Back to the Basics: Training to my Strengths

            I know that I just posted a blog, but as I’m sitting here not racing on the weekend that I typically dedicate to the Bayshore half marathon, I’m more excited than ever to run and race. For the first time in quite some time, I set out with a moderately difficult training week and was actually able to complete it. Since my last post, I ran two workouts.

May 26^th-Thurs- 9 mile cut-down (6:22, 6:20, 6:04, 5:54, 5:46, 5:38, 5:26, 5:21, 5:06) 3 mile cool down

May 27^th-Fri- 2 mile warm up straight into 6 mile Marathon Goal Pace 31:09 (5:10, 5:13, 5:03, 5:14, 5:15, 5:14). I was shooting for 31:06, but my form broke down a little the last mile and a half. I probably could’ve struggled through some more miles or run the last one a little faster, but that wasn’t the point of the workout.

All in all, after today’s 10 mile run, I will hit 85 miles with my best workout week in quite some time. That being said, the workouts that I ran this week were all strength based which just so happens to be my strength. 2:16 for the marathon is a pretty lofty goal, but I have over 4 more months to train and I certainly didn’t go into my last marathon prepared or healthy to say the least (which was entirely my fault). My coach, Jim Robinson (the coach of Playmakers Racing), is there reminding me that I need to keep up on my ancillary work as well as incorporating strides. Speed is really my weakness, but I’m planning on primarily training to my strengths for this training cycle. I think this will allow for faster recovery which should also allow for me to get my mileage up down the road. I’ve never really consistently trained above 90-95 mpw so I’m hoping to train somewhere in the 95-105 mpw this summer. Over the years, I’ve found that my body responds better to quality over quantity, but continued slow progression in higher training volumes is needed to reach my goals. That being said, I do have 4 months to work toward my marathon goal, so I do need to not get carried away so that I can get to the start line healthy this year. While I’m highly anticipating my next race, I don’t know when my next focal race will actually be. I’ve really over raced my body the last couple years so I’m really resisting the temptation to race and backing off a little bit for now. While this is completely up in the air at this point, my speculative race schedule may be Bix 7, Hood to Coast, Twin Cities Marathon, but that being said, I may add a race or two into in the mix and I haven’t committed to a marathon yet. While the workouts that I’ve run to this point are not eye-popping, 2 weeks before Indy, I ran 2 x 3 mile in 15:31 and 15:56 which was a near all out if not all out effort for me at the time. Needless to say, I was pretty scared going into Indy, but couldn’t be more happy with the progression that I’ve made in the past month. In this past week’s workouts, I really have felt like I have more to give at the end of each workout if needed, and that’s a good sign that I’m not over doing it and that I should be able to continue to progress.

May 25th Update

            My blog updates have been a bit less frequent these days. To summarize, I’m in the process of finishing up my Ph.D. in chemistry at MSU, getting ready to start a job at 3M, and recently bought a house in the Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis. Did I mention that the house is 4 houses away from my sister Dawn!? Needless to say, there are a lot of big changes going on in my life right now, but I’m taking the time to enjoy them. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have been lucky to have good people involved in my life which has made and will make the up and coming transitions much easier than they could be. So thank you to everyone that has helped me along the way.

            As far as running is going, running is actually going great. My knee has been a little bit bothersome, but I’m finally able to run normally without taking an anti-inflammatory. My workouts and races really were horrendous leading up to the Indy Mini Marathon, but I believe that I raced to the best of my fitness level at Indy and really did execute a near perfect race for the fitness that I was in. I just took 2 weeks where I ran workouts, but I wasn’t concerned about the mileage that I was hitting (I believe I hit 80 and 62 miles the last 2 weeks). I’ve been true to my goal of running workouts to get in shape rather than to show I’m in shape. I plan to do a lot of training at or near marathon goal pace (5:11’s) and incorporate more cut down runs into my training where the workouts will be on the roads. Here’s a quick summary of the workouts I’ve run post-Indy

Tues May 10^th - 4 miles in 20:42.

Sun May 15^th – Was fortunate enough to meet up with a former college teammate John Heitzman. We ran 20 miles where we took 10 minutes of recovery running (at or little under 6:00 pace) between each interval 2 x 1 min at 5:08ish pace, 1 x 15 min (5:06, 5:09, 5:08), 2 x 1 min at 5:08ish pace, 1 x 5 min (5:05). It was a great run on a great day. I believe John is ready to set a nice PR at Grandmas Marathon this spring.

Thurs May 20^th – 12 miles with a 9 mile cut-down segment (6:29, 6:17, 6:09, 5:57, 5:46, 5:38, 5:27, 5:25, 5:10).

Sun May 22^nd – 20 miles slow in the heat.

Tues May 24^th – 3 miles 15:23 (5:11, 5:07, 5:05), 0.5 mile rest (6:30 pace), 2 miles 10:16 (5:06, 5:10), 0.5 mile rest (6:40 pace), 1 mile 4:58.

My last workout was really the best workout that I’ve run in quite some time and I’m beginning to actually feel good on workouts where I feel that I could’ve run more intervals. It’s great to have that feeling back again. I plan to continue to run workouts that challenge my body, but workouts that allow my body to recover on a week to week basis. I’m planning to race significantly less than I have over the past 2 years, but I’m sure I’ll still hop in an occasional race here or there. The end goal is to run 2:16 (give or take a minute) this fall. That obviously can not happen if I have setbacks this summer, but I’ve really gained a lot of experience over the last couple years and think that I have the perfect training plan for me to run fast in the fall. I’ll continue to update my workouts in future blogs, but I plan to keep my mileage between 85-90 miles for the next couple weeks. Good luck to everyone racing this weekend.

Endurance 5k and Indy Mini Marathon

            As most people that have run with me know, running really has not gone well this spring. Looking back on the calendar, I took a spill and fractured my knee cap 8 weeks ago. While I’ve been able to run, I’ve really had a lot of trouble with the knee which has affected my stride a bit and caused some pain. Because of the difficulties that I was having, I decided to back off my mileage and replace track workouts with tempo runs. While I was seriously considering backing out of the two races that I had already committed to, I decided to go ahead and run them any way so here are the summaries:

Endurance 5k

            In the 5 years that I’ve lived in Michigan, I believe this was actually my first trip to Ann Arbor. The Huron Hills Church puts on a very nice little 5k, and Nick Willis took it upon himself to organize a fast field. It really was a pretty cool race that I would highly recommend. It’s just two loops around a river in a pretty flat area. The first race was composed of 11 guys where the sole purpose was to try to run fast. Given that I haven’t successfully completed too many workouts this spring (I believe one since I fractured my knee cap), I really didn’t expect too much out of myself this race, and I was right. I came through the mile in 4:42, but things didn’t go very well from there. I really just progressively faded and ended up running a 15:21. The poor time was a result of my lack of 5k fitness and had absolutely nothing to do with the course. Despite not running particularly well, I really did have a good time and the race was put on well. Nick Willis has a lot of class and really did a great job helping out with the race. It also was pretty cool that he had his Silver medal from the Olympics along with him. I really do highly recommend this race.

Indy Mini 500

            Again, I really didn’t know what to expect out of myself in this race. My PR in the half is 1:06:36, but I knew that I hadn’t put in the work to run a PR time. I honestly thought that if things went well, I might have a chance to break 1:08:00, but I really didn’t know. I ended up running the entire race pretty much by myself. After 3 miles I really was thinking about dropping out. It’s really difficult to block out negative thoughts during races when a season just hasn’t taken too many positive turns. Needless to say, I decided that I just needed to make it to mile 6. I could hear Jerome’s trademark cough through about 5 miles, but I actually ended up running pretty well. My splits were as follows: 

5:06, 5:02, 5:08, 5:03, 5:09 (25:30 5 mile split…actually 2 seconds faster than my Shamrock Shuffle 8k), 5:05, 5:12, 5:11, 5:10, 5:11 (51:21 10 mile split), 5:08, 5:14, 5:14, :27 which put me at 1:07:26.

With about 4 miles to go, I really thought I was going to start negative splitting, but my foot began to cramp and my lack of workouts began to show. I really did struggle a bit coming in, but I managed to get through it. I really didn’t have too much more to give today, but I’m very happy with the result. While it wasn’t a PR, it really was about as good as I could have run at this point. I think it should be a good stepping stone as I look toward running a fall marathon. The Indy Mini 500 half marathon is a fast course, and it’s run extremely well. The night before the race was pretty cool and we had the opportunity to eat dinner with Frank Shorter. Again, he’s a great guy, and it was great to hear him talk, especially about running. While this may not be what he said to the exact word, he brought up a very good point regarding workouts.

There are workouts to show that you’re in shape and workouts to get you in shape.

It’s easy to try to run workouts to show you’re in shape, but the reality is, workouts are meant to get you in shape. Once you’re in shape, you’ll show it in races. In my view, workouts are meant to break your body down, but you also need to be running workouts that you can recover from both physically and mentally. I often run workouts to compare my fitness from previous years, and I really do need to stop doing this. While it’s ok to do it occasionally, I tend to do this on a weekly basis which definitely gets me in trouble. Frank Shorter did have a lot more interesting things to say, but I guess I’ll cut this blog entry off here since it’s getting pretty long. I’m pretty sure my spring racing season is over and I’m really looking forward to enjoying some pressure free base building training. It’s time to start building toward the fall marathon. I’m not sure which one I’m going to run yet, but I really think that I’m on my way to a nice PR.