Week 9: 7/4/11 - 7/10/11 (3 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: Super busy in lab, didn't actually run :-/.
Wednesday: 8 miles w/ 6 x 1000 m intervals, departing every 6 minutes. The goal was to run these at 3:20 pace (80 second quarters), and while I hit this pace throughout most of the workout, the variance was super high: 3:05, 3:17, 3:19, 3:21, 3:23, 3:27; this corresponds to speeds between 74 second quarters (4:56 mile pace) and 82 second quarters (5:32 mile pace). On the other hand, by the time I got to the end of the workout, I was crashing pretty hard, so I think it's safe to say that 5:30 pace is about my current survival shuffle speed, which is actually good to know...
Thursday: 15 miles, medium long run.
Friday: 8 miles, general aerobic.
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery.
Sunday: 20 mile long run.
Total weekly mileage: 57
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
No clever title this week
Week 8: 6/27/11 - 7/3/11 (4 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: Didn't run; busy doing shit.
Wednesday: 9 miles with 5 x 600 intervals. This was my first time doing a hard workout since having been back, and while not stellar, I think the results were acceptable. I did the intervals beginning every 3:00 minutes, and ran in 1:54, 1:50, 1:50, 1:53, 1:54. The spread was a little on the high side, and the speed wasn't what it was the last time I ran this (~ 5.3% decrease in performance), although some of this decrease in performance may also be do to not yet having acclimated to the increased temperature and humidity since March.
Thursday: 15 mile medium long run. I got into the zone on this one for the first time since having been back. Cruised down the Charles to the Arsenal Bridge and back
Friday: 6 miles, recovery.
Saturday: Didn't run; instead, crossed trained by going on a bike trip (~50 miles round-trip) with SP to Walden Pond.
Sunday: 18 miles, long run. This was a total shitstorm. I decided to run earlier today (~1:00) than I customarily do, since I was planning to meet up with some friends for dinner later in the evening. The increased heat and humidity (> 80 degrees and ~70% humidity) were miserable. Better luck next week, I suppose :-/.
Total weekly milage: 48 (plus biking).
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: Didn't run; busy doing shit.
Wednesday: 9 miles with 5 x 600 intervals. This was my first time doing a hard workout since having been back, and while not stellar, I think the results were acceptable. I did the intervals beginning every 3:00 minutes, and ran in 1:54, 1:50, 1:50, 1:53, 1:54. The spread was a little on the high side, and the speed wasn't what it was the last time I ran this (~ 5.3% decrease in performance), although some of this decrease in performance may also be do to not yet having acclimated to the increased temperature and humidity since March.
Thursday: 15 mile medium long run. I got into the zone on this one for the first time since having been back. Cruised down the Charles to the Arsenal Bridge and back
Friday: 6 miles, recovery.
Saturday: Didn't run; instead, crossed trained by going on a bike trip (~50 miles round-trip) with SP to Walden Pond.
Sunday: 18 miles, long run. This was a total shitstorm. I decided to run earlier today (~1:00) than I customarily do, since I was planning to meet up with some friends for dinner later in the evening. The increased heat and humidity (> 80 degrees and ~70% humidity) were miserable. Better luck next week, I suppose :-/.
Total weekly milage: 48 (plus biking).
First week back
Week 7: 6/20/11 - 6/26/11 (5 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day:
Tuesday: 9 miles, general aerobic.
Wednesday: 14 miles, long run. This was the first serious run I did since having been backed - it really sucked. Clearly my legs have forgotten how to run in the intervening 5 weeks.
Thursday: 7 miles, recovery.
Friday: Can't remember what I did...
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery.
Sunday: 20 miles, long run. I was actually kind of surprised at how well this went, given how long I'd not been doing any serious running. Although I was tired by the end, I never actually hit the wall. I think this is actually a pretty promising sign that there may be some residual fitness left over from April.
Total weekly mileage: 56.
Monday: Off day:
Tuesday: 9 miles, general aerobic.
Wednesday: 14 miles, long run. This was the first serious run I did since having been backed - it really sucked. Clearly my legs have forgotten how to run in the intervening 5 weeks.
Thursday: 7 miles, recovery.
Friday: Can't remember what I did...
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery.
Sunday: 20 miles, long run. I was actually kind of surprised at how well this went, given how long I'd not been doing any serious running. Although I was tired by the end, I never actually hit the wall. I think this is actually a pretty promising sign that there may be some residual fitness left over from April.
Total weekly mileage: 56.
Break's over, back to the war!
So once again, it's been a while since I've updated the blag, so I figured I'd kick off the next flurry of posts with a quick recap of what I've been up to since April.
After the Boston Marathon, I took a couple of weeks off to recover/finish up the term, and then started trying to put together some plans for the summer. As part of this, I decided on a whim to check out the San Francisco Marathon website, since I'd always wanted to run it (San Francisco is really a beautiful city, and I have a lot of college buddies in NorCal whom I've not seen for a couple of years). It turned out that my time in the Boston Marathon qualified me for "sub-seeded" athlete status, meaning that they'd let me line up at the front on race day and knock about 40% off the registration fee. Also, apparently Sophia Bush is going to be running to fundraise for charity, so there's that, too :-P. Anyway, it seemed like a pretty sweet deal, so I signed up for it.
About the same time, another friend from college who's also here with me suggested that we both go on a trip to Israel that the MIT and Harvard Hillel groups were organizing for late May/early June. This also seemed like a pretty sweet deal, so I jumped at the chance. The trip was great, and I was able to get back into Boston just in time (read: with six hours to spare) to catch another flight back to Los Angeles for five days to see my sister's graduation from UCLA. Altogether, it was a pretty crazy three weeks, but definitely a lot of fun.
So the summer has been pretty damn awesome so far. However, the San Francisco Marathon is on July 31, and the Boston Marathon was on April 18, which (allowing for a two-week recovery) only leaves about 12 weeks of training for SF. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a huge problem: I customarily train on an 18-week schedule, but I also have an accelerated 12-week schedule that I'm comfortable using. However, the first two weeks of this schedule coincided with the last two weeks of the term at MIT, and the next three weeks coincided with my travel to Jewistan and LA, so essentially no training was done over this five-week period (I think I ran a total of two times, about five miles each). The upshot of this, of course, is that I'm now reduced from an 18-week training schedule to effectively a 7-week training schedule.
Of course, nothing could possibly go wrong :-P.
After the Boston Marathon, I took a couple of weeks off to recover/finish up the term, and then started trying to put together some plans for the summer. As part of this, I decided on a whim to check out the San Francisco Marathon website, since I'd always wanted to run it (San Francisco is really a beautiful city, and I have a lot of college buddies in NorCal whom I've not seen for a couple of years). It turned out that my time in the Boston Marathon qualified me for "sub-seeded" athlete status, meaning that they'd let me line up at the front on race day and knock about 40% off the registration fee. Also, apparently Sophia Bush is going to be running to fundraise for charity, so there's that, too :-P. Anyway, it seemed like a pretty sweet deal, so I signed up for it.
About the same time, another friend from college who's also here with me suggested that we both go on a trip to Israel that the MIT and Harvard Hillel groups were organizing for late May/early June. This also seemed like a pretty sweet deal, so I jumped at the chance. The trip was great, and I was able to get back into Boston just in time (read: with six hours to spare) to catch another flight back to Los Angeles for five days to see my sister's graduation from UCLA. Altogether, it was a pretty crazy three weeks, but definitely a lot of fun.
So the summer has been pretty damn awesome so far. However, the San Francisco Marathon is on July 31, and the Boston Marathon was on April 18, which (allowing for a two-week recovery) only leaves about 12 weeks of training for SF. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a huge problem: I customarily train on an 18-week schedule, but I also have an accelerated 12-week schedule that I'm comfortable using. However, the first two weeks of this schedule coincided with the last two weeks of the term at MIT, and the next three weeks coincided with my travel to Jewistan and LA, so essentially no training was done over this five-week period (I think I ran a total of two times, about five miles each). The upshot of this, of course, is that I'm now reduced from an 18-week training schedule to effectively a 7-week training schedule.
Of course, nothing could possibly go wrong :-P.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Greatest Show on Earth
Monday, April 18 (Patriots' Day) 2011, 115th Annual Boston Marathon
Pre-Race: Woke up at 5:00 IN THE AM this morning in order to get down to Boston Common in time to catch the bus out to Hopkinton. I wasn't able to fall asleep last night until 11:00, but in spite of only having gotten six hours of sleep, I woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed (possibly due to the excitement of Marathon Monday having finally arrived). Gustavo had crashed at my place last night so that we could head out to the buses together, and apparently hadn't been able to get more than a couple of hours. Gustavo and I had our customary, ritualistic pre-race breakfasts (mine: some white bread with honey, a banana, a little bit of yogurt, and some tea; his: some avocados with honey -- really, these just serve as honey delivery systems) and then left at 5:30 to for the Central Square T stop to catch the Red Line into Boston Common.
Patriots' Day being a statewide holiday and Cambridge being a relatively small city, there was no traffic out so early, and the streets were deserted except for the small stream of runners (easily identifiable by their distinctive green gear-drop bags) trickling down the Inbound stairwell of Central Station. The station was thick with an air of nervous anticipation as the platform swelled with runners waiting for the next inbound train. I was surprised at just how many runners there were; ordinarily, Central Station isn't all that crowded, even at peak times, but we still managed to fill the platform. Finally, the next train arrived, and we all piled in:
What had started as a trickle of runners entering Central Station became a stream as we moved into Boston along the Red Line, until we finally emerged from Park Street Station to find a veritable sea of athletes inundating Boston Common, waiting to be shuttled out to Hopkinton:
Fortunately for us, Gustavo managed to spot a reasonably-sized bus line amidst this crush of people, and we actually made it out of the Common within about half an hour of having arrived. After about an hour-long bus ride, we arrived at Hopkinton High School, the athletes' village and staging area for the Boston Marathon.
My first impression upon stepping out of the bus was a slight shock at finally seeing the scope the of the Boston Marathon. I knew intellectually that this was a large race (~27,000 runners in all), but I don't think that intellectual knowledge really registered at a visceral level until I saw just how large the athletes' village was. Essentially, the entire school grounds had been overrun with athletes. The center of the playing fields was dominated by a huge white tent set up over long tables filled with bagels, bananas, Gatorade and coffee for the athletes, port-a-pottys had been set up around the periphery of the field (there must have been on the order of 75 of them or so), and one end of the field had been allocated to a pair of scissors-lifts and a Jumbo-tron. But the one thing I found most impressive was just the sheer number of people: nearly every square inch of the field had some athlete sitting, lying down, stretching, etc., to the point where one had to be careful while walking around not to accidentally step on some unfortunate (perhaps unconscious) athlete.
Gustavo and I had managed to get in to the athletes' village around 7:30, and the first group of runners wasn't scheduled to be called to the start line until around 9:15, which left us with just under 2 hours to kill before we had to start moving. Although Gustavo and I had qualified with nearly identical times (2:52 and 2:53, respectively), it just so happened that the cutoff time between corrals fell in between them (I was assigned to corral 1, and he was in corral 2), so we decided to split up and each prepare for our own race as we saw fit.
Unfortunately, at this point in the day, it was still fairly cold (~40 degrees or so) and very windy, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself until the start of the race. I eventually figured that a cup of coffee would help warm me up, and that a quick shot of caffeine might help "clear my system" (a crucial part of race preparation) before heading to the start line. I killed some time waiting in line for the coffee, downed it pretty quickly (for warmth), and then started looking around for somewhere to shelter from the wind until it was time to head to the start line.
I eventually noticed a recessed doorway in one of the brick school buildings around the edges of the field, and decided it looked like a pretty good wind shelter in which to hide out until it was time to go. It turned out that another runner had had the same idea - a cute blond club runner from Purdue who was running Boston for the first time. We were joined about 10 minutes later by an obviously very cold young-ish (maybe 30?) guy from the Dominican Republic who was also running Boston for the first time. The three of us sat huddling in this doorway chatting and trying to keep warm until 9:00, when I left to make my customary pre-race pilgrimage to the commode, drop off my gear bag, and head to the start line.
By now the athletes village was pretty packed, even more so than when I had first arrived, and as I looked around at the mass of people, I began to think I may have just screwed myself by waiting too long to get in line for the port-a-pottys (I had budgeted 15 minutes for hitting up the bathroom, as corral 1 was supposed to leave for the start line at 9:15). Fortunately, in spite of the huge number of people, the standing army of port-a-pottys (which had seemed wildly excessive when I had first arrived that morning) kept the wait time down to a reasonable 25 minutes. When I got out, I quickly pulled off my warmups and stuffed them in my gear bag, dropped the bag off in my assigned bus, and headed for the start line.
Corral 1 had been scheduled to leave the athletes village at 9:15, even though the race wasn't supposed to start until 10:00; this is due to the fact that the starting line is 3/4 of a mile from the staging area, and the race organizers had budgeted 45 minutes for athletes to leisurely walk from the high school to their corrals. Unfortunately, by now I was running about 10 minutes behind the official schedule, and I hadn't actually had a chance to warm up yet, so I decided that I would just jog down to the starting line as my warmup, and then stretch out in the corral until the start of the race.
The street was packed with athletes walking, so I had to dodge my way through the crowd as I jogged out to the starting line. I fell in behind a line of athletes also working their way through the crowd at a jog, and as we made our way, I allowed my attention to drift from watching the guy in front of me to trying to soak up as much of what was going on around me as possible: the cops directing traffic, the spectators starting to line up around the starting corrals, even these awesome "No Stopping" street closure signs that were posted up and down the marathon route:
Unfortunately, I was sufficiently distracted while taking in my surroundings that I failed to notice the guy in front of me make a quick dodge to avoid something, and ended up running straight into the end of the handrail for a heavy metal guardrail street (where the athletes were) from the sidewalk (where the spectators were) . It nailed me right in the chest, about an inch to the right of my sternum, and left me doubled-over and stunned for a good 30 seconds or so (it also prompted a couple of audible gasps from some nearby spectators). Fortunately, in spite of the significant pain/shock of the initial impact, it had hit me in the ribcage and consequently hadn't really done any significant damage (aside from later producing an awesome-looking diamond-shaped bruise).
After I caught my breath, I continued jogging out to the first corral (now being careful to pay much more attention to where I was going, and running more towards the center of the street where there would likely be fewer obstacles). I got to corral 1 at about 9:35 or 9:40, and started stretching out. For whatever reason, the starting corrals seemed to be sheltered from the wind, and the sun had come out; it was in the high 50s/low 60s, clear and sunny - essentially perfect conditions. As I stretched out, I chatted with some of the other runners around me, who told me that we could also expect a tailwind(!). I mentioned something to the effect that it seemed like the stars were aligning for us weather-wise, and one of the older runners nearby mentioned to me that we really had lucked out - he said conditions like this only came around for Boston once every decade or so.
By 9:50, the corral was packed, the athletes had finished their pre-race preparations, and we were all standing around in that excited, nervous way that distance runners do while waiting around at the starting line. I tried to kill some more time by chatting with some of the other runners around me, asking them what their goal time was, etc. Gustavo was number 1041 and hadn't made it into corral 1; I was 905, which pretty much meant that I had just barely squeaked in, and I was curious to see how fast the other guys up at the front were. Many of them said they were going for times in the 2:45 range; I spoke to one woman in front of me who said she was trying to qualify for the American Olympic trials. Jesus these people are fast, I thought to myself; better not get too excited at the start, or you'll end up blowing up spectacularly around mile 20.
At 9:55, the race organizers brought out the men's elite field to the front of the corral, announcing some of the more famous runners by name (including American Ryan Hall, to much fanfare). As soon as the elite field was in place, they sang the national anthem, and an announcement was made over the PA system declaring that the race officials were ready to go, and this would be the final announcement prior to the starting gun. There was about a 30 second beat, filled with that familiar tense, eerie silence immediately prior to the start of a race...
and then the gun!
Tip of the Spear (miles 1 to mile 7): Holy shit, I thought, this is it, it's finally here! After six years of preparation and anticipation, I was actually, finally, running the Boston Marathon! And I'm in the front! I get to start out right at the beginning with the super-fast guys!
I hadn't really settled on a time goal or race strategy prior to the race; I figured I would let that be a game-time decision. I had run a 2:52 at the Austin Marathon a little over a year ago, but Austin was one of the faster courses in Texas, and Boston was supposed to be one of the toughest marathon courses around due to the presence of some rolling hills relatively late in the course. I had also been missing a lot of workouts in the final weeks prior to the race due to some health issues, so I wasn't sure how I would be feeling come race day. Consequently, I didn't have a good estimate for a time goal in mind, but I figured anything under 3:00 would probably constitute a pretty good day.
Furthermore, every experienced Boston Marathon runner I had spoken to before the race had mentioned that a classic failure mode for this course was going out too fast. The course is net downhill, with no significant elevation gains at all for the first 16 or so miles; however, mile 16 marks the start of the Newton Hills, a series of four hills culminating in the infamous Heartbreak Hill, which crests just before mile 21. Many runners, getting carried away by all the easy downhills early in the race, come out way too fast, and then crash and burn hard when confronted with a 5 mile hill series right at the point where they may already be on the verge of exhausting their glycogen stores.
In addition to the words of warning I had received from more experienced runners, I also knew that I myself had a propensity to come out way too fast in the early stages of a race and then crash and burn later on. Based on this, I decided that I would basically keep it in first gear until somewhere around mile 18 and then reevaluate how I was feeling. Besides, I thought myself, you've been looking forward to this for a long time; you shouldn't forget to enjoy yourself while you're at it.
I came across the starting line feeling surprisingly light on my feet (I had been concerned with a residual feeling of sluggishness in my final workouts in the two days leading up to the race). It felt good to finally be moving after the nervous anticipation at the starting line. The beginning of the course was actually on a downhill, and the sides of the course were absolutely packed with screaming spectators. This is fantastic!, I thought.
It probably also helped that I had decided to represent for MIT by wearing a maroon UnderArmor T-shirt with "MIT" written across the front in silver lettering. I was far enough out in the front of the race that individual runners were still visible, and the MIT logo seemed to attract the attention of a lot of the spectators. It was pretty nice having the "home field advantage" - pretty much every couple of seconds I could hear somebody yelling out "Go MIT!" or "Go Engineers!", which certainly made getting through the race a lot easier. Nothing quite like 26.2 miles of screaming spectators to boost the fighting spirit/ego :-).
I was having a great time as we cruised through the first mile mark - at 6:00. That is a bit faster than the agreed-upon pace, I thought to myself. Eh, it's cool, I'll just relax through this first downhill bit until the pack spreads out and I can lock in with some guys at around 6:30 to 6:45 pace.
I kept cruising along, not really feeling as though I was working especially hard, having a great time and just soaking up the experience. But I noticed, as time went on, that although I didn't feel like I was working very hard, my mile times were significantly below what I really thought they ought to have been so early in the race: I came through the second mile at around 12:15, the 5k at around 19:00, and the 10k at about 38:00. This was not the plan, I thought to myself, you were supposed to go out conservatively.
Somewhere between the 6 and 7 mile markers, I started to reevaluate my race strategy. You know, I thought to myself, I'm feeling pretty good. We have great race conditions - race conditions that only come around once a decade! - the energy from the crowd is great, and you're surrounded by guys that are legit as hell. If ever there were a time to go for the PR, this is it. Also, how awesome would it be to PR at the Boston Marathon?
As I was mulling this over, I passed a school that had about 50 or 75 people in front of it who looked like they were part of a sports team. As I ran by, they caught sight of my T-shirt and started chanting "M-I-T! M-I-T!", which 1) was AWESOME :-D! and 2) perhaps swayed my decision-making more than it strictly should have (I'll keep it real, I'm not totally immune to having my ego stoked on occasion :-p).
As I passed the 7 mile mark I pounded back the first of three energy gels I had brought along with me (based on my favorable experiences with them in the Austin Marathon, I had decided not to mess with this part of my race strategy), and reached a decision: Fuck it, we'll do it live!
Natick (mile 7 to mile 12): Ok, I thought, what's the new plan? I took stock of my situation: my two most pressing concerns were 1) I was currently running at a pace that far exceeded what I had trained for, and 2) I was starting to feel slightly warmer than I would have preferred (I realized then that wearing a dark-colored T-shirt might not have been the wisest possible choice).
I concentrated on checking out how my body was functioning, particularly my legs and breathing. I'm not breathing hard - in fact I've actually been chatting with some of the other runners around me throughout the race - and I don't feel any of the characteristic burning sensation in my legs, so I'm probably not running above my lactate threshold pace, I thought. Thank God I hammered the LT and V02-max training runs. That means the only thing I have to worry about is premature glycogen depletion.
I knew as a result of having read this study (coincidentally, produced by a researcher working in CSAIL, my own research lab) earlier in the year that since I was running faster than I had planned, I would be burning through my glycogen stores more quickly than what I had trained for. The only way that I could stave off hitting the wall would be to take on more carbohydrates during the race than I had originally planned. I had a fixed number of energy gels with me, so there was nothing I could do about that, but I had only planned to stop for Gatorade every third or fourth mile or so. Fortunately, I knew the Boston Marathon had Gatorade stops every mile, in contrast to most marathons. Ok, I thought, I'll just have to take on some additional carbohydrates in the form of Gatorade. I decided to start taking on Gatorade every other mile. That'll boost your carbohydrate intake, I thought, and should also help keep you a little cooler.
But what to do about pacing? I knew that I was going to be in serious trouble if I already felt fatigued when I hit the Newton Hills. Ok, I thought, you started running at this pace because you just naturally fell into it - no straining. Just keep going at constant effort - stay relaxed, and if you need to drop pace to do it, that's ok. The race isn't really going to start until mile 16; you just need to make sure that you show up there in good shape.
So the new goal was to stay relaxed and keep it together until mile 16. I figured that if I could arrive at the start of the Newton Hills in good shape, I shouldn't have too much trouble getting over them in one piece. If you can just get past Heartbreak Hill, you'll be alright, I thought; hell, even if you blow up afterwards and drag ass all the way into Copley Square, you'll have made up so much time already that it'll probably still work out fine.
The course between miles 7 and 13 passes through the town of Natick, and is fairly unremarkable terrain-wise: there are minor speed bumps, but the course is essentially flat. This section of the race passed uneventfully: I stayed relaxed, kept up the carbohydrate intake, and stayed on pace as planned.
Entering Wellesley (mile 12 to mile 16): The halfway mark for the Boston Marathon is in the town of Wellesley, right next to Wellesley College. In fact, the marathon course actually passes through the Wellesley campus, and it's traditional for the students to come out and cheer for the runners on Marathon Monday, creating something known as the Wellesley Scream Tunnel. I'd heard prior to the race that the cheering is in fact so loud that it's audible from a mile away.
As it turns out, this is in fact the case.
As we entered the town of Wellesley approaching the 12-mile mark, it actually was possible for us hear the Wellesley students off in the distance. As we approached the Scream Tunnel, I somewhat amusedly noticed that some of the runners around me were actually perceptibly increasing their pace (I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the mile times near the campus drop precipitously :-). The Scream Tunnel itself was somewhere between a half-mile and a mile long (depending upon which parts you wanted to count), and was pretty thickly packed with students pressed up against the metal crowd barriers on the sides of the course. As is customary among the marathon spectators, many of them had brought signs with encouraging messages on them; however, in a part of Boston Marathon tradition unique to the Scream Tunnel, some of them had brought signs asked for kisses: I saw "Kiss me, I'm Californian", "Kiss me, I'm graduating", etc. It was pretty epic :-).
I came through the half-marathon mark at 1:20:28, just over a minute slower than my half-marathon PR, but still feeling pretty good. Just after the halfway point, we began a gradual incline that continued up to around mile 15 or so. I figured that if I were going to make a critical error at some point during the race, it would be here: we were close enough to the start of the race that I still felt reasonably fresh, but still far enough out that if I burned through my glycogen stores trying to motor up the inclines I could look forward to a long, slow, agonizing death march to the finish. Just stay relaxed, I thought to myself. If these other guys want to blow by you, just let them go; you gotta show up to the start of the Newton Hills relatively fresh.
I eased up on the pace a little on some of the inclines through the next couple of miles in order to maintain constant effort. As I passed through miles 14 and 15, I was pretty pleased with myself. This isn't so bad, I thought, so far I'm really not feeling any negative effects from the increased pace.
Around mile 15 1/2, we began about a half-mile stretch of relatively steep downhill, which was immediately followed by the start of a relatively steep incline, one of the steepest we'd seen so far. As I began the climb up, I passed some road signs indicating that we were entering the town of Newton.
Newton Hills (mile 16 to mile 21): As I started my climb up the first of the Newton Hills, I though to myself, these next five miles are the race. Once you get out of these hills, it's either flat or downhill to the finish, and there are going to be tons of screaming people around. All you have to do is get through the next five miles relatively intact, and you'll be able to gut out a good finish. Just stay relaxed, and keep it together.
The first two of the four Newton hills didn't actually seem all that bad; I crested the top of the second one just past the 18-mile mark, and began a gradual 3/4 mile downhill stretch that preceded the final two hills. As I passed the 19-mile mark and started the ascent up the third hill, I started to feel the first creeping effects of fatigue. Still, that was to be expected; we were coming up on the later stages of the race, and I'd been running continuously for almost 2 hours. You're doing fine, everything's going according to plan, I thought to myself, just stay relaxed, keep it together, and continue making forward progress.
After the crest of the third hill, we had about a half mile stretch of relatively flat ground before the start of the final climb. As I passed mile 20, in spite of my increasing fatigue, I was feeling increasingly optimistic. You're almost out of the woods, and you're definitely on PR pace, I thought. One more hill to go, and you'll be home free.
As we passed the 20.5 mile mark, we encountered what is traditionally regarded as the crucible of the Boston Marathon: Heartbreak Hill. This part of the course was pretty thickly lined with spectators who had come out to help motivate runners to just keep moving up this final incline; a lot of them were carrying signs to the effect that this was the last major hurdle before the finish line. As we started up the incline, I mentally steeled myself for this last push skyward before the final downhill stretch into Boston and the finish line. Just keep on doing what you're doing, I thought, stay relaxed, stay focused, keep making forward progress. As the grade increased to its steady state, I settled into my familiar hill-climbing rhythm and resigned myself to one last uphill slog...
And then looked up to see a giant, inflatable, bounce-house looking thing on the side of the course with a big sign on top proclaiming that I had just crested Heartbreak Hill. Wait, what? I thought. I'm at the top? THAT was Heartbreak Hill, terror of the Boston Marathon? That piddling speedbump?
Turns out that Heartbreak Hill isn't actually all that big: according to Wikipedia, it has a total elevation gain of only 88 feet over the course of only .4 miles. You can imagine my surprise when after less than 5 minutes of serious hill-climbing effort, I found myself at the peak of what I had often heard more experienced Boston runners speak of as though it were part of the Himalayas.
Awesome! I thought. It's all downhill from here, and you're still on pace for a huge PR!
No stopping (mile 21 to mile 24): Just after the crest of Heartbreak Hill, the marathon course passes by Boston College on Commonwealth Ave. In particular, it passes right in front of a row of BC frat houses, so the street is packed with drunken, screaming frat boys who've been drinking continuously for the previous two hours; also epic :-).
Although fatigued, I was feeling pretty great coming off the crest of Heartbreak Hill, and the BC frat boys going nuts when they spotted "MIT" on my shirt just added fuel to the fire. This is great! I thought. Now you just have to ride the downhill all the way into Copley Square!
And then as I was passing mile 22, I hit the wall hard. It felt like somebody had just completely drained all the energy out of me. I started sucking wind, my head snapped back, my hands curled up into the characteristic "death claw" posture, and my pace dropped significantly. Shit, I'm still four miles out, I thought. I was definitely on PR pace before, but I'm still far enough out that if I really blow up here, I can still lose it. That's still a long way to go.
I found myself in precisely the situation I had hoped to avoid: I had the pleasure of looking forward to a long, agonizing slog into the finish. As I survival shuffled along, sucking wind and struggling to make forward progress, I considered the fact that I still had on the order of 30 minutes of agonizing running until I reached the finish line (one of the advantages of having run cross country in high school and college is that I have a relatively quick survival shuffle; it's on the order of 7:00 minute pace) - but that assumed that the situation did not further deteriorate. How much worse off would I get over the next four miles? Was I still going to be able to hold on to PR pace? Was it even sensible to try?
For some reason, as I found myself considering this, my mind drifted back to the "No Stopping" street sign I had seen earlier in the day:
I had stopped to take a picture of it prior to the race because I had felt that the juxtaposition of the phrase "No Stopping" with the image of a runner crossing the tape at the finish line was the perfect symbolic encapsulation of everything that distance running was supposed to be. (I can only assume that this was intentional on the part of the sign's creator).
The sign is right, I thought to myself, you're in sufficiently bad shape now that if you fall off the wagon here, you may very well not have the psychological resources to recover. Forget about what might happen 20 minutes from now, the most important thing is to KEEP MAKING FORWARD PROGRESS RIGHT NOW. NO STOPPING!
(Yes, I actually took mid-race inspiration from a traffic sign. In my defense, I was not thinking clearly at the time, for reasons which will become clear later :-p).
Having reached this epiphany, I set myself to the Sisyphean task of continuing to set. one. foot. in. front. of. the. other. The next 2 miles were hellish. I did my level best to maintain pace on the flat, but I found that I was tired enough that even the most modest incline just completely took the wind out of my sails. For the first time in the race, I started getting passed. At the moment, it was only a few guys at a time, and they weren't going all that much faster than I was, but I knew that I was getting to be in pretty bad shape, and that if I got much worse things would start rapidly spiraling out of control.
And then right around the 24 mile mark, a miracle occurred. From off to my left, I heard a phenomenally loud "YEAH DAVE!". What the hell... I lolled my addled head over to my left to survey the scene...
just in time to see Garrett Drayna bust through the sideline LIKE A BOSS and dart out into the street, fist pumping maniacally and screaming like a banshee. "LET'S GO DAVE, I'M GONNA RUN THE NEXT MILE WITH YOU!"
Jesus, he's got a lot of energy, I thought, as he bounded over to me. Does he really have to run quite so fast? Garrett later told me that as he came up to me, the only greeting I was able to produce was a long, audible groan :-p. Nonetheless, in spite of my total inability to articulate it at the time, I was extremely grateful for the assist, and resolved to take full advantage of the psychological lifeline Garrett had just thrown me. All right, let's pick up those feet.
Shock and awe (mile 24 to finish): The next mile was still torturous, but misery loves company, and at least now I had my old teammate to run with. And I actually found that having picked up the pace slightly at Garrett's insistence had somewhat revived my fortitude. Although I was by no means moving quickly, I found that I could at least manage to keep plodding forward.
Garrett ran with me for about 3/4 of a mile or so, and then (not wanting to get too close to the finishing area) peeled off to the sideline again so that he could wait to run with Gustavo. I passed mile 25 and saw that my time was in the high 2:30's. Holy shit, I thought, I can still make a sub 2:50! I just need to hang on a little bit longer.
And then, a few minutes after I had passed the 25-mile mark, I came upon a truly glorious sight. Off on the right-hand side of the street, the BAA had set up an additional timing station with one of their customary gigantic digital clocks, and above it had hung a sign, written in all yellow caps against a blue background (the BAA's official color scheme) proclaiming what were surely the four sweetest words my eyes could have beheld: ONE MILE TO GO.
As I made the right-hand turn onto Hereford Street I checked my watch one last time and saw that the current time was in the low 2:40's. This is it! Just need to gut it out for a few more minutes! I forced my head up and concentrated on mentally wrestling my body into submission: I quickened my pace, de-clawed my hands, and concentrated on maintaining running form for a final push into the finish line.
I made the final left turn onto Boylston Street, and then at last, just over a quarter mile up the street, I finally saw it: the finish line! The digital clock over the finish line showed 2:45 and change. My goal finally in sight, I put the hammer down and poured on every ounce of speed my exhausted legs could muster. As we closed within 200 meters I picked off a pack of five or six guys and broke into my best approximation of a sprint, crossing the line with a time of 2:47:20, a 5-minute PR :-D!
Post race: Flush with the thrill of victory, I interlocked my hands on top of my head and sucked wind as I staggered up the chute in my customary post-race breathless zombie-walk. W00t, new PR! I thought, as I random-walked my way towards the volunteers passing out heat blankets. One of the volunteers wrapped a heat blanket around me, which I tried to clutch closed in front of me with unresponsive hands so that he could secure it in place with a strip of tape. Unfortunately, this proved to be a surprisingly demanding task, as I was still sucking air and my hands seemed strangely unresponsive. I looked down at my numb, worthless claws in what must have been a slight look of surprise. What the fuck guys, I thought, help me out here.
The volunteer noticed me impotently pawing at my chest. "Dude, you don't look so good" he said. He put a hand on my shoulder and stared intently into my face. "Do you know what race you just finished?" "The Boston Marathon" I managed to choke out, or rather a slightly slurred approximation, as by now my face had started numbing out as well. "I think you should go to the ICU tent" he said.
I tried to tell him that I was sure I'd be fine in a couple of minutes, but he nevertheless called over another volunteer with a wheelchair, and insisted that I sit down so that they could wheel me into the medical tent. As it turned out, that was a good decision on his part (not so much mine), as on the ride over I started getting horrible cramps in my hands and lower body, and I was feeling pretty woozy. When we got to the tent, one of the triage nurses checked me out, and then called over a doctor to help steady me as I tried to stand up on unresponsive, cramping legs to transfer myself onto a cot. By now about four people had shown up (a doctor and several nurses) to start checking my blood pressure, pulse, body temperature.
By now an appreciable length of time had elapsed since I had stopped running, and yet I still had an uncharacteristically elevated heart rate, low blood pressure, and a low core temperature. Long story short, it turns out that that feeling of fatigue I had started experiencing back in mile 22 was not just the result of glycogen depletion, but was also being caused (at least in part) by dehydration, which had progressed to the early stages of shock by the time I had reached the finished line.
So I spent the next 45 minutes or so hanging out in the medical tent and drinking Gatorade while I rehydrated, warmed myself up, and waited for the cramps and wooziness to subside. Turns out that some fluids, warmth, and time really was just about all I needed - I did feel pretty much back at full strength by the time I left. And I was in good company: a few minutes after I got there I noticed runner #32 was hanging out in a wheelchair at the foot of my cot, so I gave him the thumbs up, 'cause as my old high school coach used to say, it's ok to wind up in the medical tent if you PR :-P.
So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful day for me :-).
(Turns out that it was also a successful day for Geoffrey Mutai of Eldoret, Kenya, who finished in a time of 2:02:03, crushing Haile Gebrselassie's world record time by a phenomenal 57 seconds. So there's that too :-).
Until next year... :-).
Pre-Race: Woke up at 5:00 IN THE AM this morning in order to get down to Boston Common in time to catch the bus out to Hopkinton. I wasn't able to fall asleep last night until 11:00, but in spite of only having gotten six hours of sleep, I woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed (possibly due to the excitement of Marathon Monday having finally arrived). Gustavo had crashed at my place last night so that we could head out to the buses together, and apparently hadn't been able to get more than a couple of hours. Gustavo and I had our customary, ritualistic pre-race breakfasts (mine: some white bread with honey, a banana, a little bit of yogurt, and some tea; his: some avocados with honey -- really, these just serve as honey delivery systems) and then left at 5:30 to for the Central Square T stop to catch the Red Line into Boston Common.
Patriots' Day being a statewide holiday and Cambridge being a relatively small city, there was no traffic out so early, and the streets were deserted except for the small stream of runners (easily identifiable by their distinctive green gear-drop bags) trickling down the Inbound stairwell of Central Station. The station was thick with an air of nervous anticipation as the platform swelled with runners waiting for the next inbound train. I was surprised at just how many runners there were; ordinarily, Central Station isn't all that crowded, even at peak times, but we still managed to fill the platform. Finally, the next train arrived, and we all piled in:
What had started as a trickle of runners entering Central Station became a stream as we moved into Boston along the Red Line, until we finally emerged from Park Street Station to find a veritable sea of athletes inundating Boston Common, waiting to be shuttled out to Hopkinton:
Fortunately for us, Gustavo managed to spot a reasonably-sized bus line amidst this crush of people, and we actually made it out of the Common within about half an hour of having arrived. After about an hour-long bus ride, we arrived at Hopkinton High School, the athletes' village and staging area for the Boston Marathon.
My first impression upon stepping out of the bus was a slight shock at finally seeing the scope the of the Boston Marathon. I knew intellectually that this was a large race (~27,000 runners in all), but I don't think that intellectual knowledge really registered at a visceral level until I saw just how large the athletes' village was. Essentially, the entire school grounds had been overrun with athletes. The center of the playing fields was dominated by a huge white tent set up over long tables filled with bagels, bananas, Gatorade and coffee for the athletes, port-a-pottys had been set up around the periphery of the field (there must have been on the order of 75 of them or so), and one end of the field had been allocated to a pair of scissors-lifts and a Jumbo-tron. But the one thing I found most impressive was just the sheer number of people: nearly every square inch of the field had some athlete sitting, lying down, stretching, etc., to the point where one had to be careful while walking around not to accidentally step on some unfortunate (perhaps unconscious) athlete.
Gustavo and I had managed to get in to the athletes' village around 7:30, and the first group of runners wasn't scheduled to be called to the start line until around 9:15, which left us with just under 2 hours to kill before we had to start moving. Although Gustavo and I had qualified with nearly identical times (2:52 and 2:53, respectively), it just so happened that the cutoff time between corrals fell in between them (I was assigned to corral 1, and he was in corral 2), so we decided to split up and each prepare for our own race as we saw fit.
Unfortunately, at this point in the day, it was still fairly cold (~40 degrees or so) and very windy, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself until the start of the race. I eventually figured that a cup of coffee would help warm me up, and that a quick shot of caffeine might help "clear my system" (a crucial part of race preparation) before heading to the start line. I killed some time waiting in line for the coffee, downed it pretty quickly (for warmth), and then started looking around for somewhere to shelter from the wind until it was time to head to the start line.
I eventually noticed a recessed doorway in one of the brick school buildings around the edges of the field, and decided it looked like a pretty good wind shelter in which to hide out until it was time to go. It turned out that another runner had had the same idea - a cute blond club runner from Purdue who was running Boston for the first time. We were joined about 10 minutes later by an obviously very cold young-ish (maybe 30?) guy from the Dominican Republic who was also running Boston for the first time. The three of us sat huddling in this doorway chatting and trying to keep warm until 9:00, when I left to make my customary pre-race pilgrimage to the commode, drop off my gear bag, and head to the start line.
By now the athletes village was pretty packed, even more so than when I had first arrived, and as I looked around at the mass of people, I began to think I may have just screwed myself by waiting too long to get in line for the port-a-pottys (I had budgeted 15 minutes for hitting up the bathroom, as corral 1 was supposed to leave for the start line at 9:15). Fortunately, in spite of the huge number of people, the standing army of port-a-pottys (which had seemed wildly excessive when I had first arrived that morning) kept the wait time down to a reasonable 25 minutes. When I got out, I quickly pulled off my warmups and stuffed them in my gear bag, dropped the bag off in my assigned bus, and headed for the start line.
Corral 1 had been scheduled to leave the athletes village at 9:15, even though the race wasn't supposed to start until 10:00; this is due to the fact that the starting line is 3/4 of a mile from the staging area, and the race organizers had budgeted 45 minutes for athletes to leisurely walk from the high school to their corrals. Unfortunately, by now I was running about 10 minutes behind the official schedule, and I hadn't actually had a chance to warm up yet, so I decided that I would just jog down to the starting line as my warmup, and then stretch out in the corral until the start of the race.
The street was packed with athletes walking, so I had to dodge my way through the crowd as I jogged out to the starting line. I fell in behind a line of athletes also working their way through the crowd at a jog, and as we made our way, I allowed my attention to drift from watching the guy in front of me to trying to soak up as much of what was going on around me as possible: the cops directing traffic, the spectators starting to line up around the starting corrals, even these awesome "No Stopping" street closure signs that were posted up and down the marathon route:
Unfortunately, I was sufficiently distracted while taking in my surroundings that I failed to notice the guy in front of me make a quick dodge to avoid something, and ended up running straight into the end of the handrail for a heavy metal guardrail street (where the athletes were) from the sidewalk (where the spectators were) . It nailed me right in the chest, about an inch to the right of my sternum, and left me doubled-over and stunned for a good 30 seconds or so (it also prompted a couple of audible gasps from some nearby spectators). Fortunately, in spite of the significant pain/shock of the initial impact, it had hit me in the ribcage and consequently hadn't really done any significant damage (aside from later producing an awesome-looking diamond-shaped bruise).
After I caught my breath, I continued jogging out to the first corral (now being careful to pay much more attention to where I was going, and running more towards the center of the street where there would likely be fewer obstacles). I got to corral 1 at about 9:35 or 9:40, and started stretching out. For whatever reason, the starting corrals seemed to be sheltered from the wind, and the sun had come out; it was in the high 50s/low 60s, clear and sunny - essentially perfect conditions. As I stretched out, I chatted with some of the other runners around me, who told me that we could also expect a tailwind(!). I mentioned something to the effect that it seemed like the stars were aligning for us weather-wise, and one of the older runners nearby mentioned to me that we really had lucked out - he said conditions like this only came around for Boston once every decade or so.
By 9:50, the corral was packed, the athletes had finished their pre-race preparations, and we were all standing around in that excited, nervous way that distance runners do while waiting around at the starting line. I tried to kill some more time by chatting with some of the other runners around me, asking them what their goal time was, etc. Gustavo was number 1041 and hadn't made it into corral 1; I was 905, which pretty much meant that I had just barely squeaked in, and I was curious to see how fast the other guys up at the front were. Many of them said they were going for times in the 2:45 range; I spoke to one woman in front of me who said she was trying to qualify for the American Olympic trials. Jesus these people are fast, I thought to myself; better not get too excited at the start, or you'll end up blowing up spectacularly around mile 20.
At 9:55, the race organizers brought out the men's elite field to the front of the corral, announcing some of the more famous runners by name (including American Ryan Hall, to much fanfare). As soon as the elite field was in place, they sang the national anthem, and an announcement was made over the PA system declaring that the race officials were ready to go, and this would be the final announcement prior to the starting gun. There was about a 30 second beat, filled with that familiar tense, eerie silence immediately prior to the start of a race...
and then the gun!
Tip of the Spear (miles 1 to mile 7): Holy shit, I thought, this is it, it's finally here! After six years of preparation and anticipation, I was actually, finally, running the Boston Marathon! And I'm in the front! I get to start out right at the beginning with the super-fast guys!
I hadn't really settled on a time goal or race strategy prior to the race; I figured I would let that be a game-time decision. I had run a 2:52 at the Austin Marathon a little over a year ago, but Austin was one of the faster courses in Texas, and Boston was supposed to be one of the toughest marathon courses around due to the presence of some rolling hills relatively late in the course. I had also been missing a lot of workouts in the final weeks prior to the race due to some health issues, so I wasn't sure how I would be feeling come race day. Consequently, I didn't have a good estimate for a time goal in mind, but I figured anything under 3:00 would probably constitute a pretty good day.
Furthermore, every experienced Boston Marathon runner I had spoken to before the race had mentioned that a classic failure mode for this course was going out too fast. The course is net downhill, with no significant elevation gains at all for the first 16 or so miles; however, mile 16 marks the start of the Newton Hills, a series of four hills culminating in the infamous Heartbreak Hill, which crests just before mile 21. Many runners, getting carried away by all the easy downhills early in the race, come out way too fast, and then crash and burn hard when confronted with a 5 mile hill series right at the point where they may already be on the verge of exhausting their glycogen stores.
In addition to the words of warning I had received from more experienced runners, I also knew that I myself had a propensity to come out way too fast in the early stages of a race and then crash and burn later on. Based on this, I decided that I would basically keep it in first gear until somewhere around mile 18 and then reevaluate how I was feeling. Besides, I thought myself, you've been looking forward to this for a long time; you shouldn't forget to enjoy yourself while you're at it.
I came across the starting line feeling surprisingly light on my feet (I had been concerned with a residual feeling of sluggishness in my final workouts in the two days leading up to the race). It felt good to finally be moving after the nervous anticipation at the starting line. The beginning of the course was actually on a downhill, and the sides of the course were absolutely packed with screaming spectators. This is fantastic!, I thought.
It probably also helped that I had decided to represent for MIT by wearing a maroon UnderArmor T-shirt with "MIT" written across the front in silver lettering. I was far enough out in the front of the race that individual runners were still visible, and the MIT logo seemed to attract the attention of a lot of the spectators. It was pretty nice having the "home field advantage" - pretty much every couple of seconds I could hear somebody yelling out "Go MIT!" or "Go Engineers!", which certainly made getting through the race a lot easier. Nothing quite like 26.2 miles of screaming spectators to boost the fighting spirit/ego :-).
I was having a great time as we cruised through the first mile mark - at 6:00. That is a bit faster than the agreed-upon pace, I thought to myself. Eh, it's cool, I'll just relax through this first downhill bit until the pack spreads out and I can lock in with some guys at around 6:30 to 6:45 pace.
I kept cruising along, not really feeling as though I was working especially hard, having a great time and just soaking up the experience. But I noticed, as time went on, that although I didn't feel like I was working very hard, my mile times were significantly below what I really thought they ought to have been so early in the race: I came through the second mile at around 12:15, the 5k at around 19:00, and the 10k at about 38:00. This was not the plan, I thought to myself, you were supposed to go out conservatively.
Somewhere between the 6 and 7 mile markers, I started to reevaluate my race strategy. You know, I thought to myself, I'm feeling pretty good. We have great race conditions - race conditions that only come around once a decade! - the energy from the crowd is great, and you're surrounded by guys that are legit as hell. If ever there were a time to go for the PR, this is it. Also, how awesome would it be to PR at the Boston Marathon?
As I was mulling this over, I passed a school that had about 50 or 75 people in front of it who looked like they were part of a sports team. As I ran by, they caught sight of my T-shirt and started chanting "M-I-T! M-I-T!", which 1) was AWESOME :-D! and 2) perhaps swayed my decision-making more than it strictly should have (I'll keep it real, I'm not totally immune to having my ego stoked on occasion :-p).
As I passed the 7 mile mark I pounded back the first of three energy gels I had brought along with me (based on my favorable experiences with them in the Austin Marathon, I had decided not to mess with this part of my race strategy), and reached a decision: Fuck it, we'll do it live!
Natick (mile 7 to mile 12): Ok, I thought, what's the new plan? I took stock of my situation: my two most pressing concerns were 1) I was currently running at a pace that far exceeded what I had trained for, and 2) I was starting to feel slightly warmer than I would have preferred (I realized then that wearing a dark-colored T-shirt might not have been the wisest possible choice).
I concentrated on checking out how my body was functioning, particularly my legs and breathing. I'm not breathing hard - in fact I've actually been chatting with some of the other runners around me throughout the race - and I don't feel any of the characteristic burning sensation in my legs, so I'm probably not running above my lactate threshold pace, I thought. Thank God I hammered the LT and V02-max training runs. That means the only thing I have to worry about is premature glycogen depletion.
I knew as a result of having read this study (coincidentally, produced by a researcher working in CSAIL, my own research lab) earlier in the year that since I was running faster than I had planned, I would be burning through my glycogen stores more quickly than what I had trained for. The only way that I could stave off hitting the wall would be to take on more carbohydrates during the race than I had originally planned. I had a fixed number of energy gels with me, so there was nothing I could do about that, but I had only planned to stop for Gatorade every third or fourth mile or so. Fortunately, I knew the Boston Marathon had Gatorade stops every mile, in contrast to most marathons. Ok, I thought, I'll just have to take on some additional carbohydrates in the form of Gatorade. I decided to start taking on Gatorade every other mile. That'll boost your carbohydrate intake, I thought, and should also help keep you a little cooler.
But what to do about pacing? I knew that I was going to be in serious trouble if I already felt fatigued when I hit the Newton Hills. Ok, I thought, you started running at this pace because you just naturally fell into it - no straining. Just keep going at constant effort - stay relaxed, and if you need to drop pace to do it, that's ok. The race isn't really going to start until mile 16; you just need to make sure that you show up there in good shape.
So the new goal was to stay relaxed and keep it together until mile 16. I figured that if I could arrive at the start of the Newton Hills in good shape, I shouldn't have too much trouble getting over them in one piece. If you can just get past Heartbreak Hill, you'll be alright, I thought; hell, even if you blow up afterwards and drag ass all the way into Copley Square, you'll have made up so much time already that it'll probably still work out fine.
The course between miles 7 and 13 passes through the town of Natick, and is fairly unremarkable terrain-wise: there are minor speed bumps, but the course is essentially flat. This section of the race passed uneventfully: I stayed relaxed, kept up the carbohydrate intake, and stayed on pace as planned.
Entering Wellesley (mile 12 to mile 16): The halfway mark for the Boston Marathon is in the town of Wellesley, right next to Wellesley College. In fact, the marathon course actually passes through the Wellesley campus, and it's traditional for the students to come out and cheer for the runners on Marathon Monday, creating something known as the Wellesley Scream Tunnel. I'd heard prior to the race that the cheering is in fact so loud that it's audible from a mile away.
As it turns out, this is in fact the case.
As we entered the town of Wellesley approaching the 12-mile mark, it actually was possible for us hear the Wellesley students off in the distance. As we approached the Scream Tunnel, I somewhat amusedly noticed that some of the runners around me were actually perceptibly increasing their pace (I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the mile times near the campus drop precipitously :-). The Scream Tunnel itself was somewhere between a half-mile and a mile long (depending upon which parts you wanted to count), and was pretty thickly packed with students pressed up against the metal crowd barriers on the sides of the course. As is customary among the marathon spectators, many of them had brought signs with encouraging messages on them; however, in a part of Boston Marathon tradition unique to the Scream Tunnel, some of them had brought signs asked for kisses: I saw "Kiss me, I'm Californian", "Kiss me, I'm graduating", etc. It was pretty epic :-).
I came through the half-marathon mark at 1:20:28, just over a minute slower than my half-marathon PR, but still feeling pretty good. Just after the halfway point, we began a gradual incline that continued up to around mile 15 or so. I figured that if I were going to make a critical error at some point during the race, it would be here: we were close enough to the start of the race that I still felt reasonably fresh, but still far enough out that if I burned through my glycogen stores trying to motor up the inclines I could look forward to a long, slow, agonizing death march to the finish. Just stay relaxed, I thought to myself. If these other guys want to blow by you, just let them go; you gotta show up to the start of the Newton Hills relatively fresh.
I eased up on the pace a little on some of the inclines through the next couple of miles in order to maintain constant effort. As I passed through miles 14 and 15, I was pretty pleased with myself. This isn't so bad, I thought, so far I'm really not feeling any negative effects from the increased pace.
Around mile 15 1/2, we began about a half-mile stretch of relatively steep downhill, which was immediately followed by the start of a relatively steep incline, one of the steepest we'd seen so far. As I began the climb up, I passed some road signs indicating that we were entering the town of Newton.
Newton Hills (mile 16 to mile 21): As I started my climb up the first of the Newton Hills, I though to myself, these next five miles are the race. Once you get out of these hills, it's either flat or downhill to the finish, and there are going to be tons of screaming people around. All you have to do is get through the next five miles relatively intact, and you'll be able to gut out a good finish. Just stay relaxed, and keep it together.
The first two of the four Newton hills didn't actually seem all that bad; I crested the top of the second one just past the 18-mile mark, and began a gradual 3/4 mile downhill stretch that preceded the final two hills. As I passed the 19-mile mark and started the ascent up the third hill, I started to feel the first creeping effects of fatigue. Still, that was to be expected; we were coming up on the later stages of the race, and I'd been running continuously for almost 2 hours. You're doing fine, everything's going according to plan, I thought to myself, just stay relaxed, keep it together, and continue making forward progress.
After the crest of the third hill, we had about a half mile stretch of relatively flat ground before the start of the final climb. As I passed mile 20, in spite of my increasing fatigue, I was feeling increasingly optimistic. You're almost out of the woods, and you're definitely on PR pace, I thought. One more hill to go, and you'll be home free.
As we passed the 20.5 mile mark, we encountered what is traditionally regarded as the crucible of the Boston Marathon: Heartbreak Hill. This part of the course was pretty thickly lined with spectators who had come out to help motivate runners to just keep moving up this final incline; a lot of them were carrying signs to the effect that this was the last major hurdle before the finish line. As we started up the incline, I mentally steeled myself for this last push skyward before the final downhill stretch into Boston and the finish line. Just keep on doing what you're doing, I thought, stay relaxed, stay focused, keep making forward progress. As the grade increased to its steady state, I settled into my familiar hill-climbing rhythm and resigned myself to one last uphill slog...
And then looked up to see a giant, inflatable, bounce-house looking thing on the side of the course with a big sign on top proclaiming that I had just crested Heartbreak Hill. Wait, what? I thought. I'm at the top? THAT was Heartbreak Hill, terror of the Boston Marathon? That piddling speedbump?
Turns out that Heartbreak Hill isn't actually all that big: according to Wikipedia, it has a total elevation gain of only 88 feet over the course of only .4 miles. You can imagine my surprise when after less than 5 minutes of serious hill-climbing effort, I found myself at the peak of what I had often heard more experienced Boston runners speak of as though it were part of the Himalayas.
Awesome! I thought. It's all downhill from here, and you're still on pace for a huge PR!
No stopping (mile 21 to mile 24): Just after the crest of Heartbreak Hill, the marathon course passes by Boston College on Commonwealth Ave. In particular, it passes right in front of a row of BC frat houses, so the street is packed with drunken, screaming frat boys who've been drinking continuously for the previous two hours; also epic :-).
Although fatigued, I was feeling pretty great coming off the crest of Heartbreak Hill, and the BC frat boys going nuts when they spotted "MIT" on my shirt just added fuel to the fire. This is great! I thought. Now you just have to ride the downhill all the way into Copley Square!
And then as I was passing mile 22, I hit the wall hard. It felt like somebody had just completely drained all the energy out of me. I started sucking wind, my head snapped back, my hands curled up into the characteristic "death claw" posture, and my pace dropped significantly. Shit, I'm still four miles out, I thought. I was definitely on PR pace before, but I'm still far enough out that if I really blow up here, I can still lose it. That's still a long way to go.
I found myself in precisely the situation I had hoped to avoid: I had the pleasure of looking forward to a long, agonizing slog into the finish. As I survival shuffled along, sucking wind and struggling to make forward progress, I considered the fact that I still had on the order of 30 minutes of agonizing running until I reached the finish line (one of the advantages of having run cross country in high school and college is that I have a relatively quick survival shuffle; it's on the order of 7:00 minute pace) - but that assumed that the situation did not further deteriorate. How much worse off would I get over the next four miles? Was I still going to be able to hold on to PR pace? Was it even sensible to try?
For some reason, as I found myself considering this, my mind drifted back to the "No Stopping" street sign I had seen earlier in the day:
I had stopped to take a picture of it prior to the race because I had felt that the juxtaposition of the phrase "No Stopping" with the image of a runner crossing the tape at the finish line was the perfect symbolic encapsulation of everything that distance running was supposed to be. (I can only assume that this was intentional on the part of the sign's creator).
The sign is right, I thought to myself, you're in sufficiently bad shape now that if you fall off the wagon here, you may very well not have the psychological resources to recover. Forget about what might happen 20 minutes from now, the most important thing is to KEEP MAKING FORWARD PROGRESS RIGHT NOW. NO STOPPING!
(Yes, I actually took mid-race inspiration from a traffic sign. In my defense, I was not thinking clearly at the time, for reasons which will become clear later :-p).
Having reached this epiphany, I set myself to the Sisyphean task of continuing to set. one. foot. in. front. of. the. other. The next 2 miles were hellish. I did my level best to maintain pace on the flat, but I found that I was tired enough that even the most modest incline just completely took the wind out of my sails. For the first time in the race, I started getting passed. At the moment, it was only a few guys at a time, and they weren't going all that much faster than I was, but I knew that I was getting to be in pretty bad shape, and that if I got much worse things would start rapidly spiraling out of control.
And then right around the 24 mile mark, a miracle occurred. From off to my left, I heard a phenomenally loud "YEAH DAVE!". What the hell... I lolled my addled head over to my left to survey the scene...
just in time to see Garrett Drayna bust through the sideline LIKE A BOSS and dart out into the street, fist pumping maniacally and screaming like a banshee. "LET'S GO DAVE, I'M GONNA RUN THE NEXT MILE WITH YOU!"
Jesus, he's got a lot of energy, I thought, as he bounded over to me. Does he really have to run quite so fast? Garrett later told me that as he came up to me, the only greeting I was able to produce was a long, audible groan :-p. Nonetheless, in spite of my total inability to articulate it at the time, I was extremely grateful for the assist, and resolved to take full advantage of the psychological lifeline Garrett had just thrown me. All right, let's pick up those feet.
Shock and awe (mile 24 to finish): The next mile was still torturous, but misery loves company, and at least now I had my old teammate to run with. And I actually found that having picked up the pace slightly at Garrett's insistence had somewhat revived my fortitude. Although I was by no means moving quickly, I found that I could at least manage to keep plodding forward.
Garrett ran with me for about 3/4 of a mile or so, and then (not wanting to get too close to the finishing area) peeled off to the sideline again so that he could wait to run with Gustavo. I passed mile 25 and saw that my time was in the high 2:30's. Holy shit, I thought, I can still make a sub 2:50! I just need to hang on a little bit longer.
And then, a few minutes after I had passed the 25-mile mark, I came upon a truly glorious sight. Off on the right-hand side of the street, the BAA had set up an additional timing station with one of their customary gigantic digital clocks, and above it had hung a sign, written in all yellow caps against a blue background (the BAA's official color scheme) proclaiming what were surely the four sweetest words my eyes could have beheld: ONE MILE TO GO.
As I made the right-hand turn onto Hereford Street I checked my watch one last time and saw that the current time was in the low 2:40's. This is it! Just need to gut it out for a few more minutes! I forced my head up and concentrated on mentally wrestling my body into submission: I quickened my pace, de-clawed my hands, and concentrated on maintaining running form for a final push into the finish line.
I made the final left turn onto Boylston Street, and then at last, just over a quarter mile up the street, I finally saw it: the finish line! The digital clock over the finish line showed 2:45 and change. My goal finally in sight, I put the hammer down and poured on every ounce of speed my exhausted legs could muster. As we closed within 200 meters I picked off a pack of five or six guys and broke into my best approximation of a sprint, crossing the line with a time of 2:47:20, a 5-minute PR :-D!
Post race: Flush with the thrill of victory, I interlocked my hands on top of my head and sucked wind as I staggered up the chute in my customary post-race breathless zombie-walk. W00t, new PR! I thought, as I random-walked my way towards the volunteers passing out heat blankets. One of the volunteers wrapped a heat blanket around me, which I tried to clutch closed in front of me with unresponsive hands so that he could secure it in place with a strip of tape. Unfortunately, this proved to be a surprisingly demanding task, as I was still sucking air and my hands seemed strangely unresponsive. I looked down at my numb, worthless claws in what must have been a slight look of surprise. What the fuck guys, I thought, help me out here.
The volunteer noticed me impotently pawing at my chest. "Dude, you don't look so good" he said. He put a hand on my shoulder and stared intently into my face. "Do you know what race you just finished?" "The Boston Marathon" I managed to choke out, or rather a slightly slurred approximation, as by now my face had started numbing out as well. "I think you should go to the ICU tent" he said.
I tried to tell him that I was sure I'd be fine in a couple of minutes, but he nevertheless called over another volunteer with a wheelchair, and insisted that I sit down so that they could wheel me into the medical tent. As it turned out, that was a good decision on his part (not so much mine), as on the ride over I started getting horrible cramps in my hands and lower body, and I was feeling pretty woozy. When we got to the tent, one of the triage nurses checked me out, and then called over a doctor to help steady me as I tried to stand up on unresponsive, cramping legs to transfer myself onto a cot. By now about four people had shown up (a doctor and several nurses) to start checking my blood pressure, pulse, body temperature.
By now an appreciable length of time had elapsed since I had stopped running, and yet I still had an uncharacteristically elevated heart rate, low blood pressure, and a low core temperature. Long story short, it turns out that that feeling of fatigue I had started experiencing back in mile 22 was not just the result of glycogen depletion, but was also being caused (at least in part) by dehydration, which had progressed to the early stages of shock by the time I had reached the finished line.
So I spent the next 45 minutes or so hanging out in the medical tent and drinking Gatorade while I rehydrated, warmed myself up, and waited for the cramps and wooziness to subside. Turns out that some fluids, warmth, and time really was just about all I needed - I did feel pretty much back at full strength by the time I left. And I was in good company: a few minutes after I got there I noticed runner #32 was hanging out in a wheelchair at the foot of my cot, so I gave him the thumbs up, 'cause as my old high school coach used to say, it's ok to wind up in the medical tent if you PR :-P.
So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful day for me :-).
(Turns out that it was also a successful day for Geoffrey Mutai of Eldoret, Kenya, who finished in a time of 2:02:03, crushing Haile Gebrselassie's world record time by a phenomenal 57 seconds. So there's that too :-).
Until next year... :-).
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Final Approach
Week 18: 4/11/11 - 4/17/11 (race week!)
Monday: Didn't run - spent all day at the MIT 150th Symposium: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything.
Tuesday: At the symposium again! 11 mile run.
Wednesday: So the eczema flare-up I had last Sunday got progressively worse over the course of Monday and Tuesday, until last night I was basically lobster red over my entire body - by far the worst shape I have ever been in, ever. Given the fact that this was literally over my entire body, I figured that this wasn't just a case of eczema anymore, but was probably some kind of systemic inflammation, so I took some antihistamine and some NSAIDs and went to MIT Medical's urgent care this morning to get it looked at. They ended up prescribing me a 6-day course of methylprednisolone, so although this is kind of a sledgehammer approach, at least I can reasonably expect to finally get some relief after having been dealing with this bullshit more or less constantly for the previous 4 months.
Thursday: Started on course of methylprednisolone. Body still f'ed up. Didn't run.
Friday: Methylprednisolone seems to be having the desired effect, in that I no longer want to rip my skin off. Eczema seems to be healing up surprisingly rapidly (noticeable and significant improvement overnight), although it was sufficiently to begin with that it's not obvious that it will be completely gone by Monday morning. Fortunately, the drugs have stopped the itching/pain, and the course that they gave me doesn't end until Tuesday, so even if it's not all gone by Monday, I'll still be on the sauce, and hopefully it'll be enough to get me through the race.
Saturday: Eczema situation had improved sufficiently today that I did an easy 5-mile run this morning. No pain/discomfort. Had brunch with Garrett, Gustavo, Chelsea, and Tim at Brookline Lunch, and then Gustavo and I went to see a lecture by Chris McDougall and company at the Boston Public Library on Born to Run and pick up our race packets at the Expo.
Sunday: Still feeling a little sleepy from the drugs - didn't get up until 10:30. Did an easy 4 miles on the treadmill, and then did some laundry. Went to the BAA pre-race pasta dinner at 5:00 by City Hall.
Total weekly mileage: 20
Total training volume for this cycle: 698 miles.
Monday: Didn't run - spent all day at the MIT 150th Symposium: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything.
Tuesday: At the symposium again! 11 mile run.
Wednesday: So the eczema flare-up I had last Sunday got progressively worse over the course of Monday and Tuesday, until last night I was basically lobster red over my entire body - by far the worst shape I have ever been in, ever. Given the fact that this was literally over my entire body, I figured that this wasn't just a case of eczema anymore, but was probably some kind of systemic inflammation, so I took some antihistamine and some NSAIDs and went to MIT Medical's urgent care this morning to get it looked at. They ended up prescribing me a 6-day course of methylprednisolone, so although this is kind of a sledgehammer approach, at least I can reasonably expect to finally get some relief after having been dealing with this bullshit more or less constantly for the previous 4 months.
Thursday: Started on course of methylprednisolone. Body still f'ed up. Didn't run.
Friday: Methylprednisolone seems to be having the desired effect, in that I no longer want to rip my skin off. Eczema seems to be healing up surprisingly rapidly (noticeable and significant improvement overnight), although it was sufficiently to begin with that it's not obvious that it will be completely gone by Monday morning. Fortunately, the drugs have stopped the itching/pain, and the course that they gave me doesn't end until Tuesday, so even if it's not all gone by Monday, I'll still be on the sauce, and hopefully it'll be enough to get me through the race.
Saturday: Eczema situation had improved sufficiently today that I did an easy 5-mile run this morning. No pain/discomfort. Had brunch with Garrett, Gustavo, Chelsea, and Tim at Brookline Lunch, and then Gustavo and I went to see a lecture by Chris McDougall and company at the Boston Public Library on Born to Run and pick up our race packets at the Expo.
Sunday: Still feeling a little sleepy from the drugs - didn't get up until 10:30. Did an easy 4 miles on the treadmill, and then did some laundry. Went to the BAA pre-race pasta dinner at 5:00 by City Hall.
Total weekly mileage: 20
Total training volume for this cycle: 698 miles.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
No clever title this week
Week 17: 4/4/11 - 4/10/11 (1 week remains)
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: 5 miles, recovery.
Wednesday: Didn't run. Took today off to set my schedule back by a day, in order to account for the fact that (unlike most large marathons), the Boston Marathon is run on a Monday, rather than a Sunday.
Thursday: 7 miles, recovery.
Friday: Final hard workout of the training cycle(!): 8 miles w/ 3 x 1 mile intervals. Hit up the track with Timmy C. today for an interval workout. I think it went well: 5:08, 5:10, 5:10 for the set (although that last one required some digging in the final lap to come in on time :-p). Did a 4-mile cooldown around Beacon Hill and up Commonwealth Ave, as per the usual. Looks like it's all downhill from here.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery.
Sunday: Bad eczema flare-up - didn't run today. Went to the MIT 150th Convocation(!) instead.
Total weekly mileage: 25
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: 5 miles, recovery.
Wednesday: Didn't run. Took today off to set my schedule back by a day, in order to account for the fact that (unlike most large marathons), the Boston Marathon is run on a Monday, rather than a Sunday.
Thursday: 7 miles, recovery.
Friday: Final hard workout of the training cycle(!): 8 miles w/ 3 x 1 mile intervals. Hit up the track with Timmy C. today for an interval workout. I think it went well: 5:08, 5:10, 5:10 for the set (although that last one required some digging in the final lap to come in on time :-p). Did a 4-mile cooldown around Beacon Hill and up Commonwealth Ave, as per the usual. Looks like it's all downhill from here.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery.
Sunday: Bad eczema flare-up - didn't run today. Went to the MIT 150th Convocation(!) instead.
Total weekly mileage: 25
Monday, March 28, 2011
Commence Taper!
Week 16: 3/28/11 - 4/3/11 (2 weeks remain)
So last week sucked, but fortunately, it seems to have been effective in allowing me to heal up, for the most part. Now that I'm aware of the problem, I'll be taking strong proactive measures in the future, and now that the weather's also improving, hopefully we can avoid any unfortunate health crises in the future. Time to get back in the game!
Monday: Off day. Hit the weight room. (I've been weightlifting semi-seriously since November, in anticipation of possibly trying my hand at a triathlon sometime after the marathon. Turns out I can now rep my body weight - not a big deal for actual weightlifters, but a notable achievement for a scrawny marathon runner who's really never had any upper body strength to speak of previously. W00t!)
Tuesday: 7 miles, general aerobic. Actually went a little faster than I had planned/expected (glad to be back in the game!)
Wednesday: 12 miles, general aerobic. Legs a little stiff today - probably a combination of having taken a week off and having gone perhaps a bit too hard yesterday. Otherwise unremarkable.
Thursday: Super busy - didn't get out to run today.
Friday: 5 miles, recovery day.
Saturday: Also super busy - likewise didn't get out to run (although today was supposed to be another recovery day, this week being part of the taper and all).
Sunday: 16 miles, final long run of the season - everything else between now and The Big Day is <= 13 miles. Ran the Fresh Pond + Commonwealth Ave/Boston Common loops. Took the first 10 miles or so around Fresh Pond pretty quickly, partially just to check out how my legs were feeling after having taken the previous week off. The quicker pace felt pretty good, but I ended up a little more fatigued at the end of the run than I had expected to. It's hard for me to determine whether that was due to having simply gone a bit too fast in the first 10 miles, lingering effects from missing most of last week, or the fact that I haven't gone to bed before 4AM in the previous 3 days...
Total weekly mileage: 40
So last week sucked, but fortunately, it seems to have been effective in allowing me to heal up, for the most part. Now that I'm aware of the problem, I'll be taking strong proactive measures in the future, and now that the weather's also improving, hopefully we can avoid any unfortunate health crises in the future. Time to get back in the game!
Monday: Off day. Hit the weight room. (I've been weightlifting semi-seriously since November, in anticipation of possibly trying my hand at a triathlon sometime after the marathon. Turns out I can now rep my body weight - not a big deal for actual weightlifters, but a notable achievement for a scrawny marathon runner who's really never had any upper body strength to speak of previously. W00t!)
Tuesday: 7 miles, general aerobic. Actually went a little faster than I had planned/expected (glad to be back in the game!)
Wednesday: 12 miles, general aerobic. Legs a little stiff today - probably a combination of having taken a week off and having gone perhaps a bit too hard yesterday. Otherwise unremarkable.
Thursday: Super busy - didn't get out to run today.
Friday: 5 miles, recovery day.
Saturday: Also super busy - likewise didn't get out to run (although today was supposed to be another recovery day, this week being part of the taper and all).
Sunday: 16 miles, final long run of the season - everything else between now and The Big Day is <= 13 miles. Ran the Fresh Pond + Commonwealth Ave/Boston Common loops. Took the first 10 miles or so around Fresh Pond pretty quickly, partially just to check out how my legs were feeling after having taken the previous week off. The quicker pace felt pretty good, but I ended up a little more fatigued at the end of the run than I had expected to. It's hard for me to determine whether that was due to having simply gone a bit too fast in the first 10 miles, lingering effects from missing most of last week, or the fact that I haven't gone to bed before 4AM in the previous 3 days...
Total weekly mileage: 40
Down, but not out
Week 15: 3/21/11 - 3/27/11 (3 weeks remain)
This week was f*&$ing horrible.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 10 miles general aerobic.
Wednesday through Sunday: Fair warning: If you are averse to what may possibly be too much information, I advise you to stop reading now, and move on with the rest of your day.
OK, so I unfortunately have a chronic skin disorder called eczema; it's an autoimmune disease related to (strongly correlated with) asthma (which I also have, although it's exercise induced and very sporadic) and allergies (which I had in spades prior to completing a multiple-year course of immunotherapy in the form of allergy shots - which in my case were a godsend).
My eczema was pretty bad as a kid, although I appeared to more or less grow out of it by the time I was 5 or so, which apparently pretty common. After that, I would occasionally get some on my hands if we had some particularly inclement weather (unusually hot, unusually cold, unusually dry), but having spent the vast majority of my life in California and nearly all of the remainder in Texas, this really wasn't much of an issue...
until I got to Cambridge. As it turns out, eczema is exacerbated by very cold air, very hot air, very dry air, and skin irritants (like sweat and soap), so running long distances in the cold dry, New England winter air, sweating all over yourself, coming back into your apartment that your roommate likes to keep uncomfortably warm using our building's central heating, which blasts out hot, 0% humidity air, and then hopping in the shower and lathering up to clean yourself off is pretty much the perfect storm in terms of things that will aggravate the hell out of this condition. Furthermore, not having had a serious outbreak in 20+ years, I guess the thought never occurred to me that it might become a serious issue.
So when I started to see the first symptoms appearing, I didn't really think very much of them, I figured that my skin was just unusually dry because we'd had an uncharacteristically cold snap (even by our standards), and it would probably clear itself up in a couple of days. A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, and unfortunately by the time it dawned on me that the problem was a) not going away and b) in fact appeared to be getting substantially worse as time progressed, I had pretty much missed the boat on the preventative care opportunities and was now well into full-on panic-level damage control.
Unfortunately, by now roughly 70% of the surface area of my body was involved. So at this point, I pretty much reasoned that I had two choices: I could a) quit, or b) man the fuck up and keep training. Having invested a considerable amount of time and energy in qualifying for the Boston Marathon, I opted to go with option b). Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts to treat the symptoms, my condition kept steadily deteriorating as the weeks went on, until this week.
Tuesday morning I went into work in the lab, and when I sat in my chair, it felt like somebody was twisting a red-hot dagger in my back. The pressure of sitting in my chair was actually causing me significant, constant physical pain, to the point where I was more or less totally cognitively ineffective, and the thought of having to go outside and run around and sweat all over myself under those circumstances (thus further exacerbating my condition) was actually, finally, more than I could bring myself to do. Out of desperation, I decided that the only thing to do was to basically stock up on food, barricade myself inside my dorm room for several days, Howard Hughes like, so as to escape the cold, and try to heal myself up to rejoin the fight.
So that's pretty much how I spent my spring break. Woop-de-doo :-/.
Total weekly mileage: 10
This week was f*&$ing horrible.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 10 miles general aerobic.
Wednesday through Sunday: Fair warning: If you are averse to what may possibly be too much information, I advise you to stop reading now, and move on with the rest of your day.
OK, so I unfortunately have a chronic skin disorder called eczema; it's an autoimmune disease related to (strongly correlated with) asthma (which I also have, although it's exercise induced and very sporadic) and allergies (which I had in spades prior to completing a multiple-year course of immunotherapy in the form of allergy shots - which in my case were a godsend).
My eczema was pretty bad as a kid, although I appeared to more or less grow out of it by the time I was 5 or so, which apparently pretty common. After that, I would occasionally get some on my hands if we had some particularly inclement weather (unusually hot, unusually cold, unusually dry), but having spent the vast majority of my life in California and nearly all of the remainder in Texas, this really wasn't much of an issue...
until I got to Cambridge. As it turns out, eczema is exacerbated by very cold air, very hot air, very dry air, and skin irritants (like sweat and soap), so running long distances in the cold dry, New England winter air, sweating all over yourself, coming back into your apartment that your roommate likes to keep uncomfortably warm using our building's central heating, which blasts out hot, 0% humidity air, and then hopping in the shower and lathering up to clean yourself off is pretty much the perfect storm in terms of things that will aggravate the hell out of this condition. Furthermore, not having had a serious outbreak in 20+ years, I guess the thought never occurred to me that it might become a serious issue.
So when I started to see the first symptoms appearing, I didn't really think very much of them, I figured that my skin was just unusually dry because we'd had an uncharacteristically cold snap (even by our standards), and it would probably clear itself up in a couple of days. A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, and unfortunately by the time it dawned on me that the problem was a) not going away and b) in fact appeared to be getting substantially worse as time progressed, I had pretty much missed the boat on the preventative care opportunities and was now well into full-on panic-level damage control.
Unfortunately, by now roughly 70% of the surface area of my body was involved. So at this point, I pretty much reasoned that I had two choices: I could a) quit, or b) man the fuck up and keep training. Having invested a considerable amount of time and energy in qualifying for the Boston Marathon, I opted to go with option b). Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts to treat the symptoms, my condition kept steadily deteriorating as the weeks went on, until this week.
Tuesday morning I went into work in the lab, and when I sat in my chair, it felt like somebody was twisting a red-hot dagger in my back. The pressure of sitting in my chair was actually causing me significant, constant physical pain, to the point where I was more or less totally cognitively ineffective, and the thought of having to go outside and run around and sweat all over myself under those circumstances (thus further exacerbating my condition) was actually, finally, more than I could bring myself to do. Out of desperation, I decided that the only thing to do was to basically stock up on food, barricade myself inside my dorm room for several days, Howard Hughes like, so as to escape the cold, and try to heal myself up to rejoin the fight.
So that's pretty much how I spent my spring break. Woop-de-doo :-/.
Total weekly mileage: 10
Friday, March 18, 2011
Robots and Zombies and Opera, Oh My!
Week 14: 3/14/11 - 3/20/11 (4 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 14 miles. Went to do an interval workout at the track, but once again, the f*$@ing lacrosse team had closed the track because they "needed" to "play a game". How inconsiderate! Ended up switching some workouts around for the week, and doing the medium-long day today.
Wednesday: Didn't run - spent all day at the MIT 150th Symposium on cancer research, followed by a midterm from 7:00 - 10:00.
Thursday: 8 miles with 5 x 600 meter intervals. Got out of lab late today, and by the time I got to the track, lacrosse had closed it off AGAIN. I thought briefly about running the interval workout on the treadmill again as I had last week, and then decided that since running on the treadmill sucked, I would just go back to the track later after the lacrosse team had left. Got back to the track at 7:00, did a 2-mile warmup, stretched out, and then started the workout.
The plan was to start one interval every four minutes, with the goal of running at or below 75-second quarter pace (5:00/mile pace), corresponding to 2:00/interval. The actual times I ended up running were 1:48, 1:47, 1:48, 1:48, and 1:48, which comes out to 72 seconds/quarter, or 4:50/mile pace.
Surprisingly enough, I hadn't actually planned to go that fast for these intervals; as before, I basically just ran the first one at a pace that felt like a reasonable balance between comfort and sustainability, and I just so happened to come in at 1:48. Since this turned out to be significantly faster than I had originally planned without seeming out-of-control, as in the case of the last time I ran this workout I once again basically just made a game-time decision to revise my target pace downward to 1:48. I was also pretty happy to see that there was a 1-second spread over the entire set, which was lot tighter than the spread the last time I ran this workout (also I'm not known for my reliability when it comes to calibrating my pace :-P).
But most importantly, I didn't feel at any point during the workout like I was really straining - I was running relatively quickly, but it felt almost effortless. I think this is a pretty good indication in terms of my current level of fitness - looks like the hard work is finally paying off :-).
Friday: Also didn't run - didn't get up until noon as a result of spending the previous night out (St. Patrick's Day and Kimchi's birthday). Moderately beat. Then had to rush out for the opening night of Death and the Powers. Robots + zombie apocalypse + opera = win :-D!
Saturday: 9 miles, general aerobic.
Sunday: 16 miles. I had originally planned to get up and run this workout in the early afternoon - unfortunately, I ended up not waking up until 12:00 or so (was out until 2:30 at Vamsi's place the night before with some Caltech guys who were in town visiting). Got a call at the last minute to show a visiting student around town (also from Caltech :-), and consequently didn't get back until 4:30. Had dinner scheduled for 8:00 in Harvard square, and didn't get out the door until 5:00 or so, so I ended up having to run this workout at a pretty high intensity, much higher than I had originally intended. Was pretty beat by the time I got back, but actually quite pleased with how much the LT/VO2 max stuff has been working over the previous couple of weeks - there's been a noticeable improvement in speed.
Total weekly mileage: 47 <-- on the low side again, but still of high quality.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 14 miles. Went to do an interval workout at the track, but once again, the f*$@ing lacrosse team had closed the track because they "needed" to "play a game". How inconsiderate! Ended up switching some workouts around for the week, and doing the medium-long day today.
Wednesday: Didn't run - spent all day at the MIT 150th Symposium on cancer research, followed by a midterm from 7:00 - 10:00.
Thursday: 8 miles with 5 x 600 meter intervals. Got out of lab late today, and by the time I got to the track, lacrosse had closed it off AGAIN. I thought briefly about running the interval workout on the treadmill again as I had last week, and then decided that since running on the treadmill sucked, I would just go back to the track later after the lacrosse team had left. Got back to the track at 7:00, did a 2-mile warmup, stretched out, and then started the workout.
The plan was to start one interval every four minutes, with the goal of running at or below 75-second quarter pace (5:00/mile pace), corresponding to 2:00/interval. The actual times I ended up running were 1:48, 1:47, 1:48, 1:48, and 1:48, which comes out to 72 seconds/quarter, or 4:50/mile pace.
Surprisingly enough, I hadn't actually planned to go that fast for these intervals; as before, I basically just ran the first one at a pace that felt like a reasonable balance between comfort and sustainability, and I just so happened to come in at 1:48. Since this turned out to be significantly faster than I had originally planned without seeming out-of-control, as in the case of the last time I ran this workout I once again basically just made a game-time decision to revise my target pace downward to 1:48. I was also pretty happy to see that there was a 1-second spread over the entire set, which was lot tighter than the spread the last time I ran this workout (also I'm not known for my reliability when it comes to calibrating my pace :-P).
But most importantly, I didn't feel at any point during the workout like I was really straining - I was running relatively quickly, but it felt almost effortless. I think this is a pretty good indication in terms of my current level of fitness - looks like the hard work is finally paying off :-).
Friday: Also didn't run - didn't get up until noon as a result of spending the previous night out (St. Patrick's Day and Kimchi's birthday). Moderately beat. Then had to rush out for the opening night of Death and the Powers. Robots + zombie apocalypse + opera = win :-D!
Saturday: 9 miles, general aerobic.
Sunday: 16 miles. I had originally planned to get up and run this workout in the early afternoon - unfortunately, I ended up not waking up until 12:00 or so (was out until 2:30 at Vamsi's place the night before with some Caltech guys who were in town visiting). Got a call at the last minute to show a visiting student around town (also from Caltech :-), and consequently didn't get back until 4:30. Had dinner scheduled for 8:00 in Harvard square, and didn't get out the door until 5:00 or so, so I ended up having to run this workout at a pretty high intensity, much higher than I had originally intended. Was pretty beat by the time I got back, but actually quite pleased with how much the LT/VO2 max stuff has been working over the previous couple of weeks - there's been a noticeable improvement in speed.
Total weekly mileage: 47 <-- on the low side again, but still of high quality.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Smells Like Victory
Week 13: 3/7/11 - 3/13/11 (5 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 15 miles, medium-long. Was going to do intervals today, but the track was closed when I got there because the women's lacrosse team was playing a game. Decided to swap today's workout with tomorrow's, so I ended up doing a medium-long run today. Turns out that was a pretty good decision; I ended up running into the MIT women's XC team at the start of Commonwealth Ave, and ran with them for about a mile until they crossed over the Mass Ave Bridge back towards campus, while I continued up the running trail on the far side towards Harvard. Turned around at the Eliot Street bridge, and ended up running into a men's club XC team from Northeastern at JFK Street. Ran with them for about three miles until we hit the BU bridge, when I turned up Brookline to head back to SidPac. Finished up with 3 miles on the treadmill to thaw myself out (it was only ~34 out tonight). A pretty good day; it was nice to have some company after having 3 months of > 45 mile weeks totally solo.
Wednesday: 6 miles, recovery.
Thursday: 9 miles w/ 6 x 1000 meters @ 80 seconds/lap. Meant to do this workout on the MIT track today, but unfortunately by the time I got out of lab, it was already 5:00, which meant that the track was closed so that the MIT lacrosse team could play... so I ended up doing the workout on the treadmill. I actually wasn't sure that the treadmill could even get up to that speed... (Tim informs me that the ones in the SidPac gym max out at 5:00 / mile, so I was pretty much redlining them the whole time :-P).
Friday: 10 miles, general aerobic.
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery. Ran around the Freedom Trail with Chief, who was visiting MIT as a newly admitted MechE Ph.D. student. Looks like he's going to come out next year :-).
Sunday: 18 miles w/ 14 miles @ target marathon pace. This was the last serious long run on the schedule; I have other long runs, but none of them include an LT or marathon-pace portion, so I went into this really focusing on making it count. Fortunately, we had SidPac's monthly brunch this morning, and by 3:00 PM the early-morning cloud cover had burned off to make way for a beautiful, sunny, 50 degree afternoon - perfect for fast running. Did the first 10 up around Fresh Pond, and then the 4-mile loop around Commonwealth Ave and Boston Common, back to Mass Ave and up the street to SidPac. By the time I got back to the dorm, my legs were definitely feeling it, but I feel like I did a pretty good job of keeping up the focus/intensity throughout the 14 mile MP section (of course, it also helped that I broke out the short shorts, technical tee and Dragonforce on the iPod - this was SERIOUS BUSINESS :-).
Finished up the last 4 on the treadmill at 7:30 pace so I could warm up the core/legs before a thorough stretch, then went back to my room exhausted and PTFO'd for about an hour. Smells like victory :-D.
Total weekly mileage: 64 <-- Nailed it!
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 15 miles, medium-long. Was going to do intervals today, but the track was closed when I got there because the women's lacrosse team was playing a game. Decided to swap today's workout with tomorrow's, so I ended up doing a medium-long run today. Turns out that was a pretty good decision; I ended up running into the MIT women's XC team at the start of Commonwealth Ave, and ran with them for about a mile until they crossed over the Mass Ave Bridge back towards campus, while I continued up the running trail on the far side towards Harvard. Turned around at the Eliot Street bridge, and ended up running into a men's club XC team from Northeastern at JFK Street. Ran with them for about three miles until we hit the BU bridge, when I turned up Brookline to head back to SidPac. Finished up with 3 miles on the treadmill to thaw myself out (it was only ~34 out tonight). A pretty good day; it was nice to have some company after having 3 months of > 45 mile weeks totally solo.
Wednesday: 6 miles, recovery.
Thursday: 9 miles w/ 6 x 1000 meters @ 80 seconds/lap. Meant to do this workout on the MIT track today, but unfortunately by the time I got out of lab, it was already 5:00, which meant that the track was closed so that the MIT lacrosse team could play... so I ended up doing the workout on the treadmill. I actually wasn't sure that the treadmill could even get up to that speed... (Tim informs me that the ones in the SidPac gym max out at 5:00 / mile, so I was pretty much redlining them the whole time :-P).
Friday: 10 miles, general aerobic.
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery. Ran around the Freedom Trail with Chief, who was visiting MIT as a newly admitted MechE Ph.D. student. Looks like he's going to come out next year :-).
Sunday: 18 miles w/ 14 miles @ target marathon pace. This was the last serious long run on the schedule; I have other long runs, but none of them include an LT or marathon-pace portion, so I went into this really focusing on making it count. Fortunately, we had SidPac's monthly brunch this morning, and by 3:00 PM the early-morning cloud cover had burned off to make way for a beautiful, sunny, 50 degree afternoon - perfect for fast running. Did the first 10 up around Fresh Pond, and then the 4-mile loop around Commonwealth Ave and Boston Common, back to Mass Ave and up the street to SidPac. By the time I got back to the dorm, my legs were definitely feeling it, but I feel like I did a pretty good job of keeping up the focus/intensity throughout the 14 mile MP section (of course, it also helped that I broke out the short shorts, technical tee and Dragonforce on the iPod - this was SERIOUS BUSINESS :-).
Finished up the last 4 on the treadmill at 7:30 pace so I could warm up the core/legs before a thorough stretch, then went back to my room exhausted and PTFO'd for about an hour. Smells like victory :-D.
Total weekly mileage: 64 <-- Nailed it!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Ludicrous Speed!
Week 12: 2/28/11 - 3/6/11 (6 weeks remain)
The half-marathon I ran last Sunday was the beginning of Phase III of the marathon training program; now that we've had base aerobic (Phase I) and Endurance + LT (Phase II), it's time for Race Preparation - lots of speed work. Bring on the intervals!
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 7 miles with 5 x 600 meter intervals. Today was the first track workout of the training cycle. I had originally planned to run the workout at 80 seconds per lap (5:20 pace), starting an interval every 4:00 (so as to obtain 2:00 on, 2:00 off). However, I came through the first interval at 1:50, and in spite of trying to will myself to slow down in the second interval, my body seemed to naturally want to run at that pace, so I basically said "FUCK IT, WE'LL DO IT LIVE!" and switched the goal to 1:50 / interval :-). I ended up running all six intervals at around 73 second pace (which is 4:53 mile pace, for those of you keeping score at home). Pretty good day :-).
Wednesday: 15 mile run.
Thursday: 5 miles, recovery
Friday/Saturday: I had a bad allergic reaction to something that basically just knocked me on my ass for both Friday and Saturday; didn't run.
Sunday: 18 mile long run. Pretty mellow today; did the first 8 around the Boston Common/Commonwealth Ave loop with Tim so that he could break in his footgloves, and then finished up around Fresh Pond.
Total weekly mileage: 45 <-- kinda low, but of high quality.
The half-marathon I ran last Sunday was the beginning of Phase III of the marathon training program; now that we've had base aerobic (Phase I) and Endurance + LT (Phase II), it's time for Race Preparation - lots of speed work. Bring on the intervals!
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 7 miles with 5 x 600 meter intervals. Today was the first track workout of the training cycle. I had originally planned to run the workout at 80 seconds per lap (5:20 pace), starting an interval every 4:00 (so as to obtain 2:00 on, 2:00 off). However, I came through the first interval at 1:50, and in spite of trying to will myself to slow down in the second interval, my body seemed to naturally want to run at that pace, so I basically said "FUCK IT, WE'LL DO IT LIVE!" and switched the goal to 1:50 / interval :-). I ended up running all six intervals at around 73 second pace (which is 4:53 mile pace, for those of you keeping score at home). Pretty good day :-).
Wednesday: 15 mile run.
Thursday: 5 miles, recovery
Friday/Saturday: I had a bad allergic reaction to something that basically just knocked me on my ass for both Friday and Saturday; didn't run.
Sunday: 18 mile long run. Pretty mellow today; did the first 8 around the Boston Common/Commonwealth Ave loop with Tim so that he could break in his footgloves, and then finished up around Fresh Pond.
Total weekly mileage: 45 <-- kinda low, but of high quality.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Strategy: I Has It
Week 11: 2/21/11 - 2/27/11 (7 weeks remain)
This week was unusual mix of highs and lows the likes of which I've not seen in quite some time.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 10 miles (6 in the AM, 4 more in the PM).
Wednesday: 9 miles, general aerobic
Thursday: Spent all day working in lab - didn't run.
Friday: 11 miles on the treadmill with 9 miles at 7:00 pace.
Saturday: Didn't run today; went to the Ivy+ Scotch tasting from 2 to 6 instead. SO MUCH SCOTCH - DELICIOUS DELICIOUS SCOTCH. Turns out that for the most part, I prefer Speyside single malts (I recommend the Glenlivet 15/18 and the Macallan 15 Fine Oak), although the Laphroaig 25 was also quite nice :-). Got back around 8:00 PM, and then spent the next 2 hours or so guzzling Gatorade and waiting for the room to stop spinning :-P.
Sunday: Woke up at 7:00 to drive out to Hyannis for the Hyannis Half-Marathon. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was snowing when we got there, and there were far more runners than we were expecting. We also got there about half an hour later than we had planned due to increased traffic delays from the inclement weather, so we didn't really have time to properly warm up/stretch/use the bathroom prior to the race. Given this set of circumstances, I decided that I was probably not going to have a very good day (particularly given the lack of speed work in my training thus far), and therefore made the decision just to treat this as a "fun" run/harder LT workout. Bearing that in mind, and the fact that I really needed to use the commode after the 1.5 hour car ride prior to the race, and the fact that we were being chip-timed, I decided that I would just wait in the damn line for the port-a-pottys and start the race late, reasoning that on the plus side, it meant that I would have people to run with for most of the race (in previous longer races, I've often found myself running more or less alone, which is kinda boring/not good psychologically).
So as it turned out, I ended up crossing the start line ~10 minutes after the actual gun went off, and had to spend the first 3 miles or so dodging my way through relatively thick crowds of nonserious runners. On the plus side, having so many noncompetitive guys around gave me a constant sequence of people to pass, and which in turn helped keep the motivation to pass (and correspondingly, the pace) up. (It also helped that there were more than a few really cute girls in running spandex, which is always a powerful motivator to run strong :-P).
Anyway, the point is that by starting 10 minutes late, I inadvertently ensured that there were going to be large numbers of people to pick off almost all the way to the end of the course - I didn't really start to see the crowd thin out until around mile 9, by which point I had started to catch up to the tail end of the semi-serious athletes. Again, since I'd mostly been focusing on passing people up until that point, I hadn't actually been paying that much attention to my pacing - I'd mostly been going by feel, with the intention of getting a solid LT workout in, but without necessarily intentionally trying to run all crazy (for example, I'd caught up to my friend about 2 miles into the race and paused to have a brief chat with her before continuing on). However, at the 9 mile mark, I was starting to feel fatigued, so I thought I'd check the old watch and see how I was doing - and then realized that I'd just passed the 9 mile mark sometime around 55:00. At that point, I decided to just try and hammer the last part of the race in, since this was definitely PR pace.
As it turned out, I actually ended up running (what felt like) pretty even splits all the way from around mile 3 up to the end of mile 12; I even managed to up the pace through the last mile, with a solid kick in the last 600 meters or so. I haven't gotten the official results back, but my unofficial wristwatch time was 1:19:33, which comes out to 6:04 pace - about a 6:00 PR. Not bad given that I'd spent the previous night getting plastered on Scotch and the first three miles being snowed on :-).
However, more interesting to me than the PR itself is the strategic implications of how the race unfolded. The fact that I started late, which resulted in my having lots of bodies in front of me to chase, seems to me to have been an important factor in maintaining focus and motivation throughout the race itself. Now, consider the following facts:
Total weekly mileage: 43 <-- Low, but of high quality :-).
This week was unusual mix of highs and lows the likes of which I've not seen in quite some time.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 10 miles (6 in the AM, 4 more in the PM).
Wednesday: 9 miles, general aerobic
Thursday: Spent all day working in lab - didn't run.
Friday: 11 miles on the treadmill with 9 miles at 7:00 pace.
Saturday: Didn't run today; went to the Ivy+ Scotch tasting from 2 to 6 instead. SO MUCH SCOTCH - DELICIOUS DELICIOUS SCOTCH. Turns out that for the most part, I prefer Speyside single malts (I recommend the Glenlivet 15/18 and the Macallan 15 Fine Oak), although the Laphroaig 25 was also quite nice :-). Got back around 8:00 PM, and then spent the next 2 hours or so guzzling Gatorade and waiting for the room to stop spinning :-P.
Sunday: Woke up at 7:00 to drive out to Hyannis for the Hyannis Half-Marathon. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was snowing when we got there, and there were far more runners than we were expecting. We also got there about half an hour later than we had planned due to increased traffic delays from the inclement weather, so we didn't really have time to properly warm up/stretch/use the bathroom prior to the race. Given this set of circumstances, I decided that I was probably not going to have a very good day (particularly given the lack of speed work in my training thus far), and therefore made the decision just to treat this as a "fun" run/harder LT workout. Bearing that in mind, and the fact that I really needed to use the commode after the 1.5 hour car ride prior to the race, and the fact that we were being chip-timed, I decided that I would just wait in the damn line for the port-a-pottys and start the race late, reasoning that on the plus side, it meant that I would have people to run with for most of the race (in previous longer races, I've often found myself running more or less alone, which is kinda boring/not good psychologically).
So as it turned out, I ended up crossing the start line ~10 minutes after the actual gun went off, and had to spend the first 3 miles or so dodging my way through relatively thick crowds of nonserious runners. On the plus side, having so many noncompetitive guys around gave me a constant sequence of people to pass, and which in turn helped keep the motivation to pass (and correspondingly, the pace) up. (It also helped that there were more than a few really cute girls in running spandex, which is always a powerful motivator to run strong :-P).
Anyway, the point is that by starting 10 minutes late, I inadvertently ensured that there were going to be large numbers of people to pick off almost all the way to the end of the course - I didn't really start to see the crowd thin out until around mile 9, by which point I had started to catch up to the tail end of the semi-serious athletes. Again, since I'd mostly been focusing on passing people up until that point, I hadn't actually been paying that much attention to my pacing - I'd mostly been going by feel, with the intention of getting a solid LT workout in, but without necessarily intentionally trying to run all crazy (for example, I'd caught up to my friend about 2 miles into the race and paused to have a brief chat with her before continuing on). However, at the 9 mile mark, I was starting to feel fatigued, so I thought I'd check the old watch and see how I was doing - and then realized that I'd just passed the 9 mile mark sometime around 55:00. At that point, I decided to just try and hammer the last part of the race in, since this was definitely PR pace.
As it turned out, I actually ended up running (what felt like) pretty even splits all the way from around mile 3 up to the end of mile 12; I even managed to up the pace through the last mile, with a solid kick in the last 600 meters or so. I haven't gotten the official results back, but my unofficial wristwatch time was 1:19:33, which comes out to 6:04 pace - about a 6:00 PR. Not bad given that I'd spent the previous night getting plastered on Scotch and the first three miles being snowed on :-).
However, more interesting to me than the PR itself is the strategic implications of how the race unfolded. The fact that I started late, which resulted in my having lots of bodies in front of me to chase, seems to me to have been an important factor in maintaining focus and motivation throughout the race itself. Now, consider the following facts:
- In spite of my less-than-stellar speed/LT training thus far, it looks like I've at least got reasonable levels of top-end speed and LT pace.
- At the Boston Marathon proper, I can also expect that there are going to be lots of runners who are faster than I am, and therefore also lots of bodies ahead of me throughout the entire race.
Total weekly mileage: 43 <-- Low, but of high quality :-).
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Basic Life Skills Fail
Week 10: 2/14/11 - 2/20/11 (8 weeks remain)
This week kinda sucked, although to be fair, it was mostly due to my own incompetence. I signed up for the Hyannis Half Marathon this year, and thought that it was going to be this weekend (which would have fit nicely into the planned training schedule). However, as it turns out, I misread my calendar, and the race is in fact next weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this fact until I was about halfway through this week's training plan. At that point, I decided to try to switch the remaining portion of this week's workout with the corresponding portion of next week's workout, as next week's workout contains the 22 mile long run (the longest one of my training program), and I really didn't want to miss it. Unfortunately, it seems that the net effect of all this obliviousness/switching is that the overall week was kinda bland/shitty :-/. On the plus side, at least I got the long run in.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 9 miles, general aerobic, on the treadmill.
Wednesday: 8 miles, general aerobic
Thursday: 7 miles, on the treadmill
Friday: 8 miles w/ 2 mile tempo. It was actually quite warm out today: 50+ degrees! Almost all of the snow is off the roads now, so I decided to go out and try for a 12 mile run w/ 7 mile tempo. Unfortunately, right when I started the tempo portion of the workout, it started bucketing rain and all the streets flooded, which made it more or less impossible to keep the tempo pace (at least for me anyway - I've found that not being able to see where you're going/placing your feet is not conducive to my running as fast as possible). Given the totality of circumstances (e.g., not having slept/eaten well the previous few days, general feeling of broken-down-ness, etc.), I decided that this actually might be one of those times to cut your losses due to rapidly diminishing returns. Fortunately, this tempo run actually came from what was supposed to have been next week's workout, so I'll actually have a chance to do it again (properly) next week, when I should not have as much work keeping me up at night. The plan is to prepare properly and do it better next week, 'cause I actually really do need to work on the LT now that the roads are clear.
Saturday: 5 miles, treadmill.
Sunday: 22 miles, long run. This run was the peak-mileage run for this training cycle, so I wanted to be sure that it was a good one. Fortunately, the roads remained clear throughout the week, so I had good terrain, and (aside some moderately stiff winds) some good weather (clear, sunny, ~ 35 degree temperature). Did the Fresh Pond Loop + Commonwealth Ave 18 mile loop, and then got tired of the wind, so I decided to head back to SidPac and do the last 4 miles on the treadmill.
I was pretty pleased with this workout - recently I've been very concerned about my LT fitness, since (due to accumulation of snow on the trails) I haven't had much of an opportunity over the previous couple of months to really get out and do some good (i.e., higher-speed) LT runs, so I was very conscious of my pace while running this workout; in some sense, my goal here was almost more psychological than physical - I wanted to demonstrate to myself that I had the LT fitness necessary to run the race at my target pace. I feel like I did a pretty good job keeping the intensity up on the outdoor section of the run (although it's a bit hard for me to tell, since I suck at gauging pace - I was mostly operating on perceived level of effort). In this vein, I will say that one of the nice things about finishing up on the treadmill is that it enabled me to directly set the pace, so I could measure how I felt running at the end of a long run at a given pace. To that end, I ran miles 19-21 on the treadmill, starting at 7:15 pace and working down to 6:30 for the last mile-and-a-half, just to see how my body was holding up at this pace after having put in 18+ miles already, and I was pretty pleasantly surprised; I definitely felt tired, but not so tired that the pace felt unsustainable - even at 6:30 pace.
That having been said, I'm still sufficiently wary regarding my overall LT fitness and top speed that I'm glad I still have some time left to work on this before the big day :-P.
Total weekly mileage: 59
This week kinda sucked, although to be fair, it was mostly due to my own incompetence. I signed up for the Hyannis Half Marathon this year, and thought that it was going to be this weekend (which would have fit nicely into the planned training schedule). However, as it turns out, I misread my calendar, and the race is in fact next weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this fact until I was about halfway through this week's training plan. At that point, I decided to try to switch the remaining portion of this week's workout with the corresponding portion of next week's workout, as next week's workout contains the 22 mile long run (the longest one of my training program), and I really didn't want to miss it. Unfortunately, it seems that the net effect of all this obliviousness/switching is that the overall week was kinda bland/shitty :-/. On the plus side, at least I got the long run in.
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 9 miles, general aerobic, on the treadmill.
Wednesday: 8 miles, general aerobic
Thursday: 7 miles, on the treadmill
Friday: 8 miles w/ 2 mile tempo. It was actually quite warm out today: 50+ degrees! Almost all of the snow is off the roads now, so I decided to go out and try for a 12 mile run w/ 7 mile tempo. Unfortunately, right when I started the tempo portion of the workout, it started bucketing rain and all the streets flooded, which made it more or less impossible to keep the tempo pace (at least for me anyway - I've found that not being able to see where you're going/placing your feet is not conducive to my running as fast as possible). Given the totality of circumstances (e.g., not having slept/eaten well the previous few days, general feeling of broken-down-ness, etc.), I decided that this actually might be one of those times to cut your losses due to rapidly diminishing returns. Fortunately, this tempo run actually came from what was supposed to have been next week's workout, so I'll actually have a chance to do it again (properly) next week, when I should not have as much work keeping me up at night. The plan is to prepare properly and do it better next week, 'cause I actually really do need to work on the LT now that the roads are clear.
Saturday: 5 miles, treadmill.
Sunday: 22 miles, long run. This run was the peak-mileage run for this training cycle, so I wanted to be sure that it was a good one. Fortunately, the roads remained clear throughout the week, so I had good terrain, and (aside some moderately stiff winds) some good weather (clear, sunny, ~ 35 degree temperature). Did the Fresh Pond Loop + Commonwealth Ave 18 mile loop, and then got tired of the wind, so I decided to head back to SidPac and do the last 4 miles on the treadmill.
I was pretty pleased with this workout - recently I've been very concerned about my LT fitness, since (due to accumulation of snow on the trails) I haven't had much of an opportunity over the previous couple of months to really get out and do some good (i.e., higher-speed) LT runs, so I was very conscious of my pace while running this workout; in some sense, my goal here was almost more psychological than physical - I wanted to demonstrate to myself that I had the LT fitness necessary to run the race at my target pace. I feel like I did a pretty good job keeping the intensity up on the outdoor section of the run (although it's a bit hard for me to tell, since I suck at gauging pace - I was mostly operating on perceived level of effort). In this vein, I will say that one of the nice things about finishing up on the treadmill is that it enabled me to directly set the pace, so I could measure how I felt running at the end of a long run at a given pace. To that end, I ran miles 19-21 on the treadmill, starting at 7:15 pace and working down to 6:30 for the last mile-and-a-half, just to see how my body was holding up at this pace after having put in 18+ miles already, and I was pretty pleasantly surprised; I definitely felt tired, but not so tired that the pace felt unsustainable - even at 6:30 pace.
That having been said, I'm still sufficiently wary regarding my overall LT fitness and top speed that I'm glad I still have some time left to work on this before the big day :-P.
Total weekly mileage: 59
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Getting warmer...
Week 9: 2/7/11 - 2/13/11 (9 weeks remain)
(^OH SHIT - WE'RE INTO SINGLE DIGITS!)
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: Didn't run today; I was working in lab until 11:00 (IN THE PM!) trying to get our robot's map generation software to work - before realizing that the open-source software repository we were using (the ROS octomap_ros package, for those of you, dear readers, who may be familiar with the Robot Operating System framework) was in fact an experimental build, and hence riddled with implementation errors. As a wise man once said, open-source software is only "free" if your time is worthless :-/. On the other hand, I feel slightly less bad about skipping out on today's workout due to the fact that it was meant to be a recovery run.
Wednesday: 14 miles, medium long. Got out to run this afternoon, and was very pleasantly surprised by the trail conditions today: a great proportion of the Charles running trail was COMPLETELY CLEARED OF SNOW! Thinking back to my "calibration" on the treadmill last week, I took this opportunity to hit some long continuous stretches of this run (altogether probably around 10 miles or so) at around target marathon pace (~ 6:45 or so). I was actually quite pleased with today's workout; forcing the faster pace on last week's LT run seems to have shocked my body out of its complacency - maintaining this pace today didn't seem to require as much effort as it did last week, particularly later on in the run (after mile 7 or so) where I finally hit the Zone. God, it's been a long time since I've felt that - I'd forgotten how awesome that feels :-).
Thursday: Recovery day - 6 miles on the treadmill.
Friday: 13 miles, medium-long. Good conditions continue to hold up.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day.
Sunday: 16 mile run w/ 12 miles at target marathon pace. We had an incredible stroke of luck - temperatures today were in the mid-40's to low 50's; it felt positively tropical, and a good proportion of the snowbanks around town have now completely melted. You can actually see large sections of the sidewalk all over town :-DDD!
So the goal today was to do a 16 mile run with 12 miles or so at target marathon pace. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a contiguous 12-mile section of trail, even around the Charles, and I'm not sure that I was actually running at my goal marathon pace. My (ideal) target pace is somewhere in the 6:30 - 6:50 range, but frankly I'm not sure I can maintain that pace over this distance yet (partially because I haven't really been able to practice running at that pace over the previous month-and-a-half or so, due to the snow). So although I'm not sure I actually hit my goal pace (forgot to bring a watch with me) I would estimate I probably ran about a 10- 12-mile segment at 7:15 pace or so, which is actually just about the cutoff pace for requalifying.
On the plus side, I was focused on keeping the pace what felt like uncomfortably fast, and research has shown that the actual aerobic benefit you get from a workout scales more or less linearly with the perceived level of effort, so I should still have gotten something useful out of this. I'm actually about to enter the speed-work portion of my training plan, so with any luck, the streets will stay clear from here on out so I can work on getting my pace up.
Total weekly mileage: 54
(^OH SHIT - WE'RE INTO SINGLE DIGITS!)
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: Didn't run today; I was working in lab until 11:00 (IN THE PM!) trying to get our robot's map generation software to work - before realizing that the open-source software repository we were using (the ROS octomap_ros package, for those of you, dear readers, who may be familiar with the Robot Operating System framework) was in fact an experimental build, and hence riddled with implementation errors. As a wise man once said, open-source software is only "free" if your time is worthless :-/. On the other hand, I feel slightly less bad about skipping out on today's workout due to the fact that it was meant to be a recovery run.
Wednesday: 14 miles, medium long. Got out to run this afternoon, and was very pleasantly surprised by the trail conditions today: a great proportion of the Charles running trail was COMPLETELY CLEARED OF SNOW! Thinking back to my "calibration" on the treadmill last week, I took this opportunity to hit some long continuous stretches of this run (altogether probably around 10 miles or so) at around target marathon pace (~ 6:45 or so). I was actually quite pleased with today's workout; forcing the faster pace on last week's LT run seems to have shocked my body out of its complacency - maintaining this pace today didn't seem to require as much effort as it did last week, particularly later on in the run (after mile 7 or so) where I finally hit the Zone. God, it's been a long time since I've felt that - I'd forgotten how awesome that feels :-).
Thursday: Recovery day - 6 miles on the treadmill.
Friday: 13 miles, medium-long. Good conditions continue to hold up.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day.
Sunday: 16 mile run w/ 12 miles at target marathon pace. We had an incredible stroke of luck - temperatures today were in the mid-40's to low 50's; it felt positively tropical, and a good proportion of the snowbanks around town have now completely melted. You can actually see large sections of the sidewalk all over town :-DDD!
So the goal today was to do a 16 mile run with 12 miles or so at target marathon pace. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a contiguous 12-mile section of trail, even around the Charles, and I'm not sure that I was actually running at my goal marathon pace. My (ideal) target pace is somewhere in the 6:30 - 6:50 range, but frankly I'm not sure I can maintain that pace over this distance yet (partially because I haven't really been able to practice running at that pace over the previous month-and-a-half or so, due to the snow). So although I'm not sure I actually hit my goal pace (forgot to bring a watch with me) I would estimate I probably ran about a 10- 12-mile segment at 7:15 pace or so, which is actually just about the cutoff pace for requalifying.
On the plus side, I was focused on keeping the pace what felt like uncomfortably fast, and research has shown that the actual aerobic benefit you get from a workout scales more or less linearly with the perceived level of effort, so I should still have gotten something useful out of this. I'm actually about to enter the speed-work portion of my training plan, so with any luck, the streets will stay clear from here on out so I can work on getting my pace up.
Total weekly mileage: 54
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Blargh SICK
Week 8: 1/31/11 - 2/6/11 (10 weeks remain)
Monday - Thursday: Sick, didn't run.
Friday: 11 miles w/ 4 mile lactate threshold run. I took a few more days off than I thought I strictly needed, just to make sure that I really was in fact healthy before I started up running again (I have a history of coming back too soon and prolonging my time off), but today's workout included an LT phase that I really didn't want to miss. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to actually get around to running until fairly late at night, so I ended up having to do the workout on the treadmill :-/. On the other hand, this gave me an opportunity to calibrate my pacing, which has been difficult to do recently with all the ice and snow on the ground (I often end up plodding more than actually running, since you can't really run full speed through snow and ice). Overall I think it went fairly well for where I'm at in my training schedule, but it's also pretty clear that I'm going to need to take full advantage of the V0_2 max and speed workouts later in my training cycle, as my top speed right now is not what it should be.
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery.
Sunday: 20 miles, long run (also my birthday :-D!) This was actually the first time I'd run outside in a while, and I had some glorious weather for it: it was a bright, clear day and a balmy 40 degrees or so outside. I set out this morning planning to do the Fresh Pond + extended Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop.
Unfortunately, in spite of the very nice weather today, the running conditions were atrocious. We had some more snow earlier in the week, which had not been cleared off the running paths. This, combined with the relatively warm (i.e., above freezing) weather we've had the past couple of days, together with some actual rain yesterday night, meant that large portions of the running trails along the Charles consisted of ice sheets with standing water on top of them. It was actually pretty ridiculous - when the snowplows clear the streets, they do so by literally piling up huge snowbanks on the sidewalks, which eventually ice over. When it rains, the water collects on these ice sheets, and ends up melting little channels into the middle of them, which actually has the effect of making it harder to get rid of the water, as it now is not able to run off. This has been a feature here on and off since December or so, but today was BY FAR the worst I've ever seen it. There were some sections where there was so much standing water, and the snowbanks on either side were so high, that you literally had to just run through ankle-deep standing water over ice. The trail around Fresh Pond was particularly bad - it was literally a continuous sheet of ice all the way around the reservoir. Seriously, this shit was deadly.
In fact, as I was coming up the BU side of the Charles to finish up my run, I ended up slipping on an ice sheet when crossing over the River Street bridge and busting my hip (oh the irony! As if I were not already aware of my now-acutely-advanced age!).
Needless to say, my last four miles were not particularly quick.
However, prior to my embarrassing display of decrepitude, I had been more keenly focused on keeping the intensity up than I have been previously on the long runs (as a result of my treadmill calibration a couple of days ago), so I think that that, together with the fact that this was longest run to date for this training cycle, this ended up working out pretty well.
Total weekly mileage: 37 <--Again, not so great :-/.
BONUS MATERIAL: So in addition to today being my birthday, it was also SuperBowl Sunday, and several of my friends in the MIT Media Lab were hosting a SuperBowl viewing party. The Media Lab is definitely one of my favorite places on campus - walking into the building is like stepping into the future, and there's always a ton of really cool shit going on, so I knew this event couldn't fail to be epic. As it turned out, that was indeed the case. Apparently the Media Lab has one room devoted to a gigantic TV called the "4 x 4". I say TV, but really it's a composite display which is itself made out of 16 big-screen TV arranged in 4 rows of 4. In fact, it's actually so large that it's really not in a room as much as it's in a 2 story atrium on the third floor of the building (it's not clear to me that it would actually fit into one of the labs there - it's got a 144" screen :-D!).
BEST. VIEWING PARTY. EVER. :-).
Monday - Thursday: Sick, didn't run.
Friday: 11 miles w/ 4 mile lactate threshold run. I took a few more days off than I thought I strictly needed, just to make sure that I really was in fact healthy before I started up running again (I have a history of coming back too soon and prolonging my time off), but today's workout included an LT phase that I really didn't want to miss. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to actually get around to running until fairly late at night, so I ended up having to do the workout on the treadmill :-/. On the other hand, this gave me an opportunity to calibrate my pacing, which has been difficult to do recently with all the ice and snow on the ground (I often end up plodding more than actually running, since you can't really run full speed through snow and ice). Overall I think it went fairly well for where I'm at in my training schedule, but it's also pretty clear that I'm going to need to take full advantage of the V0_2 max and speed workouts later in my training cycle, as my top speed right now is not what it should be.
Saturday: 6 miles, recovery.
Sunday: 20 miles, long run (also my birthday :-D!) This was actually the first time I'd run outside in a while, and I had some glorious weather for it: it was a bright, clear day and a balmy 40 degrees or so outside. I set out this morning planning to do the Fresh Pond + extended Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop.
Unfortunately, in spite of the very nice weather today, the running conditions were atrocious. We had some more snow earlier in the week, which had not been cleared off the running paths. This, combined with the relatively warm (i.e., above freezing) weather we've had the past couple of days, together with some actual rain yesterday night, meant that large portions of the running trails along the Charles consisted of ice sheets with standing water on top of them. It was actually pretty ridiculous - when the snowplows clear the streets, they do so by literally piling up huge snowbanks on the sidewalks, which eventually ice over. When it rains, the water collects on these ice sheets, and ends up melting little channels into the middle of them, which actually has the effect of making it harder to get rid of the water, as it now is not able to run off. This has been a feature here on and off since December or so, but today was BY FAR the worst I've ever seen it. There were some sections where there was so much standing water, and the snowbanks on either side were so high, that you literally had to just run through ankle-deep standing water over ice. The trail around Fresh Pond was particularly bad - it was literally a continuous sheet of ice all the way around the reservoir. Seriously, this shit was deadly.
In fact, as I was coming up the BU side of the Charles to finish up my run, I ended up slipping on an ice sheet when crossing over the River Street bridge and busting my hip (oh the irony! As if I were not already aware of my now-acutely-advanced age!).
Needless to say, my last four miles were not particularly quick.
However, prior to my embarrassing display of decrepitude, I had been more keenly focused on keeping the intensity up than I have been previously on the long runs (as a result of my treadmill calibration a couple of days ago), so I think that that, together with the fact that this was longest run to date for this training cycle, this ended up working out pretty well.
Total weekly mileage: 37 <--Again, not so great :-/.
BONUS MATERIAL: So in addition to today being my birthday, it was also SuperBowl Sunday, and several of my friends in the MIT Media Lab were hosting a SuperBowl viewing party. The Media Lab is definitely one of my favorite places on campus - walking into the building is like stepping into the future, and there's always a ton of really cool shit going on, so I knew this event couldn't fail to be epic. As it turned out, that was indeed the case. Apparently the Media Lab has one room devoted to a gigantic TV called the "4 x 4". I say TV, but really it's a composite display which is itself made out of 16 big-screen TV arranged in 4 rows of 4. In fact, it's actually so large that it's really not in a room as much as it's in a 2 story atrium on the third floor of the building (it's not clear to me that it would actually fit into one of the labs there - it's got a 144" screen :-D!).
BEST. VIEWING PARTY. EVER. :-).
Saturday, January 29, 2011
DAMMIT!
Week 7: 1/24/11 - 1/30/11 (11 weeks remain)
Monday: Last day of ski trip!
Tuesday: 10 miles w/ 5 mile lactate threshold run. Ran the extended Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop for my first day back after taking a little vacation. I actually got snowed on a bit at the start of the workout as I was crossing over the Longfellow Bridge, although it was only a light dusting, and had mostly stopped by the time I got to Boston Common. The LT portion itself went pretty well; I was trying to up the pace this week, and it felt pretty good.
Wednesday: 14 miles, medium-long run. I was feeling pretty good today, so I actually ended up running a large portion of this run (~10 miles or so) at an uptempo pace as well. Guess all that time off last week paid off.
Thursday: 5 miles on the treadmill. Not much else to say.
Friday: I actually didn't run today; spent all day running around between conferences and trying to buy 4 lbs of meat for a roast (as it turns out, you can't just walk into a market and pick up a cut of meat this large...), then cooking and consuming said roast. Today I'm apparently on the "fatty plan" :-P.
Saturday: Another 5 on the treadmill.
Sunday: DAMMIT! Started to feel not-so-great last night after dinner. I thought it was just a bad case of allergies, and went to bed early, only to wake up in the middle of the middle of the night struggling to breathe and blasting snot everywhere (you're all welcome for that awesome visual imagery, by the way :-P). Looks like I'm sick :-/.
Total weekly mileage: 34 <-- Shit :-/. Well, at least the workouts I actually ran this week were pretty good.
I'm inclined to take it kinda easy early next week just to make sure that I'm actually really well before I start running around in the freezing frakkin' cold again. I'd rather take an extra day off to get well than try to come back too soon and end up making myself sick again. Hopefully I can bounce back fairly quickly with some good sleep.
Monday: Last day of ski trip!
Tuesday: 10 miles w/ 5 mile lactate threshold run. Ran the extended Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop for my first day back after taking a little vacation. I actually got snowed on a bit at the start of the workout as I was crossing over the Longfellow Bridge, although it was only a light dusting, and had mostly stopped by the time I got to Boston Common. The LT portion itself went pretty well; I was trying to up the pace this week, and it felt pretty good.
Wednesday: 14 miles, medium-long run. I was feeling pretty good today, so I actually ended up running a large portion of this run (~10 miles or so) at an uptempo pace as well. Guess all that time off last week paid off.
Thursday: 5 miles on the treadmill. Not much else to say.
Friday: I actually didn't run today; spent all day running around between conferences and trying to buy 4 lbs of meat for a roast (as it turns out, you can't just walk into a market and pick up a cut of meat this large...), then cooking and consuming said roast. Today I'm apparently on the "fatty plan" :-P.
Saturday: Another 5 on the treadmill.
Sunday: DAMMIT! Started to feel not-so-great last night after dinner. I thought it was just a bad case of allergies, and went to bed early, only to wake up in the middle of the middle of the night struggling to breathe and blasting snot everywhere (you're all welcome for that awesome visual imagery, by the way :-P). Looks like I'm sick :-/.
Total weekly mileage: 34 <-- Shit :-/. Well, at least the workouts I actually ran this week were pretty good.
I'm inclined to take it kinda easy early next week just to make sure that I'm actually really well before I start running around in the freezing frakkin' cold again. I'd rather take an extra day off to get well than try to come back too soon and end up making myself sick again. Hopefully I can bounce back fairly quickly with some good sleep.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Recovery Week; or, Irresponsibility Redux
Week 6: 1/17/11 - 1/23/11 (12 weeks remain)
Welp, it's a good thing the schedule has this week listed as a recovery week, because the mileage this week was actually pretty lacking.
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: Snowed in - ran 8 miles on the treadmill.
Wednesday/Thursday: Busy in the lab trying to take over the wor- er, building robots for the good of all mankind.
Friday: So today we left for the Graduate Student Council Ski Trip. I woke up this morning with grandiose plans to put in 15 miles (although I was pretty lax about the training this week, I still wanted to be sure that I got in the long run, as it's the most important run of the week). Unfortunately, after I awoke this morning and sprang out of bed like the highly motivated champion that I am, I glanced out my window to discover that ZOMG IT'S SNOWING AGAIN! So upon realizing that this was my last chance to put in a good workout for the week, I nutted up and decided that I was going to break my cardinal rule of marathon training... and run on the goddamn treadmill. I ended up spending nearly 2 hours on the treadmill, and it was everything I thought it would be - long, boring, and horrible. WORST. WORKOUT. EVER. On the other hand, at least I got my long run for the week in.
Saturday/Sunday: ZOMG SKIING! Went up to Sunday River in Maine for three days of skiing with MIT's GSC, and it was kickass! I continue to be astounded with New England's natural beauty :-).
In other news, Maine is f*&$ing cold: the last day we were there it dropped to -12 [edit: -32 at the top, with windchill(!)], and I don't think it got up beyond 10 or so the entire time I was there. When I stepped outside my cabin, I could actually feeling the moisture in my breath freezing to my beard in real-time. Apparently Boston dropped down around zero over the weekend as well, so I guess things were tough all over New England.
Fortunately, the forecast for the next several days calls for temperatures between 30 and 40 degrees back here in Boston, which will feel positively tropical by comparison. Perfect weather for putting some work in :-).
Total weekly mileage: 23 <--About that...
Welp, it's a good thing the schedule has this week listed as a recovery week, because the mileage this week was actually pretty lacking.
Monday: Off day
Tuesday: Snowed in - ran 8 miles on the treadmill.
Wednesday/Thursday: Busy in the lab trying to take over the wor- er, building robots for the good of all mankind.
Friday: So today we left for the Graduate Student Council Ski Trip. I woke up this morning with grandiose plans to put in 15 miles (although I was pretty lax about the training this week, I still wanted to be sure that I got in the long run, as it's the most important run of the week). Unfortunately, after I awoke this morning and sprang out of bed like the highly motivated champion that I am, I glanced out my window to discover that ZOMG IT'S SNOWING AGAIN! So upon realizing that this was my last chance to put in a good workout for the week, I nutted up and decided that I was going to break my cardinal rule of marathon training... and run on the goddamn treadmill. I ended up spending nearly 2 hours on the treadmill, and it was everything I thought it would be - long, boring, and horrible. WORST. WORKOUT. EVER. On the other hand, at least I got my long run for the week in.
Saturday/Sunday: ZOMG SKIING! Went up to Sunday River in Maine for three days of skiing with MIT's GSC, and it was kickass! I continue to be astounded with New England's natural beauty :-).
In other news, Maine is f*&$ing cold: the last day we were there it dropped to -12 [edit: -32 at the top, with windchill(!)], and I don't think it got up beyond 10 or so the entire time I was there. When I stepped outside my cabin, I could actually feeling the moisture in my breath freezing to my beard in real-time. Apparently Boston dropped down around zero over the weekend as well, so I guess things were tough all over New England.
Fortunately, the forecast for the next several days calls for temperatures between 30 and 40 degrees back here in Boston, which will feel positively tropical by comparison. Perfect weather for putting some work in :-).
Total weekly mileage: 23 <--About that...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Back on Track
Week 5: 1/10/11 - 1/16/11 (13 weeks remain)
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 9 miles with 4 1/2-mile lactate threshold run. Did the Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop, but rather than turning onto Brookline on the way back, continued down the Charles running trail until the Mass Ave bridge to tack on an extra 1/2 mile or so to the tempo. Went pretty well; not really much else to say.
Wednesday: AHHHHHH BLIZZARD! Cambridge got something like 15" of snow last night, so most of the roads/sidewalks were basically not runnable:
Other apartment buildings near my dorm
So instead of running, I did some cross training. And by cross training, I mean throwing snowballs and sledding ( :-D !)
Thursday: 14 miles, medium-long run. The roads had cleared up quite a bit since yesterday, so I went out for one of this week's medium-long runs. Unfortunately, many of the trails around Boston and Cambridge were still knee-deep in snow, which made running significantly more tiring (even if you weren't sinking knee-deep, the fact that it hadn't gotten above freezing since the snow initially fell meant that much of it was still powdery-ish, and therefore, when running, you only actually converted about 70% or so of the applied power to forward motion, the other 30% or so going to fling up a bunch of snow behind you). So today went pretty well (it was certainly very pretty outside), although perhaps a bit more tiring than I would have expected for only going 14 miles. My quads in particular were a bit sore by the time I got back, which is unusual for me.
Friday: Another 12 miles. Now we have ice instead of snow, which is fairly irritating (I can't run as fast as I would like, since that causes me to slip all over the ice and puts me in real danger of busting my frakkin' skull). Other than that, not much to report.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery, on the treadmill.
Sunday: 18 miles, long run. Did the Fresh Pond + Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave double-loop again. The kids were out sledding on the hill in Kingsley Park, which was pretty cool. Still icy.
Total weekly mileage: 58 <--- Ah yes, that's better :-).
Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 9 miles with 4 1/2-mile lactate threshold run. Did the Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop, but rather than turning onto Brookline on the way back, continued down the Charles running trail until the Mass Ave bridge to tack on an extra 1/2 mile or so to the tempo. Went pretty well; not really much else to say.
Wednesday: AHHHHHH BLIZZARD! Cambridge got something like 15" of snow last night, so most of the roads/sidewalks were basically not runnable:
My dorm's courtyard
Other apartment buildings near my dorm
Boston Common
So instead of running, I did some cross training. And by cross training, I mean throwing snowballs and sledding ( :-D !)
Thursday: 14 miles, medium-long run. The roads had cleared up quite a bit since yesterday, so I went out for one of this week's medium-long runs. Unfortunately, many of the trails around Boston and Cambridge were still knee-deep in snow, which made running significantly more tiring (even if you weren't sinking knee-deep, the fact that it hadn't gotten above freezing since the snow initially fell meant that much of it was still powdery-ish, and therefore, when running, you only actually converted about 70% or so of the applied power to forward motion, the other 30% or so going to fling up a bunch of snow behind you). So today went pretty well (it was certainly very pretty outside), although perhaps a bit more tiring than I would have expected for only going 14 miles. My quads in particular were a bit sore by the time I got back, which is unusual for me.
Friday: Another 12 miles. Now we have ice instead of snow, which is fairly irritating (I can't run as fast as I would like, since that causes me to slip all over the ice and puts me in real danger of busting my frakkin' skull). Other than that, not much to report.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery, on the treadmill.
Sunday: 18 miles, long run. Did the Fresh Pond + Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave double-loop again. The kids were out sledding on the hill in Kingsley Park, which was pretty cool. Still icy.
Total weekly mileage: 58 <--- Ah yes, that's better :-).
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