Race Strategy: Mississippi Blues Half Marathon

On Saturday I'll be heading to Jackson, Mississippi, for my first (and probably my last) attempt to qualify for guaranteed entry into the New York Marathon. After January 31, the qualifying time for my age group decreases from 1:30 for a half-marathon (or 3:10 for a full) to 1:25 and 2:58 -- in other words, not bloody likely.

Even to get a 1:30 I'm going to need to run a nearly perfect race. To hit that time I'll need to average 6:52 per mile; the best I've done yet was at the Bridges Half Marathon in October, when I averaged a 7:00 pace, for a 1:31:37

Tiny details can make the difference when you're scrambling for seconds. For example, during that race my Garmin actually showed me running a 6:52 pace for the entire race. Unfortunately it also measured the course as 13.34 miles instead of 13.1. So I'll be employing the method I used at Richmond to adjust my Garmin to match the actual mileposts in the race. I sum up that method here -- basically I'll be using manual lap times instead of the Garmin's auto-lap feature.

Another key to the race is the way I'm handling the taper for this event. Following Fellrnr Jonathan Savage's model, I'm doing a three-stage taper for the race, though I'm modifying the plan a bit from what Fellrnr suggests, partly because he is usually training for ultrarunning events, while this is a half-marathon. Fellrnr's golden rule of tapering is to never run at less than race-pace during the taper. While I agree that long, slow runs won't help during a taper, running at a 6:52 pace takes a lot out of me, even for just a few miles. So I've done a couple race-pace runs, and interspersed some race-pace miles into easier runs, but I've also run a couple of easy recovery days, just to stay loose.

What I ended up doing was a 70-mile "overload" week last week, including a couple of very intense 15+ mile workouts. Then I quickly tapered by reducing distance and trying to keep some of the runs at race pace. Next up is my "rebound" day, a relatively hard race-pace run the day before the race. Savage did a 5-mile race-pace run before the Thunder Road marathon. I think I'll just do three, which is three more hard miles than I've ever done the day before a race!

During the race itself, there's not much more to do than try to keep a consistent pace. The course itself is relatively flat -- flatter even than the flattest runs I ever do in Davidson during training. Here's the elevation profile:

I basically count two or three "major" climbs of around 50 vertical feet during the entire race, with a couple other small bumps. Even the Bridges Half Marathon had more hills than that. MapMyRun's elevation charts often seem to me to understate the true nature of the course, but even if it has double the climbing compared to what we see here, that's still a lot flatter than what I run on every day. I don't think there's much point of trying to slow down on these hills -- It's better to just try to maintain a consistent pace for the whole race.

The other variable is the weather, which looks okay but not perfect. The temperature at race time is now slated to be in the mid-50s, with a 50 percent chance of rain. I'd prefer around 40 degrees and overcast, but as long as it's not too windy and I'm not running in a downpour, I think I'll be fine.

Nothing left to do but just run the race. Wish me luck!

One last post for 2011

I know, I know, I already wrote my year-in-review post but I wanted to write one more post about my final run of the year.

Today I had two goals:

1. Run a solid 15.5 mile run at mostly "marathon pace," which is a sort of bizarre concept right now because I'm focusing on half-marathons. According to the Daniels running program, based on my recent performances, I should be able to complete a marathon at around a 7-minute-per-mile pace. I don't think I'm actually in shape to do that, so I've adjusted "marathon pace" to about a 7:20 pace. This is actually what the McMillan Running Calculator projects based on my recent 5K time, so that's a reasonable enough guess (in any event, I'd be thrilled to run a 3:09 marathon, which is what you get when you run a 7:20 pace!).

2. Run in flats to decide whether to try running in flats during my half-marathon next week.

Goal #1 was a success. The actual workout involved 40, 20, and 10-minute segments at marathon pace, with faster 5-minute tempo segments inbetween. Given that I hadn't done so well at tempo pace earlier this week, I was a little concerned. But I ended up doing quite well.

MP segment 1 was 40 minutes, about 5.5 miles. I was running the DART loop and decided to stop at my house after ever loop to hydrate and fuel up, so there were two breaks, including one during this segment, but I don't think that affected my performance much. Here are my splits: 7:18, 7:16, 7:20, 7:12, 7:13, and a 7:22 pace for the final .5 miles.

Tempo 1 was okay, a 6:36 pace.

MP segment 2 was 20 minutes, 2.75 miles, including quite a bit of uphill running. Here are the splits: 7:20, 7:26, 7:24, including over 260 feet of climbing.

Then I went straight into Tempo 2, which was again okay, a 6:35 pace.

MP segment 3 got broken up by a water / fuel break, so I picked up the pace a bit: 6:59, and 6:41 for the final .46 miles before cooldown.

Overall my pace for the active portion of the workout was 7:10 per mile, for 11.2 miles. I'll need to go a little faster than that to reach my goal of a 6:52 pace, but I think it's in the realm of possibility, especially since Mississippi is a much flatter course than what I ran today.

Goal #2 was a success as well. I was definitely starting to feel a little pain in my feet near the end of the run, but nothing that wouldn't be manageable in a race. I think the lightweight shoes are well-worth the slight discomfort.

Details of today's workout are below

2011: The year that was

It's been a good year, 2011. At the start of this year, the longest I'd ever run in a race was 13.1 miles. The farthest I had ever run was 15.1 miles, and that was just a couple months before, in November of 2010. This year, I've had at least 40 runs longer than 13 miles, including three marathons, three half-marathons, and dozens of training runs.

Oh, and there was that little race last month, which qualified me to run in another little race 16 months from now.

Let's take a look back, shall we?

January
During this month I steadily build mileage, culminating in the 19-mile Fellowship of the Idiots run. Total mileage for the month: 232

February
I continue to build mileage, but also start working on speed. To test myself, I run the UNCC Homecoming 5K and PR with a 21:32. Total mileage: 235, despite the short month.

March
Despite going on a ski vacation in the middle of the month, I manage to keep the mileage up, completing my longest run to date, a 22-miler. I also run a 10K where I PR and get my first-ever age-group award, and a disappointing half marathon that at least turned out to be a good story. Total mileage: 236

April
Things start to get real. I run a good 8K and an eventful 5K before flying off to California to get ready to run my first-ever marathon. Total mileage: 217.

May
Finally! I run my first marathon ever, the stunningly spectacular Big Sur International Marathon. While I don't quite hit the pace I was hoping for, my 3:37 time is quite good for a first-time marathoner on a difficult course. I also run a 10K that is a little short, and start to get ready for yet another marathon. Total mileage: 176.

June
Just five weeks after running my first marathon, I decide I can run another. My goal: Break 3:30 and qualify for Boston. For some idiotic reason, I choose the Steamboat Marathon, which starts at 8,200 feet and descends to 6,800. It's all downhill, it shouldn't be too hard, right? Wrong. At least the scenery is pretty. The rest of the month is spent licking my wounds. Total mileage: 127.

July
Time to regroup. I embark on a new plan: Running a flat race, near sea level, and seeing how fast I can go. I bump up the mileage, and run a 5K, where I get another age group award and PR. Total mileage: 240.

August
Somehow I manage to keep up the mileage while vacationing in Hawaii, including what has to be the steepest route I've ever run. And I run a cool 10K involving four river fords. Total mileage: 242.

September
I run an epic relay including one of the awesomest descents known to humankind. What a blast! Then I set an insane PR at the Run For Green Half, beating my previous best by more than 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I continue logging big chunks of mileage. Total mileage: 246.

October
On the spur of the moment, I decide to drive to Tennessee with Todd to run the inaugural Bridges Half Marathon. It turns out to be a good move: I set another half-marathon PR, 1:31:37. This has the additional affect of kindling a new goal in my head: If I can cut just a minute and a half off my time, I qualify for automatic entry into New York. Continuing with speedy efforts, I set another PR and finish third overall in the Mooresville Pumpkin Run 8K, despite running an extra .16 miles. Total mileage: 245.

November
Finally, I make it! I spend the rest of the month taking it easy. Total mileage: 141.

December
I had originally planned to take this month easy too, but with the new goal of qualifying for guaranteed entry to New York in Mississippi in early January, I decide to ramp my training back up. I do the best I can with training during a busy travel season. I run a crazy trail race at the spur of the moment. Then on Christmas Eve I run the Mount Mourne Elf 5K with the hope of setting another PR. Unfortunately the entire field takes a wrong turn, and while I am pleased with my overall pace of 6:16, because we all run an extra third of a mile, there is no PR, no sub-20-minute 5K. Total mileage (including 15.5 planned for tomorrow): 242.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my year. There were no major injuries, I set massive PRs at several distances, I completed my first marathon, and I qualified to run Boston. Next year I'm planning to mix things up a bit, trying some "fun" races that won't result in PRs but should offer interesting challenges. With any luck, I'll get to run New York, and then Boston in 2013. I can't wait.

Total mileage for 2011 (again, including tomorrow's planned run): 2,585. Wow.

Tempos then and now

A common workout for me has been the gradually decreasing set of tempo runs. As I wrote a couple months ago:

I had a familiar workout plan -- a set of tempo runs that gradually declined in length. I would start with a 22.5 minute tempo run, take a break, then do 18, 13.5, 9, and 4.5-minute runs. The breaks would also gradually decrease in length: 5, 4, 3, and 2 minutes.

Tempo runs are done at a fast enough pace to get you to VO2 max fairly quickly -- 7-minute miles in my case. By taking breaks between each tempo, you can increase the amount of time you spend at VO2 max and therefore increase your fitness.

However, this time around I've been trying to increase my pace on workouts, with varying degrees of success. Instead of 7-minute miles the goal was a 6:32 pace. I wasn't sure I'd be able to maintain quite that speed but I wanted to try to stay at least under 6:40. How did I do?

Just so-so.

Tempo 1, 22.5 minutes:
Last time: 6:59, 6:43, 7:00, 6:46 for .24 miles, 3.24 miles total, 6:53 pace
This time: 6:38, 6:32, 6:37, 6:41 for .38 miles, 3.38 miles total, 6:39 pace

Tempo 2, 18 minutes:
Last time: 7:06, 6:55, 6:59 for .54 miles, 2.54 miles total, 7:01 pace
This time: 6:43, 6:34, 6:43 for .4 miles, 2.4 miles total, cut short at 16 minutes, 6:40 pace

Tempo 3, 13.5 minutes:
Last time: 6:54, 6:52 for .95 miles, 1.95 miles total, 6:53 pace
This time: 6:43, 6:37 for .41 miles, 1.41 miles total, cut short at 9:25, 6:41 pace

Tempo 4, 9 minutes:
Last time: 6:54, 6:52 for .3 miles, 1.3 miles total, 6:53 pace
This time: 6:58 for .84 miles, cut short at 5:49, 6:58 pace

Tempo 5, 4.5 minutes:
Last time: 6:53 for .66 miles
This time: skipped

On the plus side, my first couple runs today were pretty good, and I did manage to keep up the pace for most of the workout. In general I was faster than last time, and the terrain was tougher this time, with considerably more vertical gain (696 versus 201 feet). On the minus side, I didn't complete the workout, cutting three runs short and skipping the last one. I did manage to complete a full 16 miles, as planned, by doing a 4-mile cool-down.

So how does this bode for Mississippi? I would like to be able to do the half-marathon in under an hour and 30 minutes, which calls for a 6:52 pace. I was faster than that today, barely, but I'm not sure I could keep up a 6:52 for that long. That said, after averaging closer to a 7-minute pace during the previous workout, I was able to run a half-marathon soon afterwards at the same 7-minute pace. So maybe I'll be just fast enough. We'll know in a week and a half.

Details of today's workout are below.

The Mount Pisgah Frozen 8.2 mile run

Over on the DART blog, I've written a recap of the spur-of-the-moment 8.2-mile trail run I did last weekend. Head over there for the narrative. If you're interested in the raw data, this is the place.

Here's the Garmin record of the event:


And the official race results are posted here (PDF link).

Intervals and Reps: Then and Now

I'm attempting to ramp up the pace I train at as I get ready for the Mississippi Blues Half Marathon in January. Today the plan was to run some 800-meter intervals and 400-meter reps. A couple months ago I did a similar workout, so I thought it might be handy to compare the two workouts.

Last time the plan was to run 6 X 1000 meters at a 6:30 pace, followed by 4 X 400 meters at a 6:00 pace.

This time, with my faster pacing, the plan was to run 5 X 800 meters at a 6:00 pace, then 6 X 400 meters at a 5:30 pace. As before, I'd get 2 minutes rest between the longer intervals, and 3 minutes between the shorter reps. But this time I wasn't running on a track, and I wasn't on my home turf, which I think made it a little more difficult. How did I do?

Intervals:
Then: 6:14, 6:28, 6:25, 6:22, 6:21, 6:18
Now: 6:00, 6:01, 6:08, 6:13, 6:09

Reps:
Then: 5:51, 6:04, 5:43, 5:32
Now: 5:34, 5:44, 5:44, 6:01, 6:17, 7:17

I did all right on the intervals, but the reps were another story. I really started falling apart after rep #3. The last rep was on a fairly steep uphill, so that's understandable, but otherwise I didn't do great at all. Why? Perhaps I'm just in worse form than I was two months ago. Or perhaps the fact that I wasn't on the track and didn't have my iPod contributed. Also, running the intervals faster took a lot out of me -- maybe I'm just not quite ready for this much of an increase in speed. I have another similar workout planned for next week, so maybe I'll do better then.

Details of today's workout are below:

Next up: Mississippi Blues Half

My original plan after qualifying for Boston had been to take a month or two to really rest and recuperate. But I couldn't resist one last challenge: Qualifying for guaranteed entry to the New York Marathon.

Unlike Boston, New York opens up most of its slots to any runner who can go the distance. There are no "qualifying times," just a lottery to winnow the 100,000 or so runners who want to run the race down to a manageable 40,000. But there are a couple of ways to get around the lottery system, and one of them seems like it might be manageable for me.

New York has a way to qualify and get a guaranteed entry slot, you just have to be quite a bit faster than you do for Boston. For my age group, the qualifying time is a 3:10 marathon (compared to 3:25 for Boston). That's 12 minutes faster than I've ever run, and unfortunately, for next year's race, the qualifying time must be run before January 31, which wouldn't give me enough time to prepare.

Fortunately, you don't have to run a full marathon; you can also qualify with a half marathon at a bit faster clip: 1:30. Since I've done a 1:31, that seems attainable, and since it doesn't take as long to train for a half, it just might be doable before the deadline.

There's one other catch to the deadline: After January 31, the standards tighten, to a 3:00 marathon and a 1:25 half for my age group. That means a race in January might be my only shot at qualifying. Unfortunately I have previous commitments for two weeks in January, and marathon pickings are quite slim at the end of the month. That leaves the weekend of January 7. There is a marathon/half marathon being run that day, in Jackson, MS: The Mississippi Blues. A couple friends will be running the marathon, so I can share a room with them and run the race without spending much money. The course looks to be relatively flat, so it's a reasonable place to try for a qualifying time.

So what do I do next? Normally a marathon requires at least a month to recover before training hard again. I'm going to have to accelerate that quite a bit. After running just 14 miles last week, this week I'll be back up to 40 miles, all at a relatively easy pace. Then I'll start ramping up quite aggressively, with a hard training run at the end of next week and a total of 50 miles. That's cutting things rather close, with that hard run coming just four weeks after the marathon. My core training period will be just three weeks long, and I'm going to run 55, 55, and 70 miles those weeks. Then I will have one week to taper before the race.

A one-week taper may not seem like much, but I think it's the only way I'll be able to peak in time for Mississippi while giving myself enough time to recover from Richmond. There's some science behind this plan as well. World-class ultrarunner Jonathan Savage has noted that many runners—even distance runners—tend to do better at the end of competitions lasting a week or more than they do at the start. So he has created a tapering plan that calls for an extremely heavy amount of mileage 2 to 3 weeks before a race. He calls it a three phase taper. The phases are Overload, Reduction, and Rebound.

The overload phase consists of an increased training load, typically 20% more. This period has to be kept fairly short to prevent overtraining, typically 1-4 weeks. The level of overload will depend on how intense the normal training load is. A runner who is already training near their maximum capability would want to overload for a shorter time than a runner who has more training headroom. Many training plans tend to have the peak training load towards the end of the program, but often the peak is a little too early and too minor to be considered an overload period.

The reduction phase is the same as the traditional taper, with reduced training load. Typically a greater reduction in training load for a shorter period is used with a three phase taper than with a traditional single phase taper.

The rebound is a short increase in training load, just before competition. This approach was developed from the observation that some athletes in multiday competitions such as track races have their performance improve as the heats progress. How much the training load should be increased is not well defined, but the general idea is to focus on increased intensity with a moderate uptick in volume. The rebound should be in the last few days before competition.

Savage tried this approach before Charlotte's Thunder Road Marathon, bumping his training up to over 170 miles two weeks before the race, then tapering quickly while maintaining intensity, and running a fairly hard 6 miles the day before the race, when many runners might just rest or run a mile or two to keep their muscles loose.

My plan won't be quite so intense, with just a 70-mile overload week, and probably 5 miles the day before the race. Savage believes that you shouldn't run slower than race pace during a taper, so I'm going to try that too, doing all my taper-week runs at race pace of 6:47 per mile. It sounds crazy, but I think it's the only way I have a chance at running a NY-qualifying time.

Details of today's run are below.