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.