Official Strava/Runkeeper Thread

[Alan T]

Welp... Sometimes the weather just does not work for you.

Had a 5 mile "Hilly" Race this morning, where I was once again going to try to break 40 minutes for a 5 mile race. The weather last night just turned pear shape though, and today was just oppressive. My watch decided to freak out mid-race as well, but best I can tell I think I ended up running around 42-43 minutes.

So no Personal Record for me, but I am pretty ok with the results. Considering I did not taper at all for this race (it is just a tune up race in the middle of my schedule), the weather and the hills.. I feel that in an ideal day I would have shattered my PR.




So upcoming schedule for me, I have another 5k I am supposed to be doing on Saturday that is not part of my training schedule. My wife is on the committee running the 5k, so I kind of had to sign up for it. Still not sure if I am going to "race" it or just take it easy or what.

I'm signed up for Half Marathon "Tune up Race" on the 13th, down in Kodos' neck of the woods.. The Gulf Beach Half Marathon in Milford, CT which I am pretty excited about doing. Not so excited about waking up at 3am in the morning to drive there though

I am supposed to do another 8-10k tuneup race towards the end of the month, but still not sure what that will be and then my Marathon is October 11th ..

So pretty busy upcoming month for me!

[FrogMan]

ish, those were some rough conditions Alan!

Day 6 of my self imposed rest period. Been doing eccentric calf raises since Saturday, increasing from 3x10 to 3x12 to now 3x15 daily. Calves were kinda screaming at me for a couple days there, a sign that they needed the work.

The achilles (my left one) is still slightly sore to touch but I don't feel any pain when walking anymore which is encouraging. It still becomes sore when I teach karate barefoot for an hour or two but there's no pain the next morning.

I bought a roll of KT-Tape bands and will tape my achilles for support probably tonight to possibly go out for a tiny run tomorrow morning. Might keep it on the treadmill so I can stop and hop off if I feel some pain.

Other than the calf raises, I've been doing some core work and some runner specific routines that focus principally on glutes, mostly body weight stuff. Holy lunges Batman!

FM

[Subby]

Ahem...

Challenge Details | Fit Leagues

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Subby

Ahem...

Challenge Details | Fit Leagues

The year is not over yet!

[Alan T]

I think Saturday's weather is going to help convince me to not race hard in the 5k I am doing. I am scheduled to do a 5 mile recovery run that day (am running 12 miles on Friday and 18 on Sunday, so racing a 5k on Saturday seems pretty reckless).. but I really wanted to see how I could do in a 5k since I have not actually raced that distance since the Spring.

Race time on saturday: 82F with 80%+ humidity...

5 mile recovery run it is!

[hoopsguy]

Always nice to see stuff like this on Smashrun:

Notable (as of the date of this run)

• first run in Wheaton
• fastest run ever.
• fastest km split in 3 months.
• highest calories/hour in a month.

Longer write-up when I've got some time later in the weekend, but a very fun 5k this morning in the best running conditions I've had in maybe a month.

[Alan T]

Nice job Hoops!!

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Always nice to see stuff like this on Smashrun:

Notable (as of the date of this run)

• first run in Wheaton
• fastest run ever.
• fastest km split in 3 months.
• highest calories/hour in a month.

Longer write-up when I've got some time later in the weekend, but a very fun 5k this morning in the best running conditions I've had in maybe a month.

yeah, great job!

And Smashrun is awesome

ran 3 km on Thursday and 5 km this morning. Tomorrow will be my first time doing back to back days of running since taking almost a week off. Achilles isn't too bad during the run, kinda stiff afterward. Had a long day on my feet today, teaching three hours of karate (so barefoot) and then had a belt grading (again barefoot) so it hurt a bit more. Put some KT Tape on it when I got home and it seem to really help when in recuperation...

Will be going for a tiny bit longer run tomorrow, maybe something like 8 to 10 km, gradually increasing the distance. Will be keeping it close to home though as to be able to cut it short it it hurts...

FM

FM

[hoopsguy]

Race Report:
I've got a major work project that comes due on 9/8, so I've had a ton of focus on that over the past couple of weeks and will be locked in on this for most of the weekend as well. My one break in between work is the 5k run Saturday morning. Except that my client had other plans, as he took me out for a drink (ok, two beers) last night to discuss what 2015 might hold for me and for my firm. Not ideal for pre-race meal, coupled with the small pizza we split, but mostly unavoidable.

What was avoidable, however, was mixing up the start time. I was under the impression that the race started at 9AM, when in fact it was 8AM. That made my decision to snooze for an extra 45 minutes a bigger deal. Somewhere around 7:10 I looked up the address for the race start, and realized that I needed to sprint through the shower and get over to Wheaton, which is about 20 minutes from where I live. 25 when you hit every single red light, which is how it played out this morning. Nonetheless, after getting through registration quickly (including 4 block fast jog from car to tent) I had about 5 minutes to spare before the race. Missed the mayor's speech, but was in time for the playing of the national anthem.

When I went for lunch around 12:30 yesterday it was about 90 degrees and very humid. I was dreading what the weather was going to look like for this race, and basically discarded any thoughts of setting a PR. However, an hour later the sky was dark and we had a really savage 15-20 rain shower. That drove temperatures down fast; it was probably 20 degrees cooler when I went for dinner that night. All of a sudden the forecast for Saturday was looking pretty good. And on the drive over this morning, my car reported a temperature of 64 degrees. This was 10-15 degrees cooler than many of my 5AM runs over the past three weeks.

One final announcement before the race started - there was a prize for "King of the Hill" ... which was my first clue of what the elevation was going to be like on this course. Now this isn't going to be anything compared to what other regions of the country see, but this was a pretty decent sized hill to hit at the 1km mark.

PadsRun2014 - thephotonfoundry | SmugMug
(not me in pic - that was "King of the Hill")

Leading up to the hill, I was running at about 4:15 - 4:20 pace, which is about the fastest start I can ever recall for a race. I knew that I needed to average 4:36 to hit the 23:00 mark and I was gunning to beat the 22:45 from last time, so although this was fast it wasn't way out of line. I made a point to shorten/quicken my strides for climbing and vowed to attack the downhill when it came about.

But there was quite a bit of elevation throughout the course; more elevation than really flat areas. This is drastically different than running on the Chicago lakefront, where my most recent summer races took place. There the courses are probably 95% flat with 5% incline/decline. Here it felt more like 40% flat. And so I felt like I was having to change gears regularly, trying to make sure I wasn't burning out too early in the race.

At the halfway point, I felt like I was holding up pretty well. I certainly did not feel as gassed as I recall being on the last mile of the July 5k. However, as I look back on my splits I can see that the adjusted pace was slipping while I tried to maintain energy. The watch said I was still tracking well for 22 minutes, but the adjusted pace got worse every for each consecutive K as the course moved towards a gradual downhill. That shifted into a gradual uphill on the 4th K and once again with a mile to go I was sucking wind.

This is about the part in the race where I was telling myself that I needed to hit the brakes a little bit, potentially sacrificing the PR for not needing to walk if we had another big uphill at the end of the race. But my body doesn't always do a good job of listening to the brain; my adjusted pace was faster this lap even if the watch was 12 seconds slower than the previous one.

I didn't feel like I had a lot of pep left in my step for the final 5K, but it did look like I was tracking just a bit past 22 minutes. Sure enough, there was another medium hill near the end, which put thoughts of 22 minutes out of my head, but I still had enough in the tank going downhill at the end to finish strong. And wonder if I had been too conservative throughout, given the cool weather and my tendency to be able to sustain faster starts in recent 5k races.

Final race time was 22:41, although Strava reported 22:12 for the 5k time. Which is pretty amusing for me, as Strava has "inflated" my race times compared to official times the last several races. Which has been frustrating during training runs, where I would see 1st/2nd/3rd best for 5k while knowing I wasn't within a minute of my past race time. Now I'm going to be gunning for a Strava time that is 30 seconds better than I ran

Finish was good for 20th/369 and 3rd out of 13 in my age group. I believe that is my first Top 5 finish in age group and as close as I've been to the overall lead in a race up to this point. I don't expect to best those % finishes next week during a downtown Chicago race, where I suspect a deeper and more athletic field. But if the weather cooperates, I actually get some food/drink before the run, and a couple of minutes of stretching in then I think I can get under 22:30. Beyond 9/14, I'm updating my yearly time goal to bringing my time down under 7 min/mile pace. Heady stuff, considering I plateaued last fall around the 25 minute mark for my 5k time.

[Alan T]

Hoops, you are getting to the point that if you look for the occasional smaller race in your area, you could possibly win age group awards depending on who else shows up.

[Alan T]

Crossposted from my facebook:

I had been getting more and more discouraged this summer as every week the long runs just were not clicking and my performance was suffering. I kept coming up with excuses, it was too hot, too humid, too hilly, I was tired, etc.. But after so many weeks I started second guessing whether or not I was actually being realistic with my goals for upcoming races.

I finally had a solid long run today that helped give me a little bit of hope. My goal for Hartford marathon is to run it in 4 hours, which would be 45 minutes quicker than my last marathon. A Huge jump, but I felt realistic due to the way I fell apart last time and the things I learned from the experience. That would be a 9:10 pace roughly over the 26.2 miles.

Today's run schedule had me run 18 miles, with the middle 14 at marathon pace. I adjusted the pace for heat + humidity, which put it at 9:30 for today. I even included in quite a bit of hills too, but still hit my goals for most of the splits, including hitting 9:30 on the head in mile 16 while running uphill.

So I guess I feel a little bit better after today's run, but still just do not remember having it so rough last summer. Perhaps just a sign of my increased running load and that fine line between running enough and running too much (overtraining).

[Kodos]

Honestly, I've been worried that you might be overtraining. But you know your situation better than I do.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Kodos

Honestly, I've been worried that you might be overtraining. But you know your situation better than I do.

To be honest, I'm not so sure that I know my situation better This is all pretty new to me, I've done alot of reading on the subject, but this is my first time trying to take the jump from the Higdon level training plans to the Daniels/Pfitzinger plans. So on average it means pretty much jumping from 35-40 miles per week to 45-50 miles per week (or an extra 1-2 miles per day).

They make sure to make it very clear to keep easy days easy and hard days hard.. and I've been trying to do that. I think perhaps my biggest mistake I have been making is on top of that, putting in at times 30-50 additional miles on the bike every week just for fun. I've been thinking this final month I probably am going to cut back a bit on the biking and see how I adjust to the schedule.

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Hoops, you are getting to the point that if you look for the occasional smaller race in your area, you could possibly win age group awards depending on who else shows up.

Weird to think about, but if I was 3rd in age group yesterday then I guess that is within reach. Maybe I'll start targeting something like that next year if I'm able to get into the 7 min/mile pace ... I don't think I've seen an age group winner time higher than 21 in any of my races so far.

[Alan T]

Wow, it is amazing what difference good running weather makes. First run since I was in South America in July that I did not have to adjust for heat/humidity. I'm so excited that Fall is almost here.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Wow, it is amazing what difference good running weather makes. First run since I was in South America in July that I did not have to adjust for heat/humidity. I'm so excited that Fall is almost here.

[Alan T]

Fun running weekend coming up for my wife and I. We're going back to the Rhode Island/Connecticut coast again for the weekend, with the hotel right on the beach, same place we went last year. Last year both of us ran the Surftown Half marathon in Westerly, RI and loved it. Due to issues with kids though, it is too tough for both of us to run it this year though so my wife is going to run it again and is looking to beat her personal best time of around 2:45 for the half. She has had a rough year running wise and been demotivated quite a bit due to her ongoing lung issues preventing her cardio from really growing much. I'm hoping she does well, and I'll be there cheering her on this year!

That is on Sunday, but on Saturday is my half-marathon. I'm running the Gulf Beach Half Marathon in Milford, Connecticut (kind of near Bridgeport). I'll be getting up at 4am to eat and do the drive from Rhode Island down to the race (about 90 minutes or so). I've never done this race before, but it is supposedly almost entirely on the boardwalk there and is along the water the entire way. Should be a great view I hope!

More importantly, right now it looks like the weather is going to cooperate.. Still about a day or two away from knowing better but right now it looks like it should be somewhere around 60F for the race, and the rain is holding off until the afternoon. I've been very encouraged by the ease of my runs this week with the better weather, and think I'm all set to beat my Half-marathon PR hopefully. I'm going to be aiming for under 1:50, but anything under 1:55 is a new PR for me.

[Kodos]

If I wasn't out of town this weekend, I probably would have signed up for that too. Have fun!

[Marc Vaughan]

Really frustrated at the moment, in my second week of non-exercise, fractured my big toe slightly* playing soccer and so have been trying to 'stay off it' largely ...

Am hoping to play soccer on Friday as frankly its been driving me nuts ... I'm a bit achy at the moment but the pain has subsided and I think the aches are mainly because my body isn't used to doing nothing.

*Nothing serious from what I can tell, just painful for the first week or so and since then annoying as heck.

[Alan T]

In just a week, I went from being discouraged to suddenly feeling ecstatic about where I am in my running goals. I'll probably do a full race write up probably tomorrow when I get some time, but the Half-marathon felt great on Saturday. Despite hardly sleeping the night before, getting up at 3:45am and driving 90 minutes to the race, I felt great the entire time.

I went in deciding that I was going to take a conservative approach and picked 8:45min/mile as my pace for the Half. (about 5 seconds faster than my PR). My goal was to keep it steady the entire time and see how things felt. In hindsight, I can now really see how much my fitness has improved since even earlier this spring. That pace was too conservative, and I hit the half way point with a Heart rate that looked like a tempo run, not a race. I spent the entire second half of the race passing people who were struggling, while I was nailing negative splits repeatedly the entire second half.

Looking at the Split times, there was not a single person who crossed half way after me and finished in front of me. Meaning that I did not get passed by a single person in the second half of the race. I on the other hand passed according to the final standings at least 31 runners in the second half. I got to mile 11 and one of the spectators asked me why I was still smiling, and I just shrugged and said that I didn't know, it just was beautiful weather for a run.

At that point I realized that I had so much left in the tank I wanted to see what was left, so I finished the last 1 1/2 miles or so at under 8:00min/mile pace. I didn't even really feel it too much until the last 1/10th of a mile which they had us finishing on the beach, running in the sand.. which is some kind of horrible idea..

I guess the two things that I notice from my summer training is 1) I really do feel more fit than ever before, and just not sure exactly how much faster I should be pacing my self in some of these races just yet.. and 2) I feel that i recover so much better after the races now too. Last year after this effort, i would have been sore for a few days. Now, i don't feel it at all. Feels like it was just an easy run yesterday.

I guess that is a good thing since my training plan has perhaps my toughest run of the entire schedule for today. On top of yesterday's tune-up race, today I now have an aerobic paced long run of 17 miles scheduled. Their idea behind this is that it teaches your legs to run while fatigued/tired which will be needed the last 6 miles of the marathon. I feel pretty good though right now so guess I will see how the long run goes in an hour or so.

[hoopsguy]

Looking to hear how Alan's half marathon went ...

Did another 5k today, and shaved about 30 seconds off my time from last week. This was pretty much an example of how not to prepare for a race, as I ate poorly yesterday, got about 4.5 hours of sleep, had a watch error earlier that will push my Strava time into 4k range instead of 5k, and felt miserable for most of the run.

22:12
202 out of 3,252
173 out of 1,274 males
35 out of 183 males 40-44

27 more seconds to go for my updated end-of-year goal of running a 5k at 7 minute mile pace. Just not sure if I'll have another 5k to validate this. Right now I'm leaning towards doing a 5k around Halloween and a 15k the week following, but have to check if those line up with family schedules. If I do this, I'll have 10 races for the year which seems like a nice round number.

[FrogMan]

We, as a family, had a nice day of racing on Sunday. I first ran a 10K and placed 8th overall out of 82 finishers and came in 2nd in my category (M40-49) with a time of 43:20. Not my best time for a 10K but I can live with it. I had reduced my training since my half marathon to try and heal an aching achilles tendon and even yesterday evening and this morning was still battling a head cold that had me congested. My heart rate was already up there after 2 km so I kept a steady pace until I had to fight with a long uphill of about 1.5 km to close the race. That uphill felt more like 15 km than 1.5 km I tell ya, but I didn't walk one step of it and I'm proud of that...

A mere 30 minutes after finishing my 10K I was lining up to start the 2K race with both my sons, Andrew and Matthew. Matthew had some lofty goals for that race. He told me right at the start line that he wanted to stick to the guy on the bicycle that was opening the race in front of runners. I was kind of afraid he'd start too fast and would break down halfway through but he held on, so much so that HE WON THE RACE!!! So very proud of being his pacer for about 3/4 of that race before pushing him on to go as hard as he could for the last 300 meters, daddy "just couldn't push any harder" Very proud of him and also of Andrew who came in 4th also pushing as hard as he could.

Overall a very nice day were all profits from the race will go to a local pediatric cancer fundation. They mentioned a total of more than 5000$ was to be given. Really happy and proud to have taken part in this race but now Matthew wants to do another one on October 12th. Well, I wasn't supposed to race anymore this season...

Couple days removed from the race, the achilles is a bit but not overly sore. I felt it the moment I walked down the stairs on Sunday morning and it stiffened a bit on my pre-race warmup run but didn't really slow me down during the race itself. I taped it the moment I got home and it seemed to help but walking on stairs was hard on Sunday. Will definitely take it easy for a long while now, with maybe a couple runs a week for a couple weeks, maybe even less than that. If, and that's still a "if", we sign up for something on October 12th, I'll only do a 5K. Will be going back to calf raises starting tomorrow and will try to do them daily.


Now time for some pics from race day...

prior to the start of my 10K, feeling relaxed


the start! bib #58 will end up winning it in a time of 34:30, that's "kind of" out of my league


no other in race pics from the 10K so right to post-race pic


prior to the start of the 2K race, can you tell my youngest son was very much into it, so intent!


start of the 2K


last stretch home, about 100m to go, I'd just let him loose telling him to go as hard as he could, that we would rest after the finish line


and here's my oldest son on his last stretch... you can even see my mom running behind him, lol. She'd walked to the last bend to take pictures and was coming back to the finish line


Matthew celebrating his 1st place finish


one proud daddy


FM

[timmae]

Awesome day of racing and family time to boot! Thanks for sharing!!

[Alan T]

That is awesome FM! I'm trying to get my girls running more too. It is sometimes tough to combat their desire to just play lego marvel on the xbox all day though. I'm trying to keep it something fun that they want to do and not feel forced to do it though.

[Kodos]

Nice story, FrogMan! I hope to get my kids into running someday.

[FrogMan]

thanks guys, it was a fun day and a great experience to live it with my boys but I wouldn't say I am getting them to run "with" me.

The time at which I run during the week is the main culprit, as the kids don't really want to get up at 5 to run with dad but even at mor regular hours, it was the first time they both ran with me since late June. My youngest son was supposed to run a 2K in an event were I ran a 5K in early July but he had an incident at soccer camp where he ended up hitting his head on the bleachers and needing 3 stitches on his forehead the day of the race. Since that day, this September race remained kind of uncertain so we never really trained for it together.

Both boys are pretty busy with sports though, especially the youngest who swims competitively and trains four times a week for 90 minutes every time. Maybe someday, if/when we decide to let go of the dojo (this has been talked about with the wife), maybe then it could be nice to git in runs at other times of the day with either of the boys, or both of them.

For now, that day was just pure awesomeness for me. I really enjoyed it.

FM

[Alan T]

So Saturday is attempt #4 at trying to break 40 minutes in a 5 mile race. My Personal Best still sits at 41:19, but based on my recent Half-Marathon time, pace conversion tables all suggest that I should be capable of a sub-40 minute 5 mile.. So that is what I am shooting for...

It is a little early still to tell what the weather will be, but right now it looks like this weekend the temperature is creeping back up into the 80s once more which may slow me down some like my last 5 mile race.. Hopefully it will stay closer to the 60-70 range though.

I'm not sure the elevation map is the most ideal either for a PR attempt though...



I think I'm pretty much going to be trying for 8 min pace the first mile.. try to just survive the second mile up hill.. Recover 8 min pace for miles 3 & 4 (including the double hills in mile 4).. just going to try to will myself through those and then all downhill for the last 1/2 mile where I'll just give it everything I have...

[Alan T]

Well, I came close to my goal for a sub-40 minute 5 mile (8k) race. Official time was 40:39. I am pretty ok with that though. I felt that I ran a pretty good race. The weather was not too horrible. A little warmer than ideal, but was mostly tree covered and I don't think it affected me too much.

I finished 3rd in my age group and 13th overall. Funny thing is next year I change to the 40-49 age group in races and I noticed the guy who finished 2nd in that age group finished right in front of me (like 20 seconds).

As far as sticking to my strategy and how it worked out..:

first mile: 8 min pace goal. Actual: 7:27 (GAP: 7:26).
Second mile: Just try to survive the up hill. Actual: 9:01 (GAP: 7:43)
Third mile: Recover 8 min pace. Actual: 8:09 (GAP: 8:20)
Fourth mile: Keep 8 min pace even in double hills. Actual: 8:37 (GAP: 8:22)
Fifth mile: Give it everything I have. Actual: 7:28 (GAP: 8:09)

I started off about 10th on the line and in the first mile actually had about a dozen people pass me and I was somewhere around 20-25th at that point. I noticed at one place I was showing a 5:xx pace and then a 6:xx pace so really had to restrain myself there. In the uphill second mile though, I ended up passing quite a few of those runners on the second half of the hill. I feel these two were my strongest two miles in the race and the GAP (Grade Adjusted Pace concurs).

In the third mile we finally got to the only real flat stretch and I kind of just settled into a comfortable tempo, passed a few more people initially but then after about 2.5 miles no one passed me or vice versa the remainder of the race. If I could have done better somewhere, I think Mile 3 I took it a hair too easy. I could have gotten another 20 seconds out of that mile and come really close to 40 minutes I think.

Mile 4 was actually the toughest one for me. I wish I had remembered my Heart Rate monitor just so I could see afterwards what I was hitting here. I just tried to power up the double hills. I noticed that I gained on the two guys in front of me cutting perhaps a minute or two from their lead, but by the second hill I was breathing pretty hard. I think that I would have liked to have taken the fourth mile a bit faster in the first half though (Before the hills started). I kind of grouped that into my third mile failures in my head though.

The fifth mile was almost all down hill. I pretty much just ran as fast as I could. I know that my watch at one point near the end had me at a 5:55 pace. I had spotted the finish line and saw the time was right at 39 minutes so pretty much knew that I wasn't going to get there in time but just tried to see how fast I could go.

I guess as a summary, I really feel that I did well like I said above. I think I could have done the middle of the race better though and that leaves room for improvement.

Plus some day i will find a 5 mile race that is not super hilly and temperature in the 50s

Next up for me: Taper time. Ran less than 40 miles last week. This week 32 miles, and next week is the Hartford Marathon!

I still haven't decided how I want to handle the marathon. My half marathon PR time and current fitness levels suggest that I should be capable of handling a 3:55 marathon. So I am deciding between one of two strategies:

1) Just take it conservatively the entire time and go by feel at my long run pace and easily crush my Marathon PR, but likely not get close to 4 hours.
2) Go for a 9 min/mile pace which I -should- be able to handle and hopefully have enough left in the tank to break 4 hours at the end. I run a bigger risk of crashing after mile 20 and losing a ton of time however if I push too much.

Right now I'm feeling pretty good about my fitness levels though and I am leaning towards #2.. Go big or go home?

[Kodos]

Good luck! My niece will be doing the half, and I would too, if I wasn't going to be out of town. Every race but one that I have wanted to run in this year has ended up with a schedule conflict.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Kodos

Good luck! My niece will be doing the half, and I would too, I wasn't going to be out of town. Every race but one that I have wanted to run in this year has ended up with a schedule conflict.

Every time I come to town, you leave!

[Kodos]

It's nothing personal (as far as you know).

[Chief Rum]

I think I tweaked an ankle hiking the other day. I didn't really feel it until I did my cardio workout last night. That on top of a still healing slight Achilles pull has me concerned I can't push my speed up too much right now. I don't think I'll need to shut down for a bit, but today's workout will be a big test.

I would be disappointed to shut things down right now, since I wanted to run my friend's 5K for his charity this Saturday.

[digamma]

Does anyone know how to turn off the iOS 8 setting that posts strava updates to Facebook? I've looked in both apps but can't seem to locate the right spot.

[Subby]

Make sure the FB button is not selected. Once you select it, it stays selected for subsequent saves until unselected.

[AnalBumCover]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

I think I tweaked an ankle hiking the other day. I didn't really feel it until I did my cardio workout last night. That on top of a still healing slight Achilles pull has me concerned I can't push my speed up too much right now. I don't think I'll need to shut down for a bit, but today's workout will be a big test.

I would be disappointed to shut things down right now, since I wanted to run my friend's 5K for his charity this Saturday.

CR, are you running the Long Beach Half in a couple of weeks?

[digamma]

Found it, Subby. Thank you.

[lighthousekeeper]

anyone else having trouble viewing other people's activities in strava? for some reason i can now only see my own, and not of the other people in the fofc group.

[Subby]

Make sure your feed is set to Following and not Me.

[timmae]

Tower of terror 10 miler tomorrow night... Wish me luck (I will need it with projected 10pm run temps of 85 feeling like 98!).

[Alan T]

Good luck! At least at 10pm, you won't have to worry about the sun making it worse!

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by timmae

Tower of terror 10 miler tomorrow night... Wish me luck (I will need it with projected 10pm run temps of 85 feeling like 98!).

Best of luck. Make sure to pace yourself with heat like that ... we haven't had anything like that in Chicago for many months.

[timmae]

Just finished... 2:05 time. Fun race... More info to come next week.

[HerRealName]

Just surviving a race in those conditions is an accomplishment, Good job! Where was that race, surely not Chicago?

I'm late in posting but I was able to get my first 200 mile month in September. I needed all 30 days but finished with 201 and change.
Not only was this my first 200 mile month but also my first 170, 180, and 190 mile month. I have tired legs but I'm pushing forward...

Those are great pictures, FM, but be careful. My son is now getting into the low 19's in cross country after playing football in the past. It's sucks knowing he can beat me now

[Alan T]

Crossposted from my facebook:

Starting to look pretty sure to be wet on Saturday morning now. I've run in the rain plenty of times, but never run 26 miles in the rain before. On the bright side, at least it won't be hot for the marathon!


----------------------------

As for race planning, based on my half marathon time last month all of the various calculators suggest that I should be able to run the marathon some place between 3:55:00 and 4:02:xx

My plan is going to be I think to line up with the 4 hour pace group and go with them for a while. That should help keep me from making the same mistake as my last marathon where I ran the first 8 miles waaaaaaay too fast. I know that I can run the 9:09 pace for at least the first 16 miles and then after that I think I will just see how I am feeling. If I feel good, I might slightly speed it up a little but not too much until I hit around mile 20. The last 10k, I'll just go on feel and see how much time that I can claw back.

If I can handle the rain fine and everything goes as planned, I'm hoping to hit somewhere around 3:58-4:00.

I really don't see how I can not PR this time around, so I guess my goals will be:

A goal - 3:58
B goal - 4:00
C goal - PR (anything faster than my last time of 4:45)

[hoopsguy]

Good luck with marathon, Alan. Anyone on Strava (or Facebook) knows how hard you've been training for it.

Had an annoying set-back earlier this week. I had been running without my heart rate monitor for the last month while looking for a time to take it into Garmin and get it replaced. However, it appears the problem was not the under-warranty strap but instead the out-of-warranty watch. So no watch for the next 7-10 business days.

Decided to repair the watch for about $100 instead of spending $250-300 on a new watch. I've had this one for 18 months and really want to get through 2015 before swapping up. I suspect before the weekend is out I'll be regretting that decision ...

[Alan T]

What was the issue with the HRM that you were having again? Just out of curiosity

[HerRealName]

Good luck tomorrow Alan! You've put in the hard work so I'm sure you'll do great.

Edit.. how's the weather looking?

[Kodos]

My niece is in the Hartford Half. Hope the rain isn't bad. Good luck!

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Alan T

What was the issue with the HRM that you were having again? Just out of curiosity

Turns out issue wasn't with HRM, but the watch itself.

My first HRM progressively died over the span of about 14 months, gradually fading out over the last couple. The replacement worked great for about 1.5 months before dropping off entirely ... no longer registering ever, compared to previous experience of taking longer to register on some runs, sometimes lagging on reporting the numbers for awhile (showing 60 when values should have been 140 or so) and generally being increasingly temperamental.

So I took it into the Garmin store, expecting that the issue was with the strap ... covered by warranty. But it turns out the strap was fine, and it was the watch (not covered) that was unable to pick up the heart rate monitor.

I'm a couple runs into watch-free running and not enjoying it much. I really depend on having in-race data to help me shape effort/pacing. Running without a watch makes it much harder for me to gauge both distance and effort on my runs. I wasn't able to do the speed run that I wanted to do in order to gauge readiness for 7min/mile pace for an upcoming 5k. And knowing that I won't have this for another two weeks, I'm leaning towards changing a 5k run to an 8mi run because my efforts leading up to the race are relatively unfocused.

[Alan T]

Well the weather for the marathon yesterday was miserable. Pretty much 45F and non stop rain the entire time. I've run in the rain plenty so I don't think it messed me up any, but it made it a bit less pleasurable.

As for my running, I think that I did a real strong 16-17 miles somewhere around my 9:09 pace but started to fade a little between miles 17-21, but still was hanging in there around a 9:30 pace for those miles. At mile 21, I did the math and saw that I needed 9:10 miles for the last 5 to make my 4 hour goal and I think my brain just shut off at that point and I gave up on that goal. Once that happened, my last 5 miles had a good scattering of walk breaks in them that resulted in a 10:30, two 11:30, then two 12:30 miles. The bad part was the walk breaks actually didn't help any and probably hurt me as my legs started getting cold and it became a bit tougher.

The result though, I still set a new Personal Record for 30k by 8 minutes and set a new marathon PR by 30 minutes, so huge improvements over the last time.

My running base felt good, my training had my cardio at a good level I felt for my goal. I think for the next time, the thing I have to work on more is my mental toughness and mental fatigue. I think doing more Race pace work and more quality within my long runs will help with that as well. Many of my long runs and race pace runs last summer I wimped out during due to the hot weather or humidity all summer. That is clearly to me the point that I need the most work on.

For the rest of this year though, it is time to take it easy a bit, have a recovery period in my training, and probably have some fun races for a bit once I am ready to run fast again. Maybe do some fun local 5ks or such. One thing I did promise my wife is that I would go to the doctor though. I've kind of been running with a hernia since last May/June and she's not too happy with me for not wanting to deal with it til after the marathon. My guess is that will sideline me for about 6 weeks at some point soon too.

I'll likely be looking for a late spring Marathon to target because of that which will mean I won't start my next heavy training until end of December.