Getting back to Boston

Legs still felt really dead this afternoon. Took about 5.5 miles to loosen up. Then, with the wind behind me, I could run decently. Before that, it was a struggle. Stretching didn't help. Neither did the 80-degree temps or the headwind in the first 3.5 miles. If today was a recovery day, I'm like the economy -- there's a lot more recovery needed.

Planning another five miles later on, probably on the DM. Turned out to be 5.02 in 47:00, with the DM set at 2.0%; legs felt a lot better at 7:30 p.m. than they did at 1:30.

Addendum, shortly before I go do my second run of the day: Have some thoughts about this process I want to get down. If someone wants to comment on them, great; if not, I just want to sort through what's in my head.

All the experts say train for where you are, not where you want to be, and adjust your training as your fitness improves. I don't concur with that, because my whole purpose in doing this is to get faster. I believe that I will get faster as my training improves, not the other way around. Put it another way, if I never ran a faster time, my training would not change under the experts' advice. I think I have to MAKE myself run faster times by working harder. Yes, that increases the risk of injury, but that's part of the process too. I'm seeking out my limits -- not only how fast I can run, but how hard I can train without breaking down. I want to listen to what my body tells me to minimize the risk of injury, but I know that in seeking out my limits, I may slam into one of them headlong. If that happens, so be it; I found one of those limits I'm seeking. Then I'll try to figure out how to change or get around that limit.

There's another limit that I found 34 years ago. As a 14-year-old high school freshman, I ran an 880 in 2:14 (yes, I'm old enough that I ran before all U.S. track converted to the metric system). Mediocre to be sure, but that was my best performance as a kid. The running calculators say that a 2:14 880 is somehow equivalent to a 2:47 marathon, if I trained for the marathon as well as I had trained for that half-mile as a ninth-grader (was that the best I could have done? Who knows?). The calculators also say that that 2:14 880 indicates a VDOT of 63. I also ran a 2-mile in 11:02 as a 15-year-old, which converts to a VDOT of 57. Even using the more conservative number, a VDOT of 57 corresponds to a 2:50 marathon, properly trained. Point here being, at one point this body was theoretically capable of sub-3:00 marathoning. I'm 48 now, and I'm not going to run any more 11:02s or 2:14s, and I'm probably not going sub-3 either. But the questions are, how much of that ability I used to have is still there, and, unanswerably, how much more talent did I have then that I never tapped? That's what I'm trying to find out, and that's why I'm willing to slam headlong into those limits. This is all a big experiment, and I'm my own lab rat, complete with treadmill.

In this running life, my best performance was the half at Conway last October, when my 1:40:29 converts to a 44.87 VDOT. If I had been able to run Memphis at a 44.87 VDOT, I would have qualified for Boston. My 43.63 VDOT at Memphis left me 2:43 short of BQ. The calculator I'm using says that 3:30:59 (the slowest I can go at this age and qualify for Boston) is a 44.31. So, obviously, the immediate goal is to train so that I can get that 44.31 at least. But since I've already done better than that in a half, I know that 44.31 is not my VDOT limit. I want to know, or at least get a better idea, what that limit is for this body at this age range. Is it 45? Is it 48? Is it 50? The calculator says a 50 converts to 3:10:xx. Can I run a 3:10 eventually? 

My theory is to overreach some in my training, so that if I don't have a perfect day on race day, I still have room to get my goals. Train for a 47 VDOT or so to try to make sure I can get that 44.31, and maybe I can run a 46 along the way. That plan worked for me in Memphis in getting a huge PR and getting well under 4 hours. I hope it will do the same in Newport to get the BQ and beyond. I don't want to have to rely on picking up that extra five minutes to BQ as a 50-year-old in 2011 (which means a VDOT of 43.08). If I have to do that, so be it, and I'm sure not going to turn down a BQ, but that's not testing my limits. That's settling for a sub-limit performance I already know I can top. I want to squeeze what I can out of this body, while I can.

Mind over matter tonight. Had hoped to do my tempo run outside tonight, but had to work late and it was still 82 and humid when I got off work. Time for Plan B. So I went to the fitness room and waited for the DM to clear, one of the few times in two years I've actually had to wait for a dreadmill. It finally cleared at 7:30 and I started my 11-miler. One thing became evident quickly: It was just as humid inside as outside, the the fan didn't create enough breeze to compensate. In short, very quickly I was hurting. I had to stop twice to refill my water bottle in the first half of the run, which fell at the halfway mark of my five-mile tempo segment. Jogged two laps to recover after the second water stop, then cranked it back up for the final 10 laps. I wanted to stop about, oh, 30 times in those 10 laps, but I never did. And in spite of the heat stress I was feeling, I was able to maintain my tempo pace of 7:24 average for the whole five miles. Then jogged it in to complete the 11 miles.

I'm kinda guessing at how far I ran tonight -- the Garmin quit before I even started, and I was trying to stretch a known 14-mile route by one mile in the dark. I got an estimate of 14.7 using mapmyrun, but the trail twists and turns much more than I can indicate on mapmyrun. so I'm gonna call it 15. What I can definitely call it is a very encouraging run. After a slow warmup, as I went along I felt stronger and stronger, and if I've ever gotten the infamous runner's high, it was tonight in the last four miles. The pace got very strong, maybe even sub-MP, the legs felt strong, the breathing was even and I was in sort of a zone. Final time for 14.7 or 15 or whatever, completely run by feel, was 2:12 according to the clock in my car. If it was a 15-miler, that's well under 9:00 for the whole run. At about the 7.8-mile mark, someone told me it was 7:25 -- an hour and 12 minutes after I started. I ran the last 7.2 miles in less than an hour -- darn near my GMP. As good a midweek run as I've ever had. I took two gels and plenty of water, and there was enough breeze that the temps in the mid-70s weren't much of an issue. All in all, especially considering the warm conditions, I'm very pleased with it.

Lousy night's sleep last night; I guess I was kinda wired after that great run, plus the weather wacked out, with the temp dropping 30-plus degrees overnight and rain to boot. But it was off to the club tonight for 8 on the dreadmill. Managed to snag a mill with a floor fan for the last 6.5 miles, which helped. Legs loosened up OK after the halfway mark. Wound up covering 8 in 74:01.

So now I'm gonna try to catch up on that sleep.

A little different spin on my usual progression run tonight. Went to the River Trail for an out-and-back. Ran out for exactly one hour (6.30 miles), including a slow warmup and two shoe-tying stops. Decided I wanted to get as big a negative split as I could. Didn't look at the Garmin, since I knew the mileage, just ran. Got back to the car in less than 53 minutes -- more than a minute a mile negative split (showed 6.27 miles coming back, maybe because I tried to run tangents on the trail where I could).

I could run a lot of tangents coming back because I had the trail to myself. In two hours I saw two people, standing besides a car parked at the skateboard park, and one set of headlights. That's it. No runners, no bikers, no dogwalkers, and two furry creatures of undetermined species, maybe otters or muskrats or some other aquatic rodent.

Another lousy night's sleep in the guest bedroom (kicked out for keeping DW awake); ignored the strong urge to turn the alarm off and actually got up for a morning run at the AC. My back stayed in bed, though; it took almost four miles to semi-loosen and still doesn't feel great a half-hour later. But I got in the planned 5-miler on the TM to get the kinks out.

Still don't know really what my weekend looks like, because I don't know what I'm doing Sunday at the marathon. If my assignment doesn't involve escorting stragglers up Dillard's Hill, I'll probably do a double tomorrow -- or do a second lap of my 10-miler with the Crackheads. If I am on chase patrol, not sure what I'll do. I may still do a light second run just out of sheer OCD to get my miles up to 80 for the week. Definitely need to make more time to spend with DW, though. We've been invited to a Saturday night dinner involving friends who are participating in LRM, so that will be fun. DS is going to his state Spanish competition Saturday morning, so he'll be busy himself.

Another PR week of nearly 84 miles, topped off with 20 today. Met Pat and Kevin at the River Market and we ran the Little Rock Marathon half-marathon course, basically. Dropped those two off at the finish line, went back out on the course and ran the North Little Rock loop again, which got me to 20 for the day. So I ran the half-marathon today for free, instead of paying $80 for a T-shirt and a little medal tomorrow. :)

Amazing that, 24 hours before a marathon, there was very little clue that there would be a race run over that course. I saw a couple of crews just starting to set up. In fact, there's still a barbecue competition going on at the Clinton Center, four blocks from the LRM start, and the course through there is essentially blocked with RVs towing portable grillers. We had to dodge our way through them and through the clouds of hickory smoke or whatever. Not the smell I really needed at 6:05 a.m. And all of that is going to have to be gone by 8 a.m. Sunday.

Anyway, Pat kinda led the way on the run and Kevin and I tagged along. We started slow, maybe 10:00 pace, and Pat gradually accelerated. Finally, the last half mile or so, we just let him go and we kept on going at our 9:15 pace or whatever we were doing. Kevin is running the relay tomorrow, so he didn't want to burn off too much glycogen, and I knew I was gonna do another six-plus miles after the other two finished.

When I restarted, after a Gatorade/potty break, I continued at a good clip in the low 9s, back across the river just as we'd done two hours before. Came back over the river, hung a left just after the 6-mile marathon marker, and came back to the car. Total of 3:08 for the 20 miles.

I now know that I'm going to be a course marshal for the last few yards before the finish. Which will be fun, but it will also mean a very long day. I have to report at 6 a.m. and stay until 4. No running involved, I guess, so I went ahead and did the 20 today. When I went to the expo last night to pick up my T-shirt and lovely orange vest, I saw a woman flaunting her Boston Marathon warmup jacket, the really gaudy semi-official one (below). I kinda grumbled at her under my breath, but my next thought was, "Next year I'm going to have one of those!"