Wheeler Farm Loops

You and Andrea are both awesome. Pretty inspiring to see what a ton of hard work and consistency can do!

Heck yeah! If the aid station were moving at say, ...~11.3 mph for 26 miles that would be great motivation.

Another idea for Andrea. Rocket City Marathon. Very nice flat course. You will need enter the race officially and pace her as the competition is sparse, but she earns cash. The race director will definitely give her a comp, and might give you one as well to help the fast time on the women's side, they do want fast times there, they just do not have a whole lot of money. CIM I think is faster than Philly if it is the same course as it has been.

Thoughts on your training. I think your marathon endurance is OK. It is naturally good due to your smooth form and possibly some other invisible natural qualities - e.g naturally good glycogen store. So it only needs a little maintenance, maybe run the last 8-10 miles hard at the end of 20 once a week. In all honesty, marathon endurance is a stubborn beast. It responds only to very moderate stimulation, and does not like to be pushed beyond that. I've gone through several stages of "I am really going to train myself to be a beast in the last 6 miles of the marathon" and every single attempt resulted in an underperformance. On the other hand, "bum" training with the long run of only 20 with only 10 hard in the middle gave me the best results. I've learned the hard way why Jack Daniels does not recommend going over 22 in a long run. You definitely can when you are fit, and when you are fit you will survive it if done not too frequently for the level of fitness, but it does not build fitness even if you are fit to survive it.

I see the biggest block to your progress right now is not being able to crack 14:00 in the 5 K. 9:16 3200 m is on pace for 14:22, and with endurance there is not a whole lot of difference between 3200 and 5000. So the capability exists. However, the big question is where it went.

Your current speed allows you to run under 2:19, but to go further it would need to improve so that you are not scared about the idea of running 5:00 for the whole marathon.

I would approach the speed problem by identifying the breakdown point and working on it. Do a time trial in 200 m, 400 m, 800 m, and 1600 m and see if you are lacking in those distances. The target times would be somewhere around 25.0, 53.0, 1:58.0, and 4:12.0. If you are too far off on the 200, then you try to fix it with hill sprints. Otherwise, the workout is something involving the target speed for the distance of failure with the interval being about 70% of the distance of failure.

My intuitive feeling is that the speed problem simply comes from the lack of practice of running really fast, and will be corrected if you could train with somebody that will push you. I know it is a challenge to find a partner at this level of speed, but with some creativity can be done even if that means two or three people running a relay.

Thanks for the comments Sasha. I have heard good things about Rocket City as well.

Regarding the long runs... I don't plan on doing many more in the 23-24 mile range, especially once I get into the last 6-7 weeks. Honestly I am not worried about the endurance (that is my strongest asset), I just did it today b/c I was enjoying it and having fun. 20 milers w/ some MP mixed in, and the longer MP tempos are going to be my bread and butter this fall. Better to be a couple % points undertrained than 1% overtrained! I know saying that seems ridiculous w/ the amount of mileage I am running, but fortunately I am in a situation where I have plenty of time for recovery... so I really don't feel as if I am over doing it.

You are right, achieving my maximum potential in the marathon is going to require getting my times down in shorter races. 2:19 is the goal for this fall, but not the ultimate goal. In high school I could click off ten 28 second 200s w/ no problem. Now I can't touch that, but that is going to be an objective for next year... get the speed back. I have it in me, I just haven't used it in a long time. I mean, before this spring I hadn't even done a structured workout in about 3 years! I just need to be patient and not push the speed thing too much this fall... if I keep the course I'm on, I think I can get under 2:19. But looking forward, there is untapped potential that I won't get to unless I train my legs to run very fast again. I like the short hills sprints you have been doing, that is a good idea and you see a lot of the east africans(Canova's guys) doing those types of things.

We'll have to do some track meets next spring/summer and see if we can get those mile/3K/5K times down. It would be a beneficial thing for a lot of folks on the blog!