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Broke 3 hours and qualified for Boston yesterday with a huge PR of 2:56:58! So stoked right now! I was able to run fairly even splits most of the race until the last 4-6 miles where I was just hanging on constantly calculating what pace I would need to hold the rest of the way to stay under 3. I followed the Hal Higdon Advanced 2 training plan and only missed a few runs. It ended up working out really well and there was definitely a difference in how fresh my legs felt for the race compared to the long runs in training. Here is the Strava!

https://www.strava.com/activities/684277382

27M here (3:00 target for Boston 2020):

• I've run two marathons. The first one, I was targeting 3:05 but ran low mileage, blew up, and finished in 3:22. My second marathon was 1 year later and I hit 2:53:54.
• The biggest thing that I did was run more milage. My first cycle, I peaked at 45 MPW. For my second marathon, I started training at 50 MPW and peaked at 85 MPW. Granted, I could not have hit that mileage my first year without injuring myself, so remember that it takes time to build up to higher mileage.
• I read Run Faster by Brad Hudson and planned my own training for the second marathon. This, coupled with advice from the many experience marathoners in my running club proved to be better than any boilerplate training plan.
• Remember that you will have to make adjustments day-to-day and week-to-week to accommodate little injuries that pop up, life events, work, illness, etc. Being able to make informed adjustments is key to having a successful training cycle.
• No single workout will make/break your training, but there are some that are great confidence boosters. I did a 17 mile run with 14 miles at Goal Marathon Pace and felt so strong. It was good confirmation that I was on track to have a successful marathon.

Hey guys and gals, just wanted to introduce myself and stop lurking. I'm a slow-ass, beginner, fat (but not as much), 31-years old runner, but I've been reading /r/AdvancedRunning for almost a year now.

I've ran a few 10ks with a PR of 55:xx, and I'm getting ready for my first half-marathon next Sunday.

Here's my Strava account.

I've done mostly road training and racing, but given that the community around my place is mostly trail-oriented (we have one half and one marathon per year, but lots of very technical trails and ultra-trails), I'm thinking of doing some trails races during the second half of the year while training for a December 10K (where I hope to go as close to 50 minutes as possible).

Cheers!

Øresund strait - The Baltic Sea.

I did this on top of a cruise ship off the coast of Copenhagen last summer. I'm KOM and plan on taking this one to the grave.

I'm a fan of Daniels' Running Formula. I'd suggest picking up a copy and following the Red or Blue plan for a season, then trying the 5-10K Training plan. Joining a running club would also be a good option. Good luck!

I ran a PR at Maine Coast Marathon this morning, with BQ minus 2:40! I'm not sure if that will get me a bib, it'll be close. Either way, I'm pumped, especially after missing lots of runs this spring due to various injuries.

Splits, map, profile and photos: https://www.strava.com/activities/577168710

Beautiful course, and we lucked out with a tailwind for the parts that were along the water. Not too many hills, and low 50s with clouds most of the race.

I'm pretty happy about my pacing. The first 15 miles felt like a jog, same pace with more effort until 22, and then the last 4 were a case study in muscle spasm management, in both arms, and several spots on each leg. I kept a conservative pace over that stretch, because I didn't want to be hit with a full-blown muscle cramp.

I took a gu every 4 to 5 miles, and Gatorade every ~2 miles, sometimes water as well. Do you guys think that the muscle spams were a sign of too little nutrition?

Edit: Strava link.

Saturday: 12.7 km (7.9 mi) GA w/ 8 strides. 335 m (1099 ft) of elevation. Felt better than expected after "racing" my tempo yesterday.

Sunday: 36.3 km (22.6 mi) long run. 989 m (3245 ft) of elevation. Mostly easy or between easy and general aerobic. But it's still tiring to run for almost 3 hours, and this run also had a few hills. This is the longest run in my whole marathon preparation. I did Super Week last week, so it's only 4 weeks to marathon day now!

Totals for the week: 140.6 km (87.4 mi). 3278 m (10756 ft) of elevation gained.

• Very happy with the milage. It's exactly where I wanted it to be. I missed a 10k run on Monday, but I still managed to get the distance I wanted by adding it back over the remaining 6 days. New distance PR for 1 week of running (Monday-Sunday).
• As for elevation I didn't really have a goal. I just ran my normal routes pretty much. I think I run enough hills for marathon training anyway.
• I'm happy with the quality as well. I raced my first 3000 m, ran pretty much all out for 11k on my tempo and did two long runs in my highest milage week ever. Without feeling like crap at the end. And I didn't make it easy by doing less the week before or after. I'm getting used to the milage. While being a PR-week for distance, Strava tells me it's only 8k more this week, than my 4-week average.
  

Superweek: 9/10. Next time I'll try to do it in real-time instead of the week before, since that is more fun.

1. Done deal. I'm so fast I finished one week ago!
2. Yes, of course.
3. I can handle more milage than earlier, while keeping the quality.
4. Done with that also. Except for my long run, which I will do later today. No extra recovery. Following the plan.
5. Oslo Marathon in 4 weeks.

This morning: 5 mile warm up, 5k Race, 10 mile cool down. I won by about 20 seconds, so it felt good to get on the roads again after a bad track race a bit ago. Now covering someones shift at work woohoo.

Ran a solid marathon pace workout last Tuesday in preparation for this upcoming weekend. 2x4miles @ 6:05-6:10 pace was the goal with 4min rest in between. Did the reps on a 1.2mile loop in the pouring rain and wind. I actually felt really comfortable the entire run and definitely could have done without the rest in between and not felt bad.

Splits were: 6:01, 6:05, 6:01, 6:06 [rest] 6:03, 6:06, 6:03, 6:02

Strava Activity

1 - Nope. I'm going to do a small tempo tomorrow, but nothing crazy. I've just tacked on more running, my legs are feeling it a little bit this morning. We'll see how they hold up running today.

2 - Yeah. My legs felt really good yesterday, probably due to the down week last week, so my goal is definitely reachable.

3 - I'm all alone, there's no one here beside meeee.... Hopefully I'll get out with the track club for my long run.

4 - Fobo do you normally wake up this early? Seems crazy to me that you run at 7 or 8 at night and wake up at 6:30ish.

Also my run this morning is dedicated to /u/brwalkernc. https://www.strava.com/activities/679172199

Second 10 miler in the can. It was all I could do to run 8 flat miles. I'm still counting them. Gonna drink another six then run the final four. BAZZZIING!

Just ran an easy double on Christmas. I usually like to workout since it's a day off from everything but it wasn't on the schedule.

I did do a 6 mile tempo on Wednesday in 30:42. I was trying to run between 5:02-5:07 so right on. The weather wasn't spectacular so I was pleased to have a good result despite the conditions. The new goal for the spring HM will be 67:00 or faster, which is coincidentally 5:07/mile pace.

I hit 60+ miles for only the second time this year last week. I'm feeling much stronger, but I don't want to overdo it just because I feel better . . . we'll see how October progresses.

First workout was 4 x 1 mile with 60 seconds jog rest @ HMP. I don't really know my pace for a half right now, but I did feel that 5:57 / 6:07 / 6:07 / 6:01 was probably too fast. At least it was that morning. Still a good workout.

Second workout was one of my old favorites from 2014, a long run starting at Boston mile 23 and going out toward the Newton Hills, then coming back to the start running hard. I didn't do the whole back portion hard this time (just easing back into it), but I got five solid miles averaging 6:34 over the last two hills. These runs are how I got my last HM PR, so I'm glad to be getting more of them in now.

Also, you can't swing a dead coyote in this area without hitting a dozen Strava segments that you can only hope to get 500th place on.

Ran the Akron Half this AM. 10th in 71:17. Not exactly the time I was looking for, but the effort was there. Much more hilly than I was expecting. Started getting quad fatigue at mile five and hamstring cramps at 8 miles so it made for a long race. Still pleased to have made the trip up and gotten a hard run in.

Strava Activity

Did my first long Marathon Pace run last Friday. Goal was 10 miles at 95-100% Marathon Pace, so 5:25-5:41. Ended up doing 10.05 miles (16.2K) in 55:20 for 5:29/mile average. I like using kilometers instead of miles during longer workouts because I get more feedback during the session. I took a GU at 11k in just to practice getting nutrition down while running race pace. All in all, a good confidence booster!

Mile Splits: 5:36, 5:31, 5:35, 5:31, 5:27, 5:24, 5:29, 5:32, 5:29, 5:24.

Edit: Strava link

I like this design: https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Comfortable-Breathing-Washable-Reusable/dp/B08TBFZTNC/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=mask+bracket&qid=1614172808&sr=8-3

It prevents the bracket from falling off since it's looped in the mask. The others I tried tend to fall off or bounce around. But most of these are pretty cheap so try other designs if you like.

I've been using a VPN called Private Internet Access which has servers all over the world that you can use. Then I connect to one of the Canadian servers and use to stream. The Canadian coverage has been way better than NBC.

Mini race report: OBX 8k

Figured I'd hobby jog the 8k this morning, but then when they asked anyone running sub-7 to step to the front and nobody moved, I knew it was going to be a slow one. Primary goal was don't screw up tomorrow's marathon.

A quarter mile in, I was jogging along in 7th place and could see everyone ahead of me. I was annoyed because I knew if I wasn't running a marathon tomorrow, I'd push a lot harder and be easily first place. So instead I figured I'd run around 7:15ish and slowly reel in anyone I could. Was in third by the 2.4 mile turnaround, 1st by 3.5 miles, and was 44 seconds in the lead by the end.

I promised myself if anyone passed me I wouldn't pass them back. At one point, the cyclist asked me if I was running a 5:30 pace and I went "oh geez, I hope not. I was shooting for seven minute miles." My dad came to watch and he completely missed the finish because I'd told him I was going to run 8 minute miles. He heard the announcement that the lead runner was entering the track and didn't notice it was me. After I went through the finisher shoot, I tapped him on the back and scared the crap out of him. He was pretty upset he missed the finish.

Fun race, felt comfortable throughout, put me in a great mental place for the marathon tomorrow.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/773109405

Tuesday - 26 x 400m with 100m jog between. Ran all in lane two on a track because the soccer team had stuff in lane one on both straights. Averaged ~72s.

Thursday - 5 x 1mile with 3min jog between. Ran 5:05/5:00/4:57/4:58/4:53.

Sunday - 7 miles easy, 3 miles in 15:08, then 1 mile hard in 4:46.

Ran 110 miles. Goal half marathon in on Sunday.

My son won his first race! Well, not really, but he did cross the line first!

I ran a small (less than 200 person) "5k" this weekend and decided to push my son in his stroller. It was really windy which makes running with a stroller MUCH harder considering it is just a big sail. Pretty flat course other than a couple of small hills. My whole goal was just to win, so I once I was in the lead at the half mile mark I knew we had the race in the bag. Didn't push too hard, but just cruised into the finish. My Garmin had 2.93miles in 18:00 which is 6:09 average pace. Not too shabby for our first stroller race.

They haven't posted any race pictures, but here is a picture of my son and I with his medal.

Strava Activity

Great video and backstory. He's always a favorite of mine in races.

Also, if you guys didn't know, he's on Strava now and posts pretty much all of his workouts there. It's really awesome to see the workouts of one of the best distance runners in the US.

I raced a HM on Sunday as my final race of the year. I pulled my hamstring about two weeks ago and hadn’t done any running since then. I didn’t have time to do race-specific workouts and was feeling really uncertain about myself. I was counting on the fitness from my fall marathon training to carry me across the finish line. This was the least prepared I'd ever felt for a race.

Did some strides in the grass before the race started and I didn’t have any pain, so I figured I should be ok. I found a pack that was running around 6:58/mile pace and decided to stick with them. Everything was going really well until around mile 8 when some lady behind me stepped on the back of my shoe and sent me tumbling. Got some nice road rash on the side of my ass and tweaked my wrist, but I don’t think I broke anything other than my pride. A couple of the college kids I was running with kindly asked “Are you ok, sir?”. Shit man, when did I become sir? I’m only 37^( when did I get so old?). I picked myself up and tried to brush it off. Around mile 10 my hamstring started to cramp up on me and I stopped for a moment to stretch it out. It happened again just before mile 12. Stopping for a couple of seconds to stretch it resolved the problem, but I knew it was going to negatively impact my overall time. I still managed a kick at the end, taking the final stretch at 5:33/mile pace. Chip time was 1:31:51, which is a 4-minute PR compared to July of this year.

This time last year my PR was a 1:46. Seeing that drop in time is a huge motivator going into winter base building. I have my eyes set on a HM in late spring 2016 where I’d like to finally go sub-90.

Strava Activity

Edit: Also got the world's most gawdy race shirt.

Last week has raised my expectations a little bit. It started with a double on Tuesday where the morning tempo felt easy and the afternoon on/off workout felt even better. It was Saturday's long steady that is really making me reevaluate things.

I wanted to get in some lactic threshold work and also try to get a feel for how my HM pace felt. I set off on my run and the weather was perfect. Upper 40's and climbing with clear skys and a warm sun keeping me from feeling cold. My first few miles went as planned right in the low 6:00's but then it was like I got a second wind and just wasn't feeling taxed at all. I pressed the pace just a little more and started clicking off miles in the low 5:50's. I was still shocked that at mile 7 I felt fine. Once I increased the pace to 5:45's for the next two miles I started to feel some fatigue. I decided to just go ahead and open it up and my final mile was a 5:28. Overall I averaged 5:55 for 10 miles and I felt like I definitely could go another 3.1.

Strava Activity

I am really excited for this half marathon at the end of the month now. My original pace goal was to run at 6:00 or just under. Now I am thinking I need reevaluate.

Good luck to everyone racing. Thanks to Hurricane Matthew... no birthday race for me. Every race in coastal and central SC is cancelled. It's a real shame because some good races were supposed to be this week. The only "race" in Charleston next week is the Komen Breast Cancer event and that's mostly walkers (Real runners avoid it).

I ran my 14 mile long run yesterday to get it done before Hurricane Matthew. It's not ideal because I had to do it the day after a tempo, but oh well. Hurricane calls for desperate measures to get training in.

Speaking of that, I've run over 60 miles in the past 7 days, including a 10K, a tempo run, and two long runs. Whew. My legs needed the rest in the car while we were leaving Charleston this morning.

Most of our neighborhood stuck around since we don't live on the coast but I didn't want to be miserable, stuck at home, and possibly with the power out. The lanes of the interstate were reversed, so we drove Westbound in the Eastbound lane. That was... interesting.

I also recapped my IOP Connector Run 10K on my blog, if anyone wants to read.

Just the one workout last week for me: the Hagley Park parkrun in Christchurch. It went really really well. I simply went with the lead pack and they rolled into my tempo pace. It was four people at first, then we dropped one person shortly after the first kilometre. During the second kilometre I stopped to tie my shoe that had come undone and then decided to just quickly catch up to the two leaders. I believe in the third kilometre one other dude dropped off.

The best part was just as me and the other guy were rolling into the fourth kilometre. He turned to me and says, "I reckon you're holding back". To which I responded, "Just following the leader". We exchanged PRs and that's when I found out he was a 15:30 guy coming back from injury. Annnnd then he bolted. I picked it up to sub-17 pace but definitely couldn't catch him. Was pretty cool afterwards seeing how steady my pace was during the first four kilometres and then having a good pickup in the last kilometre.

Big workout last week for me was 6x1000m w/400m slow jog recovery. I finally decided to pay for to use the local track ($6) to do this workout, which let me just say is absolutely worth it. No walkers, everyone else using it knows etiquette, etc. I'll definitely be going back again this week. Anyway, I haven't done long intervals in a while so I wasn't too sure how I was going to make out. Daniels had me at 3:22/km so I set out to do that. And I failed.

But in a good way! I was actually comfortably going faster than what Daniels wanted me to do. The first one came in at 3:17. I knew that was too fast and thought I wouldn't be able to do six if I kept that up. Second one in 3:16. Crap. The next three I actually pulled up on the final straightaway to come in at 3:19, 3:18, and 3:19. On the final one I said screw it and pushed a little harder for a 3:15.

Overall it was a great workout and for me I think it was a bit of a breakthrough workout. 6x1200m tomorrow with a little longer recovery, so we'll see how it goes!

Strava.

I like this workout. Did it in college and I know quite a few people have success with it. It seems to be aimed at 5k-10k running mixing the tempo portions and quicker 400s which is ideal for NCAA XC. My week:

• A true fartlek without a watch. Did 10 miles with some longer pickups up and down hills based on when I felt like it.

• 15.5 miles with 10 in the middle alternating a bit slower than MP, a bit faster than MP. Ran 55:03 and split 5:43, 17, 39, 22, 50, 20, 41, 16, 39, 15.

• 20 miles on Sunday. First 10 with a group, last 10 solo. I don't take splits during the run and just go on feel, but it's good to know 6flats at the end of a LR are comfortable.

I had a couple good ones this week. First, on Thursday:

2 mi. warm up + 5 x 1600 (800 recovery) + 1 mi. c/d

I was supposed to do this in the 6:13-6:18 range, but was a little slow, hitting: 6:20 - 6:16 - 6:21 - 6:20 - 6:23. Still, I think this was a strong threshold workout and good prep for my 5k this coming weekend.

On Saturday, I had 16 mi. with 10 mi. at marathon pace. As you may know, I’ve been struggling with what marathon pace should be all season, most recently after running a better-than-expected half a couple weeks ago.

My MP runs so far this season have all been around 7:15, but I decided to step it up this weekend to see how it felt. The MP miles went like this:

7:08 – 7:08 – 7:05 – 7:04 – 7:05 – 7:05 – 7:03 – 7:04 – 6:58 – 7:04

My heart rate was really good and stead for that portion of the run, so I’m feeling pretty okay about planning on going out at 7:08ish at Philly in four weeks. (Disclaimer: This may end terribly.)

FAILED workout on Saturday.

I've been battling some sort of head cold turned chest cold for about a week now. Took 3 days off last week to help recover but still not feeling great while running.

I had a 13mile run scheduled Saturday with miles 9-12 @ 6:00 pace. I started much later than usual (~10:45am - about 70 degrees) since my wife worked late Friday night and I let her sleep in on Saturday. I started the run and was feeling very "meh", but it started going downhill at mile 7 when I started to notice I wasn't sweating anymore. Ugh. Dehydrated.

I pushed on and when it came time to start the faster miles - it hurt. I'll make excuses that it was hot and windy, but man I just felt like complete crap. I ran ~6:00 pace for about a half mile then actually stopped to recoup. I decided it was best not to push it since I was running a race in a week and just ran back to the car for 10miles total.

I haven't had a run feel that bad in a VERY long time. It is really humbling and discouraging with all the momentum I have had. I'm hoping that this chest cold clears up by Friday so I can run a decent half time, otherwise I will be really upset with how this fall season has gone.

Strava Activity

So I had two real workouts from last week that went amazing.

• The first was a 3x2mi run that went amazingly well. I wasn't exactly sure what I was aiming at for my times on it (there's a really long story that goes into this, I'll include it as part of my marathon race report), but being able to hold between a 6:30-6:40 pace for the intervals (with the slowest interval being first) was really great to see. It's crazy how much I've improved month over month and this run really helped me see that I could pick up the pace and back it off, repeatedly, at speeds that were previously unheard of for me.
• The second was a 20 mile long run that I threw in because I needed a confidence boost. I ran the first 7 alone, then met up with my running partner (and forgot to stop my watch, which is why there's the 10:20 split on mile 7), then we ran the last 13 together. Negative split, last mile at a 7:18 pace, and felt strong throughout. Exactly what I needed.

This past week (in addition to hitting 66 miles, running with /u/runroardinosaur, and everything else) was exactly the week that I needed two weeks out from the goal marathon. I'm flying high over here (although not as high as /u/herumph on borrowed cocaine) and can't wait to run the marathon.

Coming up this week, I've got another interval run tomorrow and Hanson says to do a 10 mile tempo run on Thursday. At that point, it's easy coasting until the 13th.

Had 2 workouts last week. One was a "meh" workout and the other was a great one.

• Wednesday was scheduled to be 5x1k (400m jog rest) @ 3:04-3:06, 2min rest, then 5x300m @ 46-49s with 100m walk recovery.

I went into this workout knowing that the 1k's were going to be extremely tough. For some reason my hips were not stable which made my form much more laboring than it should have been. My breathing was fine, but after 400m my knees would start hitting each other and it just felt difficult to stride out. On the 5th 1k, we decided for me to just run 600m with my friend who was running a faster pace than me (2:59's). Strava Activity

1k splits w/ 400m jog rest: 3:09 (2:12), 3:13 (2:10), 3:13 (2:10), 3:15 (2:02)

600m split: 1:45

300 splits w/ 100m walk rest: 46 (1:24), 49 (1:18), 48 (1:18), 49 (1:20), 45

• Saturday Long Run was scheduled for 15miles with miles 13/14 @ 5:40 pace. Luckily, it was kind of chilly (low 40's) so it was perfect running weather. My friend and I started ratcheting the pace down some after mile 6, but still stayed comfortable and holding a conversation. Strava had my 13/14 miles at 5:36/5:33 respectively and it felt very controlled. Very happy with how comfortable the whole run felt. Finished 15 miles with an average of 6:42 pace. Nothing to eat beforehand. No liquids or gels during the run. Felt great afterward. Strava Activity

I had two failed workouts last week. Not a great 7-day stretch.

The first was supposed to be 6 miles @ HMP. I started out way too fast and blew up at mile 4. I rested for 5 minutes then did 2 miles at what I think my actual HMP is and felt fine. I was frustrated with myself for getting carried away, especially on a hot day when I was so tired.

The other was my long run yesterday at the only time I could fit it in. I was going fine for a few miles but then started to feel an intense pressure / pain in my esophagus as if I couldn't swallow something. I had to stop after about 6 miles and stand around until I decided I had to walk back. After about a mile and a half of walking I was able to run again but felt completely dead. The feeling has mostly gone away today but it was not a nice experience to be walking in shorts and a tee shirt in 50 degrees and feeling like I was going to choke / throw up. I ended up 6 miles off my weekly goal, which is annoying. I won't try to make it up, though.

Hoping this week will be better.

1 - Only 100 miles this month. Still being super slow to build back. No mileage goal for the year. Started the year hurt, so just running is the goal right now.

2 - Florida is hot. Tried to run in the afternoon a couple of times in June. Big mistake. Really happy about my mile time trial last week. Really fun and something that I can use in the future to judge fitness.

3 - Continue to not get hurt, but my shins have been shit recently so I'm getting worried.

4 - Might do a 5k in early August. This is purely dependent on how my legs feel after my last bit of base building for the year. Haven't had much fatigue of late, so I'm hoping for a strong finish.

5 - Running related: Get to a steady 30 mpw and hopefully get a short shorts tan. Not running: Pass qualifying exams so I can not have to worry about that booty anymore. July is going to be just studying for that and running when I can.

edit: I just found out that I have the CR on a segment that Eshter Atkins ran. New summer goal, turn pro.

https://www.strava.com/segments/11640345

Finished 10.2 miles running mid-low 7's. Frying some eggs, drinking beer and ON Amino Energy mixed with Gatorade.

This morning's work

The plan is to get 6 more down before another 10 miler.

Aussie 400's is on my shortlist of workouts to do at the beginning of my next cycle. It looks like a killer.

Last week was my first taper week for Boston. I'm pretty much just following the last two weeks of Uncle Pete's 18/85 plan since just being told what to do seems to help alleviate the taper madness.

On Monday I did my last long run of the cycle, and on Friday I did 3x 1 mile at 5k pace hitting 5:38, 5:33, and 5:36. It was a little slower than I wanted, but I'm not too worried.

I also did lots of strides as prescribed by Pfitz, which reminded me that I need to do more strides all throughout the next cycle. I think I said the same thing at the end of last cycle. There's just something about saying, "I need to start doing more strides" that's similar to saying, "I need to start flossing more often."

Yesterday I ran "The Simulator", which was a short warm up then 16 miles at goal marathon pace. I mapped out a nice course with some rolling hills and put a decent hill that's the same gradient and about 2/3 the length of the big one at Boston right after mile 14.

After running 6:20's the first couple miles I settled down into running 6:10's fairly consistently with a few dips back to 6:20 pace on longer climbs. I averaged ~6:12 per mile for the entire workout, and really don't feel like it was a killer or anything. I'm pretty excited about where this puts me for Boston, and I think I'm going to switch up my goals and shoot for 2:42 pace (about 6:10 per mile) to start off with then see what happens.

This weekend I had a goal 5k on Saturday and my last 20 mi.+ long run of the cycle, and I survived (though I'm a little disappointed with the 5k).

I finished the 5k in 19:34, about 20 seconds slower than I was hoping for, and I lost most of that time in the first mile. My watch failed me with the GPS all over the place, and I pulled back in fear of a later blow up. I crossed the first mile mark about 15 seconds behind pace and I couldn't make it up. Lesson learned: don't be so dependent on technology. At least I got a new best AG percentage, according to NYRR, 75.70 %.

I followed that up on Sunday with 22 mi. at an average pace of 7:46. I generally felt good up until the end of that run, which was a positive what with starting less than 24 hours after than the 5k. I didn't stretch enough afterward, though, and then stood and cheered on NYC Marathon runners for a few hours, so I'm feeling it today.

I joined the sub-20 club this morning!

19:05 in the 5K, followed by 42:02 in the 10K. An insanely downhill course helped a lot. 5K Strava, 10K Strava

Then it was REALLY nice to watch Michigan put a whoopin' on those Mormon boys from BYU.

Last week I had a 5 mile tempo scheduled for Tuesday. Just a couple hours beforehand I ate a very large meal that really just consisted of mac&cheese with ground beef. My wife wasn't feeling well and when it is left up to me to make dinner, it's usually something of this variety.

I was burping, my stomach felt upset, but I needed to knock out this tempo. I reasoned with myself that it would be over pretty fast so I should be fine. I warmed up and seemed to be ok. Once I got going though things started to turn south. I felt like I had fire in my chest and tightness in my throat. 5:50 miles that should have been relaxed were suddenly extremely difficult. That final mile...man...I couldn't breathe, just wanted it to be over. I felt awful and my chest hurt the rest of the night. https://www.strava.com/activities/372261668

The rest of my week was a bit chaotic. I flew out to Pittsburgh for a wedding and didn't have many opportunities to run. I was able to get in 8.5 miles, including a nice 2 mile steep hill climb on Saturday. Hoping to get back on track this week.

This past week was amazing for me. Hit just under 70 miles with two workouts.

The first was with my old running club in which we did 5x(800+500) + 1 bonus 800 on some very technical trails. Lots of tight turns and necessary to watch your footing for roots. This was really tough, but I actually hung on with one guy who used to smoke me. I was third overall, with the first place person smoking both of us.

Strava Activity

The second was my probably one of my best workouts to date. Headed to the track on Saturday planning to do a tempo workout of 2x5k. Started out and everything just felt really easy. I was actually going to skip the planned 5:00 rest and just do 10k, but decided to take the rest (cut it to 4:00 though because I was getting bored standing around) and do the second 5k slightly faster. Before the workout I was worried the second 5k would be hard after the first, but it felt just as easy at a faster pace. Ended up doing to first in 18:23 and the second in 18:05. Funny because back in March I hit a PR of 18:14 and now I'm doing tempos at or faster than that!

Strava Activity

This morning I went to the track with the intent on doing a workout. When I got there and was in my warmup I started to back out in my head, citing tourist legs (i.e. heavy legs from walking so much). I eventually decided I wasn't going to do the workout, just an easy run, and do the workout the next day. But I said, "I'll just test out one lap at goal pace to see how it goes".

After the first lap I said, well now I only have 5 more for my first set of the ice cream sandwich workout (I really had about 5.75 more, but mind games work). Before I knew it the workout was done. I didn't even try to hit the paces I was hitting earlier in cooler weather earlier in my travels, but the effort was there, so I'm pretty satisfied with how it all played out.

Strava.

I've heard of something like this before, I think Ohio Northern does this as a staple called the "Stepdown". It can be grueling if you run in hard enough!

My week:

Wednesday - Easy 1:50 run.

Thursday - 14 x 400 @ 72-> 68 with 200 jog between

Sunday - 4 x 1mile with ~3:30 jog between. Ran on a bikepath instead of a track to practice the feel of road running more. 5:06, 5:01, 4:56, 4:53. Did 3 x 400 @ 71-72 after but cut it short there since I was straining a bit too much for the pace.

122 miles for the week. Bigger two weeks of training coming up!

I'm sort of in mini-taper mode right now for some races, and my mom is in the hospital (I visited her Saturday so no running or racing). I only did one workout last week.

On Wednesday, I ran a ladder workout that was 1200/1000/800/600/400/200 with 200m jog recoveries between each, and ended up logging a few more miles with the warmup and cooldown. The workout was from Run Less Run Faster, which is what my track group uses (most everyone else is a triathlete).

On Saturday, I did a big group run in honor of May Day and ran with /u/downhill_sprinter for a bit. We represented the Moose so here is a picture.

Yesterday I did 16 miles: 7.5 mi warmup, 5 miles at goal marathon pace, 3.5 mi cooldown. It went pretty well with an average marathon pace of 6:17/mi. Strava.

Earlier in the week I tried the ice cream sandwich but failed. Did 12:00 tempo, 6x1:00 hard, and then was supposed to do another 12:00 tempo but stopped at 6:00.

I had a killer workout on Saturday, then on Sunday I set the wrong alarm and missed my ride to the trails. I feel bad for that one :(!

Anyway, Saturday was the ice cream sandwich workout, which normally is 10:00 tempo + 6x1:00 hard on/off + 10:00 tempo with 4:00 rests in between the different sets. I upped it a bit so the tempos were 12:00 (or just over 2 miles for me) and switched the rests to walking recovery. I hit the first tempo at 5:55/mi, which felt good but starting to get tired at the end. Then the 6x1:00 paces were 5:16, 5:00, 5:00, 5:00, 5:00, 4:46. The second tempo I hit in 5:51/mi, and it felt much easier than the first. Overall a great workout. I think I'll continue it throughout the winter when I don't have access to a track and try and up the tempos to 15:00 each.

Strava Activity.

Last week I had a long run of 18miles. Longest training run thus far and felt awesome. Started out in the upper 7's, but the last 10miles was an average pace of 6:26 with one 6:02 and one 6:03 mile. Definitely feel like I could have gone a few more miles in the 6:2x pace.

Strava Activity

you're not going to get tons of feedback because you've essentially asked this sub to help you steal from our favourite author.

buy the book

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Marathoning-2nd-Pete-Pfitzinger/dp/0736074600

Ha! We did this one all the time in xc practice (a long long time ago. . . ) But I think coach had permission to let us onto the course. Small town advantages?

Two biggies for week 5 of Pete's FRR half plan:

Wed- LT intervals for 22min, 4min recovery, 18min These just keep getting stronger. Hitting mid-pace range where I was squeaking in on the bottom of pace range at the beginning of the cycle. And I'm not dreading them a full day in advance!

Sun- Progression long Original plan was 15-16 with the last 3 @ LT. Hopped into a running buddy's group. And. . . got sucked into a pretty quick for me pace. So I'm thinkin' no way any progression is going to happen. I'll just get to 13 and then do some cool-down miles. But we decided to try drop the pace a bit and I got 1mi @ LT and another 1/2 mi with avg. down to what should probably be around 10k pace before a short cool down. So I'm pretty happy with how that came out!

This week is either going to continue to go well or blow up in my face. But I dare say despite my complaining the legs are liking Pete's structure. Deliberately took recovery this morning super super easy.

60mi for the week.

Had a couple of great workouts last week.

• Tuesday was scheduled for 5x1000m at 3:15-3:18 with 400m jog rest. Luckily, it was the first time in over 50 days that the low got below 70F, so it was a good morning for a hard workout. Legs were a little tired, but I was able to crush the workout with splits of 3:15, 3:15, 3:15, 3:13, 3:10 with an average rest of ~2:13 on the 400m jog. Felt good to get this one done and it was a solo workout, so I worked on the mental toughness too. Strava Activity

• Saturday was a long run of 14 miles with 4 uptempo miles schedules for miles 10-13. The uptempo was scheduled to be ~6:00-6:05 pace. Ran with our Army 10 Miler team and my friend and I took off after the turnaround mark. I was feeling really good for the end of a hard week and ended up hammering it for splits of 6:04, 5:51, 5:49, 5:46. IT band was a little tight after this one, but overall felt great considering the humidity was 100% at 5:30am. Strava Activity

Ran a 5k this weekend to gauge how recovery was going - better than expected, worse than hoped for. I ran a 5k PR 2 weeks after a marathon but it was a flat race. Run in 8:27/mi. This 5k was 4 weeks after the ultra, slightly hillier but not bad, and run in 8:47/mi.

Mini race report:
Mile 1: Shit, going out too fast. 8:15/mi!!
Mile 2: Ok slow it down, you've got some heartburn and ran 9 miles yesterday, you're tired. 8:52/mi.
Mile 3: Great, now I'm walking. Went out too fast. 9:25/mi.
Mile .1: FINISH!

This really helps solidify what I've suspected - I can't really do 5ks, 10k-15k is nice, but I really like half-to-longer distances. The hubby prefers shorter, faster distances. Maybe now he'll get a good 5k-15k plan going.

Otherwise, this week is the last week of recovery before I start 18/55. I am excited for the future of my runs.

It's going great so far. I'm about halfway through in 3 days. No signs of injury or anything like that.

Today I did a 24,1 km (15 mi) medium-long run. Kind of progressive, but it's hard to not run it progressive also when you do this loop. Because it starts with a big hill and you just roll back to start after that. Just look at this elevation profile. It's pretty brutal.

1. I'm trying to sleep more. Holiday for me, so that's not a big problem. I'll add more beers in the coming days.
2. I'm doing roads less travelled and my normal ones. A nice mix.
3. I'll just pretend it never happened.

OMG I got my ARTC singlet today! :D :D :D Many thanks for organizing and sending them out, /u/CatzerzMcGee!

Trying to be good and not do anything super strenuous while I build mileage with the exception of a monthly fitness-check race. Legs are cooperating so far, but I can tell that if I throw a real workout into the mix every week when I'm still running relatively low miles I'll regret it.

Last week: hills. All of the hills. Nothing makes me question my sanity quite like running a bunch of hills on purpose. Running this route, though, the third hill is the absolute worst and they just get easier from there, so it wasn't too awful.

Thursday I got in a solid 2 x 4 mile workout (1200 recovery) at half marathon pace. I think this was my best HMP effort this year, which is good, since I'm racing a half on Saturday. In previous workouts, I struggled to hit HMP without dipping to low and treading past lactate threshold territory and paying for it later. In this one though, I finally felt like the pace was clicking.

I started to feel really tired at the end of this workout, but given that it was rather windy and that I ran it first thing in the morning without any food/fueling, I think that’s okay. Here’s how it broke down: 26:00 (avg. 6:30)[6:26 – 6:28 – 6:37 – 6:29] and 26:11 (avg. 6:33)[6:26 – 6:38 – 6:31 – 6:36]. Strava.

I think I'm going to aim to start the half on Saturday at 6:30, and then see how it feels. The course is pretty flat, but it's right on the water, so it has the potential to be pretty windy (it seems to have been a windy winter). I looks like it's going to be cold (low of 23 the night before, high of 40 day of the race), so I'll also have to figure out what exactly I want to wear.

Ohh boy, hit out a cracker this morning. 12 x 200s meaning it was 12 times the fun! Broke the session up into 4 sets. 1st set was 4x 200 at 32 with 200m jog recovery. Second set was 4x 200 at 30s with 200m jog recovery. Third set was 2 x 200 at 28s with 200m jog and fourth set was 2x200 at 27s. All with a 600m jog in between sets so non-stop running for the session.

My time were 30,32,32,30 - 29,30,30,29 - 28,28 - 27,26.

Felt really good, for a post Christmas hit out, was also to get it out of the way before it got to hot here in NZ. I may love summer but not training in its heat.

Strava

I had 2 workouts last week that I nailed.

Wednesday I had 6x1600m at a goal of 5:30-5:25 pace with 90sec rest. My workout ended up with splits of 5:25, 5:28, 5:28, 5:27, 5:26, 5:23 with an avg of 1:35 rest. Legs felt like rubber and I thought I was running slow on EVERY rep, but somehow I was killing my goals still. Surprisingly wasn't very sore after this one. Strava Activity

Saturday I had a 22mile long run. This was the longest training run I have ever done. It was rainy/windy (gusts of 20mph) and not to mention a nice hilly route. I averaged around ~6:59 pace for the first 18 feeling comfortable and having conversation, then dropped the pace on the last 4 and went 6:15 (5:50 effort level as it was mostly uphill), 6:03, 5:56, 5:57. Felt pretty strong. Only took one gel at mile 11 and carried a Nuun filled water bottle with me. Strava Activity

Downweek for me this week (and also my last partial week in Europe). I'm currently using a Hansons plan for my first marathon in January, have been building on distance for my speed days, and nailed my 5 x 1000m @ 5k day last Tuesday! Shot for 6:20/mi on the intervals and averaged 6:19/mi - which I'm especially happy with because the last couple of weeks I've fallen a bit slow in terms of the average uptempo.

Have 4 x 1200m @ 5k tomorrow and gotta say.. I'm stoked to be back in the states!

My Saturday run was supposed to be just a long easy run, but I was feeling good so I threw in 2x6k at my Daniels' MP.

Those 2x6k crushed me! Even with 3k in between the reps. I finished them, but was completely gassed.

I have no trouble completing my Vo2 interval workouts (I'm on Daniels' 40mpw 5k plan), I can even add reps, but I am awful at completing long MP efforts, they're the only workouts that have been failures for me and it's consistently very difficult.

Should I modify my training in any way to take into account this imbalance? I'm only training for 5ks, but I think I have pretty serious long distance weakness?

(edited to remove the completely wrong link)

Raced a 4 km yesterday. Was aiming for 15:00 given recent VO2max workout, but surprised myself with a 14:21. Had a nice sprint at the end against someone I know. He won the sprint, but I still had fun. The pace graph on Strava also shows the sprint pretty clearly :)

Race report likely to follow as soon as I see some pictures to help link people's backs (what I see during the race) to bibs (what I hope to see on the photos) and times.

My hip/butt muscle on the left side is a bit sore now, there will be some running soon which will hopefully clear things up.

I was pretty excited after finishing my workout I posted last week since I thought it was my last for the training plan. Well, Uncle Pete hates me and it turns out it wasn't the last.

The actual final workout was 5 x 1000 at 5k pace. I again had to do this on a section of road with a small hill so reps 1,3, and 5 have a short downhill and reps 2 and 4 have a short uphill. Fortunately, no wind this time. On the last rep I decided to push the pace once I hit level ground (about halfway through) to simulate a finishing kick. It wasn't until I got partway through the kick that I realized 500m was probably a little to soon to start that kick.

Goal pace again was 6:05-ish. Splits were 6:06, 6:07, 6:02, 6:08, and 5:45 (average for the first 4 where I was trying to hold race pace was 6:06, average for all 5 reps was 6:02). I was tremendously happy with this workout. I felt like I was able to find 5k pace pretty quickly in the rep and I was consciously having to back off pace some and not run too fast. All the reps felt comfortable (except the last half of the final one) so I am feeling good going in to the race on Saturday shooting for sub-19.

Strava

Mini race report: Trail to Ale 10k was a lovely day with light rain. I ran exactly my 4:00/k pace up to 8k, then I just stopped running for some reason for about 30s.

It cost me my sub-40. I can't complain about 40:19 for a first 10k race, I guess, but I'm pretty disappointed at the same time.

I suspect but cannot be sure that stopping was just a brain fart, especially since I picked it up and finished strong. I think if I had just toughed it out I would have had the race I wanted.

Strava link. 36th overall, 10th in my age group. No vdot progression in the last month of hard training :(

Managed to squeeze in a workout (and get above 60 miles on the week for the first time in a while): The Ice Cream Sandwich.

Warm up, then ten minutes at tempo (5:53/mi pace), then 6x1:00 on/off at about 5k pace, followed finally by another ten minutes at tempo (5:49/mile pace) and a cooldown. Ended up with 15.5k. Felt great being able to throw down a workout after some meh weeks.

Man, the posting times of these are fantastic ;)

This morning I tested out a new kinda workout. Nothing too hard just something to activate some different energy systems and muscle groups. Breaks up an easy run too.

Prescribed by the coach:

>"After a 10 minute warm up find a hill about 80metres long and stride strongly up the hill with good knee lift. Walk back down and on the flat run for 2-3 minutes before doing the same 80m hill again. Eight hills in total. Then a 30 minute warm down"

I changed it up a little bit and did a 20ish min warmup, then the hills, followed by a 25min warm down. Total distance was just over 15kms. I really enjoyed this session, made the 15kms go past in a breeze. The hills where enjoyable and not lactic creating so I think I found a good balance the first time around.

Strava Activity.

Checking the relationship between strava's pace and GAP pace also can help give an idea of the relationship between effort and pace.

Last week felt like a breakthrough for me. I had two workouts

• 11 with 6x1mi repeats. These were faster than any tempo pace I've ever run before, but the effort felt the same as previous tempos.
• Long run 18 with 12 or 13 at MP or faster. I wanted to do some marathon pace for the long run, but wasn't planning on forcing anything. My marathon pace should be around 7:00 or slightly below. Ended up running 13 of the 18 between 6:22 and 7:00 pace, most of the miles around 6:45.

I'm hoping these will translate to some fast (for me) marathon times this fall!

That workout sounds painful, but like lots of fun. I might try that out some time soon.

Just got back from my workout. ~~So fresh that it's not even on Strava yet!~~ Since my race was postponed I decided (after suggestions from /u/punkrock_runner) to do a tempo this morning, but not a normal tempo. Started off with 2 miles at LT (7:09,7:05), then a half mile recovery jog, finally 1 mile at 5k (6:46). I think this really simulated the fatigue of the later stages of a race and I'm really happy that I was able to complete this one.

edit: Strava deets: https://www.strava.com/activities/701252091

Note that I tied Erby Atkins on the segment.

I like to do a bit more mortal version of this workout that consists of 3-4 miles at HM pace, 6-7 miles steady long pace, then another 3-4 at HM. With warmup and cool down you get 16-20 miles with the last HM set being a good simulation of the end of a marathon.

I had trouble getting any quality in last week. I quit on a track workout on Wednesday and just ended up jogging around the track and running a few "fast" 200s when I felt like it. Then on Thursday I gave up on a medium-long run after 10 miles and walk-jogged back home.

On Sunday I entered a 5k at the Hofbrauhaus Cleveland. I have a "goal" 5k next week and wanted to get in a rust buster. I talked /u/cross1212 into entering and he tried to pace me to a sub-17. Unfortunately I had idiot high schooler pacing sense and went out way too fast the first 400m. I held on the best I could but the pace slipped and I ended up running 17:51. I was happy with the effort though, and Team Moose ended up finishing 1st and 2nd. I'll just have to be more patient with the pace on Saturday.
Strava

That looks like a fresh workout to try. Looks like it would be a nice change of pace.

I decided to jump into a 1600m race and the track meet my girls were in on Sunday. It was a lower attendance this year so there were only a handful of adults and a few boys running it. I had no idea what to expect, performance-wise, since I'm still doing recovery runs from the ultra and haven't done any speed work in months.

I got a 1.5 mi warmup with a few strides before lining up. My 1 mile PR is 6:06 so I was shooting for something close to that, but would be happy with anything around 6:30. I decided to go out somewhat conservative and just run at what my body felt comfortable with. First 400m was 1:32 which was faster than I planned (of course), but I felt good so I decided to try and maintain that through 800m, maybe pickup for the third 400, and then kick for the last 400m or so. Final time was 5:49 with splits of 1:32, 1:31, 1:28 , and 1:19. I was pretty happy with the time (new PR!). Based on the final split, I think I went out a little too conservative at the beginning. I definitely felt like I left some in the tank.

Strava

I recapped it on the General Discussion thread, but my main workout last week was the Green and Lean 5K. I ran a well-executed race and placed 2nd female overall... best splits I've ever had in a 5K, and I didn't go out too fast! Strava Data here

In other news, I have Boston Marathon fever today and am enjoying tracking everyone! I'm living vicariously through my friends, and it makes me want to give it a shot. I've read quite a few marathon books lately- Pfitzinger's, Jack Daniels, and Hansons.

Barring injury or illness, I am in for Charleston 26.2 in January :).

Ohh man that looks pretty tough. Haven't trained for a full marathon but that definitely looks like a solid workout and a good confidence booster for sure if you hit it.

This week I had a couple good ones. Postponed my Wednesday tempo workout since it was wayyy to windy and it worked out. On Thursday I ran 3x2 mile with 2 min rest. I've done 2x2 mile a few times and 5x1 mile once, so this was a big step up. Ran then all right around the pace I wanted.

12:11(6:06, 6:05) 12:01(5:58, 6:03) 11:57.5(5:58, 5:59.5)

https://www.strava.com/activities/508060705

Saturday was my long run and I was feeling pretty tired in the first half hour or so. Was trying to will my way through 12 or 13. Made it to 7 and turned around feeling good. Kept picking it up as I went. Unfortunately my Garmin data was corrupt but I got the splits off my watch.

7:10, 7:10, 6:58, 6:55, 7:10, 7:04, 6:54, 6:45, 6:44, 6:43, 6:37, 6:28, 6:26, 6:21

This week I need to mix up my schedule since I was doing track workouts Sunday's but ever since I bumped my long run past 13 and started pushing the last half of them, I've been too beat out to get a workout on Sundays. I'll probably move my workouts to Tues-Thurs and keep my long runs Saturday so I get enough recovery between those three.

Put together my first 50mile week since November last week and nailed a workout.

I had 2x 2.5mile repeats with 2min rest between. The goal pace was 5:35 pace. We started out early (5:30am) and ran to a local track for the warm up. For some reason the lights at the track were on so it made for a great experience even though it was cold (~27*). There was 5 of us, but I was the only one gunning for the faster pace so I knew it would be a solo effort.

Started the first interval strong (first lap was ~5:10 pace) and settled. Went through the motions and didn't get splits on the miles, but came through 2.5miles in 13:51 - a little faster than goal pace. Watch splits for the first 2 miles were 5:30, 5:26.

The second interval surprisingly felt easier than the first. I just got into a rhythm and kept pounding. I had to hold myself back a couple of times early on, but I was still killing my goal pace. I finished the 2.5miles in 13:41 with my watch splits being 5:25, 5:24 for 2miles during the interval.

I'm actually feeling in amazing shape - probably the best I've felt in ~10years. I have an 8k coming up on March 6th and a fast and competitive 5k on March 19th. I'm feeling pretty confident that I can break into the 15's for 5k at my current fitness, but we will see!

Strava Activity

Rogue Running had a great series called "what the race requires," with episodes on various distances. Here's the one on 800/mile.

u/benraj80 is right that you don't have enough time to truly prepare, so I'd treat this as a learning experience and see if the distance suits you! (Racing the mile/1500 on the track is my favorite distance.)

What you could do is one fairly difficult track workout this week like the one he listed, then you do a moderate-difficulty one the week of (to make sure you're fully recovered in time).

Two days before you take off, then the day before you do a very light shakeout run (20-30 min, or whatever is very easy for you. This is exactly what my wife's D1 college team would do before races.)

The trickiest thing about pacing for the mile is that your pace should feel strikingly fast right away. Then you just have to steel yourself to hold that pace as best you can through the middle portion of the race, which is the hardest.

I had a great session of 8 Canova Ks on Wednesday, rotating every kilometer between goal half pace and goal marathon pace. My goal was to hit 4:05 for the half intervals and 4:16 for the marathon intervals. I ended up nailing 4:01 - 4:10 - 4:00 - 4:11 - 4:02 - 4:11 - 4:04 - 4:13, so I felt pretty good about that. Strava.

Then I had a pretty strong long run on Saturday. It was my first time running 20 in two consecutive weeks of a training cycle due to some planning around vacation, so I was happy with how strong it was. I averaged a 7:28, according to Garmin (Strava failed on this one). I threw in three MP miles that clocked in at 6:49, 6:47 and 6:45.

Then, this morning, I ended up running my long run for next weekend...I had a 12 mi. medium long scheduled, but I was feeling good, so I just kept going. I only had 14 mi. scheduled for the weekend because I'll be traveling, so it'll be nice to save the extra 15 minutes or so on Saturday for more vacation-y things.

I had a pretty damn good week last week. 80 miles total with 1.5 workouts.

The first was nine miles including the featured WoW: The Moneghetti. Starting at 8k pace and changing gears until stride pace on the 15s. It always feels good to go fast during marathon training.

The second was my twenty mile long run yesterday. This one was awesome because I was invited out by the local sub-elite running club. Most of the guys are older than me (in their 40s), but damn if they aren't fast. I have been intimidated seeing their long run pace so I've avoided going out in the past, but getting the invite felt like an honour. We started out fairly reasonably and then picked it up. Averaged 4:19/k (6:56/mi) for 22k. Then I finished off the rest of the run solo. I might see if I can't goad some of them into pacing me for my marathon pace portion next time I'm out with them...

I had three:

1. 3 x 20min at Aerobic Threshold. Averaged 5:25/mile for these.

2. 8 x 3min on, 2min off. Ran about 2:58/km pace for the ons, then jogged the offs.

3. 80 minutes easy, 20 minutes uptempo. Ran with friends for the first portion then solo the last 20 minutes. Got moving pretty well.

How does everyone adjust their workouts to deal with wind/colder weather? Stay outside and adjust paces? Move inside if it's available to you?

Had a good 2 hour long run to close out the week. Over the past few weeks I've run the same 3.5mile loops so I can get fluids. Ran with a friend the first 15 so that helped it go by quick. I'm a fan of doing Long Runs at a moderate effort.

I had two awesome workouts this weekend (one was a race).

Saturday - 5k race - I was shooting for top 3, but apparently a lot of fast people showed up. I was hoping to run sub-16:25 (PR for the year), but fell somewhat short of that. Went out strong and was running in 3rd/4th the whole way but just didn't have that next gear in the last mile. I ran 16:36 for 4th place. (3rd was 16:31, 2nd was 16:27) I had no idea that the top 3 received a free pair of New Balance shoes. UGH. I think I could have pushed myself into 3rd had I known that. Regardless, I was happy with my time considering it was 6days after my 10mile race and I have not had any speedwork in at least 2 months. Strava Activity

Sunday - 13mile training run - A local running friend is gearing up for the NYC Marathon and had 13miles planned at marathon race pace (6:30 pace). He asked a few of us if we would be interested in tagging along and I said sure not knowing how my legs would feel after the 5k. Miraculously, my legs didn't feel too bad Sunday morning and the 5 of us ran together for ~7miles between 6:25-6:35 pace. Myself and another guy started dropping into the 6:15 range for a few miles and I was still feeling really comfortable. He started to drop back coming up on mile 10, so I thought I would see if I could do a cut down on the last 3 miles. To my surprise, I was able to go 5:55, 5:42, and 5:35 the last 3 miles and finish 13.1 miles in 1:22:37. That's my fastest half marathon to date since I have never raced one, haha. Strava Activity

The 13.1 on Sunday gave me a LOT of confidence that I'm building strength and should be able to run in the 2:40's for my full marathon in December. I have a fast 5k planned for Oct 31 and am throwing some speed workouts in over the next 2 weeks, so hopefully I'll get to go under 16:25 this year.

September Mileage: 120 for the month, a big step back due to taper and my marathon on the 20th. 1134 for the year which is pretty good since last year i think i hit 175...

October: I'm getting back into training mode, recovering from the marathon has taken longer than I expected, but being my first I guess now i know. My current goal is to PR in monthly mileage and start running real workouts (currently reading Jack Daniel's book).

Race Report: Ran the Two Bears Marathon in Whitefish, MT on the 20th. Had an A Goal of sub-4, B of sub-430 and C of finishing. Somehow I ran a 3:43:34 and came in first in my (not so competitive) age group. Got some awesome swag, the age group winners got wood plaques with a polished bottle opener attached. Generally happy with myself, although I know I pushed the pace when I finished the trail portion of the race and paid for it later as you can see in the Strava Data.

<strong>Photo from the Marathon</strong>

I had a couple workouts last week:

First workout consisted of a 4 mile tempo. I didn't fail it, but I didn't exactly nail it. I run my tempo's based off of HR, and I hit my target HR the whole time, but my pace wasn't where I was hoping it would be. That has made me reevaluate my 10k goal for this coming Sunday - unless it is magically 45F.

Then yesterday, I did a 10 mile long progression run. I nailed that run.

• 2 mile w/u
  
• 2 miles @ 7:40
  
• 2 miles @ 7:34
  
• 2 miles @ 7:16
  
• 2 mile c/d
  

Strava run. Very happy with how that turned out.

I think I've mentioned it before, but in my past running I've never had a real "Long" long run. This block of training I've been doing more volume as well as focusing on the long run in terms of time on feet. I did my first two hour run about a month ago and had another one yesterday, this time with the goal of 20 miles or 2:15.

I meant to go in the morning, but didn't end up getting out the door until 3:30pm to a pleasant temp of 91F. I ended up running 19.1 outside at 6:30 average, then added one mile indoors as a cool down. Didn't bring my iPod like I usually do because I wanted to have the more "mental grind" of just running for 2+ hours. All in all, pretty warm (lost 9lbs of fluid!) but good long run!

Strava Activity

I had two productive, but not very exciting sessions.

1. 10 x 3:00 on, 3:00 off. I like this one because it works out to be an hour of running with half hard and half moderate. Ran 10.28 total for the workout so 5:48 pace average.

2. 14 x 1k alternating threshold effort and steady effort with 40s jog between each. Ran back and forth on a road in a ravine so it was scenic, but very repetitive after a few reps. Ran 3:12 for the threshold and 3:25 for the steady reps.

I had my first two workouts in a while last week.

The first was a simple 5 mile tempo. Goal was to start at 5:50's and work down to 5:30's. First mile was 5:30 so I just kinda went with it. Ended up easing up towards the end for some 5:40's. It felt great to go fast again. Strava activity: https://www.strava.com/activities/356312477

The other workout I did was 4 x (2 min on, 1 min off, 1 on, 1 off, 30 sec on, 1 min off) followed by an easy mile, and then a hard mile. For the 'On' pace I was going anywhere between 5:30 - 5:00 pace. The hard mile at the end was a 5:15. Again, felt great to go fast! Strava activity: https://www.strava.com/activities/357733089

I also must mention my segment sniping session on Saturday that I completely messed up. A guy had done a 2.3 mile loop around a lake at 6:40ish pace. I was doing a 12 miler so in the middle of it I went over to the lake and picked it up to 6:00 for a couple miles. I got to what I thought was the 'finish' of the loop and turned around to jog back to a water fountain. Apparently I stopped short of the finish and so it counted my water stop and I failed. On a positive note, I did get the fastest time on a 400m segment, I did it in 72 seconds during my run!

Everyone thinks Gatorade is a great electrolyte supplement.. because Gatorade says it is, and everyone believes the marketing hype. The reality is ... it's actually really crappy.

I take two of these every 30 minutes when I'm running a marathon. All electrolyte problems solved.

https://www.amazon.com/Elite-Sportz-Electrolyte-Tablets-Cramps/dp/B00OU7YXU2/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&amp;keywords=rapid+rehydr8&amp;qid=1611859392&amp;sr=8-1-spons&amp;psc=1&amp;spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWkVLRUlZR0pHWDdaJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMjc5ODQ5MjRMNkxTOU9CUUxCVSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMzA0Nzk1MzRQWUhUODBCNkdVSSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

> No. 1 on the list is the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

I love buying cars as weird as that sounds. Looking for the big V8 or the V6 Pentastar? I've had two Wranglers with the V6, it's not too bad.

For my past few purchases I've used TrueCar for finding out what dealer invoice (what they "pay") actually is so you can see what markup they're asking for.

What you'll likely see is that they have the manufacturer sticker, then the dealer added things that are around $1,200 extra. These are normally things like nitrogen in the tires, mud flaps, and door edge protection film. You can usually negotiate decently on the price of these and argue that you don't want them. For instance, they'll try to charge $150 for the door film when Amazon can have it at your door for under $10.

Best thing to do is know what you want, find out what others are paying in your area from TrueCar, then go from there. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get close to that mark. And of course, don't be afraid to walk away. :)

I simply drink mostly Tailwind during my runs and only drink when I'm truly thirsty. The problem isn't "over-hydration" it's hyponatremia. You can absolutely drink too much water to where you're displacing your electrolytes and that can be very dangerous. I used to think I was bonking running longer than 2-3 hours only to discover I was foolishly following advice like "drink before your thirsty." Once I moderated my fluid intake and mixed my water with electrolytes I felt a hell of a lot better for 5-6 hour trail ultras than I ever did for 3+hr road runs guzzling down too much straight water.

Two workouts for me this week, only one of them intentional. I did a back to back 13/14 Monday/Tuesday to help prep for the ultra coming up.

And then I was originally planning on going for a nice hour run the morning of a wedding in Detroit this weekend before groom festivities, and had looked up the weather in Detroit beforehand, which said mid-50's.

Welllll, I got up Saturday morning and it was 41 outside, and all I had brought was shorts and a tshirt. 1.5 miles into it I decided I was still too cold, so stopped the watch and got ready to just turn it into a tempo. And then I ran the tempo a little faster than I had planned also, ended up averaging 6:02s for 4.5 miles.

To make things worse, I realized after the fact that if I had continued another .5 miles, there's a really, really good chance I would have beaten my college 8K PR of 30:02, on a spur of the moment workout. Sigh, such is life.

Had a post-race week of mostly easy running and segment chasing. Now I'm in maintenance mode until March-ish! Looking for good workouts for maintenance and long-term improvement. I'm thinking a good variety of tempo runs, kilometer repeats, and progression runs should do the trick. I'm committing to using Daniels' paces based on my most recent race, and I'm praying that it takes me to the next level. I really want to be more competitive next summer.

Nailed it this morning. Just nailed it.

Training plan had me doing 8 today. I'd done 14 on Saturday and 10 on Sunday, but when my alarm went off at 5am I wasn't feeling it. Finally got around to heading out the door at 9am.

My goal was to just log the miles and stay loose, but a mile in I was feeling pretty strong so I figured I'd throw in some fartleks as I ran on a path with a ton of telephone poles. Something like 1 on, 3 off, as I ran along the poles. Did that for a mile and then just settled into a comfortable fast pace. Turned around around mile four and then did the same for a mile on my way back.

I broke my 10k PR by almost four minutes. I'd raced my heart out in June (and won my AG) at a local 10k and I shattered that time today in the midst of an 8 mile workout. I'm sure doing something right!

https://www.strava.com/activities/701349964

The heat seemed to break this past week (confirmed by the pressure, or lack of it, in my car tires) just in time for my long run, so I got a pretty good one. I had a vague route in mind and it turned out to be exactly 15 miles, just like I wanted. Last week I had to cut the route short to 12 miles and it was tough getting back, but this week I was able to run the second half much faster than the first and end on a sub-7 up the final hill.

Strava

1. Totally just nailed my long run. I slipped on some racing flats this morning because I was feeling good when I woke up, intending to do some MP parts to the long run. Made it into a progression of sorts, working my way down to sub-7 miles, one of which was 6:36. Just jumped in the pool and going to have some breakfast now.
2. With this long run done, I'm at 75 of my 80 miles for the week. Considering heading back out there to just get the last 5 done, and then I'd be done for the week.
3. Sacrifices? A couple goats, some sheep, no big deal.
4. Should I just go do the last 5 miles now? Or do them tomorrow?

There are plenty of options you can research, or check this list to start: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-top-free-vpns-chrome-users/

However, be aware that a VPN is not free to run. If you use a free VPN service you are still going to be the product in some manner. The way Hola monetized just turned out to be extremely shady.

I had two hard efforts last week, one of them on the track and one on the roads. The track one wasn't too bad, just 3 x 1600m w/ 60 sec rest. I did 6:04 / 6:10 / 6:13. While I didn't feel too bad on the 6:04, I knew I couldn't have sustained that, so I tried to back off. 6:10 was probably the right pace, and I should have picked it up on the last one a bit. I'm definitely still trying to find my new speed--that will be a big goal this summer, and the goal for the end of the year is to be back where I was last year, at least in some respects.

My big workout was a long run with Tracksmith, which some of you probably know as an apparel business which also does a print magazine called Meter. They host a 13.1-mile run along the second half of the Boston Marathon course every month and I joined up with them Saturday. I started out pretty quick for my current fitness and held on for a while but I eventually did have to back off quite a bit, especially because we were doing the course backwards and the hills are much more difficult that way. I'm a little embarrassed that I made a wrong turn early on which added some distance--I've never actually run the course in reverse all the way from the finish line. Oh well. The coolest part was that there was a girl there who I realized later is a teammate of /u/erbyatkins named Caroline Williams. There were a lot of great athletes in attendance, but she was obviously next level.

Strava activity

Ran a really smooth tempo last week. It was more of a confidence booster than anything else. 20 minutes at 7:20ish (was supposed to be 7:30-45 pace) so basically ran my 5k race PR and felt really good doing it.

Definitely gotten stronger over my rebuilding phase and it's showing. My plan is get back up to 30 mpw and then hold for a while. Maybe Pfitz, praise be, 5k plan after that. I want to develop more speed before I step up distance.

Strava activity: https://www.strava.com/activities/611575001

Last week was a taper week. I usually follow the last two weeks Advanced Marathoning's 85+ plan during the taper because I find it mentally reassuring to just follow some kind of laid out protocol leading up to a race. So last week Pfitzypants had me do the 3x1mi at 5k Pace workout. It felt surprisingly good. I'm kind of looking forward to getting in some faster work later in the summer.

On Saturday I set out on a Medium-Long Run. The temperature hit mid-90's that day and I decided to get in some last minute heat-training by running in the hottest part of the day. It started slow, turned into a slog, then a wasted walk-jog the last two miles.

Hey! I know the 30-20-10! It's a ton of fun!

First week of four in 'base' for the next cycle - two weeks post-marathon.

Tues - 2x 30sec hill sprints with 1.5min rest between Thurs - 4x 30-30

Sat - Ran the first in the local 5k summer series. Figured I could reasonably hit 22min, wanted to focus on a controlled start, even pacing and establish a pace baseline to cover the next cycle. 6:54, 7:00, 7:06, :49 (Garmin), Gun time 22:05, chip 22:01. Strava Highest HR avg I've had in a long time and was heaving like a pregnant cow for that last 1/2 mi, but hot humid FL. Definitely not in 5k shape - no surprise there! Pretty happy with how things went. No singlet as it was way too hot (tempted to print the moose on a sports bra. . . ) - but a decent hurting at the finish photo.

Sun - Did an 'endurance holding' long run of 16 for the 21m trail/night race coming up in a couple of weeks. Why the hell did I register during marathon taper???

Damn no watch, I couldn't do it then. Yeah, lets say that's why ...

Had 2 runs last week which may qualify as workouts:

1) 6 x 1000m @ 5k pace w/ 2min jog between reps. Never done 1000 meters before, but I kinda liked it. Guess I could have done a few more, but Pfitz is the boss. Strava

2) Since I'm doing Pfitz 12/70 instead of 18/70 (because of lack of time), I'm missing out on some workouts. So I decided to try the hardest workout I could find in the longer program. The worst I could find was 29 km w/ 23 km at marathon pace. My original plan said 32 km long run, so I just extended the warmup / cool down to make it 32 km w/ 23 km at marathon pace.

I was not sure if I would be able to complete it, but it worked out pretty well. This was kind of the last test before my taper starts. So I'm sticking with my 2:50 marathon goal.

Strava

The ice cream sandwich seems like it's up my alley. I'm saving this one. Two workouts last week. Tuesday I did 5 x (2 min on / 1 min off / 1 min on / 2 min off). Friday I did a tempo with 3 x 2 miles w/ 3 min jog recovery.

Question for you guys regarding tempo runs. Do you look at your watch during a tempo, or do you just shoot for that "moderately hard" feel? On last week's tempo I did it entirely by feel for the first time and my pace varied quite a bit. I did 3x2miles, but my paces for each were 6:58, 6:44 and 6:47. I almost never look at my watch on easy runs, but for workouts I'm still a slave to the numbers.

One workout and a spiced-up long run. Friday I did a 9 mile tempo run with 4 x 2k @ HM pace w/2 min jog recovery. I was hoping to hit around 6:55/mile pace, but ended up closer to 7:05/pace. Then Sunday I did a Squire's long run, which consisted of 90 minutes split up as follows: 15 minutes easy, 6 x (2 min @ 5k pace / 8 min jog), 15 minutes easy. The purpose presumably is to engage different muscle fibers, deplete glycogen a bit quicker, as well as simulate the kick at the end of race. I was happier with how this went than with the tempo.

Had two pretty good workouts last week.

Wednesday was my threshold on the roads. Did 2x2 mile with 2 minutes rest. Actually felt pretty good. Went 12:00(6:03, 5:57), 11:45(5:55. 5:50).

https://www.strava.com/activities/484960067

Yesterday was "I" paced 800s on the track. Did 8x800 with 400 jog. Last week I skipped this due to back pain and the week before it was icy on the roads and went pretty poorly and only got 6. Averaged about 2:46.5 on these. I kind of expected them to be faster since my "R" pace was quicker than planned, but this was right on pace with the VDOT tables so I'm pretty happy with it.

https://www.strava.com/activities/488443652

Fartleks are pretty cool. I don't really use them in my plan now, but I think after I'm done with this race cycle I'll get them as a way to keep some speed while I'm doing mostly easy mileage.

Not exactly a run but this weekend was the first time I've been able to get on my mountain bike since my son was born and the brewery opened:

Strava

It was cut short due to my father-in-law losing a bearing on his rear suspension at the most absolute furthest point from the parking lot. The only good thing to come from that is that I wasn't too sore to run the next day.

I always enjoy getting out on the mountain bike and have been bummed I haven't been able to recently.

Finished my last real long run before my marathon on Saturday. 23miles total with the last 5 or so being solo. Didn't have a specific pace plan so I just ran based on how I felt. From mile 16 to 23 I cut the pace from 6:40 to 5:45 for the last mile. Felt strong on a nice hilly course and averaged 6:38 pace for the whole run. Definitely a good confidence booster for the marathon and reinforced the feeling that I should be in around 2:40 shape right now. Strava Activity

This will be my last WoW for awhile! Race day is Sunday, then recovery, so my next workout isn't scheduled until December 30...crazy.

Anyway, my final workout of the season was on Thursday, 10 days out from the Philadelphia Marathon. It was 3 x 10 minutes at slightly faster than lactate threshold pace (6:19-6:32 per mile) with 2:30 recovery between sets.

After a short warm up, I ran 1.55 in the first 10 mins., a 6:27 min/mi pace, 1.55 again in the second 10 mins., and finished it up with 1.57 in the final 10 minutes, a 6:22 min/mi. pace, then closed it out with a 10 minute cool down.

It felt hard, but really good. Now, I only have 15 miles between me and the starting line. Strava.