Liftoff

AM: 5 miles with strides.

Day off, flying to Minneapolis.

A lot of things went right in this training block, and there are things I learned that I'll do differently next time. But that's a later topic.

It's been a hectic last month of work and getting the kids back to school. Before the race, in the next 48 hours, I want to get centered, relax and enjoy the moment.

Then run as well as I possibly can.

Bib# 240

Goals
-----------
A: 2:35:xx
B: 2:37:xx
C: sub-2:39:00
-and probably most important-
Have fun!

AM: 4 miles. Met up with Jason which was very cool. We headed over a bridge and followed a beautiful path along the Mississippi. A few strides by the hotel, then jogged to Joe's hotel for a huge, free breakfast at Embassy Suites.

The energy of walking into so many crazy fast runners is exciting and unnerving. I've read stories about guys getting pulled out of a Double-A game and two hours later they're walking onto a Major League field. Small fish in big pond syndrome. It's a good thing, even if it's hard to get the head around.

Perfect weather here. It's going to be an exciting race tomorrow.

After a serious and focused five months of training, I finally ran the Twin Cities marathon on Sunday. I didn't run it as fast as I hoped, but as I crossed the finish line I experienced a satisfaction that I've never felt before in a race.

I flew into Minnesota on Friday and caught a shuttle to the host hotel. The weather was awesome, but after spending all summer in an inferno, 50 degrees felt freezing. I went to the convention and bought some garbage gear I could toss off without too much guilt.

That night I had dinner with teammates. Everyone but me was 55+, and you couldn't find a more interesting crew. Most of them have been running for decades and their outlook was refreshing. While I was eating pasta and drinking water, they ordered burgers and knocked back the beers. I was wound up like a clock.

Saturday morning I woke up and ran with Jason Butler from the blog. This site has been awesome for training perspective and support, and it was very cool to meet up with someone in person. Jason is the real deal- great guy, great runner.

I attended a meeting at noon to give an outline of course protocol and transportation logistics. Being in a room full of elite runners was a combination of inspiring and terrifying. My coach Joe walked in 2 minutes after the meeting started, and couldn't really hear anything that was going on. I translated the relevant points for him.

At some point, I finally relaxed. I fell asleep at 8:30 and slept better than I ever have before a marathon. Not great, with lots of wakeups, but pretty well. At 6am we caught a bus from St. Paul to a hotel in Minneapolis which served as the staging area. We got there around 6:30, and then sat in a large room for the next hour. I was feeling oddly loose, but the tension still dripped off the walls and I couldn't wait to start running. I was ready to face the music.

A whole lot went right in this training cycle, but I made some mistakes in the last couple weeks leading into the race. I want to record more thoughts on that in the next couple days, but in short I ran too hard, too often, and ended up nursing sore calves, hips and hamstrings in the days heading into the race. This is not a course that looks kindly on those kind of misjudments.

I spent the days before I left stretching, rolling and getting a massage. I hoped it was just psychological pain - which is very common during taper. But the plain fact is that I went into this race more beat up than I ever have been, heading into a marathon. I had a lot to balance that against. I knew my training was solid, I had trained in bad conditions, and I wasn't injured- just banged up. At best, I wouldn't feel anything once the gun went off.

I started a couple rows back and tried to settle in. Almost immediately, we crossed under a bridge that knocked out GPS, so the first mile was all by feel. I ran a bit behind Jason and knew the pace was a little quick for me, but I felt mostly comfortable. I saw 5:45 on the clock as we crossed the mile mark, and let the pace go. I was getting passed left and right, which felt bad, but I had no business running that fast at that point.

Mile 2 on the course is uphill. I haven't talked to anyone who really mentions it, but that mile seems just as hard to me as any of the last 6 miles on Summit Ave. It's early though, so you just plow through. I knew it was coming and slowed down quite a bit, so that I passed the 2 mile mark around 12:00. It was a little annoying to be 10 seconds over pace at the end of mile 2, but I planned for it and didn't wig out.

Over the next 10 miles or so, the course drops. There are occaisonal rolls but overall it's a favorable slight decline that gives you plenty of rope to run as fast as you want. In my case, my legs and hips began hurting around mile 5. The soreness I hoped was just psychological came to the front, and I battled it for the rest of the race. At times it moved into the background, and at times I wasn't sure if I could finish. It never got to be acute, so I just kept pushing.

I went through a dark spot from miles 10-12 or so. At the half, I saw a split around 1:17:40, which put wind in my sails. That was right on target, 5:55 pace. At that point, I knew there was no hope of maintaining that pace, but at least I had a chance of running a PR if I could avoid bleeding more than 3 minutes over the next 13 miles.

The second half was not pretty. I slowed down, especially after mile 16. The course was mostly flat at that point, but my legs felt terrible and I was almost fully focused on keeping them moving. I awaited mile 20, when I could get a good read on my overall pace and the start of the climb. I don't remember my exact split, but it was around 2:39:15 at mile 20 - around 2:37 pace. I knew I would be losing time, probably a lot, over the next 10k.

Summit Ave was tough, but since I was limited early on, I never ran outside myself and I felt that it was not as bad as I feared. There were a few climbs that took a big bite out of me, but there was no climb longer than a half mile. I think Twin Cities is a race that would really benefit from multiple runnings. After my first experience, I'd say that going out carefully could really pay off. The last 10k is uphill, but if you have enough in the tank it's not that bad.

For me, I got to mile 25, still struggling with leg cramping and doing the mental math to decide where I was. I figured I needed to run roughly 6:00 pace or better, which shouldn't be impossible, but sounded like it at that point. I waited for the downhill I knew was coming, and it was much shorter than expected. Still, with the race on the line I blasted it, with the last .5 mile around 5:25 pace. I crossed the line at 2:38:46 and the relief I felt was indescribable.

I am my own best critic when I underperform, which can happen. I did not run as fast as I hoped today, but it wasn't laziness or lack of will. Today was a hard fight against my own limitations, and I'm proud to come away with a very small victory. I am already excited to keep pushing that bar, as long as I can.

AM: 8 miles with Jason along the Mississippi. Sore, but not terrible.

AM: 4 miles, back in St. Pete. More sore today, that delayed effect thing. Still nice to be out running around home, with much better weather.

6 miles at lunch with Quint. Sore, but better than yesterday. Good to reconnect and talk about Twin Cities. I try not to be the guy that has 10 things happen to him, 8 of which are really good, 2 of which aren't what he wanted - then to focus on those two things.

After the marathon I focused on the positives, but in the last 24 hours two things have bothered me- that I didn't relax enough in the last couple weeks before the race, and that I ran a couple minutes slower than I wanted. I have been rolling some ideas around on that score, but I'm still letting the dust settle.

Bad day, no running.

AM: 4 miles.

PM: 7.5 miles.

Much better day, some running.

Busy day prepping the old house for renters, but I didn't feel like running anyway.

13 miles with run group. Christina and Quint ready to run the Amsterdam marathon next weekend. When I got home, I told Elise she could split a chocolate milk with me if she ran a mile without stopping. Got it done, 12:38. Glad she wasn't running much faster.

AM: 9 miles. I had the day off, so I drove the kids to school then ran in my old neighborhood.

PM: 7 miles. Met Quint after lunch for our last run before he leaves for his marathon. Then picked up my older daughter - they have an afterschool activity called "Run Club" I finally got to participate in. It's actually pretty awesome - totally unstructured and social, but the kids on  their own volition orbit a dirt track for 45 minutes then get some frozen sugar water in plastic.

AM: 6 miles.

PM: 7 miles. Quint came to track, so I got one more run with him, 3 @ 6:25 pace. My legs are still beat up, which is discouraging. Between the 9 days after the marathon, and the 2 weeks leading up to it, I feel like I have been sore for about three weeks now.

AM: 5 miles.

PM: 8 miles.

My first-grader ripped off a string of jokes tonight during bath. My favorites:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Little old lady.
Little old lady who?
I didn't know you could yodel!

Where does a butcher go to dance?
To the meat ball.

I have a pretty limited range of jokes on tap. At least now I can exchange humor with six year olds as well as the absolute dregs of humanity.

AM: 5.5 miles, never got a second run in. Celebrated my wife's birthday, which was in a mad rush of getting to my daughter's open house, restraining Anna at dinner, finishing our work, etc. Allison took it all in stride very gracefully.

AM: 10.5 miles, with 6 mile AT wave tempo. Target was 3 alternations of 1 mile @ 6:10, 1 mile @ 5:40. Splits:

1. 6:09 / 5:39
2. 6:09 / 5:40
3. 6:06 / 5:37

I’ve held off on my Twin Cities post-mortem. At first, I wanted to let the dust settle. It settled, but not into neat boxes, and I haven’t had the desire to rake through it all. I need to though, before it gets away from me.

What Went Right – This was my best marathon buildup yet. I wouldn’t always block out five months, but I started when the weather began heating up. From early May on, there is little else to do racing-wise in FL until October.

With five months, I was able to do three distinct periods: ~6 weeks of base where I was running 120-140 miles per week. That went great. It was all slow running, but I felt super strong by the end. After that, 4-5 weeks of intervals and sharpening. I ran a lackluster 5k in mid-June a little under 16:30, and by mid-July I was sharper, running 9:58 for 3200 meters.

The combination of base, speed training, and a couple months of running in the humidity made it possible to start marathon workouts in late July/August and complete them. There is no way I could have done those workouts in humidity in early June.

Overall, the marathon workouts went well. I got stomach flu for a couple weeks, but that was probably a wash, with getting some additional rest. I knew I was in a good place 4.5 weeks out when I was able to run 16 miles @ MP.

What Went Wrong – About 4 weeks out from the race, when it started to feel more imminent, some of my decisions suffered. One workout that I did not complete a couple weeks before was 10 miles MP+1/10 miles MP. At 3 weeks out, I took another swing at it, and nailed it. Unfortunately, I haven’t felt that strong since. I don’t think it was necessarily a mistake to attempt that workout again – in isolation none of the following things were crazy – but I was walking further out onto thin ice, and that never ends well.

Even though the 10/10 workout went great, I struggled to recover. Mon-Wed of the following week was a drag. On Thursday, I re-attempted the other workout I hadn’t managed to pull off, which sounds pretty dumb as I’m writing it now. This was a 6 mile LT wave tempo alternating 10k/MP.  This is a tough workout, but I was surprised by how difficult it was for me at the end of my marathon-specific block. I’ve done the workout without too much trouble before – but in those cases I was still in winter racing mode, when 10k pace feels somewhat comfortable. In the future, I would still do this workout in a marathon-specific block, but only early, and if I felt familiar with 10k pace.

At any rate, I failed again at the 6 mile LT wave tempo. Also in this week my wife had to travel for a couple days of work. I missed a few runs, and made the biggest mistake of the entire block. Friday, the day after the wave tempo fail, I met Quint for a run, which should have been easy, and convinced him to run descending ½ miles with me. It wasn’t a hard workout, but I ended up with 2 miles under 6:00, and wasn’t recovering. On Saturday, I spent a lot of the day at my daughter’s swim meet and had 1 hour to squeeze in a run in the afternoon. So naturally, I ran too hard again to get in enough miles. The next morning, I ran 18 miles on the Clearwater  bridges – mostly reasonable pace, but a few bridges full-on. By Monday, my legs were starting to feel like junk. So naturally, I convinced Mike to meet me at track on Tuesday to do 8x800 at sub-5k pace. I usually do 800s about 12 days out, but at 10k pace.

In retrospect, when life required me to back off, I wish I had not tried to cram in quality - in the future, I will try to just relax and have faith in my past training. The approach that works for me is hard workout followed by very easy days. Instead I was running low quality workouts, accomplishing little but failing to recover.

By Wednesday, I developed a sore left hip and hamstring. I kind of sobered up at this point and tried to get off the crazy train. For the next 1.5 weeks I did a lot of stretching, rolling, icing, etc. I hoped the soreness I was feeling was just taper madness. But by the 4^th mile at TCM I felt fairly uncomfortable, and it just got worse as the race went on. Which was unfortunate, because it’s a lot more fun to race against your fitness rather than managing leg pain for 20 miles.

Overall I feel that I learned a great deal from this cycle, and made real fitness improvements. I am a little frustrated that I felt that I had to cram in the last month. In looking back at the race itself, and my training, I feel that my fitness was in place, but self-inflicted wounds brought me down to earth.

 Was this a Good Race, a Bad Race, or What?! – This is a question I’ve been wrestling with, since it was kind of both. Most races I’ve run are quite a bit one way or the other.

During the race, I wasn’t a very happy camper. I was sore and slowing down. In contrast, at Grandma’s my splits were mostly seconds apart. That’s how I want to run marathons. Not like TCM, hanging on to an ugly draw.

When I finished Twin Cities- I was elated. Even though I only ran 14 seconds faster than my PR, I was very proud that I hung on when I wanted to let the race go.

As the days passed, I felt more frustrated than happy, though. I felt that I had built an engine that could hit 2:35 on a flat course, 2:36 or 2:37 at TCM. I finished at 2:38:46, which doesn’t sound like that big of a miss, but it did feel like it to me. The slower time is part of it, but racing sore, or even semi-injured, especially when it was so unnecessary is hard to swallow.

What’s Next – I've been thinking about this a lot, of course. Frustratingly, my legs have been slow to bounce back. My left hip and hamstring are still an issue, impeding serious training, and I picked up a right calf sprain around mile 17 or 18 at TCM that has joined the party. To be fair, I haven’t done a good job of rehabbing. I’ve had the problem in my left hip/hamstring surface on and off for five years, and I know how to get it better. Lately though, I’ve just hit the couch when the kids go down. I haven’t had the focus or the fire to roll, stretch, ice. Instead I’ve been eating junk, drinking beer and not sleeping enough. I guess that's not so horrible 2 weeks after a marathon, but I’m ready to move on and be a healthy, responsible citizen again.

AM: 11.5 miles. Awesome run in Jacksonville with my wife for a change, dropping the kids off with the inlaws.

7 miles in Savannah with Allison. After dropping off the kids in Jacksonville with the inlaws, we escaped here for the weekend.

Awesome running weather, but no place to run. We wound around the historic neighborhoods, which are beautiful, but tight for running. If you're feeling grumpy, this town can seem like the American Venice, or Bruge, but we had a great time.

No running today. Drove back to Jacksonville, picked up the kids (Elise cried when we showed up - I guess having unlimited cookies and pancakes made her forget all parental bonds), and back to St. Pete.

Stepped on the scale at Publix while getting groceries and set a PR, at least for 2015.

0. Work meltdown. Still, when I'm firing on all cylinders, I find time.

Another zero. Last one for awhile, though.
 

AM: 8 miles, not fun, but at least it was running.

AM: 12 miles.

AM: 4 miles. I played freeze dance with the girls while my wife was out running. When it was my turn, I went to Weedon Island since there was a race there my friend Jim was running.

Weedon Island is a nice preserve nearby, with long boardwalks and a few trails. I ran a bit with Jim, then found a shady alcove in the boardwalk and cheered on runners. It was probably the first time in a couple weeks I enjoyed anything connected to running. When running is not fun, encouraging others may be the best antidote.

Hopefully things will continue turning around. Running tomorrow with the group, and Quint is heading back from Europe.
 

AM: 8 miles. Went to a costume party on Saturday night. Failed to get out of bed early enough for the long run on Sunday. I've been lousy from a training perspective lately, but it turned out to be a nice day. Threw the kids in the jogging stroller and my wife and I ran to a park, where the girls got out and ran and played. Drove to Orlando in the evening for college recruiting.

AM: 3 miles. Early start to the day, but I got in a few miles around UCF. Then long day of tech interviews. The kids at UCF are very impressive. And a long weary drive back to St. Pete.

PM: 9 miles at track. Light rain all day. Settled on running 2 x 2 miles targeting 5:30 pace. Sean joined me, and a new guy Anthony ran some of it with us. Both came in a bit under 11 minutes. Jogged 400 between, and stood and drank water for another minute or two.

The first 2 miles felt pretty awkward, since I haven't run any workouts in a month, and it's probably been 5 weeks or more since I ran 5:30 pace or better. Things actually started clicking in the second two miles, which felt good. If I can string together5-6 weeks of solid miles and workouts I can be in a good place again.

AM: 7 miles at lunch with Quint.

PM: 3 miles after work.

AM: 8 miles.

PM: 5 miles with Quint after work. 1/2 marathon series starts tomorrow. I'm not race ready, but I'm not ready to skip and give up on the series before it even starts.

AM: 2 warmup, 13.1 in 1:20:45, 1 cooldown. Halloween Halfathon, first in a series of half marathons that brings out good local runners. In the days leading up to the race, I was uncertain if I'd even run. At one point though, I realized I'd regret it if I didn't. Usually going into a race, I'll have done a bunch of work at race pace and have a definite pacing plan. Today I just wanted to hang onto my local competitors as long as I could.

That turned out to be 4 miles. There was humidity and wind to contend with today - neither terrible, but  times were supressed. Which kind of worked in my favor, since our lead pack went out a bit more slowly than it would have otherwise. It was awesome running the first 1/3 or the race with Mike, Sean and Chris/Chris. I regret not being able to hang.

Similar to TCM, my legs became an issue into mile 4. It feels like a numbness in my left hip with decreased mobility, while an ache grows in my left hamstring. Unfortunately, the problem has not improved in the last month - it's actually gotten worse. This is discouraging since I haven't been doing workouts, or mileage - I've been taking it easy and just getting less fit and more injured.

I thought pretty seriously about dropping out when I lost contact with the pack at the end of mile 4, but I haven't DNF'd yet, so I figured why start that precedent now. I ran a lot of miles after that in the 6:30 range, which at least felt comfortable. I figured people would be coming for me sooner or later, but I ran the rest of the race alone. It was a bummer, but not a surprise. I knew there was a pretty good chance I could be in for a day like this. Mike ran great, Sean is on his way back.

As lousy as my time was today, it is the best I've run in a month. I'm going to look at it like that, at least for now. If I still can't run in a month, then I'll be ready to panic.