Fall 2017 look ahead

This entry will be a boring, deep dive into my training and what I believe were my mistakes over the past year or so that led to poor performances in the spring and fall of 2017. It will also be an exploration of what I can do to improve in the future.

Looking at this calendar year, I've 4 big name races at 10-13.1 miles. All of them have been disappointing and below expectations considering the amount of training behind them. However, when I look at my career and my best races over these distances, I see a clear pattern.

2011: I spent all of the previous winter and spring focusing on track. I ran 1:07 in September 2011.
2013: I spent all of the previous winter and spring focusing on track. I ran 1:05 in September 2013.
2014: I spent all of the previous winter and spring focusing on Broad Street. I ran 1:07 in September 2014 and a 2:22 marathon.
2015: I spent all of the previous spring focusing on track. I ran 1:05 in October 2015. and 1:04 in January 2016.
2017: I did not spend any time training for shorter races, and ran a best of 1:07 in the spring of 2017 and 1:09 in the fall.

Like I said, clear pattern. Each time I've spent a good chunk of time, typically 4 months or so, really focusing on a shorter distance and the next season focusing on a longer distance, I've raced well over the latter. It seems that I'm able to carry my speed over to the next season quite well and build on it with the endurance for the longer race, but just training for endurance does nothing to build speed for me.

2011: I spent all of the winter and spring training very hard. It was the second training cycle I really committed myself to serious, twice a day every day, 100+ mpw training. I went from running 14:46 in 2010 to running under 14:30 three times, with a best of 14:22, in the spring of 2011 and getting second place to Eric Jenkins at my conference meet. Because our team got cut in January 2011, I was open to trying out anything in the 2011-2012 school year. I ran Philly Half in September 2011 and ran 1:07:32 after really only starting to train seriously with specific workouts about 6 weeks before.

2013: Since I was at OU during the 2012-2013 school year, I was being focused on the 1500-5k starting in December 2012 and going through early May 2013. This paid off with a lifetime PR of 4:06 for the mile indoors. I trained hard for Philly that summer, ran two road 5ks just before in 14:25 and 14:19 and then ran 1:05:40 for the half. This tells me I need to be able to hit those 5k marks to indicate a good half marathon.

2014: I had a thyroid virus in the winter of 2013, so I had to take a month or so off and resumed training very early 2014. I focused on running Broad Street and pulled myself together well enough to run just under 50 minutes. I was then able to carry that speed into the Chicago marathon and ran 2:22, running 1:07 in a warm and humid half marathon three weeks ahead of that.

2015: I focused hard on running the 1500-5k for the winter and spring. That paid off with a 3:50 1500 (2nd lifetime), 14:05 5k (lifetime PR) and 30:14 10k (lifetime PR). I then specifically trained with the intent of an OTQ at Philly on Halloween. I ran 1:05:59 there, missing my goal by a minute, but kept at it and ran 1:04:27 just after New Years 2016.

Looking back at these cycles, what I gather is that I need to focus hard on running well over shorter distances and work on maintaining that speed while gaining endurance for the longer races. Examples of workouts to follow later. 

Summer/Fall 2017

Big update here, more a life update than a running update. That's because I took the summer easy, got married August 4th, honeymooned with basically no running until August 18 and started back into real training after that.

After Pittsburgh in May, I was done for the spring both based on the schedule I had set out and because I was so disappointed in how poorly I had raced all spring, especially because there was a clear downward trend after the first big race in NYC. Since I was also getting married and going on a nearly two week long honeymoon in August, it made zero sense to try and train hard through a hot, humid summer only to take 2 weeks off. I trained very easily, running once a day for about 70 miles a week with no workouts. We had a pretty rough summer, so even that was plenty hard some days. With no running over the honeymoon I jumped back into running normally and started training with no real goal. In late September I decided to get serious and shoot for Philly Half in November. I got to work with much the same program as I had in the spring, even though that didn't go well. Obviously in hindsight this was in error - the old definition of insanity saying, right?

I ran about 100-110 mpw as much as I could, with my standard tempo and longer interval workouts. Even put in some real long runs of 17-19 miles with harder finishes. Unfortunately this never really addressed my main weakness, but the silver lining is that it gives me great base on which to build for the spring.

On the schedule still I've got the DEXC open this coming weekend, a low-key actual XC 5k. Later in December I've got a 5 miler in Baltimore (Celtic Solstice) which should also be pretty low-key.

Next entry will be a separate training analysis doing a deep dive in what I believe I need to alter for success in the coming seasons.

Spring 2017 recap

Well I suppose it’s about time I wrote up a spring 2017 recap. I have been putting this off for a month and the excuse I’ve been telling myself is that I need some time to get away from it and get some perspective, but in truth it’s because I just don’t like recalling experiences like this. The essence of why this is going to be hard to write is not only because the season went poorly, but because I can’t really understand why it went poorly. That means that it will be hard to correct for the next time around. I’ll pick up on where I left off after NYC half.

Cherry Blossom 10 miler – 4/2/2017

Looking at the NYC half, I saw a couple highlights. I thought I had competed well and raced my nuts off, which was very good considering I had not raced in a long time and was a little worried I would have forgotten how to execute correctly. My only complaint was that I just didn’t run as fast as I wanted. I figured that maybe I just wasn’t quite as fit as my workouts had indicated and that with this race under my belt as a rust-buster and really hard effort it would open the door to running better at future races. With that in mind, I went to DC with the hope, as always, of running as close to 50 flat as possible. It ended up being a perfect weather day with no excuses but I managed to only run about the same pace that I ran at NYC. 5:08 pace for 10 miles frankly should have been a hard workout, not an all-out race, but unfortunately it was the best I could do and I was pretty disappointed.

Pittsburgh half marathon – 5/7/17

I had a couple low key races in the month between Cherry Blossom and Pittsburgh in which I was able to win a little bit of cash. These races were encouraging as I ran about the same times that I ran at the same races in years past, when I was in pretty good shape. For instance, I ran the pikes peek 10k in about 5 seconds slower than last year, when I ran a PR at Broad Street the next week. Again, with higher expectations I went to Pittsburgh with the hope of competing well and in the running for a little bit of money. The race did not go well at all and I had a pretty miserable time in the race. From the gun I was alone, passing 1 guy and getting passed by 1 guy over the entire course. The course was fair, a little more difficult than the very fast courses I’ve run on in the past, but definitely not unreasonable. I ran a shit time, something over 1:09 I think, I can’t even be bothered to look it up. The fitness just wasn’t there and had never been there for the entire cycle but I tried to push through it and keep working towards a performance I could be proud of. Unfortunately that never came.

Why did this season turn out badly?

This is the part of this write up I was dreading the most. I just don’t have a great answer here and exploring the reasons for my shortcomings is never fun. I’ll start with a zoomed out view of the season starting from where I was before. Last summer and fall I had big plans to go to Chicago and run fast. I got sick a few times in the summer and fall, probably due to overtraining and having a weird physical response to forcing myself too hard in high heat, and bailed on that race plan because I didn’t feel as though I was getting in good or consistent training when it mattered. I took about a month completely off, something that I had never done, and built up very slowly with an eye towards a spring season. I knew it would be far enough away to rebuild my fitness so I took it slow because I was afraid of having those fevers flare up again.  I made a logical, progressive plan towards building fitness for races between 50-70 minutes in length. I was getting in good mileage with 2-3 workouts per week. I was doing a dedicated hill workout for probably 2 months, getting in good work without timing anything just to get solid conditioning in. After a couple months, I ran some low key distance races (club challenge, Tim Kennard) in late winter/early spring. Coupled with the interval workouts, tempos and mileage, I was pretty confident. But somehow it just never came together.

Why didn’t this season come together despite months of solid work? Well, I really don’t know for sure. I think a big part was that I broke the chain of compounding cycles with the time off and bad training last fall. I also think I’ve lost a lot of the under distance fitness I had when I ran well in late 2015 off of easier training than this year. Back then I was coming off a great track season and I think I carried that speed into the longer road races. This spring I had zero background of that nature under my belt so I just had no speed endurance or comfort at that level of racing, even with all of the pace work I had done in training. Thinking about training at this point is really just speculation; I still cannot find a true weakpoint that I didn’t try to address. That’s what made the season, and even looking back on it now, so frustrating. This is a first for me – I’ve never had such a helpless feeling in which I just can’t diagnose what went wrong and why my racing didn’t meet my expectations. Sure, I’ve had bad races before or races that weren’t home runs, but in hindsight it was always pretty clear why they turned out that way or why my expectations were unrealistic. This time I can’t figure it out and it’s maddening.

This summer is going to be an extended layoff. I hate training hard during the East Coast summer with 70+ degree dewpoints and with a 2 week honeymoon in August I won’t try to force training through that. Once that’s done and the weather breaks a little I’ll think about race scheduling but until then I’ll take it easy and more laid back. Still might train a little but with no serious aspirations.

NYC Half

This past weekend was the first of three big races for me planned this spring, the NYC half marathon. The other two are Cherry Blossom 10 miler (2 weeks) and Pittsburgh Half (6 weeks). This was my first road race in NYC, and while I’ve spectated a couple of Emily’s races in the last year, this was a new experience for me. Also a new experience was getting into the elite field of a big NYRR road race. I cannot say enough about their operation there; Dave Monti, Sam Grotewold and their crew really run a tight ship and at the risk of too many metaphors it ran like a Swiss watch as far as I could tell. This will be a recap of most of our experience over the weekend as well as a detailed race report.

Race Report

The weather race morning was cold and a noticeable north wind. This would likely help the times out, since the back half of the course runs straight down the west side highway and would be helped by the tailwind. I put myself near the back of the elite field at the start. Broadly speaking, the course was a 10k counter clockwise loop (or almost loop) around the main ring road of central park, down 7^th avenue through Times Square, west out to the West Side Highway, and south down the highway, through the Battery Park tunnel, up to the finish. The miles in Central Park were mostly rolling hills and I linked up with a decently sized group for much of this. Myself and a local Ethiopian ran side by side through miles 3-6 when we were joined by a couple more guys, including Chris Bendtsen who I remembered from racing against Princeton. Once we got out of the park and into the city streets, we packed up and worked together to combat the headwind on the stretch getting to the WSH. Once we got to the highway and turned south, it became a real race with the tailwind and everybody just ran to their fitness level. I got dropped by the group around mile 9. A few minutes later the Ethiopian pulled up with what looked like a side stitch and I went by him. That would be the last guy I would pass. For the rest of the race it was just about running right on the ragged edge. Coming out of the tunnel was the 400m to go sign and two turns later there was the finish.

Positives: I was very nervous going into this race that I wouldn’t have “the right stuff” anymore when it came to digging deep and getting 100% out of my body during the race when it counted. It had been so long since I last ran truly flat-out on a good day (Broad Street of last year) that I was worried I might have forgotten what it was like. I also believe I managed my effort pretty much perfectly throughout the race and was always in a good spot. The first 10k in the park was hard but controlled, working the hills and trying to relax and maintain focus on the downhills. Once we got onto the WSH with the exposed tailwind and hit mile 9 the hammer was down for everyone and we just ran as hard as we could. This good effort management is reflected in my splits:

1^st 5k: 5:14 pace (slowest segment, with rolling hills into the wind)

2^nd 5k: 5:13 pace (still rolling hills, but mostly with the tailwind)

3^rd 5k: 5:04 pace (fastest segment of the race; net downhill from the park to the WSH)

4^th 5k: 5:06 pace (straight down the WSH running on the redline)

Last 1.1K: 5:05 pace (whatever was left)

I was also happy with my taper for this race. I felt very good in the 3 days before, and part of that was probably due to nerves and general jumpiness but also due to a slightly longer and more gradual taper. I trust in the background of work over the last 3-4 months that I won’t “lose fitness” by taking training a little easier for the 7-10 days before a really big race. This kind of insecurity is something I’ve always struggled with and is one of the main reasons I think top athletes need coaches.

Negatives: Put simply, I’m not in the kind of shape I hoped I was in. In hindsight this should have been pretty clear; despite running good mileage and having a good workout progression since December, the background of shorter speed (two springs ago, I was coming off of 3:50 1500m/14:05 5000m fitness) and overall uninterrupted quality and quantity hasn’t been there in the long term. More importantly in the only real test race I had at Club Challenge I ran slower in a losing effort this year. I had hoped that I would come around in a big-time race and that on the day with a good taper I might have something special, but like pretty much my entire career it’s very predictable to a trained eye looking at the training. Looking at the splits and remembering how the race felt, I don’t think there is any single aspect of fitness that I’m lacking relative to anything else. I just need to keep working on overall specific fitness, both underdistance and overdistance work to keep getting in better 50-65 minute racing shape. Hopefully this race will be a big stimulus for the next few weeks and I can have a solid outing at Cherry Blossom and Pittsburgh, but for now the focus is on recovery and getting back into training smartly and with an eye towards Cherry Blossom, less than 2 weeks away.

For the immediate future, I’ll probably get in a workout this week, maybe Thursday, which will be by feel and definitely without pushing too hard. Something longer on Sunday, but again not anything super strenuous, then the usual taper routine and midweek workout on Wednesday.

Overall Trip Experience…Report

Emily and I left Baltimore on the train around 5 pm Friday afternoon. We arrived at Penn station and, thanks to the race’s elite director Dave Monti, got to the hotel easily on a short subway ride. We dropped off our bags and got a quick dinner spot from the front desk. Dinner was a Ramen place, a typical tiny NYC basement eatery where we sat at the bar and watched two young Asian guys crank out bowls of meat-and-noodle based soups.

The next day we got up, had breakfast in the hospitality suite (penthouse of the hotel with great views) and went for our runs in Central Park. This hotel had a great location just three short blocks away from the park, so even with the snow still on the sidewalks it was an easy jog over. Apparently it was a popular time for the elites to get in their pre-race runs because I saw guys like Callum Hawkins, Chris Derrick, Amy Cragg and others I didn’t recognize out there.

After an easy run and strides we hung out in the hotel and watched some March Madness until lunch. Emily and I both went up and while I checked in and got my finances straightened out she had lunch and headed out to meet her sister and brother in law at the movies. I went to the bank, came back and went to the USADA meeting followed by the race technical meeting. We all had to sit through lots of lecturing and talking about the race details.  After I got out of there, I met Emily, her sister and husband for dinner at a place near Central Park. Pretty good spot, could have been a really expensive dinner but we stuck to burgers. By the time we got out of there it was getting late and we just headed back to the hotel and tried to get to sleep early.

I never sleep well before races and I was especially nervous for this one, so I tossed and turned all night and finally woke up 1 minute before my 5 am alarm. I headed up to the suite to get some breakfast and got my stuff together for the 6 am bus departure. Short bus ride but long walk through security to get to the elite staging area. Hung around for not too long before we had to go warm up; even though our race started at 7:30 we were to be at the line (with our warmups on, thank God) just after 7. I warmed up with Jared Ward and Noah Droddy and had a funny exchange in which Noah told us he wasn’t even getting free shoes so he had to wear old, beat-up flats. Jared told him he should at least be getting free gear…this proved especially prescient after the race was over.

I wrote a detailed race report above, so I’ll skip that here. After the race, Emily found me immediately and we made our way to the India House, a restaurant near the finish that served as the VIP area. I got some coffee and food here and went for a short, pretty painful cooldown with a few other guys from the elite field. We got on the first bus back to the hotel, which took seemingly forever due to the combination of race fatigue and Manhattan traffic. I had a rough period of feeling really sore and drained once we got back to the hotel but after Emily we walked to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for church at noon, which was a pretty amazing building inside and out. We got back to the hotel, packed up all our stuff and eventually left from the lobby as a big group to the post-race lunch.

This lunch was one of the most surreal and fun race-related social events I have ever been to. Surreal in that Emily and I got to rub elbows with some of the elite athletes in our sport and talk to them as regular people, and fun because the food and wine was never ending and was all comped. Sitting at a table with Olympians and record holders from around the world was fun and cool, I’ll leave it at that.

After lunch Emily and I headed for Penn Station, just a few blocks away, and went home our separate ways. She was going to her parent’s house and I was headed back to Baltimore so I had a 2.5 hour train ride to sink back into fatigue and enjoy some quiet before being back in the real world. 

Pre-Spring 2017 season

After wrapping up what I consider to be a distinct training block this past weekend, I wanted to consolidate my thoughts on the past three months as well as the upcoming spring season. 

The last 12 weeks of training have been at least as good, if not better than, any 12 weeks of base training have ever been in my career. I averaged over 100 mpw, with workouts gradually building up from short and easy in the beginning to race-specific by the end. Most importantly, I still feel mostly on top of the training, instead of buried under it. I consider this to be a wrap to the base phase because of the impending 10 mile race at Club Challenge this weekend, which in my mind kicks off my spring season. The races I have on my calendar currently are: 

2/26: Club Challenge (10 mile)

3/5: Tim Kennard (10 mile)

3/19: NYC half

4/2: Cherry Blossom

4/23: Pikes Peek 10k

4/29: Race against Racism (5k)

5/6: Pittsburgh Half

Races in bold are peak races. 

In my mind, the key difference between this base phase and last summer is that I did all workouts and runs by effort rather than putting a watch to anything. Last summer, I feel I overtrained because I was pushing too hard every workout to hit some arbitrary goal I made up for myself. This cycle, until about 2 weeks ago, I never wore a watch or took splits in a workout. I did everything on a course that I knew the distance beforehand, such as a track or the PP loops, which made it easy. In the last 2 weeks I have started timing workouts as the races get closer and I want to be more specific in the training. 

Another aspect I added back in during the last 4-5 weeks is dedicated hill workouts. I have never really been a big fan of serious hill workouts having a long-term place in a training cycle, because I have always considered other workouts more valuable. However because this was a base phase fairly far away from the big races, I decided to add them in for variety. It's hard to put my finger on any clear changes or improvements that I might have derived from these workouts, but I feel stronger and like my stride has had small changes made that make me more powerful and efficient at speed. Again, sounds kooky and hard to nail down, and maybe it's all in my head, but the placebo effect is still an effect. 

With such a good base under my belt, I am cautiously optimistic for the 10 miler this weekend. I say cautiously because I always try to keep my expectations in check before a race, because I know it will still be a hard effort on that course, but I haven't raced in a long long time so it'll be nice at least to get a reliable fitness check. To that end I am taking the week before easy and dropping mileage a bit to not go into the race tired. Should be a good effort and a very good workout as well for the big races yet to come.