55 Days to Go (I will run a sub-3 hour marathon and qualify for Boston!)
Date - Day - Scheduled Workout (Intervals within desired pace)
8/1/17 - T - 2 mile WU + 6 x 1 mile @ 6:41 min/mile w/ 0.25 mile RI + 2 mile CD (6/6)
8/2/17 - W - 7 miles @ 8:04-9:01 min/mile
8/3/17 - R - 1 mile WU + 9 miles @ 6:58 min/mile + 5 mile CD (9/9)
8/4/17 - F - 7 miles @ 8:04-9:01 min/mile
8/5/17 - Sat - 7 miles @ 8:04-9:01 min/mile
8/6/17 - Sun - 18 miles @ 7:35 min/mile (15/17)
8/7/17 - M - OFF
Total (training) mileage = 65.5 miles
Number of SOS intervals within pace = 30/32 (94%)
Monday was a swimming day. I finally got to see G swim since it's now in the afternoon and it wasn't cancelled! Not much to report on. The teacher was much more vocal and didn't let G get too wild which was a nice change. G has a tendency to wrap adults around her fingers. But this teacher was good at balancing structure with fun.
G wanted to give us a pose! She looks so determined.
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Tuesday was another HM Tempo day!
2 mile WU + 6 x 1 mile @ 6:41 min/mile w/ 0.25 mile RI + 2 mile CD
T+D of 140 with full sun and minimal wind
My legs felt surprisingly fresh throughout the last two days. The dynamic WU indicated I was good but not 100%. I got about 0.5 miles of the WU in and realized I had to use the bathroom. I tried to tough it out but after 2.3 miles decided I wasn't going to make the entire run without stopping. Just mis-timed my water consumption today I guess.
HM Tempo pace = 6:41 min/mile
HM Tempo window = +/- 10 sec (6:31-6:51 min/mile)
Thinking back this pace is pretty close to my Daniels Threshold pace (6:38) from the spring. The difference between these workouts and Daniels was two-fold:
1) Recovery for Daniels T pace was 1 minute between intervals, whereas today it was 0.25 miles.
2) Daniels T pace was completely flat, whereas today it was a mix of flat, downhill and uphills.
The pace felt really comfortable throughout.
HM Tempo = 6:41, 6:43, 6:43, 6:44, 6:48, 6:43
The groin felt a little tight running up the hill on the 3rd interval so I gave myself a flat break on the 4th interval. Things returned to normal for the 5th and 6th interval. This was a solid run! Also, set a new CR on my Flat Half Mile Loop of 3:11. Looks like I've run this loop at least 680+ times. So woot woot on the new CR!
Wednesday was another easy day. A T+D of 143 with an average pace of 8:48 with a heart rate of 126.
Ohhh, the weather. The one thing that's tough with running 6 days per week and 90, 120, and 150 minute workouts is trying to squeeze them in-between inclement weather. So the weather Wednesday night was predicting all day thunderstorms. The weather Thursday morning at 5am when I woke up was predicting no thunderstorms until 2pm. Then at 6:30am as I was preparing to get ready, a small vicious thunderstorm popped up with heavy rain and lightening several miles south of home. I predicted using the finger method and distance traveled in the past hour that if it hit, it would be at 8:30am. That was going to be a problem with a 120 minute run and at 90 minutes the storm would hit. So I decided to alter the original workout to maximize the possible training time prior to the storm.
Original - 3 mile WU + 9 mile M Tempo + 3 mile CD
Changed to - 1 mile WU + 9 mile M Tempo + whatever I could fit in (up to remaining 5 miles)
M Tempo pace = 6:58 min/mile
M Tempo window = +/- 10 sec (6:48-7:08)
The T+D was 125, with minimal wind, a little bit of rain, and full clouds.
M Tempo = 6:58, 6:56, 6:48, 6:56, 6:53, 6:58, 6:55, 7:03, 6:53
The WU felt good so I was fairly confident the workout would go well. The last few longer distance runs I have been taking very short breaks at the "aid" station. Today, I aimed to try and run by the "aid" station and grab a water bottle while running. Needless to say, the run went well. A couple of things worked in my favor:
1) Ideal weather conditions
2) The motivation of knowing an impending storm may cut the run short
3) Local garage sale weekend with lots of spectators. I thrive on an audience.
Thankfully, the storm never came. All in all, 9/9 intervals were hit with an average pace of 6:56. This is a pretty rare workout for me, as I don't usually hit a full 100% of intervals on a M Tempo workout. In fact, with 9 total intervals at this pace I'd say this has happened less than a handful of times ever. The average HR was 151 which falls within the marathon zone for me (148-152). A serious record setting day which felt very calm and comfortable throughout. Any one of these recent workouts would make me proud, but to string them together has me over the moon. I learned a lot from the Lakefront 2016 training. This time, it's train smarter, not harder! I feel so close to the end of this 5 year journey. The dream is so close I can feel it. From 100 pounds overweight and a 35 min 5k equivalent, to the cusp of the top 2% of US marathon finishers with a sub-3 marathon. Current projections have me at 2:59:17 - 3:04:50. 8 weeks to go...
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Seems like 7/16 was just an outlier because the other M Tempo runs have all been very solid. Things seem to be lining up quite well for race day!
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Friday was a funny run. Everything was normal until I rounded the corner to head towards the "aid station" at the park. In the distance, I could see two figures staring at me. One an adult and one a child. As I got closer I started to recognize the small kid (maybe 3-4 years old), as one who races me every once in a while and lives near the park. The adult was his mom. She apologized, and I asked why. She said that she heard her two boys laughing outside her house and investigated. They had taken my water bottles and were drinking them. LOL! She had brought them back and had him apologize for drinking them. I told her not to worry. We all introduced ourselves to each other and then went about our afternoons. I'll have to keep an eye out for little C more often now. Not only does he want to race me, but he wants to handicap me in the race by taking away my hydration. Game on little man!
As for the run, it was a T+D of 123 with clouds. Average easy pace was 8:44 with a 125 heart rate.
Saturday was another easy day. Because of another kid's birthday party, this was an earlier run. It was a BEAUTIFUL morning. The T+D was 119 with clouds. The average pace was 8:16 with a heart rate of 130.
Sunday was long run day.
T+D of 120-130 with clouds and no wind. Another beautiful summer morning. I'm really getting spoiled by these and can only dream to have something as nice in 8 weeks for race day.
Long Run pace = 7:35 min/mile
Long Run window = +/- 10 seconds (7:25-7:45)
I was super excited coming into this run for one reason: the two other hard workouts this week (HM Tempo intervals and M Tempo) were both 100% hit rate workouts. Which meant if I could hit 100% of intervals today, I could nail a very elusive 100% week during the middle of a training cycle. This is extremely rare for me and maybe something I've only done 3-4 times in the last 2 years of tracking splits. So, I had my eyes on the prize - a 17/17 interval hit rate. I figured the first interval (not including the first mile because of water being carried) would be the hardest to hit. Then it would just be a matter of holding pace throughout.
Long Run = 8:29, 7:37, 7:41, 7:26, 7:39, 7:37, 7:28, 7:28, 7:30, 7:32, 7:23, 7:28, 7:25, 7:20, 7:29, 7:28, 7:28, 7:29
The run felt good throughout. I hit that always tricky first interval and thought I had this in the bag. I almost missed it on mile 4 when I noticed I was just under pace at 7:24 with about 0.2 miles to go. I was able to slow down just enough to squeeze that one in at 7:26. Things settled in and I really didn't need to focus on the pace anymore. Split after split was coming in as desired regardless if it was flat, uphill or downhill. Mile #9 I could tell things were getting a little tougher and it was "end of the marathon simulation time". Then during mile #11 I looked down with about 0.3 to go and saw 7:18 lap pace. I was like "crud"! How I'm going to get this one in now... So I slowed up and did my best to get the interval in window. After about 0.1 miles, I checked again, now it was 7:19. UGGHHH! I slowed down and yet only gained one second on lap pace. ARRGHH... Alas, the split ended at 7:23 and I just missed getting it within window. No matter. Keep trying to get the others in window! Again splits 12 and 13 were within window, and then came 14. I didn't even check mid-mile what the pace was. I was concentrating on taking my E-Gel nutrition at this point. So when the split came up at 7:20, I was like OMG, what the heck!!! So I again reminded myself that I better check myself before I wreck myself. Finally I came to the last mile. I was really starting to feel it. This is exactly the feeling I want at the end of this type of run. I want just to get close to that feeling of pushing it. This was far from an all out effort (as a long run should be slow and steady), but it also helps simulate the end of the race. I had been doing the mental math on the route and realized it was going to be a bit long, but I wasn't terribly concerned. So I ended up at 18.30 miles. All in all, 15/17 intervals hit! Now that's all well and good, but I really need to be careful here. While it was 15/17 hit, the two misses were too fast, and the overall average of the run was 7:30 vs 7:35. Not a huge gap, but if I do this too much, then I'm going to induce too much fatigue over the long term of the plan and it'll cost me on race day. So I've got to pull back even more with these longer runs to keep them within pace. Now that I'm 8 weeks out, there is no more changing paces. Any change between now and race day would have non-fully realized benefits and might also cost me on race day. The average HR for the 17 miles was 141. This is just within historical HR long run average of 138-142.
Two other things to note - this is the longest mileage training run since April 12th, 2015. On that day, was the last time I did a 20 mile training run. After that training cycle, I changed to the 150 minute max mindset. That training run was 3 hours and 14 minutes (9:42 min/mile training pace). Today's 18.3 mile run was 2:18. Almost an hour faster and just two miles shorter. That April 2015 training cycle led to a 4:58:53 marathon finish (my worst). Now, I hope to be on the verge of a 2:XX:XX marathon.
Another thing is I have seriously ramped up the elevation gain without realizing it. I changed up my route to have more access to water and in doing so increased the hills during every run. But I was just perusing the data the other data and it blew me away how much I increased hill work. In June and July of 2016, I did 5396 and 7963 ft respectively. With nearly identical mileage, I've done 9756 and 12577 ft in June/July of 2017. That's an 81% and 58% increase. Now the watch changed between now and then, so maybe that has something to do with it. But regardless, I have a feeling that's going to be super helpful come race day as well!