NYC Half + Fresh Air Fund = Doing Good

Posted on July 16, 2009 by threlkeld

Sure, the insanely popular* NYC Half Marathon is sold out, but you can still run in the footsteps of Catherine the Great and other fast ladies (and gentlemen) by signing up to run with the Fresh Air Fund. FAF is just one of a boatload of charities you can run for. Just think how good it will feel to run through the streets of NYC…in order to help a kid get a little break from the streets of NYC.

*And I do mean insanely popular. A race of over 10,000 run in the high heat and humidity of NYC in August? That fills up in a couple of hours? Along the West Side Highway? Yeah. Um. Insane.

Filed under: elites, racing | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Random observations from four days of faux-parenting

Posted on July 13, 2009 by threlkeld

I spent some time last week and today playing host to my nephew, who is 12 going on 13. Here are just some of the things I learned:

Kids like to know how long it will take to get somewhere. Setting low expectations doesn’t help.

A child can block out all other ear-splitting ambient noise and is able to hear the single Guitar Hero game they are playing in an arcade.

Children find it highly amusing when you scream.

Crazy, ranting bag ladies at bus stops bring out my protective instinct.

A 12-year-old who consumes a large Monster energy drink will spew a frenetic stream of consciousness ramble for a good half hour — just like someone who’s totally coked up.

Loud plaids over loud t-shirts is all the rage in teen fashion right now.

Children find televised track meets just as tedious and dull as the adult members of the general public do.

Kids need protein fairly often or they get woozy.

No matter what the time of day, cereal is the perfect snack.

The Coney Island Sideshow is the city’s best entertainment value. And it’s family friendly.

Preteens need sleep. A lot of it.

Preteens also think everyone else around them is aware of them and everything they are doing.

It’s fun to expand a kid’s vocabulary. Some new words covered: manifesto, satire, parkway, origin/meaning of the phrase beyond the pale, assume vs. presume.

Kids forget that not everyone has the same area code.

Filed under: everyday life | 3 Comments »

It’s official: I’m completely effed up

Posted on July 8, 2009 by threlkeld

I dutifully forwarded the last two weeks’ worth of SportTracks logs to Coach Kevin and got a reply shortly thereafter (I’m paraphrashing): “You are really messed up! Stop training right now.”

I’ve known my running was rapidly going from bad to worse, with the abysmal 8 mile race on Sunday being the cardiac Klieg light. But it was helpful to have a third party confirm this, with exclamation points.

It’s probably this iron/vitamin deficiency business, but there’s also a chance of some kind of weird overtraining effect at work. So I was told to run very easy this week, 3-5 mile sessions at most. Since I’m a woman of extremes (which is what got me into this mess in the first place), I’m going to up the ante by not running at all this week.

In the meantime, I’m huffing 27mg of Ferrochel, 1,000 mg of Vitamin C and 4,000 mg of Vitamin D on a daily basis. And rediscovering the pleasures of chicken livers, leafy greens and roasted pumpkin seeds. The cast iron cookware is getting a good workout too.

Now we wait and watch. I’m awaiting whatever modified training plan I’m to start on next week. Then we’ll set up some sort of pace vs. HR workout to do as a baseline for evaluating how I’m doing over the coming weeks.

This is so frustrating. I feel as though now, rather than spending the summer in preparatory mode for marathon training in the fall, I’m instead going to be just trying to get back to where I was in April, before things when all pear-shaped and running a 7:30 mile became a huge challenge.

The fact that something like this has happened probably shouldn’t surprise me so much. When I look back over my training, I realize that I’ve been working very hard and running at high mileage now — at least for a newcomer to competitive running — for two years, pretty much without a break. If I ever wondered what my limits were, at least in training, now I know.

It’s better than being injured, I suppose. But it still sucks.

Filed under: coaching, physiology | Tagged: , , , , | 14 Comments »

Summer Basebuilding: Week 1

Posted on July 5, 2009 by threlkeld

sum09-base-01Here we go again.

Now that the dark days of May (and somewhat drunken days of June) are behind me, it’s time to put nose to grindstone once again in preparation for the California International Marathon, taking place on December 7th. On that morning, at 7AM, I will run from Folsom to Sacramento. And I plan to run it a lot faster than an anemic 7:45 pace this time around.

Was my pace in Newport literally anemic? I’m beginning to think it may have been at least flirting with anemic the more I read about blood test results and after a couple of dismal performances in local races. In any case, I’m taking action to try to correct the problem via handfuls of iron and vitamins B, C and D.

I’m also working on dropping some fat during the coming weeks of basebuilding. I’ve found it impossible to lose any significant extra fat while actually in the throes of marathon training, but I’ve had luck doing so in the past during basebuilding. Throw in a pledge of complete sobriety until after Labor Day (since weekend drinking tends to derail the weight loss effort) and you’ve got either a recipe for success or misery.

I winged it last week since Coach Kevin was still off in the wilds of Colorado, basically taking an early week from our last go-round of basebuilding and modifying (okay, bastardizing) it. I also threw in a race yesterday, which didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped.

Highlights of the week: Lost of slow recovery running as I continued to try to become acclimated to the summer heat and humidity. On Wednesday I went to the track and attempted some faster running. It was quite hot and humid, though, so it was hard to run fast or particularly hard. I got my HR up to 92% but found that my lungs gave out before my heart did on those efforts.

Yesterday I did an 8 mile race, the Putnam County Classic, which I’d thought would be flat, as the majority of the course was running around a large lake. But it was actually quite hilly, with lots of sharp ups and downs and very little flat bits. The weather was very nearly ideal, at least for a race in July: 65-70F and dew point around 58 or so. Since I’ve been racing so badly lately I decided to just run the whole thing by effort and not even look at pace during the actual race, since I’ve found it so depressing to do so. It’s hard to keep running the remaining miles when you know how slow you’re going.

I ran at as high an effort as possible, which averaged 93% MRH, although I did finish up the last half mile at 95%. Still, I was slloooowww. I was not happy to see a time well over an hour upon reaching the finish line. All I could muster was an average 7:40 pace. Barely faster than I could run for 18 miles five weeks ago in Oregon. Sheesh, it’s so depressing to see how far I’ve fallen, and continue to fall.

I should note that I’ve become a chronic napper lately. I needed a 3 hour nap on Friday (thank goodness it was holiday for the company I contract for and I’d already put in my work hours for the day). Then another yesterday post-race (not quite as surprising). It’s probably a reaction to the increased mileage + heat/humidity running + two races in eight days. Still…uh…what the fuck is wrong with me?

Today I felt okay and the weather was fantastic: mid-60s and an unheard of July dew point of 48. I had to take advantage of it since it will be hotter than Hades soon enough. So I did a hair short of 16 miles up past White Plains at a halfway decent pace.

My experience over the past few weeks has shown me how performance issues can sneak up on you. Everything can seem fine during regular “bread and butter” runs like recovery and long, steady distance efforts. The problems only make themselves known — and in quite dramatic fashion — when trying to run fast, or at least they do for me.

I may do a few more races over the summer if the weather isn’t horrible, just to try to gauge if taking supplements is helping at all. There’s a nine miler later this month that I might try, as well as the Van Cortlandt Track Club’s summer series of 5K races on Thursday evening. And I’ll definitely do the 10 miler I do every September in South Nyack, the weekend after Labor Day. I really hope I’m in better shape by then. I ran that one in 1:14:20 last year (with 80 miles on my legs already going in). I’d love to break 1:09 this time around.

Don’t get me wrong — I know so many people right now who are struggling with injuries and who can barely run at all. I’m grateful that I can run. I just wish I could run fast again.

Filed under: basebuilding, coaching, drinking, eating, physiology, racing | Leave a comment »

Running the bloody numbers

Posted on July 2, 2009 by threlkeld

I don’t know why this should surprise me, but I’ve received feedback on the order of “so, when are you going to post your bloodwork results?!” I’d thought that was way too much detail to share, not that I mind sharing it.

It is interesting to compare numbers to other athletes, although as the saying goes, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Without knowing a lot about what the numbers really mean, well, it’s hard to know what the numbers really mean.

So without further adieu, here’s what’s going on in me that is not visible to the naked eye. I’m just sharing the highlights, not every single reading.

Note that test reference numbers are based on the subject’s age, gender, etc.. So you may have a completely different set of “normal” criteria if you go get these tests done for yourself.

Thing measured           Result           Reference
                                          (Lab's "normal" range)

Blood pressure           108/59           Damned good!
Pulse rate               45               Sweet!

CBC/Platelet
  WBC                    4.4              4.0-10.5
  RBC                    4.17             3.8-5.1
  Hemoglobin             13.3             11.5-15.0
  Hematocrit             39.8             34.0-44.0
  MCV                    95               80-98
  MCH                    31.9             27.0-34.0
  MCHC                   33.5             32.0-36.0
  Platelets              259              140-415

Iron and TIBC
  TIBC                   456 (high)       250-450
  UIBC                   353              150-375
  Iron, Serum            103              35-155
  Iron Saturation        23               15-55
  Ferritin, Serum        35               10-291

Vitamins (ordered on suspected deficiency)
  Vitamin D              36.4             32.0-100.00
  Vitamin B12            456              211-911

Lipid Panel (for shits and giggles, and gloating rights)
  Cholesterol, Total     143             100-199
  Triglycerides          54              0-149
  HDL Cholesterol        71              >39
  VLDL Cholesterol       11              5-40
  LDL Cholesterol Calc   61              0-99
  LDL/HDL Ratio          0.9             0.0-3.2


Discuss.


		

			Filed under: physiology | Tagged:  |			8 Comments »

Post Mortem: Newport Marathon

Posted on June 30, 2009 by threlkeld

An appropriately titled post, since roughly two thirds of the way into this race I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

It’s been exactly a month since my debacle in Oregon. In the intervening weeks I’ve had time to review my training log and diary, and discuss theories with Coach Kevin.

I’ve also had bloodwork to rule out anything there. And, although I suspect I could potentially feel better with higher iron-related numbers (and may start supplementing as an experiment), I don’t feel that the root cause is to be found there. No, I think it was simply a matter of too much for too long.

A couple of days after the race, I sat in my room in the Crater Lake Lodge (during a rare evening of relative sobriety) and penned (okay, typed) a document that I entitled “Training Theories.” Here it is verbatim, with some helpful links:

What went wrong?

Peaked too early?
I was running my best in mid-April. The workouts were going very well. I had that “magical run” on April 21 when I couldn’t hold back from running fast and had wished that were a race day. A few days later I flew around the track for those sub-6:20 mile repeats. I’m convinced that if I’d simply tapered for two weeks after around April 12 and run a marathon around April 26 I would have had a great run.

Couldn’t hold fitness?
I suspect that not only was it impossible to hold that peak for the following seven weeks, but I probably managed to degrade that fitness by foolishly pushing too hard through some exhausting runs. The ones that stand out are the two very hot runs in late April (20 miles in Central Park in 91 degree heat on April 26 and that awful track session two days later). Then I ran the NJ Half on May 3, which I thought would serve as a good training run (if a lousy race), but now I think it probably dug me in further in terms of creating a deficit in recovery.

“Up and down” schedule around tuneup half?
Then the next few weeks were so up and down due to the “interruption” of that race that I suspect the result may have been a staleness that settled in slowly. This was evident, although very subtle, in the remaining key workouts. I chalked up any issues with those to weather factors or just the regular ups and downs of not being quite recovered from day to day.

The run the day before the race should have been a red flag. I chose not to wear my HRM (although now I wish I had). But at one point I decided to run a fast quarter mile. I managed to get down to 7:00 pace but I was working very hard to do so. I decided it was just nerves and didn’t give it another thought.

Possible modifications
If left to my own devices, here’s what I would do differently next time around:

  • Shorten the total training+taper cycle by about seven weeks.
  • Shorten the taper, assuming the buildup has been invigorating rather than exhausting. Maybe two weeks rather than three?
  • Introduce Mpace miles much earlier in the cycle, with a gradual buildup. More on this below.
  • If I’m going to race during training, choose the races only so much as they support the specific marathon event (similar terrain, etc.), and allow adequate recovery from them. If that means fewer races (or none), so be it.
  • Include a little bit of fast running early in the taper. I do wonder if those solid two weeks of recovery running somehow contributed to the extreme slowdown on race day.
  • Do more Mpace running on the roads rather than the track.

As for Mpace running, I think I need to do more of it and a lot earlier. I never quite clicked with that pace in terms of matching pace to appropriate effort level. Although I can race a full at 88-89% MHR, I’d be a lot more comfortable getting to a point where I’m at more like 86-87%.

What we could try is having me do a few Mpace miles every week (or every other, if we started this during basebuilding), starting with just a few miles thrown into a longer run and working up to lengthy Mpace efforts toward the end. This method worked very well for me for my Spring 08 race, when I basically took one of Pete’s plans and modified it by adding in a few more of those faster miles every week. By the time I got to the 12 mile and 10 mile Mpace efforts during this cycle, I think I was already cooked. I’m not completely sure that I even needed those two workouts, and they may have further exhausted me.

So there you have — the best I can do with the data (and gut feelings) that I have.

I know I learned a lot from this experience, as has Kevin. When we were talking a few days after the race he said, “I have to remember that you’re a mortal.” By that he meant that between the 9 week basebuilding period (during which I got faster) and the following 22 weeks of training, it seemed like I had the capacity to absorb any amount of work and continue to flourish. That durability and work ethic, when coupled with a capacity for self-denial and dare I say irrational optimism, added up to  our both missing some subtle yet insistent signs.

Looking back, I think the cracks were beginning to show at the tail end of April in that I was really struggling to hit times in workouts (and the NJ half wasn’t even close). It was easy to attribute those problems to other forces, but I’ll be a lot more attentive going forward to, as well as more communicative about, the qualitative aspects of the work. Heart rate data is valuable. But seeing and acknowledging that you’re working way too hard, regardless of what the stupid watch says, is more important than any data.

Hot weather training presents its own challenges, of course, but the plan I’m getting will allow for it. The timing looks to work out to around a 14 week training schedule, including the taper (which we discussed shortening). I’m hopeful that between a shorter training cycle and having learned some important lessons, I can look forward to a happier experience in Sacramento come December. (knock wood)

Filed under: basebuilding, coaching, physiology, racing, recovery, training, travel | Tagged: , , , | 18 Comments »

NYC Marathon: How to get in if you didn’t get in

Posted on June 30, 2009 by threlkeld

On behalf of a friend of a friend, I’m shamelessly plugging a charity that’s offering guaranteed entry for this year’s NYC marathon in exchange for a fundraising commitment: Team Continuum. They engage in fundraising through a bunch of different events, including NYC. I notice that their page about NYC mentions a per-runner goal of $3,750, but the note I received stated the minimum for entry as $2,950.

If Team Continuum doesn’t float your boat, it’s one of several official “charity partners” for NYC you might hook up with, as well as Team for Kids and Fred’s Team (which fellow blogger Marci runs/fundraises for). And there are lots of others too.

Filed under: racing, resources | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Bloody good

Posted on June 29, 2009 by threlkeld

Just got the call from my doc. Good news: Bloodwork came back normal. Bad news: This confirms that the problem was somewhere in my training.

I get the full results by fax tomorrow morning. But, for the curious, the ferritin level was 35. My notes say a female endurance athlete should be, at minimum, somewhere in the 25-50 range. So that’s a good number, although perhaps not great. I’ll see what the other iron-related readings are (he did the whole shebang) and decide if I want to supplement anyway.

Meanwhile, Coach Kevin is putting the frosting and sprinkles on a nine week basebuilding schedule. I don’t know the details, but he’s said it will be different from the previous basebuilding schedule because I’m fitter this time around, plus he’s allowing for the horrible summer heat and humidity.

A nine week schedule sets me up to start training for CIM at the start of September. That yields a 14 week training cycle, including the taper. I think this will work better than Newport’s 22 weeks.

But more on that in a bit…

Filed under: basebuilding, coaching, physiology, training | Tagged: , | 10 Comments »

NYC Blogging Runners Meetup #2 is July 7

Posted on June 28, 2009 by threlkeld

Live in or around NYC? Run a lot? Blog and/or podcast about it? Then this event is for you. Learn more.

Filed under: drinking | Leave a comment »

Okay, that’s enough recovery

Posted on June 28, 2009 by threlkeld

I’m going to consider this week as my last week of post-marathon (as it were) recovery. Which means basebuilding begins anew tomorrow.

I know I’m recovered because I have been determined to run a race. Not because I expect to PR in anything (especially in the summer heat and humidity of NY), but mostly because I’ve missed running fast in a crowd. I tried to race in a brand new 10K up in Rockefeller State Park yesterday, but had to skip it after getting horribly lost. So I tried again today, with greater success, and ran the Achilles Track Club 5 miler in Central Park.

I’m not even going to bother putting together a race report, because this wasn’t really a “race” race. I just wanted an atmosphere in which I could run fast for more than a mile or two. I went in with no expectations and a liberating “I don’t give a shit about this race” attitude.

As a result, nothing bothered me. The lady at registration gets annoyed because I only have $25 (that’s what the NYRR web site said it cost) and they suddenly wanted $35? I don’t give a shit. I get stuck behind a bunch of 8:00 pace people for the first half mile? I don’t give a shit. Four women pass me in the last two miles? I don’t give a shit.

Yes, it was fun to race and not really care much about it. Although I did find one thing to motivate me: a woman with 12% body fat passed me in the first mile and said, “Nice job” and instead of appreciating her innocently offered good tidings, my inward competitive bitch muttered, “Lady, you’re dead meat.”

We spent the next 3.5 miles passing each other. She’d pass me on the uphills, I’d pass her on the downhills. At mile 4.5, a downhill, I passed her for the last time and kept up the effort all the way through the uphill finish. I did not hear “Nice job” again.

Final time was 37:17, good for 45th Female overall and 4th in my AG. I realized somewhere after mile 3 that I could have run harder. I guess it’s been over half a year since my last short race (a 10K), so I’ve forgotten how to run them. I knew I hadn’t raced all out because I still had plenty of energy afterward. So I came home and then went out and ran another 8 miles. Now I’m tired.

All in all, this was a good transitional week between the relative slothdom of the weeks immediately after the Newport race and next week, in which I hope to keep running some faster miles and get the mileage up around 70. I may even try to race again next week. I covered 58 miles this week, which is close to the 60 I wanted to hit.

I’ve not yet built the new spreadsheet for this season, so here’s the low-tech, unflashy breakdown:

  • Monday: 5 miles, recovery
  • Tuesday: 9.6 miles general aerobic with last 15 mins at harder effort (~91-93% MHR)
  • Wednesday: 7.1 miles, recovery
  • Thursday: 8.2 miles, recovery
  • Friday: 4.9 miles, recovery
  • Saturday: 10.1 miles, recovery
  • Sunday: 5 mile race, 7.8 miles general aerobic

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to get the results from last week’s bloodwork. I’ve held off on posting a post-Newport post-mortem until those come in. I have lots of theories about what could have been done better in the training (opinions that are shared by Coach Kevin), but if the bloodwork comes back with neon numbers pointing to an obvious problem at the cellular level then I’m apt to revise some (but not all) of those opinions. I still think there’s room for improvement in the next cycle, but the extent to which (and how) I think the training should be tweaked will rest in no small part on what the lab numbers say tomorrow.

Filed under: central park, racing, recovery | Tagged: , , , | 9 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »