Breaking it down

The Philadelphia Marathon is set for this Sunday, which means there are a few folks around these parts conserving energy, bouncing off the walls and trying as hard as they can to relax. That's the hard part, of course. Relaxing is always one of those things that is easier said than done in almost every situation. It's almost like telling someone to "just say ‘no.'" Yeah, well if I could say no or relax we wouldn't be in this situation. Who can relax after months of training and the idea of self-flagellation and masochism looming? Better yet, people actually pay money to run marathons. Good money, too. I'm told the Philadelphia Marathon costs more than $100 to enter, which, frankly, is a crime.

The folks charging good-natured runners that much cash should be forced to get out there and run the marathon, too. Get moving John Street...

Anyway, it's taper time for some folks making the jaunt through the city this Sunday and that's always a tricky time. Most people taper for two weeks, which, truth be told, is too long in my book. But, because most people aren't exactly Bill Rodgers (who used to taper for three days... maybe) and get their training plans off the Internet from some silliness presented by Jeff Galloway or Oprah or whoever else is telling people they can hurl themselves 26.2 miles by running less, then by all means, do your two weeks.

Want to know what I do? Well, it's my site and I'm going to tell you anyway.

Here it is:

Thirteen days before the race I do my last long run, which is anywhere between 22 to 24 miles. I continue to train normally the next two days, and then I start to bring it down a little bit. For instance, since I usually take it to 105-110 miles per week when getting ready for a marathon, I'll just go 20 miles on the Thursday and Friday. I just go 20 miles in those two days because I'm going to do a race (either a 5k or 10k) eight days before the marathon as a gauge of my fitness.

After that fitness-gauging race I get into a taper which goes like this:

* 10-13 easy * 10 easy * 7 miles at race pace * 1 miles warm-up/cool down + 5 miles faster than race pace (if I can do it in 27, I'm ready) * 4-5 miles easy * 3 miles easy * 4 miles easy * Go run a marathon

This was discovered through trial and error, though, I've done a few two-day tapers where I ran 16 miles a day until two days out before cutting back to 5 and then 5k. Interestingly, "The People's Champ," Brian Sell, does something a little similar.

At least that's according to Sell's log on the Athleticore.com site where the Hanson's dudes post their workouts. In the week before the Olympic Trials where Sell finished third in 2:11:40, he did a 10-miler in 66 two days out and a 10-miler in 52 the day before.

That comes after doing 46 miles in four sessions the three previous days to the pair of 10s.

You're darn right that's pretty impressive. Then again, after piling on routine 150-mile weeks, a 10-miler at 5:12 pace is probably a day off.

Here's something else people won't tell you about running marathons... when you're out there, put some time in the bank. That's right bank it because you're going to slow down late in the race no matter what.

Week of November 5-11 (22 weeks to the National Marathon – March 29, 2008)

Monday 15 miles in 1:39:08

Felt pretty strong the entire time and easily could have gone another 20 minutes without batting an eye. My form was good and all of that, however, I noticed that the pace dipped a bit on uphills. The effort didn't change, but the pace was bad. On flat ground I'm really decent.

Tuesday 15 miles in 1:41:53

I did the same exact run as yesterday, though it was much slower. I felt strong, though, and a little better on the hills. But I definitely was tired during most of the run. The good part is that it was a strength run and I felt strong.

Wednesday 10 miles in 65:04

I ran steady 6:30 pace and it felt easy. Actually, I was a little bummed I had to stop. I felt pretty good. Still, it's a little too early to push it too much. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I should run on Sunday.

splits:

1st 5: 32:25 2nd 5: 32:39

Thursday 1^st run: 11 miles in 1:14:22

2^nd run: 3.8 in 26:59

This was kind of tough. My legs were tight and tired from -- I guess -- not sleeping well last night and waking up early. Plus, I'm putting on the miles again and maybe I'm not adjusted yet.

splits: 1st 5: 33:24.11 2nd 5: 33:44.86

Added an easy run at night. I went out later than I wanted because Brad Lidge was traded to the Phillies, so what are you going to do? Anyway, I went 3.8 miles in 26:59. I fought the slightest urge to run hard -- the point of adding the short and sweet second run is not to run too hard. I'm going to have to teach myself to go light.

Friday 10 miles in 64:58

My stomach bothered me for the first six miles, but my legs felt great. Maybe there's a difference between drinking coffee in the morning instead of Red Bull? You can't mix coffee with vodka, though.

Either way, I felt great and the running felt easy. I think I'm into it now... we'll see what happens.

splits: 1st 5: 32:34 2nd 5: 32:24

Saturday 10 miles in 67:31

My stomach bothered me again -- I think it might be the ibuprofen. Other than that, it was a slight drag to get out of the house. Still, I ran rather well and my legs felt decent. I didn't push the pace really at all... I just kind of settled in.

I think I'm going to try to get up tomorrow morning and go to Harrisburg... we'll see.

Sunday 10 miles in 58:23

I ended up staying awake all last night with a stomach ache where I worried about whether or not I OD'd on ibuprofen. Either way I've officially decided that I'm finished with ALL drugs. And I mean ALL drugs.

Anyway, I pushed myself out the door and ran to Mountville. I started out solid but not spectacular though I really ran hard from about 2 miles away and broke my course record. Interestingly, I paid attention to the terrain and noticed that there were a lot more hills than I thought on the route.

It was a pretty good run.

Better yet, my stomach isn't bothering me as much as it did yesterday, though I'm starting to get a headache... it's always something.

Taper like the good Doctor

For as ambiguous as my training program seems, it does have it’s basics besides the consistent 100-mile weeks. For one thing, there is the Monday 20-plus miler. Then there is the mid-to-late week two-hour effort. And what about the regular hill work and fartlek?

After that, it’s whatever fits the mood.

Mixed amid this gumbo of inexplicableness is a rather ritualistic taper week. It’s ritualistic because I did it once and had success with it so I stuck with it. The day before the race I like to run 5k to 4 miles and then have a big breakfast/lunch. All of the other runs ranges from five to seven miles including the five-mile tempo run on the Tuesday before the race – Wednesday if I’m running in Boston – as well as a 10-miler on Monday.

I also try to get my race packet as soon as I can because I like to hole up in my house/hotel like Howard Hughes.

The plan always seemed to be rather haphazardly slapped together until I read the taper plan from Dr. Jack Daniels’ running formula. Even though I don’t like hard-and-fast rules, his taper week suggestions make so much sense that I’m going to follow his plan as closely as possible…

Except for that five-mile tempo run. I’m doing that on Tuesday.

Anyway, starting with Sunday’s 14-mile run I have been copying Daniels’ moves. Here’s his plan:

7 days to race: 90-minutes easy pace
6 days: 60-minutes easy pace, plus 4-6 strides
5 days: 2 miles easy pace, plus 4x1200 with 2-minutes easy, plus 2 miles easy
4 days: 30 to 50 minutes easy, plus 4-6 strides
3 days: 20 to 30 minutes easy, plus 4 strides
2 days: 0 to 20 minutes easy
1 day: 20 to 30 minutes easy

See, it looks like the stuff I had been doing all along. But since I dislike the track and intervals, I’m going to try to do 5 miles in 27 minutes instead. I’m also going to try to not get too far ahead of myself like I do in golf in the rare instance when I hit a nice, long drive down the center of the fairway. Inevitably I start thinking about my birdie putt instead of knocking my second shot onto the green and end up pulling my head and flubbing the approach.

In other words, stay focused and don’t count the chickens until they get their flu shots.

And, of course, that’s the hard part. The taper messes with my mind. It’s always so much easier to go out and run and train hard and build confidence than it is to cut back and retain that feeling of strength. Perhaps that is part of the allure of the marathon? It’s like chess, not checkers.

Anyway, today’s workout according to Dr. Daniels called for 60 minutes, so I ran 10 miles in 59:24. Add in the 79 seconds it took me to run from my house to F&M’s Baker Field and I got my hour.

Nevertheless, the 59:24 sounds pretty quick. In fact, it’s the fastest I have ever run over 10 miles on the Baker Field loop. But for some reason it felt incredibly easy – it was so easy that I tried to slow myself down after going through the first five miles in 29:16.

I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m in decent shape. Then again, running a good marathon takes a lot more than simply being in shape.

Running nugget
Here's a pretty good story about a couple of pacesetters (a.k.a. rabbits) in yesterday's New York City Marathon from Liz Robbins in The New York Times. Apparently the NYRRC is not going to hire pacesetters for the 2007 race... that's fine. The field won't be so deep in 2007 since the U.S. Olympic Trials will be held the day before the main marathon.

1 week to go

I will explain the logic and method to my taper on Monday. Today’s offering will simply be an outline of the penultimate week of training before the Harrisburg Marathon on Nov. 12.

Like I wrote last week, I was not going to run 100 miles or even 90 miles two weeks out. Instead I did 88.4 miles, which makes me feel like a slacker following 14 straight 100-mile weeks.

Anyway, here’s me dialing it down:

Monday
21 miles in 2:17:08
Ran the last four miles in 23:01. The course was hilly and the effort wasn't all out, but it definitely was work. Either way, I did OK for 17 miles even though my there was something swooshing around in my stomach.

Tuesday
14.3 miles in 1:37:28
Time to dial it back.

Wednesday
10 miles in 64:30
Didn't think I was going as fast as I was, but you know...

Thursday
10 miles in 64:43
Ho-hum.

Friday
10 miles in 68:28
Stomach was a little upset and my right hip and left hamstring were achy, but the run was pretty easy.

Saturday
6 miles warmup and cool down – 5k race in 16:23.
16:23 is pretty good for me. The pace felt easy and I imagine that I could have gone faster. I would have been happy with anything under 17 because of the marathon-training mileage. Either way, it appears as if I'm in shape. I won my age group by more than 2 minutes and came in sixth place overall.

Sunday
14 miles in 1:35:26
A nice easy run despite some discomfort with my stomach. After learning that stomach issues messed up Meb Keflezighi and Alan Culpepper in New York today, I have to be very, very careful with what I eat this week. Nonetheless, the run was easy and uneventful. It would have been much more fun if my stomach was better.

Cautious confidence

The end of a training period is always a bittersweet time. There is that sense of relief of reaching the race intact and without too much wear and tear. In most cases, when I blocked out some time to train properly, the last two weeks before the race are relaxing for everything but my mind.

The head games are where the stress is. Did I train enough? Did I do the proper workouts? What about the weather? Do I have the right clothes to wear? Should I be a little more aggressive during the first half?

And of course, can I do this?

Other than that, taper time is a vacation. A working, productive vacation.

At the same time, the day after the race I always get that hollow feeling of, “OK, now what?”

“Now what” is tricky. A lot of what the next race or goal should be depends on what happens in the race, which is the position I’m in. I know what I want to do if I exceed my goal time and standing in the race – you know, the best-case scenario.

But then the worst-case scenario is always out there. That’s the part I’m not thinking about right now. Oh sure, if things just blow up and go straight to hell, there are a few races I could jump in over the following weeks, but that’s kind of extreme.

If it turns out that I’m just not very good, we have to reevaluate all of this.

So that’s where we are after Thursday’s 10-miler in 64:43. Call it cautious confidence.

Nevertheless, if there is some relief it’s from the compliments and the good wishes from the folks at the office. There’s nothing like a little ego stroking to make a person feel better about themselves.

Running (NYC) nugget
* Lance Armstrong has his rabbits. Now let’s see him go to work.

* Apparently, the marathon isn’t for plodders any more.

* I only run with my iPod when I don’t need to focus or concentrate. However, some people use that kind of stuff all the time.

Put that down

I ran with my iPod today, which can count as weight training for me. Though the little computer weighs just a few ounces, it's the most amount of weight I've carried around aside from lugging a 2½-year-old boy.

Weight training and I just don’t mix. Oh, I used to do it quite a bit back in the old days when I was younger and faster. Even this year I did pushups pretty religiously as part of my “jail house” workout. The way I figured it, my arms were moving just as much as my legs – I ought to make them strong, too.

Right?

Not anymore.

My new reluctance to lift weights and do pushups didn’t come because of some scientific evidence I read in a medical journal or something found in one of the ubiquitous Runner’s World stories about being fit that seem to be recycled from month to month. The reason is because of an interview I read a few months ago with Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, as most people know, is a bit of a runner these days. He should be in the final days of his taper before Sunday’s New York City Marathon, but had a little bit of success as a cyclist for a few years before retiring from the sport after the 2005 Tour de France.

So what did Armstrong reveal in the interview that made me turn my dumbbells into some odd-looking furniture?

He said he didn’t lift weights.

Of course that might have changed these days. Armstrong looks pretty fit and strong on the cover of a few magazines from the past couple of months. But when he was winning the seven Tour de France races in a row, Armstrong said he never touched a weight or even thought about doing a pushup. Pushups equal muscle and muscle equals weight and weight equals slow.

Slow is no good.

Here’s the quote from the November 2006 issue of Runner’s World… wait didn’t I just make fun of that magazine? Well… never mind. Here’s Lance:

“When I rode I couldn’t do a pushup, because immediately I would have put on muscle. But I decided I don’t want to do that anymore. I’d rather have a full-body workout. So I’ve definitely put on weight, a lot of upper-body muscle weight.”

In the same interview, Armstrong reveals his taste for beer, wine and margaritas (Hey! Me too!) as well as a competitive cyclist’s penchant for big eating and for starving themselves.

“It sucks,” he said.

So that’s why I stopped lifting weights. Honestly, I can’t tell a difference between now and then in terms of my fitness although these days I don’t have pipes for arms. I have pipe cleaners.

As far as cross-training goes, I try to walk places instead of driving. When I was younger and poorer I walked and rode my bike everywhere. Something as simple as that definitely made a difference in my training and fitness. I also do sit-ups like crazy and have noticed a big difference since I started doing my sit-ups and crunches on a big fitness ball I bought in the summer.

My stretching is still sporadic and not very intense, though I think I make up for that with the weekly ART sessions. I kind of enjoy doing a basic yoga routine when I can – I have my own mat and strap and everything -- but lately I have been inconsistent with that, too.

Now that I’m starting the taper, I suppose I’ll be more consistent with the yoga.

Did I mention the taper? Yeah, I started it today. After beating myself up on Monday and running hard for too long on Tuesday, I ran just 10 miles in 64:30 on Wednesday. I did the entire run on the grass at Baker Field, which is where I plan on doing all of my runs for the next 10 days to lessen the pounding and wear and tear on my legs. I also didn’t think I was going as fast as the time indicates, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

Either I’m faster or the loops are shorter.

Shoe geek
On CNN this week, I saw photos of Castro wearing Adidas gear. Nike may have some questionable labor issues in third-world countries, but at least a brutal dictator isn’t strolling around wearing Air Jordans.

Right?

Running nugget
Stefano Baldini is the defending Olympic and World Championship champ and is running the New York City Marathon this Sunday. Here’s an interview with Baldini on the Men’s Racing site where he discusses his training with Exton, Pa’s Duncan Larkin.

Play list
Here are the songs that made it from beginning to end on my iPod during today’s easy 10-miler:

Please – U2
Touch the Sky – Kanye West
3 MC’s & 1 DJ (Live video version) – Beastie Boys
Starve – Rollins Band
Piss-Bottle Man – Mike Watt
The Wait – Metallica
Loretta’s Scars – Pavement
Debaser – Pixies
I Got You – Split Enz
Jerry Was a Race Car Driver – Primus
What’s My Name – DMX
Pretty in Pink – Social Distortion
Numb/Encore – Jay-Z/Linkin Park
You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar… - Queens of the Stoneage
One-Armed Scissor – At the Drive-In
Androgynous Mind – Sonic Youth

2 weeks to go

I’m not going to run 100 miles this week. In, fact I bet that I won’t even make it to 90 miles. Oh, I’m going to work hard and all of that good stuff, but with two weeks to go I get to rest and -- gasp! -- relax.

That last part is easier said than done, of course. It’s what makes running and runners funny – they can crank out miles week after week through cold, wind, rain, sleet and snow, but if they are told they need to dial it back just a little bit in order for all of that hard training to manifest itself on race day, that’s just too difficult to understand.

I’ve been there. I can still remember the ’98 Marine Corps Marathon when I cut it way down to 100 miles in my first taper week.

Needless to say, things didn’t go too well on race day.

So here’s the deal: I’m going to go hard on Monday, Tuesday, and maybe Wednesday before going easy and Thursday and Friday. On Saturday morning I’m going to race a 5k and will consider an off day next Sunday.

Don’t bet on that, though.

Anyway, here’s how “Blast Week” shook out:

Monday -- 24 miles in 2:48:13
Started out at 6:50 pace and picked it up to 6:35 to 6:40 pace through 13 miles. It was an easy, easy pace though it did take a tiny bit on concentration because of the hills and windy conditions. About 90-minutes in, I met up with Jeff Kirchner and I ran with him for about an hour. The pace dipped a bit, but wasn't slow. When Jeff left I ran for another 22 minutes by myself and I picked up the pace again.

Even after 2:20 I still had some turnover and could have taken the pace to 6 minutes. I also drank on the run and did well with the Gatorade and Red Bull mix. Better yet, I did not stop running once.

I think I'm strong.

Tuesday – 16.1 miles in 1:53:25
Started out slow and a little tight after a long run yesterday, but the pace improved quite a bit after I got through all the hill repeats. At the end of the run my turnover was really good and I had no trouble taking the pace fairly high.

Wednesday – 18 miles in 2:02:35
Ran pretty hard over the first 10 miles at the Brick Yards. Felt pretty strong and the pace was easy even though I was running around 6-minute miles. At the end I tied up a little bit and I slowed in the hills, but I still had the turnover.

Thursday – morning: 15.3 miles in 1:39:02
evening: 6.2 miles in 41:39
Total: 21.5 miles
Ran steady the whole time even though my right calf and hamstring were a bit sore. My 5-mile splits: 33:10; 31:57; 30:55. This run reminded me of the old days. Better yet, I wasn't even tired at the end.

In the evening, I doubled up for the first time in a long time. Definitely kept the pace brisk even though my right calf was still a little sore.

Friday – 13 miles in 1:27:10
Squeezed in 13. It was extremely easy and I hope I can add another workout tonight, but it seems unlikely with a heavy rainstorm looming. The weather hasn't been good this week. Either way, not a bad run despite the fact that I was operating on very little sleep a day after doubling up for 21.5.

Saturday – 19 miles in 2:11:59
The first hour was all hills. I did tons of repeats and then held it together the rest of the way. The hills took a bit out of me... and then there was the wind. I didn’t plan on going so long but I miscalculated with my math.

Sunday – 11.5 miles in 1:16:41
Tried to keep the pace up-tempo but not too fast. Brisk is probably the correct word. Either way, I didn't feel tired or even the slightest bit winded during the outing.

That’s 123.1 miles for the week – my most since 131 miles in mid October of 1998.