The commitment it takes to perform

I was at a party yesterday and talking to a runner. Since I’m getting back from an injury my mileage is much lower right now and I’m able to … well actually go out like normal people. With Team Rogue I usually try to get into bed by 10 so I can be up by 4:30 on most weekdays and 5:30 on weekends to get my runs in. I was talking with this other runner and asked him how he’s doing and he said he hasn’t been able to put in the miles or commit what he needs to excel. Training for any marathon takes significant time and it does result in changing daily habits, diet, schedule. Trying to push your body as hard as you can really does take significant commitment, which we all hope will pay off.

All that talk and then the conversation in the car coming home where the phrase “are you running from yourself” came out made me do a little thinking. Here’s a little reflection on what I set out to do this season and a revisit to the question “Why I run versus why I train?“.

The things I’ve tried to do this season include:

• Eating better and around 2500 to 3000 calories a day. Which means snacking at work all day long and having a drawer full of food.
• Strength training at the gym so my body is more capable of handling the increased mileage (from 60 to 80 per week) and faster paces.
• Regularly stretching, using Trigger Point daily and getting regular massages to keep the body loose
• Trying to peak at 90 miles per week and keeping my average weekly mileage around 80.
• Dropping my training paces.

Everybody focuses on something or another each season. The above 3 are the things I was trying to differently and have had varying success. Here are the grades I’d give myself today:

• Eating Better A-
  Ask anybody at work, I either have an apple, pair, oreo’s, animal crackers, fig bars or yogurt with me pretty much all day. The “minus” is for the quality of what I’ve been eating.
• Strength Training C+
  I’m doing much better than any other training season but haven’t been regular about it, I got complacent and with 90 miles a week it became difficult to have the time to make it to the gym all the time. I did manage to see Mark at South Congress Athletic Club and have a program but still need to follow through with twice a week visits to the gym to perform the exercises.
• Stretching etc A-
  I’ve been very about using Trigger Point but realized recently that I needed to work more than the calf and lower leg area that I’ve been focusing on. My quads and hamstrings have tightened and this has restricted my stride in some cases and been a factor in some injuries. Minor adjustment needed now.
• Increasing mileage and pace B
  This one is a tough grade. I looked at my log for CIM and noticed that I got up-to 70 miles over a pretty long period since I wasn’t really running before May. After I peaked I suffered an injury and then my mileage was in the 55 to 60 range till CIM. After CIM I took a week off and then my weekly mileage went something like this: 22, 58, 70, 70, 82, 90, 50 … injury. I look at all of this with two perspective. The first is what the hell was I thinking, I pretty much ran more than I ever have and really just built up too fast. I was also running a lot faster on my runs, in the 7:20 minutes/mile range on easy runs and getting in the 6 minute/mile range on some parts of it. So doing all of this in one go, faster, farther, longer wasn’t a good idea and my body just wasn’t ready for it. But the reason I’m giving myself a B and not a D is that this really has to be the first time I’ve thrown caution to the wind which is something I’ve been working on with training so I’m glad I’ve done that, adjusting down will be much easier!

Looking at the time that remains for Boston training I plan to bring my mileage goals down a little. If I can manage 70 to 75 starting a week from now I will be very happy. I also think I’m going to adjust my paces from the 2:50 marathon target to a 2:53 to try and break 2:55 at Boston. I feel like my lungs and aerobic capacity is ahead of my body’s physical ability to handle the increased load. So it’s a little lower on the mileage and a tad slower on the paces and a renewed focus on strength training at the gym and some cross training. Next season I’ll try and increase my total load/effort a little more gradually to try and avoid injury.

Now of course comes the million dollar question of why put myself through all of this. I wrote an answer to “Why I run versus why I train?” last year as did many others on the team. It really does come to seeing what I can push my body to do and also the sense of internal accomplishment in achieving some goal.

As I think about it those are pretty superficial statements.  Why do I want to see how far I can push my body and what I can accomplish? To be perfectly honest, I don’t know, that’s just how I’m wired. So for now as long as I get satisfaction out of it I’m not going to worry about the deeper reason and physco mumbo jumbo reasoning behind it. What I know is I look forward to waking up, putting shoes on, meeting up with the crew and running easy, hard, or insanely hard and getting side stitches from laughing along the way.

Developing the race plan for the Boston Marathon

The starting point for me is my race in Boston in 2006 where I was trying to get under 3:00 hours. Click on the image below to see the details.

2006 Goal versus Actual Results

The plan wasn’t too far off. Going into it I assumed the race would mean whatever shape I was in for a flat course + 2ish minutes and that’s what the paces targets were set on. Until the hills try and stick around marathon goal pace (for a flat course) even though it is downhill. Then loose some time in the hills and try and get back to slower than MGP in the finish.

The biggest problem was the first mile which was a minute slow, that was nearly impossible for me to make up. I was also a little slower in the hills than planned and then the motivation wasn’t there since sub 3 seemed out of reach. I haven’t decided on my plan for 2009 yet, it’ll come in early April but I am starting to form a general idea on how to run the race … not the specific paces yet. I do want this to be a negative split race from an effort standpoint, I’m not sure if that means a negative split based on pace yet but we’ll see.

Coming back from injury

For any of you that know me you should know by now that I’m a pretty conservative runner and am especially so with injuries. Since I’ve had this foot sprain since Tuesday I’ve eased back into getting on the road. Tuesday was a visit to the doctor to make sure nothing serious was wrong, it wasn’t. Wednesday was a massage to release the tension and work out the plantar and any other tightness in the calf. Then ice and stretching till Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was a 2 mile run walk and Sunday was the 3 mile loop around Town Lake. I don’t think I’ve run that loop in a while so it was nice change. I still have some soreness on the underside of my foot and the outside of my foot but nothing too painful. Just need to keep on icing and try and get 3 to 5 miles in on a few runs this week and then ease back into my mileage so I can join back with the group when we start the higher intensity phase in September.

My previous injuries have been a blessing in disguise so I hope this one is the same. I was training for the 2006 3M half marathon and the 2006 Boston marathon. I changed my shoes (yes stupid I know), asked the shoe floor attendant for something similar to the Mizuno Precisions but I guess they weren’t really that similar,  the month before 3M right when we were peaking and the new brand just didn’t work and I hurt myself. I did end up getting better for 3M but only ran half of it and found somebody to pace for the last part of it and just did that. It took another 2 to 3 weeks to become 100% and then it was time to ramp up the mileage for Boston. Boston 2006 ended up being a PR for me with a time of 3:01:09 The injury, in hindsight, prevented me from peaking too early for Boston which I attribute to the good race. Not sure what this injury means for CIM but I’ll just keep putting one foot in-front of the other till December and see how things go.

I’m crazy for training with Rogue

I got wind recently about some fun discussion in the Austin running community about Team Rogue and that we’re all a little loopy with the training we’re doing with Steve, Ruth and Karen. I definitely have my share of mental issues, I guess training with Rogue and loving it is just one of the symptoms. I was thinking through my crazy experiences training with Rogue since … what is it now 2004. I think the results say more than anything else. I ran Moto in a 3:27 in 2004. Then I started training with Rogue and ran a 3:10 at Chicago the same year. Ran Boston ‘05 for run, took it really easy and managed a 3:13.

Then came my first act of craziness when I joined the first Rogue Performance Project to gear up for Boston ‘06 which I managed to run in just over 3:01, basically to plan and expectation on the dot except for the minute slow on the first mile. I’d say that’s a pretty good crazy streak

My guess is the “crazy millage” people hear about Team Rogue doing has them wondering if we’re nuts, are we all going to get injured or burn out? My view on that is this group is a bunch of experienced runners and we know what we’re signing up for and believe in our coaches ability to help us reach our goals. For one thing, this phase of base building is really very different than other programs I’ve done in the past with Rogue or what I’ve seen with other groups. Yeah it’s a good amount for base mileage but we aren’t adding mileage AND frequency AND intensity, it seems like a very measured plan with distinct phases with specific purpose.

I must say though that as members of Team Rogue we do have a lot more responsibility in this program than others we have been in before. This is challenging program that will push some us harder than we have in the past. When Steve says he wants us to run easy all the time except for the Steady run on Tuesday and possibly right at the end on Saturdays in this phase we NEED to listen. If we don’t we may be getting the mileage but are missing the point about the balance to the program and the real purpose of each phase and the run each day … and basically risk not getting the intended benefit, increasing the chance of injury, risk burnout, and decrease the chance of ultimately meeting our goals.

So I’d say, yes I am crazy. I’d be lying if I said I’m not worried about getting injured. But as you can read from my earlier post I’m paying a lot of attention to all the aches and pains and adjusting. As experienced runners we’re supposed to pay attention to what we’re feeling and make the adjustments working with our coaches; the close attention we get from them in this group makes this possible, I took advantage of Steven’s office hours yesterday just for this purpose. That to me is what makes Team Rogue so interesting, it isn’t just cookie cutter, there’s a plan and we’re equally responsible for seeing it through as our coaches are.

Racing as a “team”

There’s a nice post by Ruth about Team Rogue on “training together and racing together”, basically about a large group all trying to perform for the same race. When I started with Team Rogue I wasn’t quite sure about racing CIM, it was more of I’ll go there and support everybody but now there is that nagging urge to run a marathon and get that sub-3 out of the way.

The post reminded me of the training I did with the Performance Project from 2005 to 2006, with the Boston Marathon  ‘06 being the goal. I’d trained with the same group of people for quite a while as part of the Performance Project, Kent, Duane and Tracy were a few. Even though we were all training together there were a lot of different races and distances invovled so the workouts people were running would be different and the folks with the later races wouldn’t necessarily have too many people to run with towards the end. So I do see the benefit of having the vast majority of us go for the same race.

The postivie of the Performance Project and I think of Team Rogue though is the team atmosphere. Boston ‘06 was a great experience for me and one of the main reasons was that there were a few of us that had trained together the whole time and were going up together. I ended up rooming with Kent but Tracy and I were about the same pace so we actually came up with two race plans together, then both agreed on one that was in between both our philophies. We ended up running the first 17 miles basically with each other, I suck at hills so I lost Tracy when they started and caught up at the top of heartbreak hill. After the marathon, we both shared what was going through our heads. I felt terrible the first 5 to 6 miles but didn’t let on since Tracy was there and he apparently felt bad the next 6 … so having that support really is nice. We did agree up front of course that this is the plan but if one person is feeling bad or not having a good day the other needs to run their race and not worry about it. Overall though, the experience of training together for close to 9 months, then travelling to a city, waiting in the athelete’s tent area, and then racing together was an experience that was a lot of fun and very rewarding.