2024 Advanced Training and Racing Thread (still competitive jerks) (Read 210 times)

Merkle - Economy? Sure. Here's the plot for pace:HR (aerobic efficiency) for about the same time period - quite similar trends.

Mule racing - I still haven't made it to Colorado in summertime to try this and it makes me sad.

5K race report:

Here is 50% of the course.  The bridge crosses the  Indian River Lagoon.   That's the Atlantic Ocean in the distance past the barrier island. 

It turned out to be a good weather day, relatively speaking.  The wind forecast for the day stayed the same but the time frame kept getting earlier.  So instead of 20-40 mph winds at 8AM, that happened overnight.  It was only a little breezy on my warm up and I was definitely excited to only have to deal with the hills and not the wind.  It rained overnight and during my warm up, but the sky lightened up and the sun came out for the race.  The sun was rising over the bridge and the ocean,

I lined up about 25-30 people back, 5th or 6th row of folks.  I try to identify and avoid getting lined up behind the people that look suspiciously slow in the rows in front of me.  Was not totally successful today.  The start was awkward, because they start you in a marina parking lot and you do a horseshoe U-turn 5 seconds into the race, so you can't really get up to speed and it's not fun with all the other starters running in a circle.  You then make a hard right turn in another 100 meters onto the causeway.  One benefit was all the turning kept me from going out too quickly.  I was trying to figure out where the finish line was, but couldn't see it.  You would assume it would be the same as the start, but when I did a turkey trot from that same marina a few years back, it was not the same as the start.  I just wanted to know how far from the left turn back in, until the line in case I needed some seconds at the end.

Some runners passed me off the start, but at about 1/2 km, it had thinned out.  One young guy passed me here, and he was the last person to do so.  I was using 2 very tall guys as wind blockers, but I had to pass them on the climb.  Surprisingly, I felt 0 headwind, which was odd since my phone had showed the wind would be blowing East (Note: I was running East, literally looking at the ocean, and I still didn't solve the riddle of the missing headwind until the 2.5 km mark .

I was running 3:50 pace until the climb, but hit 3:58 at 1 km, was running at 4:03 pace at the top of the hill.  It was a pretty smooth start.  At this point I tried to pass an older guy that I see out running the bridges all the time.  His strategy seemed to be to go easy up and hard down, and he really took off on the down and was like 50 meters ahead of me at the bottom.  I was running completely alone for the next couple kms.  2nd km I completed in 3:55.  I could see the turnaround and I felt ok, better than I felt in January at 2km on my 20:41 solo run.

At this point there was 1 guy that I was catching probably in his 30s, there were some footsteps from 2 people catching me, and there were 3 runners that were sort of 50-70 meters ahead of me.  The old guy that worked the downhill followed by a young woman and bearded guys in his 30s.  I tried to keep even distance like 50-75 meters behind and I reeled in the 1 catchable guy just before the 2.5 km mark.  I was kind of in my own thoughts and didn't even look at anyone behind me, didn't hear the split from my handheld iPhone.

I solved the mystery of the missing wind as soon as I did the turnaround.  It was like a nice steady 15 mph in my face.  It was at that point I started to kind of gauge how much harder I was working, and it was definitely noticeable.  My entire race plan was keep 4:00/km in sight and hit the final downhill and hang on for the flat finish.  I hit 3 km at 3:57.  At this point I had 10 seconds in hand, but I was tiring and had not started the climb yet.

I had to accept that I would probably not break 20 on the climb, as the wind was much worse as we got higher.  I kept trying trying though.  It was encouraging that I was catching everyone in front of me and the footsteps behind me were all gone.  So I knew everyone else was getting worked by the windy climb too.  My pace slowed to about 4:30 near the top of the climb, probably 30 mph winds right in my face.  The thing that kept me feeling optimistic was my average pace, which only slipped to 4:01/4:02 at the very top.  I hit the 4km mark a little ways into the downhill at 4:14 for that km.  I was 5 seconds behind 20:00 pace, and I was super tired.

I put 100% of my focus on catching the bearded guy, got him about 1/2 km out.  At this point, I sort of got out of race mode to veer off and give high 5s to my 8 and 5 year old.  Then I got back into race mode, made sure my average pace was under 4:00, it was 3:59, and realized I could catch the young woman, the old guy was already around the turn and I didn't really think about him.  I caught the young woman and blew past her on the turn.  I don't sprint at the end of like 5k fun runs.  It's just not a great look sprinting past senior citizens and kids and the high placed women right at the line and blocking their finish photos, so I try to catch everyone that I can catch with room to spare and remove hope so they don't get frisky.  Mission accomplished, she gave up immediately.

At this point I was trying to figure out where I would finish the race.  I actually slowed down thinking I had missed the finish line turn, but then realized we were doing that (ridiculous) U-turn again.  Due to all the rain and it being painted with traffic paint, I was very careful on that curve and lost even more time.  Then I finally saw the clock like 20 meters ahead and guessed I went under it like 20:01.  I was very annoyed that I had let 20 slip away slowing all the way to the finish.  Turned out I had room to spare, 20:00 flat time and 19:57 chip time.  I guess I took longer than I realized to cross the start line.  My final km was 3:44, but ran a total of 5.04 km per the phone.  Some of that was the high five detour.       

I won my age group on a technicality.  The guy who would have won my age group finished in 3rd overall, he ran 17 something.  I was curious about how the wind changed the race, so I looked up some of the top 20 who also did it last year.  They were ~20-30 seconds slower than last year.  The top woman finished 2nd place in 17:45, 83.3% age graded for her on that windy/hilly course, really good.   The old guy (59) finished 6 seconds head of me on the course, but only 3 seconds on chip time.  His 19:54 was good for a 79% age grade.  Also really strong.  I finished in 9th out of 432.  Not bad for a guy with a pot belly (I fell off the healthy eating wagon late in the week and weighed in 172 this AM, what can you do?).   

Next steps.  My next goal is sub-19 by the end of June.  I will try to pick a less up and down race next time!

mt79 - nice race report. I hate u-turns in races, especially shorter distances!  That bridge looks like one of those longer climbs where you can at least kind of dial in a bit of a rhythm.

Steve - sounds like the right call.  Super annoying timing with the covid and all though.

Me - pretty good week of training in the bag.  Trying to jam a lot into this week and the next one.  I ran 2 doubles for the first time in I-can't-remember-how-long and had a really good HMP workout on Thurs morning.  Probably needed to dial it back a little more on my long run this morning though.

Weekly for period: From: 18/03/2024 To 24/03/2024

Totals: Time: 07:45:41 - 🦅Imperial: 67.67 mi - Metric: 108.88 km

Hi all.  Steve thanks for the nudge.  Sorry I've been slacking in my duties as a thread organizer.  Sometimes life gets in the way and you need to simplify.....Run, work, bullshit...mostly in that order.  I'll post my last 2 weeks this afternoon.

One thing to add... Go Huskies!!!

58 miles running, 1000 yards swimming, and 2.5 hours pool-running.
M: 1 hour pool-running.
T: 8 miles very easy (9:30) plus upper body weights/core.
W: 12 miles, with a track workout of 3x3200 in 14:14 (7:12/7:02), 13:57 (7:02/6:55), and 13:44 (6:56/6:48). Recoveries of 4:42 and 4:50 between. Followed with leg strengthwork.
Th: 9 miles very easy on trails (10:05) in the morning; streaming Pilates in evening.
F: 12 miles very easy (9:24) plus drills and strides, followed by upper body weights/core.
Sa: 17 miles, including a marathon effort workout of 2x5 miles at marathon effort with one mile float between. Splits were 38:39 (7:44 pace) and 39:19 (7:52 pace) with a mile in 8:23 between the two. Followed with leg strengthwork.
Su: 90 minutes pool-running and 1000 yards swimming.

Just two workouts this week - long intervals on Wednesday and a marathon effort workout on Saturday. The long intervals went decently, confirming that I'm pretty much where I wanted to be fitness-wise at the end of this cycle.

Saturday's long run was in pretty tough weather conditions - steady to heavy rain and 45 degrees, with a brisk wind. But...it could be like that on race day, so I sucked it up and did the workout.

Unfortunately, I figured out about 20 minutes into it that my raincoat was no longer waterproof. And of course, once I was soaked, I just got colder and colder (marathon effort is not enough to keep one warm) and the run suffered.

The paces were not what I had hoped for during this last workout. On the other hand, I run this workout at marathon effort - and I'm pretty sure that I'd be happy with the paces I held during that workout if I was racing a full marathon in that type of weather.

Despite the above, I'm still happy I did the workout on Saturday instead of waiting until Sunday. IMHO, there's multiple reasons to run marathon pace/effort workouts, including both fitness and practicing the skills needed to run a good marathon. Managing bad (but safely runnable) weather is a very important skill to have and to reinforce via practice from time to time.

mt79 - nice work on the sub-20!

Fishy - Around here, the Huskies are Washington; I assume you’re talking about UConn. I have them winning my pool, which is not too bold this year. But I also had them winning last year, which was not so expected, and it won me some money. I figured let’s try again. And Go Illini! No confusion on that one. They looked very impressive last night, but Iowa State is next and will be tough. 

mmerkle - well there aren’t a whole lot of workouts in the last two weeks anyway; they say nothing in the final ~10 days will make a difference. Plus a lot of plans front-load all the VO2max work. Someone probably has a more physiologically appropriate answer, but it doesn’t seem too surprising to me. Interestingly—I’ve been using McMillan custom plans purchased off their site. He doesn’t really have any VO2max—all the shorter stuff is “cruise intervals,” which is closer to 10k pace. And it looks like I have one of those the Wednesday of marathon week. 

My week: it was kind of a tough one. I had a business trip Mon-Thurs, and had to get creative to squeeze in runs. It was two time zones east of me, so my usual early mornings were going to be way too early. I managed, including a couple early-evening pre-dinner runs, another on the hotel treadmill at 9 PM after a business dinner which included drinks and dessert (not recommended), and that 3 miler was all I had time for after unsuccessfully trying to wake myself up at 3:30 AM body time. At this point in the cycle, 5 weeks out, I wanted to make every effort. 

Today I was scheduled to pace the first half of a 3:50 marathon. I had a 22 on the schedule, so I planned to add on afterwards. A few times I’ve paced the first half and just finished out the rest of the marathon. But those were not in the middle of a training cycle. I did not think it would be a good idea right now, based on how much it might take out of me and the extra recovery required. Well you might have already seen on Strava or can see below what actually happened. I clearly have no self control.

Weekly for period: From: 03/18/2024 To 03/24/2024

Totals: Time: 10:52:39 - 🦅Imperial: 73.61 mi - Metric: 118.44 km

Dave - Nice job getting it done while you were travelling.  Hopefully you don't pay for the unplanned marathon!

Flavio - my advice on the trail race would be don't worry about pace at all, just get out there and enjoy it.  Take it easy to start and dial it up if you're feeling good.  You always want to have a bit more in the tank than you would for a road race just in case the race director has chucked some horrible hill climb or technical section towards the end of the race!  Race directors for trail events can be truly devious too (Lazarus Lake being the best example lol).

Fishy - haha I know the feeling.  When I've got a busy week at work lined up sometimes my wife is like 'maybe you could take a day off running and start earlier'... NOPE! Worst possible idea lol.

Darkwave - that's what I always tell myself when I have a workout on a rough weather day... it might be like that on race day!

mmerkle - could well be your body is still adapting to re-reramping the mileage after being sick.  Normally takes me a workout or two after being sick to properly get back into it.