Epic Suffering

I'm a big fan of Strava.   For the most part over the last few years I've relied on Garmin Connect for specific running dynamics, split, and heart rate information, but recently re-discovered just how good the Strava app has become.   I originally tried Strava back in 2013 and wasn't impressed after a few runs and deleted the app.   Recently I was on a run and forgot to charge my Garmin 620, but had my iPhone with me and decided for expediency to download Strava and give it another shot.    I was impressed.

The infographic below is from a 12 mile run today I did in preparation for the Seattle Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon I'm racing in 3 weeks.   I'm at the conclusion of what's been 2 great training weeks rolling back-to-back 40-mile weeks and what appears to be a half marathon pace that could be sub 7:30 depending on the weather on race morning in a few weeks.    I'm not sure I actually suffered in an epic fashion today, but I realized that being good at suffering takes a lot of practice -- it doesn't just happen.  I'll write more about this later in a different post.    It's a hard concept to explain and I'm not sure I even have my own thoughts straight on what it takes to be good at suffering on an intense run and how endurance athletes are able to do it.

This afternoons run was effectively 2 x 5 mile tempo run with 1 mile warm-up and warm-downs.    I ran the outbound 5 in 37:30 and the return in a stiff headwind in a somewhat disappointing 38:26.   I realized however once I was on the run that I didn't plan my workouts smartly this week as Thursday afternoon I ran a 60 minute half marathon pacing session in 7:27's which I was still feeling on today's run.    I plan to do a couple of super easy runs the next couple of days and gear up for a half marathon time trial next Saturday which is 2 weeks prior to race day just to see where I'm likely to be.

The goal for this year's race is something in the 1:37's but I really want to get back into the 1:35's before I get back into training in July for a mid-September marathon.    

This will be Ethan's second half marathon this year.   At last year's Rock-n-Roll he ran 1:37:10 on a course that's mostly uphill the last couple of miles with a stiff uphill climb the last 600 meters or so. Apparently this year's course has changed and offers a significantly more downhill run from miles 10 through finish once we climb off Lake Washington Blvd to Interstate 90 and head back on the express lanes towards town.    

I have no chance of hanging with Ethan over the first half of the race as he's significantly faster than me at this point (recently running a 5:05 PR in the mile as a Junior at Bellevue High), but I'm secretly hoping I can get him in my gun sights over the last 5K and chase him down from over the last 3K of the race as we push to the finish line.    

2016 Beat the Bridge 8K Race Report

It's been a month since the Boston Marathon and it felt great today to be back racing the JDRF Nordstrom Beat the Bridge 8K in Seattle.    This was the 8th time I've run this race with a 34:08 PR in 2010 with race times the three years of 35:58 (2014), 35:39 (2015), and 35:41 (2016).   I was happy with today's result placing 12/142 in my age bracket and 239th out of nearly 2,000 runners.   

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect today after taking a week off from Boston and then following up with a couple of solid 40-mile training weeks before heading off to Mexico the week before last for seven days.   Although I ran five of the seven days on vacation (I didn't run on the travel days) including a 22:41 5K on the resort treadmill, I was fairly sure the vacation was going to slightly derail what would've possibly been a better race time this morning.    I've never run well coming off of vacation when it comes to racing.   

Coming out of the Boston Marathon unscathed and finally healed up from a nagging lower right leg tendon injury from January, I've finally been able to string together a month of workouts where I've been able to blend in tempo, interval and long runs all within a seven day training cycle without any pain (and it seems like it's been forever since I trained and wasn't in some level of pain leading up to Boston).   

Preparing mentally for this morning's race, my son Ethan and I have a fun pre-race ritual we've enjoyed the last couple of years together. The night before the race, we jot down our anticipated split times for the next morning's race.  It's a simply way to think about how we plan to run the race and talk a little racing strategy before actually going out and running the race.   The scribbles below are what I wrote down last night depicting my actual splits from the 2015 race, planned splits for this morning's race followed by my actual splits this morning.   

  

The story of this morning's race is I've gained a lot of speed coming out of the marathon, but anything approaching even a minor hill climb (such as the first 400 meters of mile three in this race) really causes me to fade.  I think this is a function of being unable to do any hill training leading to Boston due to my injury as well as still having just a bit of residual marathon fatigue which shows up on hills.    

In fact, my pace on mile three over the University Bridge today was fading towards a 7:50 split before I got off the bridge and made up time over the remaining 1000 meters of mile three and got back down to 7:29 expending a lot of energy with sapped me a bit on mile four.    

I was actually ahead of my race time last year until the final ~1500 meters running it in 6:51 vs. 6:41 in last year's race.   I thought I ran a strong closing stretch but again the slight uphill over the last few hundred meters before it flattens out over the final 100 meters probably did me in.    

Snapshot from the race from Strava 

In summary I had some mini PR's over the course of the race running a two-mile stretch in just over 14:00 minutes which I was quite happy with.    

Me and my 17 year old son Ethan who ran a 32:08 this morning, leaving me in the dust with an opening mile of 5:57.

 Next up for me is likely the June 18 Seattle Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon.    With 4+ training weeks remaining I'm hoping I can leverage some of the great aerobic base from all the Marathon training and get some good threshold and tempo work in that gives me a competitive time.  The course was changed this year so that the closing 1/2 mile is now mostly downhill vs. dead uphill which I'm sure a lot of runners complained about.       Last year I ran it in 1:39:20.   I'll be pleased with anything sub 1:39 and elated for anything sub 1:37 although some of the hills along the route will make this tough.

Lessons Learned on the way to the 2016 Boston Marathon

2016 Boston Marathon + 13 

It's already been 13 days since I ran the Boston Marathon. After taking the rest of the week off to rest and recuperate, I resumed training this last week logging nearly 40 miles including a tempo run, intervals and a solid 14 miler on what was a perfect Saturday afternoon in the Puget Sound.    The tendon injury I've been nursing for the last few months (and written about endlessly in my prior blog posts leading to the Marathon itself) has cooled down.   I'm finally starting to regain some speed that I felt glimpses of prior to the Marathon but couldn't really bring out in my training for fear of further exacerbating the injury.

Looking north on the Sammamish Trail on a perfect Saturday afternoon in in Redmond, WA.

Training Cycle Insights 

• Enjoy the process - not only the result  I was struck by a somewhat obvious observation made by Olympic Marathoner Des Linden on a Podcast I was listening to yesterday while on my run.    Her comment was that she had endured a lot of disappointment on the road to two Olympic marathon teams and that she was still racing marathons because she enjoyed the process - not just the result.   I couldn't agree more.    As much fun as it was to travel to Boston and run this year's marathon, the process of planning for and executing a 14 week training cycle culminating in running a Boston Marathon qualifying time -- and then putting together a training program to actually go run in Boston this year was highly rewarding.      It's almost akin to building a business plan for an idea and then putting it into play, doing what it takes to make it a reality.  
   
• Have a plan B Someone once said to me "man plans; God laughs".  While that may be a bit over the top, it really pays off to stratify goals in terms of "A" and "B" outcomes.   While it's imperative to strive for top-level goal achievement, it's impossible to hit the mark every time. Invariably, as is the case in marathoning (and in life), things happen outside your control (such as the weather, a nagging injury, etc) that will impact your actual execution requiring real-time course correction.     In the case of this year's race, the weather played a significant role in what was possible out on the course.   Fortunately, I had anticipated some sort of circumstance in the actual racing of the marathon that would require a real-time course correction and ratcheting my goal back to something obtainable that I could still be proud of.   My "A" goal was 3:33:00 and "B" goal was a 3:43:00.  It was obvious to me just a few miles into the race that the warm temperatures and moderate headwind for me meant I had to re-set my race tactics and expectations.  That I had anticipated and planned for this made it easier to simply adjust my race tactics towards my "B" goal which I achieved - running a 3:42:40 and passing nearly 3500 runners along the way to the finish line.
  
  
• Strike a balance Nearly all of my prior marathon training cycles were nothing but 45 - 55 mile weeks of running with little invested in mobility and core/strength training.   This time around, due to injury, I had to significantly cut my miles back and take a far more balanced approach in my training incorporating a lot of mobility and alternate aerobic activities into the mix.    The result was that I likely got out to Hopkinton in the best overall shape I've been in spanning the last 5 years.    It's hard to quantify exactly how striking a cross-training balance will pan out for me in the future, but it served an important lesson for me with respect to being good at not just one thing -- but a multitude of things in order to run a successful race under challenging circumstances -- which I attribute to a higher degree of balance in my training regimen vs. simply pounding out miles every week.
  
  
• Be data driven Of all the things in executing a marathon training cycle, besides the training itself, I think I love all of the biometric information that's now at our fingertips the most.   I can't wait to get back from a workout and examine my running biometric and running dynamics data to look for insights whatever they may be.    On any given day I am pouring through data in Strava and Garmin looking for insights that will allow me to train even more effectively and/or pinpoint weaknesses I can work on before getting to the starting line.     I've also found that the data doesn't lie, and that it's pretty easy to get an advance read on your actual race day performance by simply looking at how you are performing on your harder workouts of substance where you are really tested week in and week out.   I love these workouts as they are the single best indicator of race day performance when examined as a trend over time leading to race day.
  
  
• Dress rehearsals matter For this training cycle I ran four 20+ mile training runs (two 20's and two 22's), each with fast finishes at or below marathon pace.    But it's not just running the long run, it's the management of the entire 48-hour cycle leading to the long run that for me really constitutes a dress rehearsal.   Nutrition, sleep, the morning-of-the-long-run routine, recovery, what gear to wear (or not to wear), hydration and nutrition plan, etc.   I like to practice all of these aspects so that when the 4:00 am wake-up call comes on race day morning, I am in a routine and not doing things for the first time under pressure.    Practice makes perfect and it's never more amplified than when running an event like the Boston Marathon which for most of us is likely the biggest race day stage we will be on as amateur runners.
  
  
• Execution In the end when the moment comes there's nothing more to do except trust in your training, your planning, and go out and enjoy the experience for what it is.   My top goal for Boston this year wasn't running another BQ, rather, it was completely soaking up and enjoying the experience -- and being grateful for having the opportunity to compete in such a world class event.     There's nothing like the last few moments before the start of a marathon and being at complete peace with everything you've done to get to that moment and knowing you're comfortable with whatever the outcome will be -- because you've prepared as hard and as diligently as you can -- and now it's simply about execution vs. thinking.  
  

I couldn't be more grateful for being given the gifts of athleticism, health, desire and determination and the support of family and friends in pursuit of this wonderful sport of marathoning.   I can't wait to lace my shoes up and get to the next starting line -- and hopefully another BQ and trip to Boston.