A True Progression Run Today

I met Brian King at 6 AM this morning for a run. Our plan was four times around the 3.55 mile Greatwood loop, with each loop being faster than the previous, and all of them pretty aggressive. It was warmer and more humid than I would have liked but oh well.

We took off and covered the first loop in 25:10, around a 7:06 pace, and just about where we wanted to be. The second loop was a little tougher, especially since I'm not used to going long as well as fast early in the morning. The second loop was 24:48 and I was not looking forward to another two even faster. The third one was a solid 24:24 and then it was game on for the final 3.55 mile loop. We were ahead of loop three's pace through mile one and also at mile two, and well ahead at the last turn with .8 to go. I had told Brian that we should stay together to the back corner, which is about two miles into the loop, then it was every man for himself. Brian began drifting ahead at that point and by the .8-to-go mark he was about 30 -40 feet in front me. We both hammered down that final stretch but Brian continued to pull away. He finished the final loop about 18 seconds before me, as I came in with a 23:28.

We did exactly what we planned to do this morning, which is gratifying in itself, and in the process set our new all-time best four loop time of 1:37:50 (6:53 pace) for me, and 1:37:32 (6:52 pace) for Brian. And as I've mentioned before, this isn't exactly a straight, flat course. It was a great training run but certainly no fun.

Uptown Turkey Trot 10K - 11/27/08

I headed out into the soup yesterday morning for the TXU Uptown Turkey Trot 10K. I was looking forward to another chance to test my fitness level and gauge where I am in my comeback from the summer injury. The McMillan calculator predicted a 39:51 based on the 5K I did a week and a half ago but I thought I might be a bit better than that and targeted a 6:20 pace (39:16).

I certainly would have liked things to be a bit cooler than low 70s and sky-high humidity but not much you can do about the weather. So when we started I was cautious not to go too fast, knowing that the conditions weren't favoring a fast day. I hit the first mile in 6:11, a little fast but felt okay. I hit mile two in 6:14 - not too much drift. Mile three was a 6:17 and still not too terribly much drift and about the best I could expect given the warm humid conditions. Mile four was where it started to get challenging and painful but I still managed a 6:22. Mile five was very uncomfortable but only a tiny bit more drift - 6:25. Mile six didn't feel any better but I clocked a 6:21, trying to hold off anyone who might come up from behind me, like either one of the Schroeder brothers! Once again I didn't look back on the course - better to worry about my race and what was in front of me. As we ran down Post Oak Blvd. I would pick off a landmark up ahead and focus on getting to that point. This helped get me through the worst patch and I was soon at the end of six miles. Time to see if I had anything left for the final .2 mile kick. The tank was pretty empty and I went 1:10 for the final stretch.

Finishing time was a better than expected sub thirty-nine - 38:56 (6:16 pace). That was good enough for 2nd place in the 45-49 age group.

Even though I dislike muggy weather as much as the next person I seem to do well against the field when things are that way. Guess I'm just more willing to suffer than the next guy, or more prepared to suffer. Probably just used to it I guess from the hard training runs I do. I'm not stranger to the pain.

Irregular Intervals

No, they're not the latest cutting-edge training technique, though I guess they could become that. That's simply the best way to describe the speedwork I did this evening.

I live just off a 3.82 mile loop around my neighborhood. There are several blocks that make up this loop, some longer than others, divided by roads that lead into the interior of the loop. I decided to do speedwork on the loop and let the irregular block lengths be my "laps". I covered one block to warm up then took off on the next block, not letting up until the block was over. Then I recovered on the next block, then fast on the one after that, etc. I managed seven fast laps and covered a total of about 4 miles. Here are the lap details:

.38 miles - 2:10 (5:43 pace)
.19 miles - 1:03 (5:40 pace)
.37 miles - 2:04 (5:33 pace)
.18 miles - :60 (5:24 pace)
.25 miles - 1:22 (5:27 pace)
.31 miles - 1:40 (5:26 pace)
.30 miles - 1:41 (5:41 pace)

The recovery blocks were more consistent in distance - all were around .25 to .3 miles at a 9 minute plus pace. This was an interesting and challenging way to do speedwork because even though I run this loop pretty regularly I don't pay much attention to how long most of the blocks are and since the loop curves I was rarely able to see how far I had to go before I could let up. Very challenging. I would like a longer one or two in there though. But I guess I could combine a couple of blocks next time to get one over half a mile in length.

18 Mile Progression Run With Brian King

Brian King came over to the house this morning at 5:30 for an 18-miler. We didn't really want this to be a slow, ho-hum long-run and it wasn't.

We started off at a decent pace, no just-warming-up first mile of eight minutes or something. We talked about holding an overall pace of 7:30 or better and were on that number through four miles. In anticipation of a cold morning I had laid out everything I would need to stay warm but left some of it behind (tights, extra shirt, extra pair of gloves) because it was well into the 40s when we started. One thing I did wear which I ended up regretting was Toastie Toes inside my shoes. My feet get cold very easily and these things work great but they were bothering me early on and we had to stop at around four miles to take one out, then again at around five miles to take the other one out.

We went nine miles out and nine miles back. Other than the two brief stops mentioned above we stopped only once - for water at about 11 miles. After that stop, and with the wind more at our backs than it had been going out, we started to pick things up versus how we had run the first half.

Here are the splits so you can see what I'm talking about:

1: 7:31
2: 7:24
3: 7:21
4: 7:53 (includes the first stop)
5: 7:10
6: 7:53 (includes the second stop)
7: 7:27
8: 7:21
9: 7:19
10: 7:26
11: 8:18 (includes our water stop at the elementary school that's on the course)
12: 7:07
13: 7:11
14: 7:12
15: 7:13
16: 7:05
17: 7:07
18: 6:28

It was great to have something left in the tank and drop that last mile the way we did. Good job Brian - I was determined to hang on. Let's do it at mile sixteen next time like we did last summer.

A Rare Win

Early in 2001, when I'd been a runner for all of about 3 months, I came across the results of a local 5K in the Arizona Republic (my wife and I lived in Phoenix at the time). I'd never done a 5K and I think I had to look up how far it was but one look at the results made me quickly realize that I certainly wasn't fast enough to go out and win one. I was trying to hold a seven minute pace in my 3 mile training runs and here someone had done one in a little over 16 minutes! Surely this must be some local phenom I thought. Heck, I had no business even entering a race if times like that were being posted.

What I didn't realize then was that the distribution of 5K race times went according to the typical bell curve. There can be a rather large gap between first and second, a smaller gap between second and third, a still smaller gap between third and fourth and by the time you get to the mean you have runners bunched so closely that 20 runners can be clustered over 20 seconds. And after doing a few races I realized that it was possible to be two or three minutes back of the overall winner and still crack the top 10.

So that became my goal. I wasn't fast enough to win and only once or twice did I ever experience the thrill of even briefly leading a race. But I could still try to move up as close to the overall winner as possible. In 2005 I pulled off a second place finish or two, and at least one third overall. I even trailed one single guy for 9 and a half miles of a ten mile race but a wrong turn by him near the finish allowed me to backdoor my way into an overall win. But that one had an asterisk by it and I certainly didn't feel like I "won" it in the true sense of the word.

Thanks to a heads up by Jon Walk, I had entered a 5K this past weekend that was put on by Spring Baptist Church and which was to be run through my in-laws' subdivision, Bridgestone, off FM 2920. I knew that the race was kind of under the radar so I might have a chance to do some damage, but figured some high school cross-country runner would show up and post a 17 something. But as I surveyed the field of runners I noticed that there was really only one guy who looked to be a real runner, and he looked to be a few years older than me.

We lined up next to each other but didn't speak. After about 100 yards into the race I realized that I had been right. All the 10 year olds who took off with us quickly faded and it was just he and I. We ran very near each other for a quarter mile at the most then I began to pull in front. After another quarter mile I didn't hear anyone behind me but didn't want to look back. I figure that if I see that they're way back I might let up, or if I see that they're right behind me it might temp me to throw in the towel when the going gets rough. I'd rather assume they're still in the hunt and I need to stick with the plan. I must say, it was a rush being the guy following the cop car that was leading the field through the course.

My in-laws live about 1/4 mile from the finish and since my wife was also running the race we had taken our two boys over to grandma and grandpas' that morning. As the cop car, then me approached the finishing stretch I looked up ahead and saw that my wife's parents had the boys all bundled up and standing on the corner to see Daddy and Mommy come by. When my boys realized it was me that was in the lead they began to jump up and down and yell. My five year old came onto the course and wanted to run with me like we do at the end of training runs when he's been stuck in the jogging stroller for five miles. He ran alongside me for just a bit but got mad when he began to slow and I kept going. He wanted me to stop and take a walking recovery with him and didn't understand why I couldn't!

I hammered it in as best as I could and ended up busting through the ribbon they were holding up at the finish. It was a real kick. I'm not really a good enough runner to be winning races and my 19:11 was nothing special, but hey, I can only race against those who show up. After catching my breath I watched the second place guy come in. I asked him if he'd seen the older couple and two little boys standing on the corner and he said he sure did. He said when he went by he heard one of them say with grave concern in his voice, "is that man going to catch Daddy?!

Last thing - hats off to the wife who is really not a runner, at least not like most of us but who managed a PR of 31:29 and actually placed in the goofy 15 year age group they had.

.93 Mile intervals

To me, mile intervals represent the final frontier of training in that they hurt as much as any workout I've ever done and you can get in trouble real fast if you're not fit and disciplined. I haven't done these since before I got injured so it was with butterflies in my stomach that I ventured over to the course I run these on. We've always known, even before getting Garmins, that this course was just short of mile. Usually we go a little beyond a full loop in order to call it a clean mile but tonight I decided to give myself the mental gift of just doing the loop itself, which is about .93 of a mile, times four. I had enough anxiety over these already so I figured that knowing I didn't have to go a full mile on each one would help me get four done. It did. Here's my splits and my adjusted per mile pace for each .93:

5:39 (6:04)
5:34 (6:02)
5:34 (6:02)
5:31 (5:58)

Not too bad. Better than I thought and I wasn't dying at the end. The break in between is a jog of about half a mile at around a 9:30 pace.

25K Recap

I'm not going to be overly loquacious in recapping my 25K race from this past Sunday. I did okay, about as expected but not fantastic. I did better than expected through 12 miles but faded some on the last three. I want to get much faster by the time of the 30K in five weeks. Fortunately there's a solution for that - it's the title of this blog.

My finishing time was 1:44:53 (6:46 pace). My Garmin registered 15.63 miles for that 1:44:53, which yields a pace of 6:43, just one second slower than the 1/2 marathon two weeks ago. I was 5th in the 45-49 age group and 36th overall. Here are my mile splits:

1 - 6:31
2 - 6:42
3 - 6:41
4 - 6:39
5 - 6:49
6 - 6:41
7 - 6:37
8 - 6:34
9 - 6:35
10 - 6:59
11 - 6:43
12 - 6:39
13 - 6:53
14 - 6:50
15 - 6:54
6:33 pace for the final .63

It was nice running right behind my training partner Brian King pretty much the entire race. Brian finished 1st in the 25-29 age group - way to go Brian. It was me pushing you, right?! We also ran several miles with another buddy, Garrett Rychlik. And it was also nice to have several people out on the course giving me a shout-out as I went by. Thanks Tuan Nguyen, Lou Thrash, Jon Walk, Wayne Cohen, and anyone else I missed, including a few people I didn't recognize. It makes a difference.

Since The Half Marathon

Last Monday I wisely took the day off to recover from the half marathon the previous day. The calfs were sore and the last time I ran on a sore calf I was out for 11 weeks.

-I hit the road on Tuesday, 5.5 miles after work along White Oak Bayou in the very cool temps and felt great. 7:10 pace.

-On Wednesday I went out for some speedwork - 4 repeats of about .55 miles each. Pace was around 6:00.

-On Thursday I had too much going on and had to take the day off. But on Friday night I went out for 10 miles (actually 9.96) over in my old neighborhood. It felt good to go long and relatively fast - a 6:58 pace, with a final mile of 6:29. The amazing thing about that run was that here were my first seven mile splits: 7:04, 7:03, 7:05, 7:06, 7:05, 7:08, 7:00. How's that for dialing in?
On Saturday we had a full day again, including me being tied up in a computer class most of the day, then across town for dinner and drinks with friends. Got home at 12:30 AM so no running early the next morning.

-I did get out the door Sunday around 9:30 AM for what I hoped would be an easy 15 or 16 mile long-run. It didn't quite work out that way because I wasn't really prepared for the warm temperatures and bright sunshine. I stopped at the park n the out-and-back course which is at about 5.4 miles for a drink of water. I wisely decided to head back toward the house, figuring if I still had some starch in me I could do a lap around the neighborhood to pick up any milage I still felt like getting. But I called it quits as I approached home. I hit 10.80 miles in a 7:19 pace.

-Tonight I went out for speedwork again, on the .4 mile oval where I used to live. My splits were: 2:22, 2:19, 2:15, 2:16, 2:14, 2:10. It was a nice feeling of accomplishment to get in six repeats, my goal, and at pretty decent times. I just need to shave about five or six seconds off each one of these and I'll be back near peak.