Visit to Minnesota

I am wrapping up my visit to the University of Minnesota for grad school next year and thought I would take the time to summarize my thoughts on the school and the running program.

The school itself is in a great location, with campuses split between Minneapolis and St. Paul in a scenic area of Minnesota. It has one of the largest student bodies in the nation with around 50,000 students. It certainly doesn't seem that big because the campus is quite spread out, with it being on both sides of the Mississippi River. The engineering department is good and the professors I talked to seemed enthusiastic and very involved in research and solving current problems. Obviously the winters can be rough, but that hasn't stopped this and other northern schools from producing great runners. Another great thing about the location is that there are a ton of good running routes right from campus. The River Path goes for many miles on both sides of the river and there are lakes, a golf course and other city parks to run around as well.

The programs seems excellent. Coach Plasencia ("Plaz") really knows what he's doing, as evidenced by his own personal athletic success and the success of the men he has trained over the past 15 years. Such standouts as Ben Blankenship, Hassan Mead and Chris Rombough have all shined under his tutelage and I believe that it would be very beneficial to my development as a runner to be coached by him for one or two years. An interesting bit of trivia: Coach Fischer (my current coach) coached Plaz when he was in high school and Fischer was just a young coach! Pretty amazing how small the world seems sometimes. I am not as starstruck from this visit as I was from visiting UO, but I can definitely see myself succeeding here.

Another thing I really liked about the school was how all the sports teams support each other. I went to a hockey game (Gophers won, 2-1) and a basketball game (Gophers won in OT against Big 10 rival Illinois), and both games drew tons of attendance and support. Guys on the team told me how everyone likes the AD and the football coach, even though the team isn't great, and the throws coach gave me a very warm welcome as well. Perhaps I'm just bitter about the situation at UD, but it always seems to me that the athletic department is not well liked and the games are never well attended despite their best efforts. I just think it's great to see a positive environment for all the teams here.

So I think it would be pretty cool to go here next year. I would be thrilled with running for a Big 10 school and competing with against some great runners. Honestly just having a team again would be great!

Icicle 10-Miler Recap

Today I ran a 10 mile road race, which forced me to change up my week a little bit. I ended up trading a little bit of mileage for quality and ran 2 workouts and this race. I went into this race about as fresh as I have been since I started this training cycle after the Rothman 8k, but I was by no means taking a full taper into this. Basically I wanted this to be a good indicator of my fitness. The course has some hills and the weather, a chilly 22 degrees and breezy, probably affected times a little bit as well.

Feeney, Me, Digennaro at the mile

As to the race itself, I didn't know how hard I would end up running this beforehand, since my goals were to win and maybe get the course record if I felt good (54:03). I started out with Mike Digennaro and Dan Feeney for the first few miles and took the lead for good just before 5 miles (26:25). The first half of the race is where most of the hills are so I ended up having a solid negative split and won in 52:32 for a new course record. Even though the downhills in the second half of the race made it fast, I could feel my legs taking a beating and knew I would be feeling the race later. Digennaro and I pushed the hills hard in the first 4.5 miles but I didn't run flat-out over the last few miles, since I was confident in the gap I had and the downhills were hard enough as it was. There was a really tough hill in the last mile but other than that the finish was nice and I cruised it in without trying to force out an extra few seconds.

After the race my legs feel very beat up. I knew I would feel pretty bad but the cooldown was hilariously slow (somewhere near 9 minute pace) and we all felt terrible. Just sitting around my legs are quite sore and I know I won't be able to run a quality workout for a few days. It's amazing how a tough course even a less-than-100% effort can take a long time to recover from. I remember after my half-marathon this fall it took over 10 days to fully bounce back from that effort, so hopefully this doesn't sideline me for that long as I would like to get back to quality training as soon as possible. There is something to be said for the fitness gained from this hard and long of an effort, and this is just the kind of work I'm looking for in January.

Feeney and I post-race

Tomorrow I fly out to San Diego to see some friends and the weather there will be a welcome respite from 25 and windy here in DE! Hopefully they take it easy on me out there and don't run me into the ground too hard or I'll have to come back early.

Oklahoma

The past few days I was in Oklahoma on a recruiting trip to OU for a potential 5th year of competition in grad school. Going into this I didn’t really know what to expect, since I had never gone on any of these trips, but I had a hunch that it would be pretty cool and a lot of fun. Now that I’m back, I can safely say that I am blown away the the OU cross country and track programs and would love to run for them next year. The team dynamic and the synergy between the entire team, including all of the coaches, is amazing and something I had never seen. Everyone just seemed to genuinely love each other, and the coaches, while able to maintain a professional demeanor when necessary, were included as family in the team brotherhood.

The whole trip was great but there were a couple events that really wooed me to this program. The first night, Coach Smith and his lovely wife Renee treated Kyle (my roommate/fellow recruit), Kevin Williams (guide for the trip) and Kevin’s roommate and team member Bill Kogel to a delicious dinner at a local steakhouse. After dinner we got our first insight into Coach Smith when he “held court” at the dinner table for an hour and a half. The man totally overwhelmed us and he really showed his love for running and the team. I came away from dinner thinking that this man belonged in the company of the great guru-coaches with men like Bowerman, Jumbo Elliot and Lydiard. His coaching record over the past 30+ years is incredible, as is his charisma and his infectious enthusiasm for the sport.

The next night for dinner, Coach Smith and Renee hosted the entire XC team plus the recruits (Kyle, myself and 3 freshman) for a great dinner where we bonded with the team. This was a great experience and I really noticed how well the team got along. This really sold me on coming here; by hanging out with the team and seeing their interactions, it was obvious that everyone got along with everyone else and really enjoyed their company, and the coaches were involved in the banter and company as well.

Overall this was an amazing trip. Tiring, busy and hectic but really a great experience. Before this visit I had never seen a team that got along so well. The nearly unlimited athletic budget, great meets to go to and environment for training and improvement didn’t really hurt either. Coach Smith was just great and made every effort to talk to us and let us know what we would be getting ourselves in to. He told us that to really be successful in the program, we would have to buy into it, and who am I to argue with his kind of success? He took the team from nothing to 5th in the country in XC in 6 years, and has coached 274 All-Americans! Not many coaches have that kind of track record. I would love to be a Sooner next year!

2011 In Retrospect

2011 was a good year for my running. I learned a lot, raced a lot and trained a lot. I ran PRs for every distance, didn't get any really debilitating injuries, was able to train consistently and generally take my running to a new level. Some numbers:

4541 miles (88 mpw)
24 races
11 PRs
35 days off running (due to injury, between-season breaks, sickness, etc)

Not too bad. The only upsetting things this year were my knee injury in the winter (caused by slipping on some black ice) and my Achilles "injury" in the summer (felt after track IC4A but never became debilitating). I also learned a lot about training and myself this year; I was in great shape in the spring but was never fully rested to run 100% up to what I think I could have run. I was trying to race well in the longer races while at the same time maintaining quality training, which is always a mistake, and it showed in my fatigue during the season. However, it was a good learning experience so I can't be too upset about it as long as I don't make the same mistakes this year.

Another positive is that ever since I started running higher mileage, especially in the past year, I have found a personal sweet spot in balancing mileage and quality that is near-optimum for me. I've mostly stopped running mileage for the sake of mileage and have gotten better at just training hard 2x a week plus a long run and seeing what kind of mileage comes out in the wash. I believe this is a much healthier mental state and a more relaxed way of training. Hopefully I can carry this mindset through to the racing season and can back off enough to take full advantage of all the work I'll put in this year.

The Nature of Fatigue

Today's runs made me think about the fickle nature of fatigue and how the body reacts to stress in the short- and long-term. When I say fatigue, I mean the "breaking down" feeling you get after overloading your body for a few days that can persist for weeks. I guess the more technical term is overtraining. Every runner who has hit mileage or workouts a little too hard knows the feeling. Everything over the course of the day, even simple daily tasks, are harder and take more mental strength to get through. All the runner wants to do is lay around and not have to concentrate or undertake any sort of physical or mental task. Just walking up a flight of stairs or writing a new blog post can be a daunting prospect. I tend to get this more from just running mileage with no workouts. When I run workouts I ideally run my easy days easy enough that I feel pretty good on workout days, so the only time I feel run down is the day after a hard workout. When I started back up in this cycle I wasted no time getting to high mileage, so I felt terrible for about 2 weeks and then all of a sudden I came out of it and started feeling better, mentally and physically. I don't think medical science has yet determined the physiological causes of this kind of long-term fatigue, so it is an interesting thing to ponder.

Also interesting is the way the body handles the exact same stresses at different times. For instance, today I had one of the better training days of my life. I ran 15 miles at a good pace in the morning, then tonight came back and ran 5 more at a pace faster than maybe every other secondary run I've ever done. This capped off a 115 mile week, the highest I've done since at least the summer, and my first week of workouts. Yesterday I ran very easily but accumulated a lot of miles, and today I fully expected to feel at least a little bit fatigued from the last 1-3 weeks of work. But I felt great! It truly is a mystery why I felt so good today, after an accumulation of quite a bit of work for me, and bad some other days with much less crap in my legs. I am sure the easy day yesterday made some difference but I felt so much better today than yesterday that I can't believe it's attributable to only one factor. I can only hope that this kind of feeling continues, but given how little I know about the nature of my body's fatigue I'm sure that I'll wake up one morning, after being in a routine, and feel completely different than I did the day before. I'll probably feel worse, but that's part of what training is for - the mentally callousing aspect of training and being able to get through the bad patches as well as revel in the good patches, like today.

First workout back

After about 2 weeks I'm finally feeling good back at normal mileage. The last 2 weeks have felt like a long time, since I was feeling pretty bad most of those days and was basically waiting to get over it. 2 days ago (Sunday) I ran my first long run in a while and we cut the pace down well over the last few miles. I felt great and even felt good the next day, which was a fairly hilly run. Today I ran my first real workout of the new cycle with my roommate/training partner, Dan Feeney (danfeeney.blogspot.com). We ran a good session of hills at the Newark Reservoir, up a paved 0.35 mile hill. I was a little worried about this because my left plantar fascia has been giving me some trouble, along with my right achilles since I sprained that ankle a few weeks ago. I ended up feeling pretty good and focused on good form, driving off the back foot and not slouching, trying to look more like Chapa instead of Salazar:

I expect to be decently sore tomorrow, since I worked muscles hard that I haven't touched for a while. Since my legs have been feeling good lately I hope to continue this, and maybe do another workout like a long tempo run on Friday. As far as mileage, I'm currently in the low 100s so with quality workouts I think I'll be fine. I don't want to start working out too hard yet; low intensity but high volume. I plan on training for the half marathon for probably the next month. Regarding plans for indoor, if I think I'm in good shape in February then I might attempt a fast 5k but I won't attempt to peak for anything until April. Other than that, low-key races and maybe use a 10-miler in January as a good workout with Feeney.

Back in to hard training

This week was my first week back into serious training. After Rothman, I took about a week off, which was convenient as I got to relax around Thanksgiving and the time off from school. Once I got back to school I jumped in with both feet and started running a lot again. I purposefully didn't slowly ease into running again, because I have never had problems with jumping back in and I would rather get the awful tired feeling of running a lot out of the way sooner rather than later. After about 3 days of consistently bigger miles I was pretty much flat on my back, but today (6 days after I started) I actually felt good on the run. Hopefully I am coming out of the "valley of fatigue" because I want to be able to do well on finals next week!

Once I get acclimated to regular out of season mileage again, hopefully in a week or two, I want to get to doing serious strength work. By that I mean long intervals and tempo runs, similar to what I did this past summer to prepare for Philly RnR Half. Those workouts really made me feel strong and I think they gave me a great foundation on which to do more 5k or 10k specific work later in the winter and spring. In past cycles I have just tried to run a lot of miles, sometimes at the expense of recovery and thus compromising some workouts. This time around I think I'll be able to get fitter by taking my easy days easier, letting me get more out of the hard days. One thing I'll prioritize this year is getting faster; if I want to run 14:10 for 5k I had better be comfortable running 68s for longer repeats. That will probably take a lot of practice to acclimate my body to that.