cannot find more than one or two instances when I said I stopped pushing at such and such point because a few seconds or a minute didn't matter to me as much not being injured, or recovering for my next race, etc. Even in my goal race this spring, the New Jersey Marathon, this became the case as I didn't care in the closing mile or two whether I finished in 3:01, 3:02, or 3:03. The funny thing is I don't really have regrets about this after my races when I'm able to hit the road and get back into workouts injury-free and a day or two or a week or two earlier than I think I might have been able to otherwise.

And just to clarify here, we're not talking necessarily about the last 400 meters of a race but often the last several miles of a longer race or the last mile of a shorter one. At some point I worry that this lack of mental toughness or willingness to rationalize saving a little something up at the end of most races will start costing me more and more time than I realize. Let's say that the mentality started to creep in somewhere around mile 20 or 21 in the New Jersey Marathon and as a result by mile 23 or mile 24 there really was no chance of breaking 3 hours and thus no reason to really kill myself for an extra minute or handful of seconds here or there at that point. But maybe if I had been a different mindset at mile 20 about how I would fight like heck in the last couple of miles then I would have pushed harder and given myself at least a shot at sub 3 in the closing mile or two. I don't think that was necessarily the case but I am worried I am headed down a bit of a slippery slope.

But then there's the other side to the story. I have just had one of the most successful stretches of running in my life and PR'ed at every distance I have attempted within the last six months and I appreciate and enjoy running more than ever. I'm willing to spend more time in training running more miles and doing more cross training and feel out right exhausted some of the time to get better and make more leaps and bounds, I just don't have the desire any more to ever put absolutely everything out there on the line in one day and I honestly believe it has kept me training more consistently and better off than in the past in terms of my injury situation.

It's almost come to a point where it is a training philosophy. After my injury layoff after my first marathon I had a lot of time to reflect on my running and I really questioned the purpose of training for a marathon in the traditional sense with a big build-up, a two to three week taper, and then totally beating my body up on an off day for a time I wasn't proud of and then weeks of recovery (which in this particular case turned into months). The more I thought about it in those terms I came to the belief that if I ran at 98 or 99 percent effort in my races and didn't try to fixate quite so much on tapering and preparing myself for just one important day that the recovery time between races or cycles would be shorter and that there would be a better overall consistency in my training by avoiding injuries but also by limiting the taper and recovery period which was out of sync with my normal training and running. In other words, I considered that in the long run I would become a better runner and improve more by not losing up two months of good training every time I ran a marathon or losing a week every time I ran a half marathon, or three to four days after a 10K. What if I were able to accomplish 98 or 99 percent of my potential ability from a training cycle in a race and only lose a month of peak training instead of two or three days instead of a week or a day or two instead of three or four? If that were really true (and the 98 or 99 percent figures were really accurate, something which I could never fully know or prove) then in the long run it would undoubtedly be worthwhile because I still have so many ways in which I can improve and I still have time where that should come as long as I can avoid injuries or some sort of burnout or life distraction. What's the point of running a marathon one minute faster if with the right training and approach you think you can run one ten minutes faster in a year?

I realize that sometimes you have to take and seize an opportunity when it is available to you because there are many unanticipated factors that can hinder it from ever coming again but there are just very few opportunities or instances now that seem to merit that ultimate effort to me for the purpose of a two seconds or even two minutes. If in my next marathon I hit the last mile struggling but needing just to put together one last sub 7 minute mile to break three hours, do I hope that I would give almost everything I had to accomplish it, yes I do, because breaking 3 hours has become such a meaningful and sometimes perhaps too consuming goal for me that it would be worth seizing that opportunity right then and there and knowing that I had given my best.

But in most instances I think I am becoming more and more satisfied with giving my almost very best when it comes to races. If I were an elite on the top of my game that would be the wrong attitude but with so much room still to improve my training methods and overall running ability and the fact that I'm not racing for a gold medal or a big paycheck but just for me I'm starting to believe that it might be the right approach. It's just a difficult thing for me to admit to because I don't want what I'm saying to myself to be misconstrued or lumped along with people who just run for fun and don't care much about their times or people who don't train hard or breeze through races and don't suffer much through pain or put forth any mental determination and then wonder why they didn't run faster or why they have hit a plateau. I think I'm still competitive and tough and committed to fast running and working my butt off but I just view things a little bit differently than I used to and have a new approach of how to reach my ultimate goals and enjoy them a bit more along the way. Or maybe I'm just getting soft and I have to turn this around? I hope that's not the case at least. At least I've had the chance to be a bit philosophical about running for the day now.

Back to the Track

In keeping with my current mode of trying new running things, I headed to the Icahn Stadium Track on Randalls Island last night for the final installment of New York Roadrunners Tuesday night summer race series. My running life began with two years of high school track, culminating with a 2:20 in the 800 meters, a 5:20 or so in the mile, and a 11:30 or so in the 2 mile---I came to running only late in high school and was quite out of shape when I started so I never had the chance to realize my track potential. My last trip to a track was for the Icahn Stadium series in the summer of 2005, when I ran in three separate meets there, competing twice in the 1500 and once in the 3000. My 1500 PR was 4:56 and my 3000 PR was 11:04. That of course was back before I had ever run a half-marathon or marathon, much less primarily focussed on them, so the 1500 and 3000 didn't seem like the sprint events that they do now.

So I headed to the track meet last night not really knowing what to expect. My only recent reference point was a 5K several weekends ago in 18:08 along with all of the other longer races I have run this year. I went back and looked at my running log from 2005 (yes, I've already conveyed my tendency to study the past before I race) for some clues about what to expect. My mile PR of 5:10 was set late that summer, but of greater relevance was looking at my 5K and 5 mile times from that summer, which were around 19 and 31 and a half minutes respectively. Seeing that I figured even though now I would be much more uncomfortable on the track and running short distances that I should be able to best my 1500 PR from 2005 since my most recent 5K time was now a minute faster and I had dropped my 5 mile time by a minute and half. Still I knew this was going to be a bit of a foreign experience so anything was possible, but I kind of fixated my mind around the 4:45-4:50 range.

I got in a three or four mile warmup running from Manhattan along the running path adjacent to the FDR and then across the pedestrian footbridge at 102nd to the island and then once on Randalls Island, along the run/bike path that runs along the river. I don't think I've ever run on Randalls Island (aside from on the track) before and as I ran along the path there I was thinking that it might be a pretty nice, quiet place to run. Unlike the path on the Manhattan side of the river there was no highway, car noises, and grime to contend with. So I made it to the track about twenty to twenty-five minutes before the meet was to start and paid my 10 dollars for all the events I could handle and got two or three entry stickers for the events I might run---at this point with a 5 mile race coming up on Sunday I was planning on probably just running the 1500, which was the first event, but left it up in the air to maybe run the 800 and/or the 3000 depending on how things were going.

I really wanted to warm-up well for this event since I expected it to feel very very fast to me so I ran four or five strides along the backstretch and a tempo-paced lap around the track to warmup some more. One thing I noticed immediately was how windy it was. Running down the backstretch was significantly easier than running on the far side of the track and around the final curve where the wind was coming off the river and blowing right at and around you. After making a stop at the batroom and water fountain, I made my way to the far side of the first curve on the track where everyone was starting to line up for the 1500. It was warm in the sun, but windy and cool in the shade, so I stood there as I waited. The women's heat of the 1500 went off first, followed by the fastest men's heat, which was comprised of people who walked up to the line when the started called times of 3:45 through 4:10---Fast, with a capital F, and not for me. So after watching that group blaze around the track I waited for the next call as a few people in the 4:20-4:30 range came up to the starting line as they got into the 4:40s and then called 4:50 almost no one else was budging but I finally did expecting that they would soon call more people with slower times as well. But alas they did not so I knew I was going to be right at the back of a pretty fast heat.

The gun went off and I felt pretty good right at the back of the pack in the first 200 to 300 meters and was wondering to myself, should this feel harder and faster? I think I had built the race up so much in my mind as a sprint that I was expecting it to feel like a 200 or 400 meter sprint the entire way. By the time I hit the finishing line for the first time, 300 meters into the race, I started to feel some tightness in the legs and realized that that was what was going to feel hard to me in this shorter race---not the breathing component, but that lactic acid would slowly build up and my legs would fatigue at this fast pace---something I was not used to. As I hit the 400 meter mark someone was calling out splits and I was at 72 or 73 seconds. It was a fast start but I thought it was about where I should be actually since I assumed that I would go out a little fast with the faster field and unlike when I used to race back in high school and listened to my coach tell me not to go out too hard, I was more afraid tonight of going out too easy like it was a 5K or something I was used to. In the second lap of racing I started to feel some of the burning in my legs, particularly in the hamstrings and most of the field had a good gap on me except for one person who I had just passed and was tailing me. I came around 800 meters in 2:31, so a little over 5 minute mile pace and expected as my legs tightened up more to fade. But throughout this whole time, it just felt so strange to me because I wasn't really huffing and puffing and struggling for air, but it was more a feeling of coasting along but just slowing down gradually as the lactic acid built. Eventually I came home in 4:46, which equates to about a 5:08 mile, as I almost closed a huge gap on one person who was tightening up and held off the guy who had tailed me the whole race in the wind to avoid last place in the heat. All in all I was relatively happy with the time given the circumstances and my expectations but I was also left with the feeling that I had hardly raced and that I could have pushed things a bit more. I'm not sure if that was the case or if I am just used to the longer drawn out struggle of road races. In any case I knew I had left at least a little something in the tank because I couldn't really rationalize the point of an all out kick that would leave me sore or injured somehow just for the purpose of shaving a second or two off my time in a pointless, fun, testing the waters, type of race.

After the 1500 I hung around the track for awhile contemplating what to do next. I really felt like I hadn't justified coming out to the meet yet and that it would be quite anti-climactic to leave so soon after I had arrived. So I hung around and watched the last heat of the 1500 (and saw no one it in beat my time so was glad I went in the heat I did even if I was at the back) and several heats of the 400 meters and jogged a bit to keep my legs loose. As the 800 meters came up about 20 minutes after I had finished I considered it but was just too uncertain of doubling back at another race and trying to run at an even faster clip than I had just run. So I let the event pass by and eventually decided I would stay for the 3000 and just see how it felt and do it as a hard workout without really pushing it in like a race at the end but try to at least be respectable and keep it at 5K pace or faster and under 11 minutes. So after getting a slightly longer breather as the women ran the 3K it got a little chilly standing around as the sun began to set and the breeze picked up. Finally we got onto the track and off we went. Similarly to the 1500 it felt weird running at the beginning like I should be going much faster and that the cardio and breathing component was way too easy, but I expected to feel the lactic acid and tiredness in my legs from the previous race as this one carried on. I more or less ended up in no-man's land in the race as there were a five or six guys who were super fast and shooting for times in the 8:30-9:15 range and then a pair of people in the 10 minute range, followed by me, and another eight to ten runners at 11 minutes or slower. Running mostly alone and catching one person who had gone out way too fast with about two laps left I finished in 10:36, a respectable time after having run the 1500 and given that I wasn't really in a race mentality and wasn't pushing it that much but more or less just trying to maintain the pace and effort that I had started out at---with a 5:40 mile pace I was at least a good ten seconds under my most recent 5K pace, which was all I was trying to accomplish. It was also very windy by this point along the far turn as the weather had really picked up later in the evening. With about 800 meters to go, as I had expected, I could really start to feel the burn/fatigue in my hamstrings presumably from the earlier race but again the cardio and breathing part seemed way easier than I expected.

So my night at the track finished and I went for a nice four mile run home, accompanied for about half the way by a fellow local road racer who I had talked to and finished around at a number of other races over the years. We had a nice conversation and got to know each other a bit better than from our brief encouters at the start and finish of previous races so it was a nice way to end the evening. I finished the night with two (expected) new PRs, a good workout, the belief that I can challenge the sub 5 minute mile mark in the Fifth Avenue Mile in September if I so choose, and hopefully something left in my legs for the 5 mile race this Sunday.

Testing the Waters

I think someone (or many ones) with running expertise once said that it is unwise to add too many new elements to your training at once. I don't know if it's an urge to spice things up while not in marathon training mode or beacuse I am just clueless when it comes to actually training specifically for shorter distances but I found myself doing a lot of new running things last week. I can't say I necessarily planned things that way because I'm in the "free mode" part of my running season when I kind of am just following what I want to do. While for some people this is a good thing and a time for rest and recovery, I'm not really sure being in "free mode" is necessarily the best for me because while I enjoy it to a degree, the bottom line is I like to run and I like to run a hard a good deal of the time, so whatever this phase of my running season is, it would be hard to call it a recovery period.

So what did I do new or different last week?

1. I ran every day, in fact through yesterday I had run 10 days in a row. That's not a big deal for most runners, particularly those who log as many miles as I do, but it's not something I have done or been willing to do for almost three years now since I first injured my hip and have added at least a day or two of cross training into my week to allow for better recovery and less pounding.

2. I continued my plan to introduce some doubles into my training. I have to admit part of the reason for it is simply convenience because I can run home 4-5 miles from work faster and more peacefully than I can walk, or by negotiating crowded subways and buses in rush hour. Running to work would never really work for me because I would be a sweaty mess and too many other logistics to work out, but running home is quite appealing and if we get hit with crazy thundershowers as we often do this time of year I don't lose my main run for the day or have to worry about postponing it/moving it to a treadmill etc. as I would if I moved my main run from the morning to the evening. So in all this week I did a double and a half for the second straight week---on Tuesday I ran 8 miles in the morning, and 4 in the PM, and Thursday I elipitcalled for an hour in the morning and ran 4.5 in the PM. I don't know what path this is headed down but perhaps as many as 3 actual doubles per week by the end of the summer or maybe I'll just bail on them.

3. Speaking of running in the PM, this was relatively new element # 3. I almost always run in the morning regardless and I like it this way for a number of reasons---mainly because life, work, and weather rarely interfere with morning runs and also because I am a morning person and get up very early and am tired by the evening. In fact almost the only reason I will run at night is because that is when my running club meets for its workouts. (As will be explored in new element # 4) I don't run workouts all that often with other people except for a Sunday group run which I used mainly for my medium long-run during marathon training, but over the course of the winter I ran a tempo run with others about an average of once every two weeks maybe a little more often. But this week I did both a track workout on Wednesday and a tempo run on Friday with a group at night. Throw in the two days I ran home from work as part of doubles and that made for four evening runs in total.

4. As hinted at in # 3, I ran speed work twice in the same week for the first time in quite a long time. At least speed work with others as I often will just do a second tempo run or something of the sort on a weekday morning when I'm feeling good and want to push the pace a bit. The 10 x 800 meter track workout I did on Wednesday night was in fact only the second or third interval workout I've done all year and it was rough. I was definitely not on the same level as many of the people I was running with who I could hang with or beat in races but who had been running intervals all spring and over the course of the last couple of years. In all I was happy with the paces in the workout as I averaged around 2:50 for my 800s (when you include the 2:38 and 2:41 I blasted out at trying to hang with people who I thought were of similar ability) but it left me feeling pretty tired and honestly a bit perplexed at how easily everyone else was able to reel off the times they did. It also left my hip feeling a little too achy and off, which is the reason I have stayed away from too many intervals for the last couple of years---for whatever reason I can run, hard, medium, slow and all kinds of workouts without much problem as long as I am not starting and stopping over and over with hard efforts. I followed this up on Friday night with a group tempo run, something I did do every other week or so throughout the winter before I hit the peak of my marathon training and started doing all of my workouts solo in the morning, which while not a shock to the system was pretty terrible run---maybe because of the heat, maybe because of track workout on Wednesdays, or maybe because my body was just in shock from all the unusual training elements I had thrown into the mix this week.

5. All of these new training elements and workouts led to the highest mileage week I have run when not in marathon training at 70 miles and without looking through my running log I am also pretty sure it is the most mileage I have run in a week without what I would consider to be a long run ("long" run was 14 miles on Sunday).

So what is my conclusion on all these new or relatively new training elements. For one, I won't throw them all into one week again anytime soon---I was dead tired during my tempo Friday and my 14 miler (with a mile or two of tempo mixed in) on Sunday and my hip was starting to act up just a bit--- though maybe I'll try to build up to it by the end of the year. But to look at things on a case by case basis:

1. While I may stick to the run more mileage as I feel like it approach in my next training cycle, running every day on most weeks is not something I am going to aspire to. My hip just needs an off day from the pounding sometimes. Period. I think I will be fine running 7 to 10 days in a row here or there but not as a regular practice, I have already made a decent jump in the last year to get from 4-5 days back up to 6 plus a day of cross training.

2. I'm going to stick with some doubles and see where they take me, as noted before it is just convenient to run home from work once or twice a week, so if it doesn't affect my training in other ways I might as well add 8-10 easy miles per week.

3. I still don't like running at night. My body and sleep patterns could adjust to it I'm sure over time, but I definitely lost some sleep this week the two nights after I did my track workout and tempo at night since I got home later, then had to shower, eat dinner and then still felt all awake from the hard running as I was going to sleep. While I'm sure one could look to the cumulative effect of all this running as to why I felt so tired and slow on my Friday night and Sunday morning runs this week, I really think this had a lot to do with it, as more than anything else it threw me out of the daily rythym and running pattern that I followed all throughout my last marathon cycle. So I will probably still keep one of the group workouts per week or at least every other week becuase I think they will ultimately help my running---and it spices things up occasionaly and makes it more fun sometimes---but I won't be doing it twice in a week anymore.

4. The conclusion in # 3, leads into the conclusion for # 4, that I won't always run two speed workouts in a week, particularly as I adjust to some doubles and eventually start to increase my long runs again. I will continue to run faster on two days most weeks, but one day will not be organized and my traditional style of hard running on a morning when I just feel good since I find this so much less stressful and easy to recover from than when I force a workout on my body on a specific day which it may or may not feel like doing. For the most part I will probably cut out the repeats and track work since I have gotten a long way in the last year just running higher mileage and tempos. I will do some though as I focus on shorter races over the course of the summer.

5. I like the higher overall mileage I reached this week without doing a long run. If I can consistently hit 65-70 miles per week without going over 13-15 miles on any run in this phase of my training, it should make hitting 80 mile weeks come marathon training season feel doable if that's the direction I want to head in. Also, even though I felt pretty tired and sore at the end of this week I also couldn't imagine running the two hard workouts I did as well as the "1.5" doubles while dealing with the wear and tear of a 20+ mile long run and I do think that running the same total mileage that I have often done in marathon training while being able to throw more speed work on top of it might serve me well, particularly at the shorter distances this summer.

So that's all, I'm taking my overdue off day today after all that running last week, which is why I had time to reflect upon it all in this post! What am I going to do to spice things up this week since I'm dialing back some of the other elements. Well it's mostly going to be an easy week but I may head to a track meet tomorrow night to run a 1500 or 800 for the first time in a very very long time, which would promise to be quite interesting. But the focus for this week is getting a little more recovered and rested so I am prepared for Sunday's 5 mile race.

Racing on a Whim

In general I like to plan and schedule things in advance and I'm not really the type to do something on a whim. This is true of my running for the most part as well, or at least my racing schedule. But on Saturday morning I decided to run a 5K on a whim. I had thought about doing it briefly at the beginning of the week, thinking that I had just run the Brooklyn Half and that I didn't really want to do any speedwork during the week but an end of the week tempo might be perfect so why I not just go out and race on Saturday, since I have been talking about for awhile now how I am just going to race a lot this summer at shorter distances. As the week went on I decided against the race because my hip had been bothering me a bit and it just didn't seem right to go out and run yet another race a week after a half marathon which had been just a month after a goal marathon.

But then I woke up on Saturday morning, having skipped on doing the tempo run I considered the night before, had some Gatorade and realized I had no milk in the house to go with my cereal for breakfast. It sounds weird but I honestly think if there had been milk there I wouldn't have ended up running the race and I would have just had my normal breakfast and relaxed until doing a run later in the afternoon. Instead I took a nibble of a Clif bar which was about the only other suitable breakfast food lying around and decided what the heck, I'm already eating like I'm going to run a race why not just go out and do it. I don't want anyone to think this typical of my thought process and how I approach running because it's really so far from my normal attitude and in fact I think I have a tendency to over plan and get over anxious over the details when it comes to racing. Since the New Jersey Marathon on May 3, however, I have kind of been in a different mood about running. In Jersey, I had been sick all week prior to the race and for one of the few times in my life I actually went to the starting line telling myself just do the best you can on this day in these conditions given your fitness and how you are feeling at this moment, not based on what could have been a week ago or what you would like to accomplish. Maybe lots of people have that approach to racing, but it hadn't been mine. I like to think of races as having a purpose and most of the time that is for a PR, I really struggle with the concept of racing when in off-season mode or racing my way into shape or training through a race, as I always want to put my best foot forward and give myself a chance to succeed. That's why only race as often as I have a down week coming up in my training to make a mini-taper possible and why I won't run 5Ks really when training for a marathon. But like I said since Jersey I have kind of felt differently about that. I toed the starting line of the Brooklyn Half last weekend, knowing that I wasn't in better shape two months before and that I was still beaten up a bit from the marathon and that the race had no real purpose for my past or upcoming training---I was just going out there to race.

And that's what I did again on Saturday, only this time I literally decided to race about two hours before the race started. I knew I would race the 5K hard because I am a very competitive person but I literally had no expectations for time and didn't even really know what a particular time would tell me about my current fitness since I had just run the half marathon the weekend before and hadn't adjusted the week after to prepare for another race the following weekend. So out I went to Central Park for the YAI 5K Central Park Challenge, a race that benefits those with disabilities. I like races like this one that are much smaller than the NYRR races and have more of a mom and pop feel to them than what you normally get in New York City with these races with 5,000 or so runners. Smaller races also give me the opportunity to compete for place, which is always a nice change of pace from the constant time trialing we do. I ended up running an 18:08 for the 5K, which was actually just four seconds off my PR, and finished 7th place overall and won a plaque as first in the 20-29 age group, but the fun part of this race was that it developed so that I was close to being in contact with the lead pack for the first mile and change even though it took off after that I kept them in sight for a long time and opened with a very fast 5:35 opening mile only to fade and kind of shut things down a bit towards the end when no one was catching me and I wasn't catching them---that is the beauty of these off-season races in my opinion is that I really feel I can go out there and do whatever the hell I want. I can start them hard and not worry about fading or I can start them more conservatively and not worry about having to make up the time for a certain goal but just feeling strong and making it a good training run. Honestly, it is such a relaxing way to race that I think it really allows me the opportunity to hit some unexpected PRs and have some unexpected great days. If I race enough, on a whim or not, I feel like at least once or twice I will just hit that right day when I feel great and everything clicks, that is luxury that I can't have with marathons or longer races but it is one that I can have right now.

Half Marathon # 10, Borough # 3 in 2009

I put my 10th half marathon in the books yesterday---the Brooklyn Half which took me for two loops around Prospect Park and then down Ocean Parkway to the Coney Island boardwalk. For the short of it, it was not a goal race and I went in with few expectations slightly less than a month after running the New Jersey Marahton and I finished respectably in 1:25:59, two minutes off my personal best set in the Manhattan Half in January but still my second best of my ten half marathons.

After arriving at Prospect Park a little less than an hour before the race with one of my running club teammates, we walked around the bathroom, baggage, and start area and realized pretty much immediately that this race was likely going to be a huge zoo. In past years the Brooklyn Half had about 5,000 people in it and this year there were over 11,000 registered. Just looking at the porta potty situation and the narrow start area I was already pretty concerned that the NYRR was not really prepared to handle a field this size for this race. As far as I could recall, they only put on two races all year that are bigger or of similar size, the marathon and what was formerly known as the Nike NYC Half Marathon held for the past three years in July or August through Central Park and down through Times Square and the West Side Highway. The marathon is obviously a huge event in the city and three times the size of either the NYC Half or yesterday's Brooklyn Half and it is very well put on and NYRR has had years of practice at it and the city basically shuts down for the day. The NYC Half is also produced as a marquee event in which registration closes quickly and where one has the sense of high organization/preparedness and that everything is shut down for runners that morning. The big key is that with 10,000 runners in Central Park that the park loop is closed to other users.

After a short warm up jog around some of the woody trails in Prospect Park I lined up near the front of the first corral with my teammate and we were eventually joined by three other teammates who were going to run with us. Standing at the start it was immediately obvious how narrow it was and how many people were going to be lined up. It's at moments like these that I am very thankful to be on the fast side and in the front corral because even back in the second or third corral there was going to be major congestion and the race could be a bit of a crap shoot. My other observation was that it was extremely sunny and warm standing there before the race and I do not run very well in the heat as a general matter. We seemed to stand around forever as the race start was delayed by a good 10-15 minutes as they finished clearing traffic on the course---a reminder of how the New Jersey Marathon had been delayed in similar fashion by 30 minutes four weekends ago. The extra time did allow me to meet up with three runnersworld forumites, DCV, Troutpan, and Got2GetUnder3, though I wish I could have spent more time getting to know them.

Standing at the start with my teammates we came up with a plan to all run together as a pack through Prospect Park and try to help if we could one guy on our team who wanted to automatically qualify for the NYC Marathon by running under 1:23:00. I thought that might be a little fast for me but I figured that was also my "A" goal for this race so I might as well go for it. Normally with the uncertainty I had coming off the marathon I would have played things conservatively for the opening miles but this race really had no purpose for me in terms of time and I didn't mind blowing up a little if I could be to someone else's benefit. Also, even though I belong to a running club, I'm pretty much a solo runner when it comes to races and training most of the time as I tend to just function off my own effort level with my own goals, but I thought it would be pretty cool to kind of go back to my high school cross country days and run as a team in a big pack to a common goal.

Mile 1 (6:17)

When the horn finally sounded, that team plan we had come up with all seemed to go out the window as two of the five guys took off at 6 minute pace, one of them was faster and had just agreed to run with us but the other guy was of similar ability to the other four of us and I didn't quite understand why we weren't sticking to what we had just talked about. Anyway I ended up in no man's land as the two of them went out faster than I was willing to go and the other two guys, including the guy trying to qualify for the NYC marathon, who I had thought had been right behind me faded a bit further back. So I was basically in no-man's land. That was fine with me as I'm used to running alone anyway, but I had gone out faster than I would have otherwise as I followed the two teammates in front of me for the first quarter mile.

Mile 2-4 (6:36, 6:17, 6:18)

I kind of locked into my own race for mile two as I battled the uphill mile and somewhere in there realized for certain that the two teammates who had taken off in front of me had no intention of coming back and running as a pack and that there was no way I was going to try and catch them at this point. So I gave a look behind me and slowed down a bit for the other two guys to catch up as I figured I might as well try to help this guy get under 1:23 for as long as I could even though I didn't really think I was going to be able to hold onto that myself. We settled into a nice rhythm together.

Mile 5-7 (6:39, 6:38, 6:18)

This is where the fun really began. I had been right about the poor course design and my fears about lapping slower runners on their first lap came true, only even worse than anticipated. Since the two loops of Prospect Park were not quite identical and runners on the second lap had to go an extra half mile to mile before rejoining where they were on the first loop, I figured that I would catch the slowest runners somewhere around mile 5 or 5.5 and just have to deal with lapping people for about a mile before I exited the park. Wrong! Because the start had been so packed and narrow there were throngs of people just entering the main loop for the first time, hardly a half mile into the race, by the time we rejoined the loop around mile 4.5. This made for a mess. There were designated lanes for each lap, with the faster runners forced to the outer lane but this only worked slightly. For one I'm sure people on their second lap ended up running much further than the course was measured for. Secondly, many slower runners and walkers drifted out into the outer lane (and vice versa as I'm sure many of the faster runners went inside trying to avoid taking a much longer route around the park, even though I'm not sure how that would work very well trying to go around slower runners but some tried nonetheless). Thirdly, water was out of the question, because it was on the inner part of the loop where the slower runners were. Given that there had only been one water stop in the first 4 miles that was a bit annoying. Finally, the biggest problem was that in the outer lane we were sharing it a lot of the time with the general users of Prospect Park, including cyclists---not a good or totally safe combination. As I said before the park needed to be closed to other users as Central Park is with the NYC Half for this race to work. In any case I was just waiting to get out of the park and onto Ocean Parkway where there would be free space. My hamstrings were also bothering me and I could feel the fatigue from all of the hills in my legs which were still worn down from the marathon.

Mile 8-11 (6:28, 6:32, 6:31, 6:37)

Finally we got out of the park and onto a nice downhill on the entrance to Ocean Parkway, which was then of course followed by another uphill even though I thought I had seen that last of those in Prospect Park. At this point I was starting to suffer from a side stitch on my right side. I don't know why it happens to me so frequently, particularly at the half marathon distance, but I really wish I could figure why I get these side stitches and why they are so incredibly painful. I have tried everything with pushing into them, deep breathing etc. but when they come on I just always end up in worsening pain which is only alleviated by easing off the pace. I honestly think it is more than a simple side stitch because they don't go away completely after the race and I can still feel the muscle soreness and spasm there after the race when I breathe deeply and sometimes there is some lingering soreness in my diaphragm for several days after the race. Anyway so that was what happened to me yet again, so even though my legs were feeling better to be rid of the hills and I was ready to push the pace I couldn't really do it. On a different day maybe I would have battled through it more, but I really wasn't prepared to embrace the pain and push through it today since it wasn't a goal race and it was just between all my hard marathon training and the short-distance training I was getting ready to embark on. So I struggled through these miles, for awhile with my one remaining teammate who I was still with until he faded behind (the guy going for sub 1:23 fortunately had forged ahead of me just as we left the park).

Mile 11-13 (6:37, 6:54, 7:08)

When I hit mile 11 I tried to put in the surge that I had been holding back on because of the side stitch but the pain just intensified and I didn't really have much left at this point anyway as I think the marathon from a month ago or the heat of the day had really caught up with me. So about mile 11.5 I more or less called it a day as I was passed by a friend from my office who always seems to pass me late in these longer races. I looked at my watch and figured I just wanted to break 1:26 and I didn't really have to push much at all to do that and if I didn't do it I didn't really care a whole lot. As we entered the Coney Island boardwalk for the last half mile, a lot of people passed me but I really just didn't care. As I finally hit the last 100 or 200 meters I could see the clock and saw it was going to be very close with 1:26 so I picked it up just because I hate finishing in one or two seconds over anything and 1:25 just had a better ring to it, so I crossed the line in 1:25:59, with one very sore right side and a pretty blistered up left foot.

Post-Race

While I sincerely hope that NYRR makes adjustments to this race for the future because the situation in Prospect Park was pretty bad, I did really like ending at Coney Island. I'm usually not one to care and hang around the post-race festivities but I did for awhile yesterday and it was pretty fun. First I met up with some people from my team and others I knew and we chatted. The guy shooting for sub 1:23 had made it by four or five seconds so I hope the one cup of water I handed him and the four miles I ran with him in Prospect Park may have made some bit of difference but I'm sure he could have done it without me. I also met up with Morissey from runnersworld, who turned out to be a friend of a friend I know from the real non-internet world. So after going to stick my feet in the ocean (which was pretty painful walking around barefoot with blisters!) and buying a smoothie and chicken taco on the boardwalk I headed home! It was a good day and an OK race, about what I expected. Thinking back on it, the race was a lot like the Bronx Half in February when I was coming off a great time in the Manhattan Half two weeks earlier and still felt a little beat up and didn't really have a goal and care a whole lot about my time and kind of just went for it anyway a bit in the early miles to see what would happen and then suffered a good bit at the end. Only this time I was a minute and a half faster so maybe it means I was in better shape than in February even post-marathon. Whatever the case, I don't really need to be in long distance shape for awhile as I embark upon my fun-filled summer of shorter races (maybe even next weekend if I feel up to it but probably not). I don't really like training for shorter races, but I do like racing a lot and the races themselves. More than anything you just get to race more often and don't feel as beat up the day or two after and can get right back into training. Also there are no side stitch death marches for 3-4 miles which right now feels like a huge plus! The change of pace should be good in any case, before I hit up the NYC Half in August, the Queens Half in September, and the Staten Island Half in October and then probably embarking upon the NYC Marathon again! 3 out of 5 borough halfs now complete!

Half Marathon History Lesson

So as I said before when I have an upcoming race I like to go back and review my past races and training. Since I'm running the Brooklyn Half on Saturday, I figured it was time to give myself a history lesson on my past halfs. Saturday will be the 10th half marathon I've run (it really seems like so many more but that's it). The previous 9 have all been in New York City: I've run the Staten Island half twice, Brooklyn twice, the Bronx twice, the New York City Half in Central Park and Times Square twice, and the Manhattan Half once. My times have looked like this:

Staten Island October 2005: 1:33
Brooklyn April 2006: 1:29
Bronx July 2006: 1:31
NYC Half August 2006: 1:26
Brooklyn April 2008: 1:27
NYC Half July 2008: 1:27
Staten Island October 2008: 1:28
Manhattan January 2009: 1:23:52 (PR)
Bronx February 2009: 1:27

I'm not sure what that all means but of those races I am most proud of NYC 2006, Manhattan 2009, and Staten Island 2005 in that order. The most disappointing of those races was Staten Island 2008. NYC 2006 was one of the most unexpected PRs I have ever had in running and not only did I significantly negative split the race but it was one of the easiest races I have ever run. It was really the first half I ran where I had the benefit of some marathon training in my legs and where covering 13 miles was no longer a long run for me anymore. I was also very relaxed in that race and wasn't really planning on running it that hard until I felt so great since I had raced a 5K and 5 miler hard the previous two weekends. If I could go back and re-create the feeling I had running that race that day in every race I ran I would do so gladly, I think I have only come close once in a longer race, which was the 15K PR (56:53) that I ran this past March, but even that felt like more of struggle. I gained a lot of confidence from that half (in retrospect probably a little too much for the marathon that followed that November) and I think I learned a lot about running in that race and what kind of training works best for me, even if it wasn't something I fully realized at the time. When I decided to focus on training for the Manhattan Half this past January, I looked back at what I had done leading up to the NYC 2006 race and followed some similar principles with doing a few 14-18 mile runs in the six weeks or so leading up to it and racing a hard shorter race two weekends before. As I set a nearly three minute PR in the Manhattan Half (despite, or perhaps given my penchant for cold weather racing on account of, about 8-12 degree temperatures). I was very pleased with that race but it definitely wasn't unexpected in the way NYC 2006 was. My third most proud half marathon moment was my first just because I had no idea what to expect and it was the first time I had even run 13.1 miles and perhaps (I didn't keep a running log then) the first time I had ever run more than 10 miles. Given that, the 1:33 I ran in October 2005 may have been the most impressive time of all the halfs I have run.

As I hit my 10th half marathon this weekend I guess I'm becoming a bit more of a veteran at this distance (though I know many people have run that many in a single year or 10 or 20 times that many in their lifetimes) but more so than ever I feel uncertain about what is going to happen in this race on Saturday and how my body will respond. For starters, I have never raced this soon after a marathon before, much less a race this long. I've been a bit tired on my runs but my larger concern is that my left hip has been feeling a bit too stiff for my liking (yes that old injury that always causes problems one way or another) and that I tried to do some speedwork in the form of 1 minute hard intervals (stupidly I might add) last week and the middle of my right hamstring has been a little tight ever since and has seemed to fatigue when I hit the end of my runs---that has been getting better with each run since my silly speedwork adventure last week though I'm not sure I can say the same for my hip. I'm so used to my hip being stiff though at various times that I have to admit that I think it won't be much of a problem in the race (hopefully not famous last words), it's just going to be a matter of soreness afterwards and having to be a little carfeul in the upcoming weeks. I don't know that I've ever gone into a race before where the # 1 overall goal on my mind was to come out as healthy as possible but that's kind of how I feel about Saturday, though I don't think the thought will cross my mind if I end up having a good, better than expected day, it will just be if I am struggling that I will probably opt to coast in. The reason I feel this way is because I would be annoyed at myself that I have pushed a little too hard post-marathon and this race kind of falls into no man's land since I'm not going to be in better shape than I was when I ran the marathon a month ago or in the weeks leading up to it and I'm about to embark on training for shorter races, so this race isn't really a goal race nor is it a measuring stick or building block for my next training cycle. It's kind of just there--- in a way the end of my marathon cycle but also removed from it at the same time---and that's why I don't really have a goal for it other than to come out healthy.

Having said all that I'm going to go to the line with the idea of racing it in mind, I'm just not sure at all how things will unfold. In the six half marathons I have run since I got serious about them, I've felt strong and done well in two of them (NYC 2006, Manhattan 2009) and felt dead and beaten up and just coasted in or struggled at the end of four them, in three of those four I came in with almost identical times between 1:27:27 and 1:27:32 and the other (Staten Island 2008) I had one of the most miserable side stitches and three mile finishes to a race I can ever imagine and ended up in 1:28:12 when I was on sub 1:26 pace for about 10 miles. So you throw that all together and I feel like there is a good chance I will end up running in the mid 1:27s again on Saturday, but as I said I really have no idea what to expect. On the flip side, I don't think it's totally impossible that I could have a good day and squeak in a PR. I ran a 1:23:52 in January in ice bowl conditions and I was clearly in better shape than that by March and April, and my 15K and 10 miles time projected to a 1:21 half or so. I feel a bit beat up and tired right now without a question and I may feel the effects of my hamstring or hip out there (in which case I will probably slow down) or just a general feeling of not having recovered from the marathon but if I was actually in 1:21 shape in mid-April, how much of that fitness and freshness could I have lost? Possibly a lot since I did run a freaking marathon, but maybe I have held onto just enough so that I can still nab a slight PR or a sub 1:23. The three times I have PR'ed at the half marathon in the past have all been a little unexpected and by almost 3 minutes. I don't think a 1:20 is in the cards by any means, but I guess we shall see. It could be ugly, it could be pretty, but it will most likely just be "blah" and I'll try not to hurt anything in the process so that I can re-focus things for the summer. Stay tuned....

The City Spoileth Me

I'm out of the city for a day or two in a rural/suburban area of upstate NY. Every time I go somewhere like this I wonder how so many of you are able to keep up your running the way you do.  Seriously, the roads here have no shoulders and there are enough cars going by to make it unpleasant and concerning if you're trying to run anyway that you are either going to have hop into a ditch or risk getting mowed down. And somewhere along the run there is destined to be a big dog chasing you, and I worry about the little poodles with their owners nearby in Central Park. People always assume there must be nice running when you're out in the "country" but seriously I am so spoiled to have New York City to run in. I really don't know if I would be a runner if I had grown up somewhere else. So I'm in awe of all of you who have to deal with some of these problems on your daily run and still manage to log consistent high mileage and speed workouts. Carry on.

Looking to the Past

As I said in my first post, I created this blog in part so that I could look back six months, or a year, or ten years from now, and see what my training was like and what I was thinking about running and life. But sometimes I wonder if I/we can become too fixated on my/our running past. I have a computer training log in which I have tracked at the very least the distance (and sometimes the pace, feel, injury sensations, purpose, conditions as well) of every run and the time of every form of cardiovascular cross training I have done since November of 2005.

Despite adhering to my "just keep running" philosophy I think I have probably looked back over my log over the years more than a lot of people do. Whenever I embark on a new marathon training period I give things a check and as I get closer to race day (and am bored while tapering usually) I have a tendency to stastically analyze training "plans" past and compare them to what I have been doing more recently. Since I haven't followed a set training plan for anything for almost three years now, I guess it's my way of trying to impress on myself some sort of conscious or perhaps sub-conscious reminder of what kind of "training" I should consider. Sometimes though I think I just do it to try and give myself a confidence boost before a big race. For example before NYC 2008, I had averaged much less total mileage than before NYC 2006 but when I went back and looked at my log I saw that I had done 6 rather than 3 20+ mile runs in the 18 weeks leading up to the marathon and that I had also done more 15+ mile runs the second time around. As it turned out I didn't beat my 06 NYCM time in the 08 NYCM but I did get pretty close given how many fewer total miles I had run and how poor my times were at shorter distances compared to two years before, so in a way my little research experiment proved correct and I was in fact in better marathon shape the second time around than a generic equivalent running calculator might have indicated.

In the weeks leading up to the New Jersey Marathon this past spring I played a similar researach game with myself, though this time it wasn't so much to provide me with a needed confidence boost but to see and understand what had worked for me since I had had so much success in my tune up races and throughout my training cycle. Basically as I looked things over, my weekly mileage in the 18 week buildup was slightly higher than it had ever been before but the real difference was in three factors:
1. it was the first time I ever came off another marathon into a second marathon training cycle and thus I had a level of consistency, particularly with long runs, that I had never had in the past (statistically in the 40 or so weeks prior to Jersey 09 I had done 13 20+ mile runs compared to 3 leading up to NYC 06, and 6 leading up to NYC 08---that in itself had to have made a huge difference).

2. I really started making the mid-week long run a part of my normal routine. In NYC 08 I hadn't used them at all. In NYC 06, I often concidentally got in one or two 11 mile days during the week just on account of long interval workouts I did and the warm ups and cool downs that came with them. But for Jersey 09 I purposefully focussed on those longer midweek runs and made them more like 13-14 miles rather than 10-11. Statistically: I ran 13+ miles 24 times in the 18 weeks leading up to NJM 09, compared to just 15 times for NYC 06 and 13 times for NYC 08.

3. I ran a lot more tune-up races and tempo runs. For NYC 06 I did a lot of fast running but it was mostly in bi-weekly interval workouts rather than tempos and I only raced four times in the 18 week build-up, three of which were on consecutive weekends more than 10 weeks out from the marathon, so the only race I did in the last 10 weeks was an 18 miler which was hardly an opportunity to really work on and gain confidence in pushing myself through faster running. In NYC 08 since I was coming off injury I was pretty limited and basically did no faster running in training or races until about 5 weeks before the race when I did an 18 miler and then 2 weeks later a half-marathon. For Jersey, I ran races from the beginning of the 18 week period right up to a month before race day and ran some pretty fast 4-6 mile tempos that weren't more than 10-20 seconds off race pace for those distances. I got into a consistent racing schedule and raced a 5 miler and two halfs at the beginning of the cycle, a 5K in the middle, and a 15K and 10 miler as my last two tune-ups. That made for 6 races in the period from 18 weeks to 4 weeks pre-marathon and at a range of distances that tested both my speed and endurance. Also in general I just like to race and so I think that kept me fresh and took away some of the pressure of having trained for one big goal race with everything riding on it.



So I think that's the good that comes out of my tendency to revisit my past training. From NYC 06 I came away with an understanding of the importance of long-term consistency, particularly as it pertained to long runs. I built on that for NYC 08 as much as injuries allowed me to do and from that training cycle I again took away the importance of a consistent mileage base but also the importance for me of running races and tempos in preparation to build the necessary speed. Even though I didn't follow a training "plan" persay for Jersey this past spring I definitely applied those lessons from my two previous training cycles into how I ended up training and for the most part it worked for me.



I also think that there is a bad that comes out of revisiting the past (beyond being a complete dork with all these statistical analyses of my past runs I've provided you with). It is very easy for all that attention on the past to get me distracted from my philosophy of "just keep running." I think this is particularly a risk now that I think that I have found some training principles that worked well for me. I think this spring worked for me because I listened to my body and did tempos, long runs, races, a lot of the time on the weeks and days when I felt most ready for them. If I try to more or less "copy" what I did for Jersey for my next marathon (probably NYC or Philly 09) I think I could end up in real trouble. On the one hand I'd like to think there are components I could add to my training that would help me get to the next level, on the other hand I believe that if I were just able to more or less repeat what I did that I would also improve significantly just from the consistency of it over a longer period.

I think the real problem of trying to "copy" what I did this past spring though will come on some week in September when I look at the training I have done since June and realize that I have run more races than I did in the winter or that I've done three or four fewer 15+ mile runs and I then try to change up my training as a result and end up forcing a midweek long run or so on myself just because that worked for me in the past. I have to be very wary of such a scenario because it will start to break me away from the idea of "just keep running" which is what I think has worked for me up to this point in my running life and it is also how I will lead myself down another injury path.

I'm already thinking this way even in my post-marathon recovery. I've looked back at the mistakes I made after NYC 2006 when I started to run again every day the Wednesday after the marathon even though my quads basically couldn't support me to run anything close to my natural running form. Three weeks later I was out injured for what would turn out to be a seemingly long, long time. I've also looked back to see what I did right after NYC 2008 that led me into the Jersey training cycle and see that I took the entire week off after the race and didn't go more than 6 or 7 miles until almost 3 weeks post-marathon and didn't try any kind of faster running. While I took 4 days totally off after Jersey, I kind of jumped back into things after that at least compared to what I did after NYC 08. I was doing 8 mile runs much of last week and did a 13 miler on Sunday and a tempo workout on the track yesterday. The thing is my legs as a whole feel a ton better than they did after either of my first two marathons and that was evident from the second I crossed the line when my quads didn't seize on me (though I could tell you doing the tempo yesterday that my legs definitely were not 100 percent yet). But there are aches and pains here and there, the same ones that would bother me now and again during training---my right knee/shin, the flexor of my right foot, and yes my chronic issue with my left hip. None of these things feel awful and they wouldn't stop me from training if I were in the middle of a marathon training cycle with the goal sight, but they do make me wonder if I should chill for awhile longer like I did post NYC 08 since that ended up working for me. But the mileage I put in for this marathon was so much greater, the training so much harder, and I felt so much better afterwards and in the process of training that I feel that I don't need to follow what my past history has taught me. Of course if I'm injured a month from now or if I feel beat up in October I'm going to look back on this blog post and kick myself for not listening to my past experiences much as I look back as what I did after NYC 06 as mistakes.

I guess history in all things, running and otherwise, can only tell you so much and you need to find a way to both learn from it but not depend on repeating it. That's why I ran 13 miles on Sunday and it's the same reason I'm taking today off. It's also probably why I am going to "taper" (from practically nothing to taper from) next week for the Brooklyn Half and take another couple days off. I don't think I just put into words anything here that I didn't already know, but at least I got to admit to the world (like everyone didn't know already) that I am a huge nerd and have gone back over my training log mutliple times to add up how many 13+, 15+, 17+, 20+, 22+ mile runs I did in various training periods leading up to past marathons.