First Race - Mixed Bag

When I awoke this morning, the little issue w/ my back had improved yet again and I knew it would not interfere w/ my race at all.  No, I was as close to 100% healthy as one could expect.  The weather was going to be nice too - sunny and about 58-degrees for the 9 am start.

The race was at Stanford University - we were going to be running around the walkways on their campus (which is nice) and it was being run by one of their sororities.  (insert your favorite joke here!)

My 15-year old son was going to be running this race w/ me.  He's a Sophomore on the X-country team at HS.  He ran a very tough 8 x 800m in practice on Thursday at about a 2:42 average pace, and followed that up w/ an 11-miler on Friday - so even w/ the off day Saturday this was just going to be a "fun run" for him.  I figured he'd finish in about 19 minutes.

About 120 people entered the 5k.  I made sure I got a good position at the start.  The plan was to go out in 5:40 and then adjust depending on how I was feeling.  I didn't have a specific target time as this was my first road race of any length, but I really didn't want to finish in over 18-minutes if I could help it.  (5:48 per mile)  Being at Stanford, there were a few college runners in the race and I repeated to myself a few times, "don't go out w/ the college kids and get sucked into their pace"  

Gun goes off, or was it a whistle, or just some hung over college girl yelling "GO!!"  Immediately I'm in about 15th place.  I see one college kid moving much quicker than the rest of us and getting to the front very easily.  After about 150 yards I'm in about 12th, quick check of the Garmin says I'm at 5:43 pace - that's fine.  There are about 4-5 guys right in front of me forming a pack.  After about 50-60 yards w/ them I feel like it's too slow - check the watch - 5:55, yup too slow - later boys.  I make my way around the 5 of them and I can see that I'm now in 7th.  Over the next half mile or so I pass a few more and am now in 4th.  The first kid is way the hell out there, 2nd and 3rd are within 10 yards of each other and about 30-40 yards ahead of me.  At the 0.7 mile point we make a 90-degree left turn which gives me a chance to take a quick peak behind me - no one's close - maybe 60-yards.  

And at that point boys and girls, for all intents and purposes, the "racing" phase of today's event (at only the 0.7 mile mark) was over.  Positions 1 thru 4 would not change the rest of the way.  And in fact, none of those positions would even be challenged.  

I come through the first mile in 5:43 (according to the Garmin - there are no mile markers)  A few seconds slow, but w/ all this time to go, shouldn't be a problem.  The goal now is to simply hold the pace - don't lose concentration on this 2nd mile and slow down.  The second kid has now distanced himself from #3 who is still about 40 yards ahead of me.  I try to focus on him to help me keep my pace - closing in on him doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.  

At that point I hear something fall and hit the ground.  As I turn and look, I see it's my car key - shit I forgot to zip up my back pocket!!  Luckily there was an attendant a few yards ahead - I call out to him "hey, can you help me out - I just dropped my car key".  He starts to head down the path as I yell back "thanks a lot".  As I look forward again, the #3 guy is still there - whew, didn't lose much time!

I look down at my pace - 5:43.  Damn this is like clockwork!  Another 90-degree turn (there would be a lot of these - and it isn't pretty at the end) another quick peak back. . . . and there's nobody there.  I take a second look almost in disbelief - nope nobody there at all.  5th place would eventually finish a minute and 17 seconds behind me.  

The unfortunate thing I'm beginning to notice now is that I'm not racing - because there's no one for me to race.  No one's behind me, the kid in front of me is 40-50 yards ahead, and I can't even see the two kids who are ahead of him.  I'm totally alone here and have been for at least a mile.  This is really nothing more than a fast tempo run on Stanford's campus.

I come through the second mile - 5:42.  Good, I had held the pace.  (just like a damn tempo run)  Now what?  Quick assessment of how I feel.  Well, not great but compared to what you're probably supposed to feel like 2-miles into a 5k, I'd have to say pretty good.  Let's try to pick up the pace.  I'd love to start reeling in the #3 guy but he's picked it up too and is now probably 70-yards ahead.  Damn college kids!!  I have the Garmin set to auto-lap each mile so when I check out my lap-pace for mile #3 I see that my pace for the first 1/3 of this mile is now 5:38 - not bad, I'm indeed picking it up.  

This is where the race goes to hell on me in a hurry!  I mentioned a while back that we have a lot of 90-degree turns in this race, I think there are 12 in all. . . . but what I didn't notice when I looked over the course map prior to the race is that the last 5 of these guys are all in the last half mile or so.  And they're not marked!  Making things worse is that there are buildings all over the place now as we run through the campus and we're turning so frequently that I no longer have visual contact w/ the guy ahead of me.  (and like I said, he's only 70-yards or so ahead so that gives you an idea how quickly we're making 90-degree turns)  Also, due to the buildings, I can't locate him after he's made the turn so I'm kind of blind.  Now, they do have a girl at each intersection . . . . but you'd expect them to be holding up huge arrows or something pointing you where to go.  They're not.  Instead, I have to call out to each girl as I approach, "which way!?"  And then they point.  Now I'm not now, nor was I then upset in any way at these girls.  They got their butts up really early on a Sunday morning to host this thing and the proceeds went to charity - so congrats to them for doing a pretty decent job overall - these ain't the World Championships or anything.  The real issue was that lost focus during this time.

So this is where I sort of blew it.  I got so caught up in trying to figure out where to go that I lost focus on what I was doing.  I'm simply not good enough at this point to be running a 5:38 pace after 2.5 miles of a 5k when I'm changing directions every 70-150 yards AND not concentrating on the task at hand.  

Mile-3 comes in at 5:49.  Shit!!  I get my focus back, run the last 0.14 of a mile in 5:37 pace (after one more 90-degree turn).  0.14 you ask?  Yeah - another issue - the course was long.  Afterwards I went up to one of the girls and asked if this was true and she said it was - last year they measured it and it was long; and this year the course is exactly the same.  How much does an extra 0.03 matter?  At my pace it adds 11-seconds.  Finishing time - 18:03  Man I just typed it and I already hate looking at it.  (would have been 17:52 for 3.11 miles)

So my time was wrecked by two factors - one of which I had some control over (losing focus and costing me a good 10-seconds) and one was just that the course was long.  The reality is the time doesn't matter - if the course were short by 0.03 instead, would I be thrilled that the clock read 17:41?  Not really - it's the race I ran that matters.  And my average pace even w/ the loss of focus was 5:44.8 - I can live w/ that for my first race.

So let me look at the things I did well:

#1 - I didn't go out too fast and that's one I was really worried about

#2 - I immediately recognized that I was in a group that was slightly slow and moved ahead

#3 - Nice even pace for the 2nd mile (first 2-miles:  5:43, 5:42)

#4 - correctly evaluated that I could step it up and moved to a 5:38 pace for the first 0.3 of the 3rd mile before I hit the 'maze'.

Now the things I learned:

#1 - If you haven't run the course before STUDY the map carefully!  (I could have saved myself some panic if I knew how many turns there were down the stretch and I wouldn't have needed to talk to the girls had I realized that 4 of the last 5 turns were right hand turns)

#2 - Don't lose focus on what you're doing.  I did such a good job keeping focus during the 2nd mile, but did a very poor job of this at the end.

#3 - EFFORT!!!!  I did NOT race this close to hard enough.  Litmus test - as I came through the shoot and the girl was ripping off the bottom of my bib I was having a nice pleasant chat w/ her . . . about 7-seconds after the finish!!  Shouldn't I be gasping for breath about to fall down??  

After thinking about why this was the case, I came up w/ a few reasons - First, I had no one to race - I was alone from 0.7 miles until the end.  I think the adrenaline disappears when you're racing alone, like I said it almost turned into a tempo run kind of feel.  Second, my only real goal was to finish under 18-minutes and after seemingly banking 11-seconds in the first 2-miles and then picking up the pace from there, I was sure it was already in the bag (and it would have been if the course were 3.11 miles)  So I had no sense of urgency - but next time, screw it - lesson learned:  when there is no sense of urgency, CREATE ONE!!

But hell, I did several things right too, and it's just the first race.  If I had to do over again next weekend, I'm pretty sure I pick up 10-12 seconds from effort/focus/lack of panic over where I'm going, and of course another 10-12 seconds if the course length were correct.  Where I went into this thing w/ a slight lack of confidence, I now know I can go 17:4x, hell next weekend - and knowing that gives me some kind of reference point to work around.  

Being that I was the first non-Stanford student to finish, I did win my age group which netted me a nice gift bag of Pete's Coffee I think (I haven't looked yet)

What about my keys??  OK - after finishing I look down the course trying to see where my son was going to finish.  I figure he'll be in any minute and we can go find the guy who "hopefully" has my key.  I see someone come across - not him.  Then a second person - that's him, a nice finish in 6th overall.  I call out to him " hey, we need to go find someone".  He says, "why to get your key?"  As I was about to ask him how he knew that, he opens his hand and there it is!!  Evidently he was in 5th place at the time, saw me look back, noticed the key on the ground and scooped it up on the way!  Problem solved.

I may post some more thoughts on this race later, but I think I've probably bored you guys long enough.  Feel free to tell me what a bozo I was for screwing up the last 0.7 - I welcome any criticism/advice you may have.

Ready to Go

Couple of really easy days ahead of the race.  Five easy miles on Friday, and just a quick 2.5 miles today to loosen up.  

The "weakness" in the quad seems to be gone and for the most part the legs feel great.  The down week has really helped to clear the deck of a few nagging little things.

I have a bit of an issue at the base of my back on the left side, however.  It surfaced in the middle of Friday's run out of nowhere.  It was sore last night so I took some Advil and iced.  Slight improvement this morning and it's been feeling better throughout the day.  As long as it doesn't get worse during the race it should be a non-factor.  

Not much else to say - just time to go out and run.  

Training:

9/10:  5-miles easy @ 7:10 pace

9/11:  2.5-miles @ 7:02 pace

5k Prep

I moved my typical Mon-Tues-Wed training out to Tue-Wed-Thurs and inserted a complete off day on Monday as I'm taking a down week here.  That meant lifting on Tuesday (although I skipped the dead lift and squat) and no running.  The two off days from running back-to-back really helped to clear up a few little nagging things, so physically I felt better after Tuesday.

Wednesday was an easy running day and today was my Threshold day.  Being that I haven't done any specific 5k training, or really any race training for that matter, (i.e. - no volume speed work, no VO2Max intervals, and not even any race pace efforts) I felt I needed to run something more up-tempo just to get me used to running faster.  

I talked to my coach and what she came up w/ was a race-pace type of workout (actually a bit quicker) that wouldn't be very taxing.  The plan was 10 x 400 broken down as follows:

5 x 400 @ 85 w/ 90-second breaks

5-minute break

3 x 400 @ 83 w/ 90-second breaks

5-minute break

2 x 400 @ 80 w/ 90-second break

This would get in some 5:20 - 5:40 pace running - 2.5 miles in all w/ the breaks being long enough to not make this too difficult a workout to recover from.

It went down like this:

first set - 89, 84, 83, 83, 84.  (first one was the "wake up quarter", first time running up-tempo @ 9:00 am)

second set - 81, 81, 80

At this point, the workout was feeling quite easy, but coach didn't want me going under 80 so I decided to shorten the rests for the last two.  (instead of 5-min break and 90-seconds between reps I went with 3.5 minutes and then 60-seconds between reps)

third set - 80, 78.  

All in all, not too bad.  Only issue is that the outside of my left quad feels a little weak right now - I have no idea what caused it, but I don't think it's very serious.  I'll have to see how it feels tomorrow.  

The plan is another easy day tomorrow, a short evening run on Saturday and then the race is on Sunday.  I don't have a specific target time in mind, I figure I'll go out in about 5:40 and then make adjustments as needed.

Training:

9/6:  Off Day

9/7:  No Running  lifting (upper-A, abs) stretching, rolling

9/8:  AM  4-miles very easy - 7:44 pace

          PM 4.5 miles easy - 7:08 pace

9/9:  4-miles including 10 x 400 in 89, 84, 83, 83, 84 - 81, 81, 80 - 80, 78

Down Week and a Race on the Way

I've been planning on taking a down week here for a while, and I think this is going to be the week.  I've been steadily increasing mileage and/or intensity for over two months, and I've yet to take anything resembling a light week.  I had some issues w/ my calves last week (which thankfully feel much better now), and although my quads feel OK, my glutes were really sore after the hill workout.  Additionally, I've had a lot more going on at home recently and I haven't had as much sleep as I'd like and at times I feel a little drained.  So with that, this week is going to be a really light week.  

The good news is that over the past week, the pace of my easier runs has actually picked up while at the same time, my HRs have been coming down - so that's nice to see.  Yesterday was supposed to be my long day, but being that the hill work was pushed to Saturday, I didn't feel comfortable running long w/ the soreness I felt on Sunday, so I just set off for an easy run figuring I'd call it quits whenever I felt the need.  Much to my surprise, I felt a lot better during the run than I expected and I clocked a 7:17 pace for 8-miles w/ a HR down in the 140s (which is pretty low for me these day).  This follows my 3-mile warm-up run on Saturday before the hill work where I averaged 6:54 w/ only a 145 HR.  I both cases, the Pace vs HR data is definitely an improvement compared to most of my previous easy runs.

I got a good night's sleep last night, and my soreness has definitely improved - but I'm STILL forcing myself to take the down week.  

In regards to the 'race' - my coach wants me to run a 5k just to see where I'm at.  It will help to set paces for upcoming workouts and give me a chance to get out there and get some racing experience.  (even though 5ks are not really the focus)  I found one in my area this Sunday, October 12th.  Obviously there is no 'training' for this thing, I'm just going to go out and run.  I don't know the course at all, I have no idea what the size of the crowd will be, and I have no idea how many 'obstacles' (i.e. walkers, slow moving bozos that start up front, etc) will be in the way - but it really doesn't matter.  The main idea for this race is just to get a ballpark pace figure so that we can setup workouts going forward.  

This will be my first legit road race.  I did do a 5k a couple of years ago, but that was a 'fun run' on Easter, and I hadn't so much as gone for a jog for the 5-months prior to running it - so I can't really call that a 'race'.  (although I did run 2-miles the day before just to make sure I could run!)  So this will be the first real race for me.  Based on my 17:44 effort for 3-miles a few weeks ago, that would put me at about 18:22 for 5k.  On the plus side, I'll have the race day adrenaline, but on the downside I won't be running on a nice level track - so I don't know which takes precedence.  I'm going to try and keep it in check for that first mile, not go out too fast and just see how it goes from there.  I imagine that after running 2 or 3 of these things, I'd do a much better job of pacing myself, so I won't be too disappointed if I make some errors judging the pace - I've really got nothing to compare against so I'll just run by feel and hope for the best.

Training:

9/5:  8-miles @ 7:17, HR - 148

First Hill Workout

Legs felt good enough to give the hill workout a go.  I felt great during my 3-mile warm up - 6:54 pace in the trails, but that wouldn't last long.

The plan was to do 8 X 45" up about a 10-12% grade w/ a jog back down and a total of only about 90 seconds between repeats.  The problem was that I didn't have anything exactly in the 10-12% range, but I did have one that I mapped out earlier to 14% so I figured that was close enough.  Only later did I realize that the 14% grade was considering a much longer segment of the hill - the part I ran my repeats on today was actually between 17-20%.  Big difference!

First repeat felt good - nice and quick up the steep incline.  Second repeat about the same, just a little tougher.  Third rep - really started to feel it in the quads, and by the 4th rep my quads felt like they were on fire.  Checking the Garmin later I realized that I was running up this near 20% grade at about 6:30/mile pace for the first few reps - that'll kill your quads quickly!

By the time I got to rep #5 my legs simply weren't functioning the way you'd like - anytime I tried to surge it was like someone poured gasoline on my legs and lit a match.  Not fun at all.  I did manage to do a 6th rep but I was clearly going downhill fast (which really means uphill - SLOW) so I just cut it off there.  No way I was going to be able to do 8 reps on that hill - not a chance.  

I came away from the workout really encouraged - why you ask?  Because this hill just killed me today - chewed me up and spit me out.  By the 5th rep my quads were mush - unable to do much of anything.  So what that means to me is that this is an area where I can REALLY improve over the next few months - and when I get better here, by default I'll be a lot faster, and that will help my middle distance times a ton!  So I'm already looking forward to this workout next week - the plan calls for 10 x 1-minute, but again that's assuming a 10% grade hill.  If I can find such a hill, then that's what I'll do, but if it's this hill again - I'll probably just try the 8 X 45" again.  

I'm supposed to run 9 - 11 miles tomorrow, but I have no idea how my legs are going to feel when I wake up.  I guess I'll have to play it by ear.

Training:

10/4:  5- miles including 3-miles @ 6:54, HR - 145 and 6 x 45" hill repeats (17-20% grade) 

Daily Triple

Been having some issues w/ my flats (ASIC Hyperspeed-2) that I use for the Tempo work at the track.  The heel is tremendously low, and this has caused my calves to get really tight over the past 3-weeks.  So this past Wednesday I ran in my old flats (ASIC DS Racers) and had no issues, however the calves are still a mess.  

Thankfully I had an appointment scheduled w/ my CMT for Thursday and she was able to work out a lot of it.  Good news is that the ITB is still clean - no issues there.  Being that she needed to dig into the calves so much, there was no way I was going to be able to run on Thursday due to the soreness - so that became an off day.

Hills were scheduled for Friday, but I was still sore an decided to push that work out one more day.  Instead I would do my usual easy day running double w/ 4-miles in the morning and 5-miles in the evening.  The dilemma that caused was that Saturday is supposed to be a lifting day and I was not going to lift and do hills on the same day, so what to do?  

Answer - I was going to 'triple' on Friday instead.  4-miles in the morning, lifting in the afternoon, an 5-miles in the evening.  None of the lifting was on legs, so as far as running goes, it was the standard double that I've done many times before.  It takes a good deal of energy to get out there 3-times in one day and do something, and I was very happy that I still felt good enough to put up sub-7 minute miles comfortably in the evening run.  

I'm a bit concerned about the calves an how that may eventually have an impact on my knees, so I've got to watch that very closely.  I don't know how much the hill workout will affect this, but I'm going to give it a go if the weather holds up today and see how it goes.

Training:

10/2:  No running.  Stretching, rolling, appt w/ CMT.

10/3: AM  4-miles easy @ 7:41 pace

          Afternoon - lifting (Upper-B, abs)

          Evening - 5-miles @ 6:54  HR - 152

Tempo Effort w/ a Twist

My threshold work the past 3-weeks has been at about 5:55 - 5:58 pace.  This included 3 x 1-mile w/ 1-minute rests, a 3-mile Tempo Run, and of course the dreaded 2-mile repeats w/ 2-minute rests.  

Being that the third workout (the 2-mile repeats) was the first time I had any difficulty, coach decided to change up my effort today.  I imagine she wants to get more of a handle on where I'm at - so instead of doing 1-mile cruise intervals again (which was on the schedule) she wanted me to do another 3-mile Tempo Run - with a twist.  This time, back off to 6:10 pace - the idea here being that perhaps the 5:55 - 5:58 pace is more at the "front end" of my T-pace, such that I can handle the easier workouts at that pace, but the tougher T-workouts are slightly out of reach for me.  So the plan was to shift the Tempo Run to the "back end" of the T-range (about 6:10) and then after that effort, take the standard short rest of 1-minute per mile (so 3-minutes in this case) and then run another 1-mile at T-pace where the goal was to run a very controlled effort but to pick the tempo up to slightly under 6:00 for the mile.  

I imagine that by me getting pre-fatigued w/ the 3-mile tempo run at the "back end" pace, she would learn something about my current fitness by seeing how that 4th mile went.  

So I ran my 3-miler at 6:10 pace.  For whatever reason I was expecting it to be a total walk in the park, and it was not - I actually needed to concentrate a little during that middle mile to make sure I didn't lose the pace.  The good news was that after the effort was over, it only took a minute and 20 seconds, for my HR to recover down to 128.  By the time the 3-minute rest was up, I felt completely ready to run.  

Probably a little too ready - I went out too fast on the 4th mile and had to purposely slow myself down on the second half of the first lap which still came in at 1:23.  After that I made the adjustment, but as it often times happens, I slowed a little too much for my liking.  So I picked it back up a bit and finally ran a nice consistent pace for the last 2-laps.  No kick here - didn't want to 'alter the data'.  I came across the finish in 5:52.  What does it mean?  I don't know.  I sent the info over to the coach and perhaps she'll be able to determine the pace at which I should be running most of these workouts going forward.  

Training:

10/1:  6-miles including 4 @ T-pace.  3-mile Tempo Run @ 6:10 pace, followed by 3-min break, then 1-mile @ 5:52.  Ave/Max HR of Tempo Run - 161/167, Ave/Max HR of 4th mile - 163/169