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Heart

Posted in training, tagged marathon, marathon training, motivation, running on July 12, 2010| 4 Comments »

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Last week, a little over 12 weeks out from my next marathon, I suddenly had a crisis of confidence.

It’s not like I fear the marathon like I used to. I know I am capable of finishing. Yes, there is always a part of me that wonders “can I finish this marathon today” but for the most part, I know that if the fate of the world depended on me running 26.2 miles in one shot, I could do it, and the planet would be saved.

No, the crisis wasn’t about completing a marathon.

It was about finishing, more specifically, finishing strong.

***

I am close.

Real close.

Just over 9 minutes close to calling myself a Boston qualifier (3:20:59). Yet many of the metrics used to project marathon times based on shorter races like the half-marathon and 10K indicate that I should be capable of running anywhere between a 3:07 and a 3:17. My best to date? A 3:30.

So what’s the problem?

I supposed I could reason that Boston is a tough race to qualify with. I could argue that maybe I would have BQ’d in Providence had I not just run a Boston 2 weeks earlier.

But those would just be excuses.

Is Boston really 12 minutes harder? Did running Boston really cost me 9 1/2 minutes in Providence? I have a hard time believing that.

***

Many in my life will attest that I have struggled through much of my adult life with the concept of finishing. I will start dozens of projects and finish a few. One of the “few” things that I have maintained an almost laser-like focus on has been running.

Running has brought a certain amount of order to my life that was definitely lacking before. With each race I have signed up for, I have been able to focus on a goal and follow it through. The success or failure in achieving that goal (a sub-40 10K – SUCCESS!, a 1:30 half-marathon and a 3:20 mary – not yet) has almost been secondary to following the task to the finish line.

When I briefly ran cross-country in high school, I did it begrudgingly. I ran because I really wasn’t any good at any other fall sport. Unfortunately, I was expected to do something in the fall to stay fit for the spring track season (I ran the 330 IM hurdles – I was too slow for the 100, 220 and 440). To say I didn’t like it is an understatement, plus, I really wasn’t any good. I dropped out of a few races, a few because of injury, others because my heart was just not in it.

***

My heart was just not in it.

***

That statement has been floating around my head for the last few days.

Is that my problem? Is it a heart issue? A twitter friend said to me recently that she thought that heart was represented through determination. I’m pretty sure that I have that. Another friend said to me when I first started this marathon quest, that the last 6.2 miles of a marathon are where you really discover just who you are and what you are made of. The last 6.2 of Manchester showed me that I could finish what I had started, even if it meant doing so on frozen quads. But as I look back at Boston and Providence through the lens of time, I wonder, what did those last 6.2 miles really tell me? Did my body fail me, albeit to a lesser degree, again? did I error strategically? or was it my heart?

I am going to tell myself it was the first two, and I now have 12 weeks to prove it. For my Boston/Providence double this Spring, I did not follow any particular training plan. I simply ran. I logged a tremendous amount of miles, but never followed any schedule, and quite honestly, never did much in the way of speed or threshold work. That changes for this fall.

Yes, I am again pulling a double (this time 5 weeks apart), but my approach is going to be different. I am running the Smuttynose Rockfest Marathon on October 3rd followed by New York City in November.

For the next 12 weeks I will be following a plan (the Pfitz 12/55) that works on endurance, speed and strategy. Something I have come to realize, just now, is that race day strategy doesn’t start when the gun goes off. It starts with the beginning of your training cycle. I tried to execute a smart strategy in Boston on race day, but the training I had done (essentially all long runs) didn’t lend itself to doing that.

The training isn’t going to be easy. There will be hard runs and easy runs over the next 12 weeks, but maybe that is what heart is all about.

To go back to my twitter friend, determination is where it all starts. It’s time to train hard, and more importantly, train smart.

I’ve got 12 weeks to make my body match my heart.

My heart is set on 3:20.

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I Feel the Need…

Posted in boston marathon, training, tagged intervals, Magic Mile, marathon training, Speed, Speed training, Yasso 800 on July 6, 2010| 10 Comments »

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…the Need for Speed.

The primary training tool in the marathoner’s tool box is mileage. The more miles you put in the bank, the more likely you will be able to successfully complete a marathon. Logging 60 miles a week (something I’ve never done) will force your body to adjust to the concept of 26.2 miles much more aggressively than running 20 miles a week. That’s not to say that you can’t complete a marathon on 20 miles per week training, it’s just makes the task a bit more painful.

That said, my goal really has never been to just complete a marathon. Don’t get me wrong. Completing a marathon is huge. HUGE! But from the very start, I wanted to eventually be able to call myself a Boston Qualifier. As much as I have improved over the past 8 months, dropping 24 minutes on my marathon time, I am still 9 minutes and 12 seconds short of accomplishing that goal.

As banged up as I was at the end of both Boston and Providence, my legs recovered quickly and I was upright and walking down stairs within a day. Fitness is not the issue.

Speed is.

I have a need and the need is speed. At both Boston, but especially at Providence, I had opportunities late in the game to pick up the pace and finish close to 3:20. As much as I tried, the speed just wasn’t there at the end. I never stopped running, but in both cases, the last three miles proved to be my undoing.

Enter Yasso & Galloway.

My hopes are that this fall, Bart Yasso and Jeff Galloway will take me to the promised land.

Both are running experts and both have “discovered” certain indicators that can tell you if you are ready and able to hit your desired marathon time.

I plan on using their methods as part of my speed training this summer to help me get to where I want to be.

You can find their indicators here & here, but in a nutshell they work as follows:

Yasso 800’s: Once a week you go to the track and run a series of 800 meter intervals. Starting with 4 intervals and adding one each week, you try to run each 800 in minutes and seconds in the time that you would like to run your marathon in hours and minutes. I would like to run a 3 hour 20 minute marathon or better, so I will run 800 meter intervals in 3 minutes and 20 seconds or less. In between each interval you walk the same amount of time. Eventually you build up to 10 intervals, and if you can do that, you should be ready to run your marathon.

Galloway’s Magic Mile: Once every 2 weeks or so, you run a mile about as hard as you can. Galloway says that at the end of the measured mile you shouldn’t be able to maintain that pace for more than another 100 yards, though he does emphasize no puking. Over the course of you training, you do 4 magic miles, eliminate the slowest, and average the remaining 3. From there he has a program that calculates what your magic mile average indicates. I need to average a 5:53 mile or better to run a 3:20 marathon.

The indicators alone won’t be enough speed work by themselves, so I plan on throwing in some shorter intervals along the way (some 400’s and 200’s). If you have any suggestions, please let me know. My goal this summer is to do Yasso 800’s once a week, running 3:20 splits or better and check my Magic Mile at least 3 times. Hopefully come October (I’m looking at the Smuttynose Marathon on October 3rd) both of those indicators will tell me that I am more than ready to break the 3:20 barrier in the marathon.

Stay tuned!