I did! This morning! Ten times! The training program I am on right now uses “strides” aka fartleks as a primary speed component. Generally speaking there are no track-based speed workouts in the Advanced Marathoning plan. Rather, strides and longer speedwork (e.g. 800 and up) are incorporated into medium and even recovery runs.

In the “laughing at myself” category, I knew I wasn’t going to measure the 100m strides on my Garmin, so I decided to count off 10 seconds by one-one-thousand etc. After completing the first stride, I sheepishly realized that I wasn’t Usain Bolt on an off day, and did the next 9 for 15s instead. Probably a little more realistic.

77 degrees as I headed out the door this morning at 5:30. At least I’m not doing it now – as I write it’s 98 with a heat index of 106.

Saw and was greeted by Nelson headed the other way on his bike – with a brand-spanking new helmet! Your noggin is an important commodity. You can’t be protecting it with a helmet you bought 20 years ago – a fact I realized last year myself. Spreadin’ the word.

I put together a new training loop I’d been meaning to try for a while on my Saturday long run this weekend. This is no dissertation on the relative benefits of loops vs. out-and-backs, but they both have their merits from a psychological standpoint. I was getting bored of the OAB, so I figured up this loop ahead of time.

If I’m not able to train on the course I’m next racing on (my preference) I usually do an out and back on the Mill Creek trail – there’s a trailhead 1m from my front door. Other recently developed trails link up to this, and I’ve been meaning to put them together into a loop.

Saturday I headed at the door at 5:15 with the temp at 63. It doesn’t get any better than that for a summer run. I headed north on the sidewalk for a mile and came to a paved trail that runs West along K-10. Bonus: first heard, then saw two owls. One took off, the other held his ground on top of a utility pole. After about a mile, that trail becomes more of a sidewalk as it turns north, but I kept heading west for a bit further before turning north – these roads had a rural feel you still find in parts of Olathe. At the 3 mile mark I got to turn back onto a trail that went down into some wetlands and worked its way over to Black Hoof Park, which frames Lake Lenexa. I took the north loop over to the dam and stayed on the trail below the dam past mile 5. Just before mile 6 there was a big uphill as the trail became 91st Street, which then heads straight back down to the Mill Creek trail. I had to turn north and run a short out and back of about a mile to get the distance I wanted, otherwise I came back on the MC trail as usual after the turnaround.

I didn’t push the pace as much as I probably should have on this run. I wasn’t quite hitting marathon goal pace, but I did get 8 quality miles in a range from the low to mid 7s. Even with warmup and cooldown it was nice to see this training run clock in at less than the first half I ran as a race in 2011. Total distance 13.18 miles.

I’m really glad my neighbor, John Kohler, asked me to come down and run a leg of this cross-country relay with him. Check out the website and consider donating to the One Fund. You’ll have to drive farther than I did to catch it now though – they are east of St. Louis by now.

We began the morning in Newburg, a small community southwest of Rolla. This is one of those towns that used to be bigger than it is now, but my initial impression of a ghost town was later turned around by the appearance of a huge group of kids that came out to cheer us as the baton was passed from the previous stage to ours.

John and I were joined by Amanda, from Rolla, and Tony, from St. Clair. A pair of local runners from another stage also joined us through the streets of downtown Rolla. Nice folks, all. Committed runners, all. The four of us all found that we had shed significant weight through running in the last decade.

We had great support from local law enforcement. A Phelps Co. Sheriff’s deputy followed us the whole way, and various municipalities – Doolittle and Rolla, at least, were on the point through intersections. An over-used term – it was rock star/parade type treatment. The added safety and visibility was much appreciated. Thank you!

It was a hot day! The baton was about an hour behind, so it was every bit of 10am when we started our 11 miles. Some new blacktop in places pumped up the temp. I needed more water than I could carry – so it was great to have a support crew in John’s in-laws. The enthusiasm and support of his family was fantastic.

It was a great day for a great cause!

There was a nice article about John and the run in the KC Star sports section on Thursday. We also got some coverage in the local Rolla paper:

http://www.therolladailynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130621/NEWS/130629710/1020/SPORTS#axzz2WxDVpgK0

Just noticed that the Cursoris – my go-to training shoe right now – went over 300 miles on the odometer this week. Love this shoe. It’s holding up well with no signs of imminent failure.

I started a new training program Sunday – albeit with a recovery run. 4 months to October 19th, 18 week program. I hit the elliptical Monday and Tuesday so I could do a tempo run with Nelson this am. We did 5 miles at pace (ok, I did 4.5, but there was a good reason which I am not going to describe…). Plus a 1 mile warm-up, 1 mile cool-down. Also a 2 mile round trip bike ride to our meet-up on the trail. I’ve decided I’m going to motivate myself for the KC Marathon by doing a running tally of goal pace miles. My goal pace is 6:51. I’m going to count any full mile that’s sub-7 minutes as a GP mile. So, I logged 4 of those today. Now if I can just string together 26.2 of those, I’ll break 3 hours. Easy, right?

Here’s a few shots of the soles:

I sat down last night after work to finish personalizing a training plan from “Advanced Marathoning” by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas. My training plan is for my next goal race: the Kansas City Marathon in October. It’s based on the 18 week AM plan with mileage up to 55 miles per week (max). AM has 8 sets of plans. Four different mileage max amounts, 2 different lengths – 12 and 18 weeks. The mileage levels START at 55 miles per week and go up in 15 mile increments from there, with the most intense plan bearing the foreboding, open-ended label “Marathon Training on More Than 85 Miles Per Week.” So I’m on the “starter” plan.

I’ve plugged everything into an excel spreadsheet so I can use it in the future by simply plugging in the date of race week. The spreadsheet will then calculate the rest of the dates (not hard).

Just in time, too! I knew in the back of my mind I’d have a few limbo weeks after Hospital Hill, but as I was constructing the training plan I was one week off because of the way it’s labeled. When I finished it last night, I realized that training starts Sunday. Yikes! Err, I mean, yay!

Here’s a link to a PDF version if anyone’s curious:

Advanced Marathoning 55 Miles per week 18-week schedule

I made some modifications to the AM plan which hopefully don’t mess up all the good exercise physiology that Pete and Scott put into it. The AM plan is based on a Sunday long run, which doesn’t work for me – I’m just not going to get up that early before church. Also, I usually do a recovery-effort run with Nelson Sunday am. It would be possible to splice a long run into either end of that, but it’s just not ideal, again particularly given the necessary alarm-clock setting.

I tried to give the most attention to the day before and after the long run. I have always preferred an “easy” day before and after – duh! Generally speaking that’s AM’s thinking too, especially the day after. However, AM usually puts an “easy” run the day before the long run, and rest or cross-training the day after. So basically I am subbing a recovery run for the cross-training. Hopefully I am not hindering recovery too much, but I have been doing recovery runs the day after long runs for a while now anyway.

Due to my modifications there are some “extras” I may have to ignore on the Sundays that are more than recovery runs. E.g., tuneup races and a little bit of striding.

While I’m on that subject, there is a lot less speed work in this plan than in the Eladio Valdez plan I’ve used in the past. The authors acknowledge this: “Looking at these schedules, you might be wondering, Where are all the “speed” workouts?” Their response is that their workouts focus on endurance, lactate threshold, and VO2max. Speed is less important for the marathon.

On the other hand, that’s the perfect segue to pace. There’s speed, then there’s speed. Chances are, if you’re trying to follow a plan out of a book called “Advanced Marathoning,” you have an ambitious pace goal. My new pace goal is very ambitious – a sub-3:00 marathon, averaging a 6:51 min/mile pace. Backing out the predictor paces (half marathon, 15K, 5K) that leads to some pretty crazy-fast paces at times – brief spurts of sub 6:00 min/mile, e.g. These training paces are intimidating! I am rationalizing it this way: I seem to be able to race a bit faster than my training paces might predict. So, if I am not hitting these pace goals during training, I’m not going to become discouraged. Also, I don’t expect to blow through 3:00 on the tough KC course. That doesn’t mean I won’t try, but my PR is 3:11 on a flatter course, and just under 3:14 on the KC course. I’ll look to go sub 3 perhaps at Boston in Spring 2014, or find a flat fall 2014 race like Chicago.

So, there it is. I’ve been blessed with injury-free summer training the last two years. I pray my body can hold up to this schedule. If I follow the plan to a T, I’ll be adding another running day to what I typically have done – which is to run 4 days a week. If I feel like I am overtraining, I’ll have to sub back in a cross-train day for one of the lighter running workouts – something I may just do preventatively.

I’m looking forward to the next step(s)!

One of my goals this year is to break the 1000 mile barrier. I’ve been in the 900s the last two years since I started keeping track and running more miles. However, discretion has been the better part of valor, and while dialing back the miles after fall marathons I’ve come up short. This year might give me a better shot, since my 1 month running break started in December and ended part of the way through January. Last year my layoff was the month of March, with no spring marathon.

I went over 500 miles Saturday the 8th. It’s looking good so far!

It’s taken me some time to cope with this run (June 1st) so I’m just now getting to blogging about it.

I had set a lofty goal of breaking 1:30. I ran a 1:31:28 – a PR by roughly 6 minutes for me. On the other hand, measuring it against my two other half marathons, that’s not saying much. One was my first endurance race, the second was with an abbreviated training schedule after coming off of a layoff.

True confessions – I was really hoping I could breeze to a sub 1:30, which would give me some confidence for a sub 3:00 marathon. (The ULTIMATE goal in my sights right now). I still think that’s doable on a flat course in good weather conditions.

So, I’m a bit disappointed. I feel like I had a sub-1:30 in me, but just didn’t push hard enough. The main lesson I learned from this race is “run your own race.” I had hoped to lock in with the 1:30 pace group and coast to victory. In retrospect, they went out slower than I would have, and tried to make up a 1 minute deficit too quickly. I clocked a bunch of miles in the middle of this race that were well under my goal pace – and one of them was while I was getting left behind by the pacer. However, I’m not passing the buck. I’ll just be wiser next time. I have run some good races with and without pacers – but I have never crossed the finish line with one. I have found them most helpful in dragging me out to a faster pace than I might go out at, then hanging on (I know, this is not exactly the “preferred” negative split strategy).

The rest of the rundown, for personal posterity:

Overall place: 144 out of 4279
Age grade: 67.84% (I’m sniffing Regional Class at 70% but still in Local Class at 60-69%)
Pace: 6:59 (Goal pace was 6:51)
Age group place (M40-44):14 out of 284

I ran in the Asics Piranhas. More blistering than the recent Garmin marathon, but on a hillier course. Nothing major. However, I think I’ll need an alternative for the KC Marathon in October.

Props to Nelson for running his own race, and getting his sub-1:30!

I thought I’d use my last blog post before the HHR to wish everyone a great race and pass along a few thoughts on pre-race day prep.

For some of you, this is all going to be Mr. Obvious stuff. It wasn’t to me as little as 3 years ago though, so here’s my personal pre-race prep.

Starting the Friday morning before a Saturday morning race, I shift over to a low residue diet aka low fiber diet. If I’m not making myself clear, there’s always Google. As with any of this stuff, if you haven’t tried something new before race day, don’t. Try it in training first. I have a marathon ritual that’s more extreme than my half-marathon prep. For the half, I’ll emphasize carbs in the last 24 hours, but I’ve never experienced a glycogen depletion wall under 20 miles. I figure if my glycogen stores are near normal, I’ll be fine.

If you’re like me and you’ve ever forgotten to charge your Garmin etc. before a long run, maybe a checklist is a good idea. I’m not exactly a morning person so I lay out all my gear the night before. No new gear! You don’t want to discover that your new shirt feels like sandpaper at mile 8. Try to get a good night’s sleep.

On race morning, I get up a couple of hours before the race and have my usual double espresso along with some sports drink to get hydrated and top off the glycogen stores. The last thing I want to do is find myself in a porta-potty 5 minutes before the race starts (or worse…) I follow the advice of getting any eating (not me, liquids only) and carb-intake out of the way at least an hour before the race starts.

Pump yourself up with some music in the car! Arrive early enough that you don’t stress out about parking, that last-minute bathroom stop, and getting to your corral on time. I like to do a little active stretching in the corral just before the national anthem – squats, lunges if there’s room.

Have fun out there!

No, we didn’t both participate in a cage match. The answer: toe trouble. And no, I’m not going to post a pic of Jon’s toe. It’s kind of the Joe Theisman of toe injuries. Googlers beware.

This wasn’t a running injury or related to an athletic endeavor in any way. It was just one of those freak klutzy maneuvers. I had made a u-turn on the stairs to turn a light back on, and when I rotated to head back downstairs, my toe got hung up in the carpet. It’s not like it’s a thick shag or anything. If only that were the end of the story – I also had to tuck and roll down to the landing after losing my balance. All of this was much to the stifled amusement of my daughter and niece. The RHSW gave me a gracious “are you alright?” as I fumed down the rest of the stairs. No, I am definitely not all right, I said only to myself.

I recently finished Scott Jurek’s Eat & Run, and my toe trouble caused me to recall Scott’s broken toe – stubbed on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night just before the Spartathalon – a mere 152 mile race in Greece. I wondered if this was going to wash me out of Hospital Hill, or at least make it significantly more painful.

Well, the good news is that despite clearly doing “something” to cause bruising at the interphalangeal joint (I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on tv, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), it’s held up pretty good this week through multiple runs, including a barefoot 5 miler. I think I’m all right now.