A clydesdale no more!

I'm always reluctant to buy new shoes. I guess I'm just cheap.

Andy I had a similar experience with WBR this year. I just ran horrible and was quite depressed for a while afterward. But even so I still believe that 60-70 with some races or tempo runs thrown in still beats 40-50 with speedwork, at least if your focus is 1/2 marathon to marathon, maybe even shorter distances as well.

I think we just go through cycles and sometimes we cross the line and end up overtraining and our body rebels and we run really lousy for a while. For me I've found I have a hard time and see negative results if I get much above 75 miles and/or if I try to add a day of shorter speedwork rather than 1 or 2 longer tempos a week. I also have to really be careful about not doing too many races, especially back-to-back.

The frustrating thing is that even if you find a winning formula there are no guarantees that formula will work this year the same as it did last year or next year. Periods of lack of sleep, illnesses and various life stresses come and go and can wreak havoc on our running so that we can't get away with the same stuff we did when we weren't stressed out.

Tricky business this running stuff and life in general. Good luck to you in finding just the right balance that will allow you to perform at your best.

First, you didn't cost us one single second.....you ran the best 5 races you could for those 2 days. Everyone could see that by the time we were all done, everyone was pretty exhausted.

Second, your ran *5* legs, not the "normal" 3. I've got a tough time with the "normal" part of racing 3 times within a 20 hours period and 5 is nearly twice as much.

Third, don't forget you flew in the morning of the race, raced all afternoon, evening, night, and into the next morning. I'm sure the travel schedule sapped everyone's strength a bit.

Finally, the course wasn't easy. Everyone had to save a little something for their remaining legs early in the relay and I'd say that the last sets of legs were the most brutal.

So while a post-mortem is good, I think you're being overly harsh on yourself to think you cost us time. You *did* have the most difficult running slot on the whole team (Runner 7 was ranked #1 for difficulty on Paul's magical spreadsheet) AND you ran 5 legs. Cut yourself some slack!

Andy-

I think you suffer from the same thing I do. I look at my times and cringe. Every time I do that. I always wish I "could've or would've" run faster. Relays are tough. I really did myself in running as hard as I did. It will take me a couple of weeks before I will be able to run hard again.

The theory is that you can run a relay at the same pace as your half marathon. That is true for 3 legs. Throw in two more and roughly 12 extra miles and that theory goes out the window. If you instead use your marathon pace you get closer. I was still slower than my marathon pace. The important thing is that you ran the best you could at that given time. I would use the frustration you feel towards training that much more for your next race. I think your training is pretty good. It (like mine) could use some tweaking. I would be happy to share with you the tips that Paul has shared with me and half the blog (many people here are using his system that worked wonders for him). The bottom line is that we were sure glad you went and ran well as you did. Going for the win was fun, but not the purpose in going. We could've gotten a lot closer to the winning team if we didn't have to travel 8 hours plus 3 to the start, plus line up runners to the slots they could run rather than what would be the best legs for that person. We had to compromise too much. Take that away and have you run the exact same and it would've been a different race....You get the idea....