Adjusted Reality

I’m banking on some pretty sweet 70.3 fitness as about half the oomph to get me through a marathon with a short training cycle.  I’ve also done it last year, and the year before (with a suuuuuper short cycle, in fact, I’d be recovering from it today instead of just starting taper).

Every year it’s been an order of operations:

1. Recover from Kerrville 70.3.

2. Do a long run as quickly as possible (6 days after in 2012, 13 days after in 2013, 20 days after for 2014 only because I was sick 13 days out).

3.  Ramp up the weekly miles to support the long run (all easy).  This year, in 2014, I actually did this BEFORE doing a long run, which is the right way.

4. Do my first 20 as quickly as possible (13 days after in 2012, 20 days after in 2013, 27 days after in 2014).

5. Take a stepback week to let my body process all that ramping up.

5. Maintain a decent amount of miles until 3 weeks out, and then start gradually tapering.

I’ll admit that the initial ramp up is a little rough, pulling you by the nose instead of a gradual build, but within about 2 weeks it becomes the norm and my body adapts.  I’m actually finding this cycle that my recovery is better than ever.  I’ve been just bopping along with training.

Zliten decided to go tweak his knee (doing non-running related stuff) so he’s been a little low on the miles – he did 3.3 miles with me Thursday night and was all smiles (once you get used to that steady stream of endorphins it’s hard to quit).  But, as coach, I didn’t let him pick up training and do the 23 or even a 20 because that would be crazy after being out most of the week.

I bailed on the 23.  I was definitely iffy on the merits of doing it, and I wasn’t doing it solo.  I had considered an easy 20, because it’s the last week to do it, but I also wasn’t convinced that would be the absolute best use of my time.  My next thought was do something a little shorter and speedier (warmup, a good handful of m pace miles, cooldown, somewhere between 15-18).

I had thought about doing the faster practice this week and doing a 20 next week (2 weeks 1 day out) to let Zliten have one more 20.  Not optimal, but I definitely didn’t feel worse for wear after my last 20, so it was in the running as a possibility.  So, I had lots of options and I was waffling back and forth on what to do.

Then, I went to the internet for advice.

Even though the second training plan I brought up had a 20 miler 2 weeks out, I guess it was the advanced high mileage plan for Boston prep, because suggesting that on the internet apparently is like kicking someone’s dog and insulting their mothers.  How dare I consider running the magical 20 with only 15 days to recover?  Apparently I’m asking to be injured, sick, and mentally addled, probably in conjunction with wearing a scarlet letter A on my chest or something.

Ok, fine, I can concede that.  Probably not the greatest idea.  Three weeks out of Kerrville I did my second 13 (long run) and then chilled out a bit on the run miles, so makes sense.  So, whatever I did this weekend was it, and then it’s taper time.  So, even more pressure to get this right.

Then I got paralyzed in that decision and decided to post my dilemma to a forum I frequent (that generally has sane people) to try to get ideas.

Total mistake.

Apparently my training thus far was an affront to the marathon distance (not enough miles, ramped up too fast), swimming and biking don’t count at ALL in building running endurance fitness (I heartily disagree over years of experience with it), and the best thing I can do is to run way less miles (now that I’m ramped up and absorbing training just fine?) and accept defeat right now that my marathon is just shot.  Wow, thanks for the confidence guys!

I know that the traditional path to a marathon does not include doing a lot of training on the bike and in the pool, but I feel so fit after my 70.3s I’m ready to leap.  Once I drop the other sports, and after a little adjustment period where it’s weird and awkward to RUN ALL THE MILES, I feel good.  I admit, it IS harder to do 90% running instead of splitting between all 3 sports, but I’m rolling less hours overall, with a lot less intensity overall, so the load feels very similar at the end of the week.

I was riled up for awhile about it, but at this point, I’ve realized this – if you’re going to do non-traditional things, you have to forge your own ground and ignore the haters.  You have to march to the beat of your own drum.  I certainly wouldn’t recommend everyone jump up in miles the way I do, but this isn’t my first rodeo.

It started one year I experimented on a half marathon 6 weeks out of an olympic tri, and I PR’d it (the half marathon that is, it’s actually still my PR).  I was going to do it again the next year, but it got rained out.  2012, I tried the 70.3 to marathon, and while it was so, so, hard, I had a great experience and was hooked.  Last year, I did it again but picked one NINE weeks out.  I PR’d by 21 minutes.  If any of these had gone badly, I would not continue to do this.  I’m not a moron.

And, this doesn’t flatten me for weeks or months or anything.  The first marathon ended and I took a nice long offseason (but that was planned, I’d done 24 races in 12 months and it was time for a break).  Last year, I logged almost 60 miles in December not counting the marathon and I was already ramping up for a half in January.  So, this level of training didn’t kill me, injure me, or otherwise negatively affect me.

I also have the benefit this year that this is not my only shot.  Yeah, I want to PR and have a great day, and I’m on track to do so.  However, I’m signed up for another one at the end of February.  Getting up to fit enough to do a marathon and then having 3 more months to fine tune?  Pretty sure that’s going to be the breakthrough one.  However, I’m also going to nontraditionally train for that one too because I’ll be ramping up for an early season 70.3 as well.

But, I’m sure that run fitness can’t translate to bike and swim, so there’s no way I’m going to PR that one either, according to the internet.  I may as well just give up now.  Riiiiiight.

So, what happened this weekend?  Only, like, my best breakthrough run of this cycle.  I went out with a very flexible plan, and discovered my body had found it’s way out of the mileage haze.  It wanted to cruise faster than normal, so I let it.  The first 7 miles were between 11-11:22, and then I found another gear for the next 9 – between 10:20-10:40.  It felt natural, and my cadence and stride felt pretty great.  That was 16.  I decided to do two more to cool down, but my legs didn’t really want to slow, so those were 11:04 and 10:50, respectively.

The result: the fastest I’ve ever run anything over a half marathon by a LOT, and a huge confidence boost going into the next 3 weeks of taper.  I celebrated by stretching, an ice bath, a beer, and a delicious sandwich (yay, splurge day).

I do have some weirdness going on in my left shin/calf that I’m a little worried about.  I can run/walk/etc no problem, but I’m feeling a few twinges now and then.  I know it’s knotted all to hell (been doing lots of self massage and going to officially address that this week at the chiro and massage), but as a runner, anything in the shin is scary – we fear the hell out of stress fractures.  I don’t think this is it.  Pain that moves around and cycles generally is muscular, but it’s definitely a wakeup call to treat myself right.  I’m taking a few extra days off running this week and frankly, if it’s a wash and I swim and bike most of it, life will go on.  The hay is in the barn. Taper is for addressing these things.

However upset I was at the people on the forum, I actually am thankful for two reasons.  A great path to me to accomplish a goal – to be told I can’t.  So, thank you, random internet people.  You may have gotten into my brain for a bit, but I can ASSURE you that you’ll be in my brain in the latter marathon miles, and I’ll be fighting hard to prove you wrong with a shiny PR.

Also, if this is going to be limping through a marathon, I’ll be excited to see what I can do at the end of February with 3 more months to train.

Life is beyond super busy, but it’s been a while so let me drop a marker in the ground with how it has been.

Last year, this time, my run game was totally on the up and up.  I found speed and endurance and just about every run was like sunshine and puppies and rainbows.  After a legitimately shitty period of running legs during 2013 triathlons after sustaining a knee injury in the spring, it was like being a butterfly that emerged from a cocoon.  It was like, 3 weeks after tri season ended, my running attitude and aptitude somehow pulled a 180 and I was on top of the world.

This year, I’m still in that cocoon.  Mostly.  The wings might be starting to poke through but the transformation is not as dramatic as last year.

It’s a bit unfair to compare.  Last year my run was SO SHITTY during tri season that I really had nowhere to go but up. I was running so below my capacity it was sort of… how could I not run better?

Last year this time, it was so much more temperate bordering on chilly.  We’re finally having our first morning where it’s below mid-60s and humid at dawn this weekend (and actually, mid-60s and humid has been the best of it, it really feels like summer has just continued on, really).  Last year the weather was pretty much perfection from Kerrville to Space Coast.  Not so much this year.  Last week’s run ended at 86 degrees on the thermometer and feels like WTF.

Also, I think I raced Kerrville harder this year, and then went on vacation, and then spent the first week back with my mystery sickness/allergies, and then decided to wreck my bod at a crossfit class and post my slowest run of the year after.  When you have only TWO three week blocks to train, and one of them is just hampered with issues, it’s not exactly a confidence booster.  Another 180 from last year, where training just sort of cruised along.  I was kind of scared of how good I was doing last year, this year I’m scared I’m not improving at all.

However, the goal for the last three weeks was simply volume, and besides the first week, when I was sick, I nailed it.  I just expected the easy pace to drop off a little quicker like it did last year.

Week 1: 21.5 miles ran (which for how AWFUL I felt, was pretty good, though I wanted to hit 35)

Week 2: 40.5 miles ran (40 planned, check and check)

Week 3: 50 miles ran (weekly run mileage PR!)

Midweek miles have just been runs.  A few hilly, a few hot, some before work, some after, some at lunch, some with headlamps, some in full sun.  I’ve put a *little* effort into parts of a small handful of them but mostly they’ve been miles, easy pace/effort.

Week 2 and 3 had long runs (because I’m not counting 6 miles as anything but “holy crap I’m still recovering”).  My 16.5 miler (15-18 planned) was… how shall I say… a character building experience.  Everything felt *off* immediately and never got better.  I was cranky, I had technical difficulties with my music, it was HOOOOOOTTTT and I really just hated every step of it.  Not the best initial long run of a short training cycle.

However, I realized even during the crappy run that it was good mental practice.  Last year, with the weeks of sunshine and rainbows, I showed up to the race feeling off at mile 1 and it threw me HARD.  Now I know that not feeling awesome isn’t an emergency, it’s just one of the cards you draw on the day where you toe the line.  It’s just a longer day of managing that.

Last Saturday was our first 20 this year.  Suffering through that painful 16.5 brought some mental toughness confidence, but that 20 gave me the other side of the coin.  This was just a super pleasant, floaty, mostly painless, happy fun run in spite of just about everything crapping out that day.  Who gets a floaty 20 miler?  That shit is supposed to be hard, right?

My headphones broke at mile 7.  We didn’t bring enough money for gatorades and had to beg for ice/tap water at our second stop.  It reached 86 and was full sun by the end, which was actually hotter than the week before.  But somehow, this one was just a-ok super fine.  I mean, about mile 17, it got to be some effort.  Before that it was just playing around outside.  And this was exactly, on the nose, marathon pace from last year.  Just sublime.  This was the run I was waiting for, for sure.

This week is stepback week, and then I have four more weeks until the race after that.  With these short blocks, it seems that the first half is slogging through a base build, and the second part is where I find all the fun gains when I push myself a little.  Here’s hoping!

A few things I’m looking forward to in the next few weeks:

• Doing my first 23 mile training run next weekend.  Same easy pace as the 20, but Zliten is convinced that closing that gap between training distance and race distance will help. We’ll see.  This will be 3 weeks out from the race, and if I feel like it’s doing irreparable damage I’ll cut it short.
• Speeeeeeedwork.  A few short interval sessions to keep my legs remembering how to turn over faster than a jog, but mostly some tempo work so I remember what it’s like to string sub-10 min miles together and not die.
• Fast finish runs/progression runs.  I tend to run this way anyway, but I’ll be pushing those last miles a little harder.
• Marathon pace.  There will be a lot of “x miles with x at marathon pace” and hopefully once it’s cooler, marathon pace will get a lot easier.
• Actually making a better “best guess” about my marathon pace.  Right now, I’m going to start out around 11 min/miles and cruise a little faster as I get warmed up.  We’ll see if that’s realistic closer to Nov 30th.

Honestly, right now, I’m targeting about the same finish time I was targeting last year – around 4:40.  This is a time I fully believe I could have at least came close to if I had the right day, and didn’t blow up between miles 13 and 20.

And maybe that’s what 2014 is about.  Having the right day, against whatever else life throws at me.  I’ve been able to have some good solid races this year, races where I’m executing on the day on paces that are either at or above my expectations with my training… so… I’m hoping to continue the trend November 30th.

Other stuff:

I’m trying to get in the habit of doing the DOZEN twice a week.  It’s a great set of strength sets that works everything BUT your main running muscles and leaves you fresh.  Sadly, it has also illuminated how terrible I have gotten at pushups, and I’ll be working on that.  Only being able to do 13 from my toes is a little bit embarrassing.

I’m really trying to stress the stretching, foam rolling, and recovery.  I get away with a little more during tri season since swimming and easy bikes tend to loosen me up pretty well, but only running wears me down more.  More relaxing on weekends instead of being everywhere, ice baths, and taking care of myself is on the plan.

I’m sticking with the fruits, corn, and potato for carbs type thing but I have gotten a little lax.  French fries are TECHNICALLY on the list but I probably shouldn’t get them as often as I have been.  I’ve been eating beans not instead of other carbs but with them.  I’m going to get through Halloween (being reasonable), and then redouble my effort from now until the race (with an exception for Thanksgiving, of course).

I think it may be worth tracking at least part of my food intake.  I may spend a week or two tracking everything that’s not veggies, fruit, meat, nuts, non-sugary dairy (cheese good, ice cream, bad), or running fuel.  I have no idea how many calories I’m eating right now, and don’t really want to know, but I think that having to track outside that realm means I’ll eat less of the other stuff.

Had my every-few-years blood draw and doctor confirmed I am a perfect specimen.  The only thing she said was outside OPTIMAL (but within normal) was my B12 and D3 levels, so I got me some suppliments and I haven’t really felt much change, but I am only a month out of recovering from a hard race, so this may shine a little better next year.  Also, she said eating a little MORE red meat might be helpful.  Odd when your doc tells you that, right?

I still am trying to figure out music on my runs.  I’m using my phone, which is old, and heavy, and tends to turn the volume down during and lose connection.  The benefit is I run with music a lot less and mind it less too, but I do like some tuneage to motivate for particularly long/hard sessions.  Also, I used to use a music service (zune) for 15 bucks a month that worked for both me and Zliten, and I got 10 free songs per month.  I’m not sure how I’m going to beat that. 😛

And on that note, back to busy life.

Question of the week: Any music player/service suggestions that don’t start with i-something that you love?

One of my oft mis-quoted quotables is a version of the last few lines from T.S. Elliot’s The Hollow Men.

This is the way marathon season begins.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It’s not news to me, but I always fear taking a break, even for a week, because my head does crazy things.  Not like other athletes who complain about the lack of activity, I don’t mind that, I know my body likes the rest after a hard effort.  It’s about the coming back.  I’m always afraid that somehow I’m going to return to sport and I’ll have lost the joy or taste or the aptitude I had previously for it.  Like this whole triathlete thing was a fluke.

Newton’s First Law states that “”An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”  This is so my life.  If you set me on a course, and it’s not intolerable or offensive to me, I’ll just keep doing whatever the fuck I was doing until something disrupts me.  I actually lost a TON (ok, 1/20th of a ton) of weight just relying on inertia once I found something that worked.  It wasn’t the healthiest, holistic way of losing weight and relied on counting calories and 100 calorie snack packs and fat free cheese (shudder), but it led me to where I am today, so that’s a good thing in the grand scheme.

I tend to fear rest simply because of the oomph needed to get inertia going again.  That’s why I’ll never go into off season without a goal race planned and a projected time to exit.  I fear it would be too easy to forget I love to race and remember I love wine and my couch too much.

Usually one week isn’t all that much, but I had the combined and completely irrational fear of “what if I’ve lost all my fitness” and “what if I haven’t taken enough time off to mentally be ready to handle training again” (one or the other might make sense, but not both at once!).  I’m pretty sure you don’t lose any measurable fitness in one week, and I’m pretty sure 8 weeks of training isn’t anywhere close to my burnout point, so, yeah.  Brain woogies.

I had a… let’s just say… annoying-ish Monday, and my husband was stuck late at work so I was solo and I had other stuff to do and I was tired and didn’t feel like it and cranky.  However, since this isn’t my first rodeo, I knew that was EXACTLY WHY I needed to run, however short or slow it was.  I also knew I was kinda bored of my usual route and needed to get groceries, so I drove to the grocery store, which happened to be a block from a nice two mile stretch where a lot of folks run and bike, so I set out there.

Half a mile in, I felt great.  I finished the loop and kept dancing around my car because I didn’t want to stop.  Nothing fast, just 4.5 miles easy, but I was happy.  I half hoped my husband got home and decided he wanted to go for a night run, because I was up for 5 more miles no problem.

We knocked out 4.5 more miles in the morning on Tuesday, and 3 at lunch, and my week was looking up!  I was getting the miles just as I could, and little snippets of runs instead of big ambitious miles made the recovery easier, right?

So then why, on Wednesday, did I wake up feeling like I got hit by a freight train?  I still don’t have a great answer, but I was pretty much flattened – tired, no voice, sore throat, so I worked and slept.  Zero training.  Thursday, I woke up feeling exactly the same.  Bleh.  I felt a wee bit better by the end of the day (or maybe just not any worse as I expected to come down with something), so I gingerly got on the trainer and spun for 40 mins.

I felt pretty great after, and had ZERO change in symptoms on Friday morning except the daily allergy pills I had started on Wednesday just in case seemed to have kicked in because I felt less tragic overall, and decided at that point to get on with my life.

I ran 3.5 miles after work with Zliten and our headlamps.  Mile 1 was sludgy (to be expected).  Mile 2 felt great (though I stayed at my snail pace anyway).  Around mile 3, I started feeling a bit weak and kept slowing so I jogged it in and called it.  Probably one of the worst feeling runs in a while.  I was not encouraged by this.

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling ok, and it was 65 and rainy outside, so I HAD to get out there to play in the puddles.  My run plan was only to run until I felt worse than when I started (which is pretty much never on normal runs), or til 10:30, whichever came first.  While I kept it snail’s pace again, after mile 3 or so, the normal magic happened and I found myself speeding up just a bit at the end and extending the run to 6 miles, even though it was a little past my projected quitting time.

I hit the trainer for 45 mins while the Kona Ironman Champs kicked off.  There may have also been champagne toasts and chips and dip eaten, so you can tell how SERIOUS that cycling work was, right?  It was a little less rewarding to watch Kona than last year when we rocked an 18 mile run first, but two hours of activity was just about right, I felt good that day but really tired by the end of it and slept great (and 10+ hours) that night.

Sunday, I had considered a little more activity since I felt much better, but it’s my normal rest day, so I observed it.  We did laundry, batch cooked, picked up a bit, and binge watched Family Guy in between it all because it was brainless and it was exactly the day I needed.

And now, I arrive at today.  I wouldn’t say I’m 100%, but I’m definitely in the 90s and plan to resume the run all the (easy) miles plan this week.  While I’m not happy I was knocked down a bit last week, I can’t have picked a better week for it to have happened.

Week 1 (10/6-10/12):

• 21.5 miles/just over 4 hours running
• 33 miles/1.5 hours of cycling (trainer)
• 0 miles of swimming (according to plan)
• 0 strength sessions (oops)

Week 2’s plan is a little more.  Physically I’ve got the allergy issue I’m dealing with, but mentally I feel a little more ready than last week to rock, so maybe taking things a little easier last week wasn’t so bad of an idea.

• 38-44 miles running/7-8 hours running.  If I feel sassy, I’ll run a few miles of one of my 5 milers as a tempo, but for now, I’m all about building an easy base since during tri season, I was about at 15-25 miles and I raced a half ironman two weeks ago really hard and I’m doing more so my body may need time to continue to recover and adapt.
• 1 trainer session.  Easy, with the goal of spinning out my legs the day after my long run.  1-2 hours as sounds good.
• 0 swims.  I don’t want to get to January 1st this year without any pool/lake time since the race, but I’ll fit it in next week.
• 2 arms/core sessions + stretching.  Nothing long, nothing fancy, but doing something to work these out.  20 mins for the work, 10 mins for the stretching.  I need to find an hour per week to do this.

It’s always a weird transition, going from triathlon season to marathon season.  While it doesn’t sound that different (run more, swim and bike less), it’s a paradigm shift in my head.

See, there are tradeoffs between doing triathlons and doing marathons.  There is a simplicity to marathon training when triathlon is anything but simple.  Balancing three sports of workouts, trying to time everything right, making sure you don’t fuck up and put a hard swim set at lunch when you have a 2.5 hour smashy smashy brick 5 hours later.  When you’re running, it’s pretty easy to keep track of not doing run speedwork right after you’ve done run speedwork!

It’s a huge act of keeping the plates spinning – which I love – but can get to be tiresome.  Also, keeping all that gear straight!  There’s practice goggles and race goggles and caps and pool earplugs and lake earplugs and wetsuits and tri suits and don’t even get me started on bikes and nutrition and hydration and thinking about whether it’s a brick or not.  And, let’s also not mention packing up to train or race elsewhere.  It feels like you’re packing for a month long holiday, not a day or weekend trip!

Last week’s (sorta failed, but still applicable) plan was: Run.  How simple is that? Generally easy pace but not stressing out about it.  Whenever I have time.  This week, we’ll get to a bit more structure with an actual long run goal range of 15-18 miles, MAYBE a gentle entry into speedwork – just a few miles faster than the easy, chatty, non-thinky zone to wake the legs up, and some arms/core work to stave off the fall putty upper body marathon problems.  But, in general, the plan this month is to run.  Occasionally fast, long every week or two, but just do the work – 35-50 miles per week.

The flip side is I really didn’t feel up to running at some points last week, but the idea of activity wasn’t offensive.  During tri season, I could easily switch that around to be a trainer, spin class, lake swim, pool swim, maybe even a rare weekday ride outside, or even a brick with a short run, but with only running, there is run or do not run.  This week, I think I’ll be less cranky since we get some fall weather, because when it’s nice pretty much all I want to do is run outside above all else, so there is that.

So, while I’d rather have had a BANG and have completed my 35 miles as planned last week, I’ll take a whimper over nothing any day.  However, my confidence could use a good week this week since we only have SEVEN (yipes) weeks until the marathon.  I feel WAYYY behind even though I know that’s incredibly silly because I started from just about zero with 8 weeks to rocking the shit out of a half ironman, and this seven week block is starting from FAR from zero, but that’s the reality of my not-so-rational brain right now and I just need a good week of running to make those gremlins go away.

Question of the day: How sick do you have to be to rest on a planned workout/training day?