Engaging the brain

Week 3: 10/26/09 - 11/1/09 (15 weeks remain)

Monday: Off day.

Tuesday: 10 miles, medium-long. Nothing really interesting here.

Wednesday: 13 miles, medium-long. So today was the first time the schedule called for back-to-back medium-long runs. I was actually quite pleased with how today's run turned out - I got started around 10:30 or 11:00 after having put in a full day at the lab and at the office, and although I didn't really feel like running when I first got back home, once I actually put the shoes on and got out the door, my body more or less settled into the appropriate pace on its own. Really, the point of all of this training is to develop your body's ability to just metronomically grind out mileage, independent of how you actually happen to be feeling, so seeing this in action was actually kinda cool.

Thursday: 5 miles, recovery day.

Friday: 9 miles, general aerobic.

Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day. Today's run kinda took me by surprise; I'm not quite sure how or why this happened, but for whatever reason, I just felt completely dead today. Maybe it was because I decided to run in the morning for the nice weather we've been having lately (ordinarily I've been running kinda late at night). In any case, I came down with a serious case of the runner's blahs (maybe I should have been a zombie for Halloween :-). So given that I wasn't really making much progress on the physical front today, I decided to try for some progress on the mental front. One of the overall goals that I set for myself as part of this training regimen is to learn to run smarter. I've not been very good at this in the past, and it's actually cost me on several occasions. So rather than do what I would ordinarily have done on an occasion like this (forcing myself to run harder), I tried to recognize it for what it was (having a bad day as a result of increasing intensity of the runs earlier in the week), and not stress out about it too much since today was supposed to be a recovery day anyway (i.e., one in which the goal is not to run fast, but to recover so that the following workout will be a good one). We'll see how this works out tomorrow.

In other news, today being Halloween (the most awesome holiday of them all) , I went down to 6th Street tonight to check out the freak show, and found it suitably epic :-).

Sunday: 17.5 miles, long run. So today was the longest day in the schedule so far, and to be honest, I was somewhat apprehensive before attempting this workout. You'll recall last week's workout didn't really go as well as it could have, and I ended up in a pretty sorry state by the time I got back. So although today was supposed to be just some generic long mileage, my personal goal (in keeping with the overall theme of learning to run smarter) was to practice running intelligently. In the past, I've had serious problems getting carried away early in races, and then just trying to hang on through the later half. For shorter races like the 5K, this isn't necessarily a bad idea, as you generally want to establish a good race position as early as possible for psychological reasons, and the race is sufficiently short that even if you're really hurting over the last mile, you can gut it out if necessary. However, in longer races like the half-marathon or marathon, burning through your glycogen stores early on will leave you in a world of hurt.

So my personal goals for today were:

1. Pay attention to maintaining consistent, timely pace, especially in the earlier miles where you know you have a tendency to go a little nuts.
   
2. Hydration/replenishment: Take along an appropriate quantity of Gatorade, and consume it steadily throughout the run to prevent (delay) dehydration/electrolyte depletion. (The body's thirst mechanism is notoriously slow - generally, by the time you actually feel thirsty, it's far too late to do anything about it - you'll have to take on a great deal of water fairly quickly to rehydrate, and this results in waterlogging and electrolyte depletion, both of which suck pretty bad. You gotta be proactive here.)
   

So that was the plan, and overall I think it went very well; I made sure not to go out too fast in the first few miles, found a decently quick yet comfortable pace, settled in, and kept rehydrating steadily throughout the run. I ended up running a consistent pace throughout, didn't hit the wall or cramp up, and ended up back home fairly tired (as one would hope, given that that's precisely the kind of stimulus these long depletion runs are supposed to provide) but otherwise in good shape - no pain, stiffness, or soreness. In fact, whereas last week I spent the next several hours following my run lying on my couch struggling to summon the strength to make myself dinner, this week I took a shower and went out to see Zombieland (which is AWESOME, by the way). I would call that a success :-).

Total weekly mileage: 59.5 <-- right direction again :-).

The Pain, the Pain!

Week 2: 10/19/09 - 10/25/09 (16 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day. Went down to the department and learned me some smooth tensor fields of type (r,s) on differentiable manifolds; you know, the usual day at the office.

Tuesday: 8 miles, general aerobic. Some generic junk mileage. Nothing interesting to report.

Wednesday: 10 miles, medium-long. So today was supposed to be a 12 mile day, but about 4 miles in, my left knee really started hurting in a way that was unfamiliar to me, just above the kneecap. I suspect this was due to the fact that I haven't really been taking very good care of myself over the past few weeks (months) in terms of getting an appropriate amount of sleep. On the plus side, though, the pain felt like it was more of a sharp muscular pain than joint pain, which makes me optimistic that if I'm smart about this over the next couple of days, I might be able to knock this thing down before it starts to become a serious problem. One of the things that's really screwed me up in the past is that I often don't use an appropriate amount of forethought in my approach to training. I've actually seen this trait in several of the other runners that I've run with in the past, especially in high school; you get a group of naturally competitive people together, who are highly motivated, who want to train hard to do well, and they get so caught up in going out and running hard in practice every day that they lose sight of the fact that having a training week consisting of six back-to-back hard workouts may not actually be the optimal training schedule. A couple of guys on my old high-school team took themselves out of action unnecessarily doing stuff like this, including me. When I got hurt a couple of years ago, I definitely prolonged my recovery time by getting overeager and trying to come back to running again before I was physically ready, which only resulted in me reinjuring myself and having to take more time off. So one of the things that I've been really cognizant of since having decided to go through with this training plan is the fact that I am somewhat injury prone, and this is more intense training than I've done in a while (certainly in several years), so I need to be smart about sticking to what the training schedule actually calls for (e.g., actually going easy on the easy days so that I can go hard on the hard days), and handling the nagging pains/problems that inevitably come up when training for longer distances in a way that will enable me to continue to get the most out of my training. So today, I cut my run a couple of miles short because the pain in my knee was actually starting to interfere with my running gait; as much as it pisses me off that I'm cutting a workout in the second week of training, I think that a dispassionate analysis indicates that whatever marginal benefit I might gain from running two additional miles on a moderate intensity day is more than offset by the expected setback of continuing to run in the presence of a potential injury, and possibly screwing up the next several weeks of training. As of right now, the most important workouts in this phase of my training are the lactate threshold workouts and the long runs on Sundays, so the goal is to get my knee back into shape for a good workout this weekend. So this is my attempt at trying to train smarter; we'll see how this works out for me.

Thursday: 4 miles, recovery. Still some lingering pain in the knee; hoping that a good night's sleep tonight will knock this thing down.

Friday: 8 miles, general aerobic. I did not want to run today - not at all. I've been busting ass on this geometry and physics course I'm taking in the math department, and I didn't get back home from the office until around 11:00, after having gotten a fairly paltry amount of sleep the previous day (like 5 hours). But I figured that this is likely what it's going to feel like during the later stages of the actual race (i.e., I'm ass tired and the last thing I want to do is run another 8 miles), so that in some perverse, masochistic sense, this is actually more of a reason to get out the door - it'll toughen me up mentally. So I put on the shoes and went out anyway. As it turns out, that was definitely the right decision. The fact that I was tired to begin with meant that I was relaxed when I started the run, so that I actually was able to lock in pretty comfortably at a consistent moderate pace (as the workout actually called for). As an added benefit, running for 8 miles at a consistent, moderate pace warmed up and stretched out my left quad in a way that the recovery run yesterday didn't (because of my schedule, I'm doing most of my runs in the early to late evenings, and it's been getting kinda cold here lately), so the pain in my left knee seems to be subsiding somewhat. Since it's Friday and I don't really have to get up early tomorrow, I'm hoping that getting a lot of sleep tonight will mean that my knee feels even better.

Saturday: 4 miles, recovery. Knee actually feels pretty good today. I think taking it a little easier earlier in the week has paid off. We'll see tomorrow.

Sunday: 15.5 miles with 9 miles at or above goal marathon pace. So today was meant to be the hard workout of the week. The plan called for a two-mile warmup from my apartment down to the eastern end of Town Lake, followed by an 8 mile section at or above marathon pace along Lakeshore and Riverside to the Congress Street bridge, up Congress to the Capitol, east along 12th to Red River, up Red River to Dean Keeton and west to Guadalupe to loop around the outer edge of campus, and then back through the Capitol grounds and down Congress to the river. I was actually quite pleased at how the marathon pace section went - I kept up a consist, quick pace throughout, and even tacked on an extra mile at this pace when going from the Congress Street bridge back to the I-35 bridge. Unfortunately, I was working pretty hard, and in particular sweating quite a bit through that first 10 or 11 mile section, and although I stopped to get some water at a park at the end of the hard section, I hadn't been hydrating during the hard section itself. This created a situation where I had 1) already sweated quite a bit, 2) was mildly dehydrated, and 3) was trying to get sufficient water at one go to somewhat rehydrate myself. Having thought about what happened after having gotten back from the workout, I'm pretty sure that the combination loss of sweat (and salts) + rapid influx of water (diluting whatever salts were left over) meant that my electrolyte levels ended up being lower than they should have been, because I very shortly thereafter started feeling like death and cramping up everywhere. Something similar happened to me during the last marathon I ran, which did turn out to be due to low levels of sodium (a mild case of hyponatremia caused by excessive consumption of water without electrolyte replenishment). So although the hard section of the workout went well, the last two or three miles were kind of a disaster, and I was kind of a wreck by the time I made it back to my place. On the other hand, I think this is what is now referred to as a "teachable moment": I gotta get a bottle of Gatorade or something for next week's long run...

Total weekly mileage: 49.5 <--wrong direction :-/

So my training this week suffered somewhat due to my cutting some of the workouts down earlier in the week in response to my knee. On the other hand, this did have the desired effect of enabling my knee to bounce back to the point where I could run a strong hard workout at the end of the week, and avoid a long-term injury that could screw up subsequent training weeks. I guess that counts as a win :-/. We'll see how next week goes.

As Promised

So against my better judgment (in light of the massive pile of fail set down on this blog for everyone on the ‘tubes to enjoy), I’ve decided to begin training for another marathon attempt… again (as promised in my last post). This time, however, I’ve decided that I’m actually gonna do things right. You know, things like “proper training”, “proper nutrition”, ‘”proper rest”, and most importantly, “having some idea what the fuck I’m doing”.

You see, (and I know this is going to sound somewhat ridiculous) the last time I’d seriously been in “training” for a marathon, the day-to-day workouts that I was doing basically consisted of me just making shit up. This was bad for several reasons. First, I had no clue what kinds of physiological adaptations made for a successful marathon runner, and as a result, had no idea what kinds of training to do. Indeed, since I didn’t really know what I was doing, I ended up just trying to adapt the kinds of training I’d been doing in cross country. Additionally, at the time I decided that I was going to attempt the race, there was only a month of available training time left. Since I was just coming off of the track season, I was still pretty (track) fit, but knew that I would not have the time to adequately build up to any great deal of mileage in the four weeks that I had remaining. Given this set of circumstances, together with my own staggering level of ignorance, I decided that the best thing to do would be to try to build up my lactate threshold, reasoning that if I could run 5:50 to 6:00 miles comfortably for 8 to 10 miles, then I should be reasonably comfortable running 6:30 to 7:00 miles for 26.2 miles. That’s how you end up with a training week that looks like this:

Monday: 8 mile tempo
Tuesday: 8 mile tempo
Wednesday: 8 mile tempo
Thursday: 8 mile tempo
Friday: 8 mile tempo
Saturday: 10 miles (long run)

Pure genius. In fact, on the morning of race day itself, the farthest I had ever run, in my entire life, was 13 miles, which I had done exactly once before. I’m pretty sure that the only reasons I actually finished the race were 1) I was too ignorant to realize that what I was attempting was absurd and 2) by the time the profound stupidity of what I was attempting hit home (around mile 18), I was just too damn stubborn to quit.

So this time around, I finally got wise and decided to actually get a real training plan. I asked Ryan Ogliore for some sage advice, as I recalled that he had spoken highly of one particular training plan that he had found in some book, and which had apparently produced very favorable results when he had implemented it. Ryan was kind enough to direct me to Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger.

So far, I’ve been quite impressed with Advanced Marathoning. Pfitzinger is apparently a sports physiology researcher, so the majority of the book is actually an explanation of what the marathon is all about on the level of biochemistry; it also introduces training elements like lactate threshold and V0_2 max workouts in terms of the physiological attributes that they are designed to improve, which is nice in that it provides concrete motivation and explanation for the kinds of workouts that the book recommends.

The book itself actually provides six distinct training schedules, which are classified according to total completion time (12 or 18 weeks) and level of weekly mileage/difficulty (30 – 50, 55-70, and over 70). Given my previous experience in the marathon (i.e., actually getting a pretty good time given that I had no real training), the fact that I’m somewhat injury-prone, and the fact that I don’t have a limitless quantity of time to allocate to running, I’ve decided to go with the 18 week, 55 – 70 mile plan. The nice thing about this schedule is that, by redistributing the mileage appropriately amongst the weekly workouts, you can actually get some really solid longer and harder runs in while still keeping the overall weekly mileage reasonable, which equates to less time that needs to be invested (relatively speaking), and a decreased risk of injury.

So I’ve got (what seems to me at least) to be a reasonable plan for training. What’s the actual goal? Last time (again, having no serious training), I ran a 3:11:08, having run 6:30s up until around mile 18 with a precipitous decline thereafter. Now 3:10 is the Boston qualifying time for my class, so pretty much any improvement will get me a qualifying time; however, training for and racing a marathon requires a rather substantial investment in effort, and it seems kind of weak sauce to go through all this trouble for a 1:08 PR (again, over a time that was obtained with no real training or preparation). So as long as I’m going to do this, it seems as though I should make it worth my while and go for the sub-3:00. Based on these considerations, I’ve decided that I’m aiming for a time somewhere between 2:50 and 2:55; I’m planning on being fairly conservative in my approach to this race, just to make sure that I do, in fact, qualify, so in actuality, it will likely be closer to 2:55. Just for the record, those paces come out to approximately 6:30 and 6:40, respectively, which is actually about what I was running for the first 18 miles or so on my last attempt (again, with no real training or preparation). So this seems like something that should be fairly doable with the proper training and preparation.

OK, so I’ve got a definite goal and what seems to be a reasonable plan for achieving it, so it seems the only thing left to do is put some work in. It’s go time!

Week 1: 10/12/09 - 10/18/09 (17 weeks remain)

Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 9 mile run with 4 mile lactate threshold uptempo. So this Pfitzinger guy isn’t playing – the first day’s workout calls for a 9 mile run that includes a four mile tempo. Now I’ve been putting in base mileage over the summer in expectation of having to do some serious work once the real training started, but this was the first serious hard running I’ve done in almost a year. Fortunately, it seems like whatever I’ve been doing has worked out pretty well. Ran two miles from my apartment down to the east end of Town Lake, stretched out, then did a four-mile tempo loop clockwise around the lake, crossing over the I-35 bridge. I feel like it went pretty well; I don’t have a working watch right now, but I estimate that I was running somewhere around 6:00, or possibly slightly faster (5:50). More importantly, it was consistent throughout the workout – the point of these is not so much pure speed as in getting used to maintaining a consistent, quick pace so that your body can become accustomed to producing energy and flushing waste products out of your muscles while you’re moving at speed. That having been said, I definitely did started feeling it around the 2 mile mark. Cooldown and moderate jog back to my place, plus a short side loop to get a total of 9. Feeling pretty good about the first day of training.

Wednesday: 11 miles, medium-long. Good god this sucked. Woke up this morning feeling the lingering effects of yesterday’s workout: serious dead legs. Then I had to go run 11 in 90 degree heat and high humidity (we’ve been having some wildly oscillating weather recently – 60 and overcast one day, then 90 and blazing sun the next). Needless to say, this was not my finest hour; I started the workout feeling dead, and things pretty much went downhill from there. Gutted it out, but it was not pleasant, and I can’t say my performance was really and that great.

Thursday: 5 miles, recovery day. So I remember looking at the schedule at the start of the week and thinking why is the third day a recovery day? Now I understand. Ran an easy 5 miles today. Hopefully this will loosen my legs up a little bit; the previous two days’ workouts have left them pretty sore and stiff.

Friday: 9 miles, general aerobic. Feeling a lot better today after yesterday’s recovery. Still not 100%, but maintained good cruising speed without an unreasonable amount of effort.

Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day. Another recovery day. I assume this is in here because tomorrow is the first serious long day so far.

Sunday: 15.5 miles, medium-long. So today was the first real hurdle in terms of mileage. Went for a 15 mile run through downtown, past the capital, and around the university. Overall, I was pretty pleased; didn’t really start to feel fatigue until around mile 12, and maintained a good, consistent pace throughout. Comparing where I am now in my training with where I was the last time I attempted a marathon makes me think that I might actually be able to pull this off :-).

Total weekly mileage: 54.5