Starting to dial in the race plan for CIM

Today was a marathon goal pace run. I’ve been varying my effort between a 2:55 and 3:00 hour marathon finish. That’s an average pace of between 6:41 and 6:53. I’m definitely not in 2:55 shape and I know it, I’m probably closer to the 3:00 hour range but have been doing some workouts at 2:55 to try and condition my body but then run CIM to get the sub 3 hour marathon monkey off my back.

Our run today was a total of 23 miles with a 4 mile warm-up and a 4 mile cool down. The 15 miles in between were at marathon goal pace. Three 5 mile loops with a 2 to 3 minute break in between each loop, which really made the loops a little harder since the legs felt heavier after stopping. My goal today was to run the first set at a 3:00 based pace or 6:53, then at 6:47 and then around 6:45 or so. The actual sets of 5 went a little differently.

5 Miles  Pace
34:43    6:57
33:56    6:47
33:21    6:40

I was off on the first 5 miles but don’t feel bad about it. I don’t run with a Garmin and the first few miles were marked a little short so I ended up thinking I was running too fast and backed off when I really shouldn’t have. I adjusted that for the next sets and knew the first few marked miles would be fast and it was the total time I needed to hit.

The worst part of the run had to be the cool down. After standing around for 10 minutes after finishing the third set my legs felt like lead weights. I managed to keep the side stitch at bay, didn’t ever even get to a point where I had to really adjust anything. I don’t think I’ve gotten rid of it completely so still need to get it checked out but it’s been somewhat at bay for the last couple of weeks which has made workouts much better.

Looking out 6 weeks to CIM it’s time to start visualizing the race for me. I’m thinking through a couple of race plan options. I want to break three hours and that’s the A goal. Now it’s down to the best way to do it. My current thought to break 3 hours is to run around a 6:50 pace (2:59:00 marathon) for the first 20 miles, then see how I feel and decide if I want to pick it up to a 6:45 ish pace gradually or not. If I were being more aggressive I’d go out to average a 6:47 pace or a 2:57:43 pace which is where I think my perfect race day would put me at my current fitness level. It’s funny how a minute here or there on the overall marathon is such a big deal, guess that’s what running at your limits does.

Am I missing out on something with “Smelling Salts”

Tomescu ran a great race in Beijing to win the women’s marathon. Both Paula and Deena had bad days, Paula because of her fracture in May hadn’t been able to train much and Deena pulled out less than 5 miles into the race holding her leg.

One thing that was strange was the “smelling salts” Tomescu apparently took during the run. There’s are a few people wondering what that was about on keepaustinrunning.org so if you have any insight into it let us know.

Thinking of doing the Si Labs Relay

I did the relay a few years ago with a group form work at NI, I think we came second in the corporate division at right over 3 hours. That got me thinking about the $100k prize for the team that breaks 2 hours at the even this year. You really need to be an elite runner to do that:

http://www.keepaustinrunning.org/forum/topic/show?id=2213086%3ATopic%3A813

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.

Marathon training for the next 12 weeks

We had a team meeting for Team Rogue after our run this morning. People ran between 14 and 20 miles today, 20 for the people that started in their Lydiard phase earlier. This is two weeks into the official program. Steve, Karen and Ruth (the coaches) shared an overview of the training and also some of the cool perks of being part of Team Rogue … I just like the sound of that … Team Rogue.

The Team Members
Steve started us off by having everybody share their name, coach, goal time and race. It was interesting to see the different goals for all the marathon runners. The majority of people were of course training for the California International Marathon, which will be fun since that’s going to be a huge group of Austin runners going for that Marathon. There were people trying to run a 2:30 to 3:59:59 so it’ll be a fun tie over the next 22 weeks.

Steve’s Passionate Explanation
Having trained with Rogue for going on 4 years I’m always impressed with how Steve can people excited about their training, their goals and to believe they can do it … as long as they focus and stay committed. One of the exciting things about this new program was the new approach Steve is having us take for this training season based on his experience training over the last few years and his running and reading about running since he was 6 … that blows my mind sometime, running since he was 6. Steve shared the standard info about the impact of Aerobic and Anaerobic conditioning, the thing that was really different from previous programs is that for this group Steve is focusing a lot on the Lydiard model. Other Rogue programs and most marathon programs have a lot of multi-pace training, this time round we’re starting with a 14 week base Lydiard base phase and will have some interesting runs planned including 30 mile runs and some interesting 25 mile runs with miles all out mixed in. I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge.

Karen and Ruth on The Cool Perks of Being in Team Rogue
There are definitely some cool perks to being part of the Team Rogue program.

1. Karen has arranged a block of rooms at a hotel for us take advantage of, I think we should rename it Hotel Rogue for the weekend!
2. We’ll be able to take advantage of the yoga classes at the Rogue Annex next to the Rogue Equipment running store.
3. We’ll be able to purchase, for a really good price, 2 sets of uniforms. Better yet we’ll get to vote on the colors. Now I have to say usually the Rogue gear looks pretty cool so our votes better live up to the past coolness of Rogue gear.
4. Strength training with Mark at South Congress Gym.

All in all I’m genuinely excited about this new marathon training program. Now I need to think about sucking it up and running the marathon with everybody instead of running a half … let’s see how that internal struggle goes.