Getting back to Boston

One of those days where, if I weren't in training for a marathon, I probably would have come home from work, eaten something, and gone straight to bed. I got pummeled at work, and will again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (holiday weeks are always like this). Instead, I came home, changed clothes, and put in a darn hard workout: Four miles of warmup on the treadmill, three miles at marathon pace, the last mile at something approaching LT pace, then go outside for 10 100-meter strideouts. This time the strides were HARD, probably reflecting that I was less than five minutes off a tough 74-minute training run.

Which brings me to pacing questions. I'm not sure where to go with this. I'm basing my MP for training off what I ran in the 10K two months ago, which gives me an MP figure of somewhere in the 9:00 to 9:10 range depending on whose tables I use. It was a good 10K, PR by six minutes, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an optimal run (I walked for 200 yards, a temptation I always find hard to overcome in mid-run or mid-race). But when I base my pace off heart rate, like recovery runs, for instance, my HR at 9:00 pace is barely out of the recovery zone. And following Pfitz's advice to do longer runs at MP + 20% then MP + 10% is frankly too darn easy; I have a very hard time running that slow. My 11-miler on Saturday averaged MP + 3%, and the last three miles were well UNDER goal pace.

Not that there would be anything wrong with running four hours at recovery pace if that got me a sub-4, but I'm not going to unearth that hidden potential I'm trying to find by running at less than 70% of my heart rate reserve. Specifically, I'm not going to get to Boston that way -- unless there's a helluva lot more hidden potential there than I think. And yes, I have to quit the Gallowalking if I'm gonna maximize my ability.

So I'm now officially in mini-taper for the 5K. Take tomorrow off, an easy four- or five-miler on Wednesday, maybe a light jog Thursday, bust the 5K Friday morning, then a SLOW long run on Saturday (I know, I always say that and then end up busting it). But if I can get in the 22s or low 23s Friday, I'll deserve a bit of a break. And if I don't, I still need to take it easy on Saturday.

Hadn't planned to run today, at all. But my wife's car was in the shop, and my son's car wouldn't start, and he had an interview for a volunteer job at an area museum this afternoon, so he took me back to work after lunch and then took my car to the interview. Which left me with how to get home once I finally finished work. I could have called and waited for someone to pick me up, or I could run home. So I ran. Didn't have my Garmin, or even a watch, but my cellphone has a stopwatch feature and I clicked that on as I left the office, which is almost exactly a mile from the house. Got home and looked at the stopwatch, and it was my exact GMP for a four-hour marathon: 9:09. Spooky, huh? Or maybe I just have my body tuned in to 9:09 miles.

This is one of those days I got through on pure adrenaline, after next to no sleep (not because I stayed up late, but because I couldn't turn my brain off once I went to bed, which was actually at pretty much my normal time). So I'll be crashing early tonight...

In taper mode for the 5K, for which I picked up my bib after work. Ran 5 miles on the treadmill, the first four at just under 10:00 pace, then cranked up to just under 9:00 for the last mile. I'm getting really tired of the treadmill, especially as my mileage builds upnder Pfitz (tonight was scheduled for 9 miles), but crack-of-predawn every day or running in the evening heat outdoors just doesn't work for me. So until the weather is more favorable, I'll continue to do most of my Mondays and Wednesdays on the dreaded TM, and drag myself out of bed before dawn on Saturdays for the long run. Come to think of it, with a 7:30 start Friday, the 5K will be an early alarm clock day as well. Tomorrow's a rest-and-finish-the-work-week day.

Probably fortuitous that I cut back on my running this week, as big a crush as work has been. Next week, fortunately, will not be nearly as hectic between 8 and 5, because I'm scheduled to ramp up the mileage quite a bit and add the fifth day of running back in.

My first 5K. I really wanted to run a good race today, so much so that I ran the race in my head over and over last night, and consequently didn't get much sleep. The fact that my cat just came back from the vet and is audibly NOT happy about the disturbance to her routine didn't help either. But I ran a marathon on four hours' sleep, so I figured a 5K wouldn't be a big issue (and I could nap afterward).

The Firecracker is 250 feet downhill from the area of Little Rock known as the Heights down to War Memorial Stadium, looping around the stadium past the golf course and the Little Rock Zoo to finish on the east side of the stadium. The big downhill starts at about 1.8 miles and goes probably three-quarters of a mile down Van Buren Street to the stadium itself. My plan was to run a good, steady pace on the first 1.8 miles (which goes slightly downhill), let gravity accelerate me somewhat down Van Buren, but try to have something left for the loop around the stadium, which includes an uphill stretch past the Zoo.

Well, the plan almost worked. I ran the first mile in 6:54, the second in 6:53. But I didn't have much left when I hit the bottom of the hill, and that little uphill through the zoo (with the accompanying aroma of elephant dung and a distressed skunk) was REALLY difficult; mile 3 was in 7:47. But when I got to the top of the little hill at probably 2.9 miles, I was able to pick it up and brought it in at about 6:00 pace.

The goal was to break 23:00. I clicked my watch at the line: 22:27. Official time (no chips) was 22:31.02, which is about what I would have expected; I lined up near the front and got on course very quickly. I finished 178th among men, 16th in my age group and 212th overall out of 1008 finishers.

I did a test a couple of months back to try to figure out my maximum heart rate, and I got a result of 168. I did better than that this morning: 170. Both of which correlate pretty well with the old estimated MHR formula of 220 minus age, which for me right now is 173.

Sasha told me the other day that I have enough speed to get where I want to be. After this morning, I now believe him. And this morning's performance, for those familiar with Jack Daniels' work, bumped my VDOT number from 38 to 43 -- and correlates to a sub-3:40 marathon on both Daniels' and Greg McMillan's calculators. Now, Sasha, it's just time to put in the miles. Lots of miles.

You want to define this morning's run by pace, then it qualifies as 12.63 "easy" miles. However, there was nothing easy about it.

After Friday's race, I tried to take a nap, only to be thwarted by the other cat (not the one who yowled much of Thursday night) who insisted on snuggling up next to me and then taking a bath. I can sleep through a lot of things, but not through a cat bumping into me while licking his fur. So no nap (ignore that two hours on my Friday blog), and the beast just would not stop, or go away. Then it was time to go to the parents' for the Fourth; we stayed there six hours (and through two thunderstorms), and drove back home. By the time we got back, I was exhausted, and sore, and just went straight to bed at 8 p.m.

Slept pretty well, but the alarm clock at 4:45 alerted me to two things: It was time to get up and get ready for my Saturday run with the Crackheads, and my thighs hurt just about as much as they did after the marathon in March. Tried to stretch them out before I left home, and when I got to Pinnacle Mountain State Park for the run, but they just weren't going to stretch. Or stop hurting.

So the smart thing to do would have been to cut the run short, maybe try again Sunday. But I didn't do the smart thing. I did the obsessive/compulsive/Crackhead thing: Run my 12 miles. Plus. Tom and Hobbit sent me on an unfamiliar route (by myself -- none of the other runners were going 12), I wasn't sure about the turnaround, and 12 became 12.63 according to the Garmin. Twelve-plus painful, slow miles; not sure if the emphasis is on painful, or slow, because they were equally both. DOMS, hell. Nothing delayed about this soreness.

One thing I did get out of today. Before the run, Tom and Hobbit handed out a little surprise for the Crackheads: Little rubberized bracelets, similar to the Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" ones, but these are engraved "Crackhead -- LR Marathon". If I weren't an official Crackhead before, I am now.