Being Stubborn and Stupid

Stubborn and Stupid marathon time for 2013

Sensible and Personal Record marathon time from one year earlier.

Ever since I started running and training for marathons I have striven to obtain, give and discuss proper and helpful training methods with those who are also running and training or thinking about running and training for marathons. I've read books,  magazines, forums, blogs, and articles which all say things like "don't go too far too fast" or "back off the training when you sense injury coming on" and have been said and believed in by me.  I have cautioned myself and other runners to alter planned running paces in bad conditions and too ease into a race rather than going full bore like an idiot.  You would think I would know when training for and running my fifth marathon that all of the aforementioned principles don't just stop applying because I have ran a marathon before.  

Nope, not this year.  I did pretty much everything wrong in my process leading up to and during my marathon training.  I then compounded that problem with an utterly stupid race strategy that left me having the worst pacing since my first marathon and had me see my third worst marathon time ran (the other being my first and second marathons).  This blog will attempt to glean what went wrong (hint: I failed to follow well established training and racing principles). 

Training for my 2012 and 2013 marathons pretty much started the same.  Due to our son's medical issues, it is hard for me to run more than one marathon a year, with traveling, expense and the time it takes to do it, so I pretty much prepare for the next marathon right after the previous one is over.  This typically involves a reverse taper (resting and light running for two to three weeks following the marathon) and no speed training for four weeks after the marathon.  Now, the tricky part with that plan is that I usually start a training program for a big 5 or 10 k in the spring (typically the Azalea Trail Run or Spring Fever Chase), so I start a training program for that pretty soon after the reverse marathon taper is over (and I try my best not to start before full recovery).  

After that event, I plan out my fall marathon schedule and then plan a 8 to 12 week base building program through the summer to where I am running around the weekly distance I will be running in my marathon training program, without the same amount of long run since those typically entail many 18-22 mile runs.  From there, I go into my marathon training which is usually a 18 week modified Pfitz plan.  

In 2012, I was able to have a pretty good base building period, running six days a week up to a maximum of 50 miles towards the end.  The problem I had then was I planning on following the Pfitz up to 70 mpw plan, to the T.  I thought base building up to the start of that plan would be sufficient to go right into it with no worries.  Two weeks in and my body told me otherwise.  Plantar fasciitis, runner's knee, my ITB Band, you name it, started flaring up and made me realize the plan was not going to work.  So I dialed it back, modified the Pfitz up to 55 mpw plan with increased speed work and reduced mileage, and averaged roughly 50 mpw. I did my customary multiple 20 – 22 mpw runs and kind of dealt with the  plantar fasciitis (golf ball massage) and ITB Band (foam roller and Alleve once a week) to where I was able to hit all my workouts and times in those workouts.

 I felt decent coming into the 2012 First Light Marathon about hitting a PR, especially if the weather cooperated.  My plan was to pace for a 3:20, but doing it with a pretty substantial negative split so I could ease into the race.  All I needed was good weather.  

Unfortunately, that did not occur.  

The weather was pretty hot for that time of year, and while I don’t remember the exact temperature, I remember telling my wife not to expect anything great since it was going to be shitty weather.  So did I plan to keep with the 3:20 pace plan?  Nope, I adjusted the goal to any PR  I could get and basically planned to run the splits I had the year before and hope to not die doing so.  I altered my fueling strategy as well and had a pretty good race, although the increased consumption of Gatorade (trying to combat the increased sweating due to heat) than what I had trained with made me want to vomit towards the end.  Below are the splits for that race followed by the splits for the 2011 race, look at how consistent they are for the most part: 

2011                                                                            2012

1st mile: 8:18:3                                                            One 7:36 

2nd Mile: 8:20 16:38                                                   Two 7:50 

3rd Mile: 8:19 24:58                                                   Three 7:52 

4th Mile: 8:00 32:58                                                    Four 7:52                    

5th Mile: 7:53 40:51                                                    Five 7:44 I Hit watch early

6th Mile: 8:00 48:52                                                    Six 8:03 

7th Mile: 7:49 56:42                                                    Seven 7:35 early again

8th Mile: 8:35 1:05:17 (Restroom break)                     Eight 8:18 

9th Mile: 8:05 1:13:22                                                 Nine 7:54 

10th Mile: 7:59 1:21:22 Hills start                                Ten 8:15 Hills start

11th Mile: 8:13 1:29:35                                               Eleven 7:47 

12th Mile: 8:13 1:37:49                                               Twelve 8:03 

13th Mile: 8:00 1:45:50                                               Thirteen 7:54 

14th Mile: 8:01 1:53:51                                               Fourteen 7:51 

15th and 16th Miles: 15:47 2:09:39                             Fifteen 7:45 

17th Mile: 8:00 2:17:40                                               Sixteen 8:00 

18th Mile: 8:17 2:25:57 Last mile with Hills                 Seventeen 8:01 

19th Mile: 7:50 2:33:47                                               Eighteen 8:06 Last  Hills

20th Mile: 8:00 2:41:48                                               Nineteen 8:01 

21st Mile: 7:56 2:49:44                                               Twenty 7:48 

22nd Mile:7:47 2:57:31                                               Twenty one 7:56 

23rd Mile: 7:56 3:05:28                                              Twenty two 8:08 

24th Mile: 8:18 3:13:46                                               Twenty three 8:02 

25th Mile: 8:22 3:22:09                                               Twenty Four 8:10 

26th Mile: 7:54 3:30:03                                               Twenty five 8:11 

.2 1:31 3:31:35                                                            Twenty six 8:05 

                                                                                    Point two 1:35 

I was happy with both of these races and the pacing I did. I never hit a wall and kind of just killed my plan and got a PR both times.  A big part of my training in both of these years was running the hilly portion of the actual course for my long runs many times.  I passed so many people in the hills and at the end I was constantly getting motivated to keep it going through the race.    

After the 2012 race, I followed the same schedule until my summer base building.  In order to get more miles in, I eliminated most of the speed work and ran seven days a week.  Why?  Because it seemed like the best way to get in the most mileage in the least amount of time, my wife is very patient with my running schedule, but I wanted to try it out to see if I could acclimate myself to running every day that way I could get home earlier and take less time on the weekends running.  Well...my body did not acclimate to it very well.  Runner’s knee struck, along with my recurrent ITB band issues, and really put a hurt on the pace I could run. Did I stop and regroup? Hell no, I kept on running through it thinking my body would acclimate and that the first two weeks of my marathon training program would be kind of like a taper (WTF was I thinking) and kept on pushing through the pain. 

I also decided to alter my training schedule from the previous year.  I wanted to work up to the Pfitz 70 mpw plan for my 2014 marathon (why am I thinking a year ahead?) so I modified the 55 mpw plan to include an extra day of running (running 6 days a week), and all of the long runs and midweek long runs from the 70 mpw plan.  This resulted in a plan where I was averaging 60 mpw running.  Sounds great, except my knees never got better and my paces were still slower than in the past (I know you are not supposed to run easy runs hard, but my easy pace was now in the mid to high 9:00's whereas previously it was low 9:00's high 8:00s).  I was able to hit my speed workouts (tempos and track), but could not even think of running the marathon paced long runs or the races set out in the plan.  Even when I would race, family fairness dictated that I run my long run on that day as well so that I was not taking up a full weekend of running.  My wife needs to have some sort of weekend and recover too after all!!! 

Well, all that did was further injure me (running twelve miles after an all-out five mile effort with warm-up does not lead to proper form or is a good recipe for avoiding injury) and defeat the purpose of that weekend since the race was to tire you out for the next day’s long run.  To make up for the lack of racing, I extended some of the speed work and tried to add additional mileage in because I thought (wrongly) that this would help me in some way for the marathon.  All it ready did was wear me down further.  By the time my taper came, I was still injured, exhausted, and knew the race was going to be shit.  But I still had hope for running close to my PR if the weather cooperated since I ran a PR when the weather was so shitty. 

Ten days out I knew the weather was not going to be an ally.  High 70’s, high humidity and wind.  Fuck.  As the marathon drew closer, the weather, which is never predicted right in our area, was sticking to that forecast, high heat (ideal marathon temps, IMO, are 40’s and 50’s, dry), humidity and wind. So, did I alter my pacing plans...who do you think you are reading about, hell no. 

I don’t know why I did not decide to just set out running 8:15 to 8:20 a mile and stick with it.  It was not as if I thought I had a chance of PRing.  Anyone I thought would be interested in it or could provide me some encouragement I let know, “No way in hell I am Pring”.  But I still foolhardily stuck with that goal.    

Race day came, and the following happened:  

2013:

Mile one 7:30

Mile two 8:00

Mile three 8:00

Mile four: 7:56

Mile five: 7:56

Mile six: 8:05

Mile seven: 8:03

Mile eight: 8:11

Mile nine: 8:04

Mile ten: 8:08 Hills Start

Mile eleven: 8:08

Mile 12: 8:21

Mile 13: 8:19

Mile 14: 8:15

Mile 15 8:14

Miles 16: 8:17

Mile 17: 8:28

Mile 18: 9:10 Last mile with hills

Mile 19: 8:52

Mile 20: 8:54

Mile 21: 8:52

Mile 22: 9:20

Mile 23: 9:49

Mile 24: 9:55

Mile 25: 9:28

Mile 26 9:00

to end 1:52

It was very humid and the wind was awful.  It seemed as if there was a hard headwind the entire race, especially in the hills.  The pacing also started way too fast and I never wavered from it, not even in the hills.  I dropped and passed so many people in the hills I thought I was killing it.  In reality, I was being dumb while everyone else was being smart.  By the last hill I had barely anything left.  Typically, I recover (pace will slow down slightly, no walking) in the mile following that hill and then get right back at it.  The recovery never came for me.  The best thing I can say is I never ran a ten minute mile in the last six. And while I am typically the one passing people in the end, I was passed by three marathoners following the hills. 

The weather really was awful, but I doubt I can attribute a 14 minute decline in a year to just that.  At one point my arms were covered in white, which was the salt left over from my sweat evaporating, and my left arm would not quit cramping (I ran at one point with my full arm extended, pretty sure some people thought I had Bell’s Palsy).  Running injured should never really have been an option for me and I should have recovered and then tried to resume training.  My training paces should have been the indicator but I told myself I was just tired from the extra mileage I was averaging and that the taper would put the goodness there.  Not altering my pace was probably the biggest dumb ass move ever.  No way I should have run that first mile in 7:30 and just really wasn't a smart pacer (which is one of my strong suits in running) as evidenced by the trail off at the end.  Being passed at the end really stuck it to me since I cannot recall finishing a race so weak, outside of my first five k and marathon.

So, back to the drawing board.  I am going to get a full recovery in and shoot for the ATR or Spring Fever Chase.  If I am not recovered by then, there is a neat five k in April benefiting the Ronald McDonald House in Mobile where people throw paint on you a I can go for: http://www.colormerad.com/races/mobile.html

Wonder if it’s possible to go sub 20 while covered in paint?

From there I’m going to base build, six days a week, and try and get that mileage to where I can either do the 70 mpw plan safely, or follow the plan I did in 2012 with a little bit more mileage.  The one thing I have to remember though, is running injured is no longer an option.  It does not further my running goals or plan so doing it is just fucking stupid. So is running balls out when you know you dont have the fitness to do it.  Oh well, the last six miles of this year's race taught me a pretty good lesson on not making the aforementioned mistakes again.  

     

Man, it has been awhile since I wrote on this thing.  Kinda surprised blogs are not obsolete yet.  As the above picture demonstrates, my running did not taper off like my blog usage.  And yes, I am about to get outkicked by a ten year old in this photo, but I was fortunate enough to be able to hold to cross before him...if the race was another twenty feet though...woof.

I have run two marathons since my  last blog post, one a year, and achieved a PR in each of them so that my current PR is 3:28:35.  I am proud of that 3:28 since it was run on a hot and humid day and on a hilly course (First Light Marathon, which is the same marathon I did before and have this weekend) and probably would have been a lot lower in ideal conditions.  I am running another marathon this weekend but do not expect to PR since I have been training injured for a year now and really like doubting myself before these things.

Also, since my last blog post, my family expanded with a wonderful little son who was so eager to get into this world to meet us that he came ten weeks early and weighed only 1 pound 9 ounces.  He stayed in the NICU in Pensacola, along with us, for over four months.  He fought through it though and is now a wonderful, healthy, once deaf (now has cochlear implants to help him hear) and kicking our butts son.

My new son has limited my racing but I have been training pretty heavy every year trying to get my marathon time down.  This year's marathon training had me following a modified Pfitz plan (Advanced marathon up to 55 miles with me eliminating a rest day and running the long runs from the up to 75 mpw plan) which entailed me running around 60 miles a week plus expanded long runs on the weekend.

To gear up for the training, I did a summer base building program of running 7 days a week with one long run a week since I was limited on the time I could put in mileage.  I figure my knee issues arose either during that phase or the early phases of my program and they never really went away.  So, I have been foam rolling my legs and killing the supplements (fish oil, vitamin C mainly) to try and get the knees feeling better.  Some days they do, some days they don't, but  I was not able to run my training runs nearly as quick as I have in the past.    

That lack of speed is what gives me concern for my marathon time this Sunday, but who knows what will happen?  The weather certainly looks like it is not going to be helpful in lowering my time any.

After the marathon I think I am going to gear up to train for going sub 40:00 at the Azalea Trail Run or Spring Fever Chase 10ks in March. That training would have to start after a solid two week reverse taper to try and get my knees back to non-hurting status.  From there, I would go on to start my base building for next year's marathon, where, hopefully, I could go sub 3:20.

I am going to try and post my weekly schedules here and maybe that will keep me motivated to hit those speed workouts and times needed to get to sub 40 and 3:20, if my knees cooperate.  Pardon the grammatical errors.

This week is uneventful except for the marathon which is Sunday.  I will post a race report on it, and try to remember some stuff from the other two times I have run it for my own record.  The two weeks following that will be spent resting, recovering and getting fat (Although I will resume my strength training routine) and then the third week I will start the new training regimen that I will post as well.    

Out

Pass the Turkey Trot, Please

As you can tell by the above picture, there is a sad turkey in the blogosphere today. Regrettably, I will no longer be running in the turkey ten miler tomorrow morning over in Creola. I have been looking forward to the race all year, but family commitments have made participation impossible. Due to this, I have decided to move my tune up race to December 11 where I will participate in the Holiday Half Marathon. That race is roughly a month out from my marathon and will give me a good idea on whether I will be on target to run the time I want for my marathon or not. I believe the race has an eight k run as well for anyone wanting to run a smaller distance than the half marathon. Check the races out at the Port City Pacers website.

Not running the race also means that I have unintentionally ended up having an unplanned rest week, which I hate. I just had a recovery week two weeks ago and I hate thinking my fitness is being wasted or compromised. But, to be fair, I did run twenty two miles this past Saturday so perhaps it is okay to allow my legs to recover and get the benefits from that run by running light the past few days. However, since I will not be running the race on Saturday, I am now going to go ahead and run a ten mile threshold run this evening with three by two miles at a 7:00 minute pace, seven miles tomorrow, and fourteen to sixteen miles on Sunday with pickups. Originally, I planned on running two miles with striders on Friday, the race on Saturday and eight miles with the last three at marathon pace on Sunday. If I can run the new amounts as planned, I will have gotten another quality fifty mile week in and all will not be lost.

Hopefully my run tonight will go off without me getting injured. No day light savings time means all of my runs are completed at night. While Daphne has a lot of sidewalks to run on, not many of them are will lit for extended distances. My fallback running route, "the bowl", is great for running my normal runs as it has a lot of hills to contend with. The problem though is it is only a four mile stretch, out and back, which means to get ten miles in I would have to run the same route two and a half times. Normally this would not be a big deal but I run that route almost every day for six to eight miles and running multiple laps on it daily gets to be a bit tedious. The hills are also pretty steep making it very, very difficult to run a threshold pace run on the course and stay strong for the duration of the exercise since repeatedly running the hills hard sometimes blows me up.

Due to these issues, I usually run my threshold runs on main street in Daphne. This course has draw backs as well, mainly safety issues due to the lack of lighting further down the course. The good part of the course though is you can pretty much run an out and back marathon on it and it has some pretty decent flat sections so you are not running uphill the entire time during a fast paced run. So the plan for now is to run that route, and pray I do not twist my ankle or get hit by a car in the dark.

Next week's schedule is shaping up to be a tough one, but I am looking forward to getting some more hill work in. Here is how the schedule looks:

Mon Track workout (likely 5x1000 in 4:00 followed by 8x200 in :45)
Tues eight miles (Hills)
Wed off
Thur 10 mile threshold run with 3x2 miles at threshold pace
Fri seven miles
Sat eight miles with last three at marathon pace
Sun twenty miles

Hopefully I can knock my runs out and get another blog post written next week. Stay tuned.

Let's dust this off:

Another long delay and another running blog neglected...what were the odds?

To be fair, I have had some events in the past months that have made it hard to keep running and sane, much less write a post for a blog followed by three people. So, yes, I am still running and have not really stopped. Presently, I am training for the First Light Marathon in Mobile on January 9, 2011. I originally wanted to try the three marathons in three months challenge but that went belly up after the aforesaid issues went down. But I have no regrets because of the wonderful, beautiful, strong ass, can't no body hold me down baby boy we got out of it.

No three in three also meant the demise of my ultra in March. I just do not have the vacation days available to justify taking days off to participate in three out of town running events. The new plan is to move the old plan forward a year and do everything in 2011-2012. Hopefully my times will improve enough to where I could also Boston Qualify in December at Huntsville next year as well and kill another bird with one stone. I just need to be able to run a 7:17 pace for 26.2 miles...not to difficult huh?

So that is pretty much the rushed update that I have prepared. I am running 22 miles tomorrow (in preparation for Georgia's victory on the plains) and will run seven on Sunday. Next week will consist of track work and some easy runs in preperation for my participation in the Turkey Ten Miler over in Creola where I will be shooting for a PR. Wish me luck, I ran last years in 1:19:38 or 7:57 pace.

A long overdue update and possibly the end?

So...I went and let my blog get away from me. I guess this sort of thing happens all of the time but I feel really bad about it. I did not want to be one of those people who start a blog and quit it with no send off (even though I have done that exact thing on previous occasions). However, the few people who actually read this thing already know the end results of my marathon experiment so it probably was not that big of deal.

Yes, I trained for and completed my first marathon injury free on December 12, 2009. No, that is not a picture of me after the first marathon, but, instead, is a picture of me after successfully completing my second one.....what???????

Yep, doing one was not enough for "this guy". I had so much fun running in the first one I decided to try it again. Okay, that second part was a lie. I did not run the second marathon because I enjoyed the first one so much. In reality, the first marathon was one of the toughest things I have ever accomplished. Finishing under four hours almost caused me to get injured because I pushed so hard in the final mile to get in under time.

The marathon started off fine and I was feeling great up until around mile eighteen. By mile twenty I swore I would never run another marathon again. By mile twenty four I seriously contemplated quitting. "Hell" I thought, "I quit that blog of mine, quitting this damn race should be a snap!!!" At mile twenty four and a half I said to myself "when the f*&k is this thing going to end?"

A weird thing happened though. Right when I reached the finish line of my first marathon in the glorious time of 3:59:19, I felt the greatest I had ever felt in my life...spiritually. Physically I was a wreck, particularly my legs, but the sense of accomplishment I felt on that day blew me away. Seeing my wife and best friend from graduate school yelling and cheering me on all the way did not hurt either.

The day after the marathon, I decided to run a second one a couple of months later with the hope of bettering my time. I learned some things from the first one that changed my training up and prepared me better for the second go around. I did more long runs over 16 miles and ran hard just about every time out. The result...a twenty one minute PR. I finished the Rock and Roll New Orleans marathon in 3:38:48 with energy to spare. The race still beat the hell out of me physically but the distance was much more manageable this time. Instead of feeling dread at mile twenty I was excited and knocking down 8:20 miles. I also made myself promise to take goofy photos at the end and update this blog so that people would know I "finished the drill" as the Georgia Bulldogs would say.

I plan on running more marathons in the future and am going to attempt the Alabama three marathons in three months challenge at the end of the year. http://www.mercedesmarathon.com/3n3.php I may try and Boston Qualify, a 3:10 marathon time, at the first marathon in December. If the three marathons go well, I will likely attempt a fifty mile ultra marathon next March. That is a big IF though. Running the approximate equivalent of two marathons in one day is a daunting endeavor. Even to someone as foolhardy (when it comes to running) as me.

I will seriously try and update this thing at least once a month. Right now I am in a recovery cycle in my training program and nothing really exciting is going on until next week. I am going to run in the Spring Fever 10k and the Azalea Trail Run 10k in the next couple of weeks so hopefully I can post some pretty good times and update this blog with them. If I do not, maybe this post can be a fitting conclusion to my dumb little blog.

Blowing Up in Humid Town

I have experienced some pretty nasty weather ever since I started running, but none of that compared to the horrid humidity I hurried through last Thursday evening. What made the run even more excruciating was that it was my first "tempo" run. "Tempo" runs are where you pick up your pace for a certain amount of time. My goal was to run at 8:16 pace for ten minutes at some point during my six mile run.

My philosophy in tackling tough tasks is usually to try and get through the hardest part first. This way, the remainder of the exercise is fairly easy. That philosophy usually works out pretty good, but I would not recommend it for "tempo" running. I started the run with a half mile warm up and then picked it up to 8:16 pace to start the "tempo" run. Right off the bat I noticed that I was sweating way more than usual and breathing was very hard to do. Half way into the run the left side of my brain was coming up with all the excuses in the world it could muster to get me to quit. I pushed on and finished the ten minute "tempo" run and immediately slowed to a pathetic jog to try and "rest on the run".

The attempt was a complete, catastrophic calamity and I soon found myself walking to regain my breath. "Stop walking you pansy", screamed the right side of my brain. "Turn right here and your car will only be a mile away" begged the left side of my brain. I soon started doing math in my head to try and take my mind off trying to breath and the heat. This worked for a good while. I finished the run (with a couple more walk breaks and even more math problems) and felt pretty discouraged until I ran into my coach who told me that he cut his run short due to the humidity and had a hell of time finishing as well. So there . . . I was not the only woose running last Thursday...kidding.

The rest of the week was pretty tame as far as my ridiculous running routing goes. On Friday I decided to run a new course from the YMCA over to the Windsor entrance of Lake Forest and back. It was a great area to run in except for the lack of sidewalks over half of it. On Saturday I ran on a treadmill to give my legs some recovery and get ready for Sunday's long run.

Sunday's run was the best breezy bay run I have had since I started running. I ran fourteen miles again, but this time we ran over on Dauphin Island Parkway over the Dog River Bridge...yes ran over the Dog River Bridge. If Thursday's run was the most humid of the season, then Sunday's was the coolest. We started at 6:00 am and I actually caught my teeth chattering on a few occasions. The run was great and I hope it is the same this weekend.

Monday I had another torturous, timed track workout. This week I had to complete 5x1000 meters with each 1000 meters completed in 5:00 minutes and a 200 meter recovery. I then had to do 2x1000 meters in 4:45 with a 3:00 minute recovery. We finished the workout with 2x200 meters in 45 seconds.

Tuesday's run was completed with my beautiful, boootylicious babe over in Daphne. She ran 3.5 and I did 6. I am off today and am scheduled for another 16 miles on Sunday. I also received September's schedule and will be running 20 miles by the end of that month...I cannot wait!!!!

Sorry for the delay and the short post this week but work has been killer.

On Sunday, August 9th, I ran fourteen miles over in Mobile. What makes the accomplishment better in my eyes is that I did it on the hilliest course I have ran on to date. Hillcrest is named the way it is for a reason.

I ran forty six miles combined last week including Sundays sixteen mile run. Yes, I can now run sixteen miles. I was scheduled for fourteen but decided to run sixteen because my buddy did not want to run it on his own.

Yesterday's track workout was murderous. It was a ladder workout of 4x200 meters with a 200 meter recovery, 2x400 meters with a 400 meter recovery, 1x800 with a 400 meter recovery, and then we had to go back down the ladder by doing 2x400 with a 400 meter recovery, and 4x200 with a 200 meter recovery. Including warm ups we ran over six miles with a third of the runs being at sprint pace...UGHHH.

This weeks long run is fourteen miles again. The Mobile group wants to run over the Dauphin Island bridge so I have some high humidity and traffic to look forward to. I just hope they do not have speed traps set up because I will likely get a speeding ticket if they clock my extreme running speeds...DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!