Two weeks til Chicago

Well, it's finally taper time before the big race. I realized that this might be the part of the training cycle that I'm the most unsure about how to do, especially for a marathon. Formulating everything else throughout this cycle has been pretty simple, because the philosophy of all training is basically the same, regardless of what distance you're training for. Now, I need to consider the physical demands of the marathon and taper from a little farther out than I'm used to. This will probably bring some anxiety and insecurity, but I know that it's much easier to overtrain the last 2 weeks before any big race than undertrain.

One big update that I haven't said anything about here is how I raced at Philly. The answer, as I suspect for pretty much everyone not named Deena, is "frustratingly." The weather did not cooperate, and within a two week stretch that had great weather every day that Sunday just happened to be warm and foggy. 67 degree dewpoint was the official data at race time on the nearest weather station to the Art Museum that I could find online. As a result the race was pretty miserable and disappointing. After being immediately upset after finishing, I asked other guys how they felt in the race and no one was very pleased with it. I also did some perusing of the results of the guys around me and pretty much everyone ran well off their PRs. 

I estimated that I had a good shot at PRing and thought that low 1:05s was a distinct possibility, assuming an ideal day. I ran 1:07:16, which was 95 seconds slower than I ran last year. That was pretty consistent with other results that I found so I can pretty safely rationalize that result and chalk it up to the weather. Besides the disappointing time, I felt that it was a great workout for Chicago. 

Back to Chicago prep. My last hard workout went very well on Sunday (exactly 2 weeks before) so now it's all easier workouts from here on in. I am not sure exactly what I'll do for the next couple hard days but now it's all about keeping my body in tune and avoiding that sluggish feeling that a lot of people tend to get with tapering. I don't plan to drop mileage drastically or completely stop working out, but the workouts themselves will get easier. I will try to maintain the same frequency and schedule of running just to maintain some routine and not through my body off. Finally, the last few days will be very easy light jogging and the final variable to hope for is good weather the morning of the race. Chicago can be iffy, but it has had a pretty good track record the last few marathons so hopefully it all works out. 

My plan for the race: I think I'll try to start at 5:20-5:25s and see how that goes. Ideally I would like to have a group to run with so I can reserve mental energy for the last 10 miles or so, get in the draft and settle in to that pace without having to push at all. I expect the first 10 miles to go by pretty quickly, but somewhere between 10-15 I'll start to get a little tired. Between 15-20 I need to be mentally prepared for a bad patch or two, and somewhere in that stretch I'll need to start pushing hard. The last 10k, of course, is all about running as hard as possible. If I can run smartly and evenly through halfway in 1:10 I think that will set me up for a good 2nd half. This is all uncharted territory for me though, so all of this in most definitely conjecture. Looking back, I can confidently say that I have prepared to the best of my ability. I've put in the long efforts a bit slower than goal pace, I've put in good speedwork, and gotten in two runs of almost 3 hours. Mileage has been relatively low for me, and doubling regularly has been out of the question, but judging by the workouts I think that I have a good base of marathon-specific work behind me. Next Sunday I'll find out exactly how prepared I am. 

Getting into the racing season

After training seriously since June for Philly half and the Chicago marathon, it's almost that time. Philly is next weekend and Chicago is three weeks later. What that means for training is that all of the hard work is basically done and there just isn't much more fitness to be gained.

Philly will function as a serious, all-out race, as a final blow-it-out workout before Chicago and as a marker to see where I'm at. I am very curious to see what I am able to run at Philly, because it will be my third time there. Since I've done it before, and last year ran well, I can compare this year's performance against last year. Hopefully the weather is comparable so that I can eliminate as many variables as possible to really see where I'm at.

Speaking of comparing Philly to past races, I really can't make an accurate prediction of what kind of shape I'm in. On the one hand, my workouts have gone well, probably better than ever as far as half marathon and longer specific fitness is concerned. The workout I did two nights ago (5 x 2 mile @ 10:10 w/ 400 jog/2' rest) is something I have never been able to do, and even though I did it on a slightly faster course than the bike path (where I have always done that workout) I believe it is still better than what I have done in the past. For reference, last fall before Philly I ran 4 x 2 mile w/ 3' rest @ 10:10 and that was very difficult for me, even though I ended up running 5:00 miles for the half.

With all that positive talk out of the way, the one variable that I am a little worried about is overall mileage. Last fall I was putting in 105-110 a week consistently in training for Philly. Now that I'm working full time, I have time commitments from 7 am when I leave for work to 6 pm when I get home. I just don't have the time to train as much as I did when I was just bumming around. I am still able to get in 80-90 a week (athleticore tells me I've run 347 miles in the last month). This is where the analysis of how mileage affects fitness gets tricky in my opinion.

Benefits of higher mileage: Undeniably, there is some more fitness to be gained just from putting more easy mileage. Particularly running doubles often; two stimuli a day are great for keeping metabolism high, keeping your racing weight low, producing beneficial adaptations via hormones and other stuff. Another good side effect from higher mileage is that it gets you used to training and working out (and racing, if you choose to train through) on tired legs, which allows for a more dramatic gain in racing ability during a taper.

Costs of higher mileage: One thing about training that a lot of people gloss over is that mileage is important, but only as a support system for the race specific workouts. What that means practically speaking is that people should run as much mileage as they can handle without it affecting the real training that is directly related to the goal race. To be even more blunt: too many miles is when you are too tired to hit the paces in workouts that you need to run to race well. I definitely fell victim to this in college and I believe I would have run better had I not gone overboard with mileage my junior and senior years. Too many miles = too tired in workouts = not getting the designed benefit from the workouts, especially when you're trying to hit paces. Hard-core lydiard disciples disagree with this, saying that effort is the only thing that matters when you're working out and that the taper will allow you to race well if you've put in the big base beforehand. I believe that a good amount of race specific training is necessary to do well (well is defined as meeting your ultimate potential, not just running fast), and if you're tired from easy mileage you just can't work out well enough to get enough specific work in.

I think last fall I found my sweet spot in training was just over 100 mpw to be able to work out well and still accumulate mileage. However, that was in training for the half and I recall the longest workout I did was 11 miles as a tempo run. Now that I'm doing more marathon-specific work, the workouts can be even longer and more intense, so they require more recovery before and after (geeks would call this "modulation"). In this regard I think doing less mileage helps, because it allows me to hit the workouts very hard and try to get big adaptations. But like I said, there is going to be some fitness lost from not putting in those extra mileage. The elusive sweet spot in training, that is different for everyone, is where you personally are able to work out hard while maintaining as much easy mileage as you can fit in without sacrificing the serious work.

So basically, I don't really know where my fitness is because a few variables have changed since last year when I raced a half. I'll find out in black and white where I stand in two weekends.