Tag Archives: Marathon

Jun 05 2019
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Life, Marathon, Running, Weather

Would I drop out of the 2019 Chicago Marathon?

Despite growing up in the hot Las Vegas desert, I actually don’t like hot weather. To this day I still struggle a lot in warm temperatures. This might have something to do with why I acclimate so well to cooler wet climates like Seattle and the extremely cold winters of Chicago.

I work hard year round to acclimate to rising or falling temperatures. Spring and summer not only are no exception but in my case it’s crucial to handling runs in summer heat. My forehead for some reason won’t sweat for some time when it warms up (it eventually will by mid/late summer) and that exacerbates how hot conditions feel for me.

Also, with a bigger frame than other runners, I absorb and retain heat a lot better than others. That’s great in winter, and not so great in summer.

I have a hard time with basic runs when it gets hotter than before. 65-70 degrees will probably feel okay in September, but right now it’s like a sauna of death for me to run in. I have a hard time going more than a couple miles without stopping, and in suitably hot conditions I may even have to stop for good after a couple miles.

If regular runs are hard, you can imagine what speedwork and races feel like. Speedwork at least usually allows you to stop and rest every few minutes. A race, however, demands a non-stop effort until you reach the finish line. Even a 5K may be too much if it’s warm enough.

Now consider the challenge of running a full marathon. By itself in ideal conditions it’s a monumentally difficult feat. Add in any warmth above 60 degrees and you’ve exponentially increased the difficulty. Once temperatures reach an otherwise mild 70 degrees you actually begin to put runners’ health in danger.

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May 16 2019
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Marathon, Running, Training

Building hill workouts for your goal races

It’s nice when a goal race is on flat, normal terrain. A place like Chicago or New York City makes it easy, since all their races are on mostly flat ground.

Along with creating prime conditions for fast times (… well, weather permitting), training for the races is straightforward. Work on aerobic and neuromuscular fitness, work on tempo and speed, recover and feed yourself well, and you can crush it.

If a race has elevation shifts, things get a bit more complicated. We already see how weather and temperature impact races: If you train in clear and mild conditions, but then race in windy, hot/cold conditions, you’re not going to be trained to deal with the latter. Even when trained for warmer conditions, suitably hot races can negatively impact performance no matter what.

Likewise, if you train on flat ground, then try to run a race with hills (whether uphills or downhills or both), your performance and body will suffer as you likely have not trained at any length to handle hilly conditions. The longer the race, the greater the impact.

Runners who live in hilly locales face challenges with training speed, tempo or maximizing mileage because of the hills impacting speed. But this becomes an advantage when they run races featuring hills. Their bodies are well-trained to deal with the big elevation shifts. American runners in Seattle, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and mountainous regions like Colorado and Utah are better equipped to handle hills than runners in Chicago, Florida or New York City. (Plus, that never minds thinner air in higher altitude, also a key factor and a separate subject)

So, as a Chicago runner, I have to be mindful when I blow town for a race in a locale with hills. Vancouver is a clear example, with not only big elevation shifts early in the Vancouver Marathon course, but even the smaller elevation shifts later in the race are mountainous compared to the elevation changes in flatter Chicago.

One key reason these hills didn’t destroy me is that on multiple occasions I ran special workouts at nearby Cricket Hill. While Cricket Hill isn’t exactly a big hill (with only a 45 foot elevation climb), it does rise at a tough grade and when run on right, it can prepare you for running up and down hills.

So, how?

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May 12 2019
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Food, Marathon, Races

Eating a good diet at destination marathons

With Vancouver I was fortunate that the coastal city had a wealth of sushi options. Sushi rolls were an almost perfect combination of carbohydrates (from the rice) and protein (from the fish, seaweed and soy sauce). Sure, they also had markets with lots of produce, which also helped.

But produce is easy to get in most locales. Rich healthy whole food carb and protein sources… not as much.

When I ran the Chicago Marathon last October, this was easy because it was only a few miles down the street from where I lived. I could cook and eat as typically desired right up to and after the race.

But what if I run a marathon in a more remote locale, where there’s not a lot of stores and restaurants? Or even if the race is in a major market, what if pretty much every restaurant available served processed and otherwise unhealthy food that wasn’t going to help me stay ready to run?

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May 07 2019
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General health, Life, nutrition, Recovery, Running, Training

Fitness Debriefing After Vancouver 2019

VancouverMedalSitting down and beaten up from the longest run is a great time to take stock of where I’m at with fitness and what I ought to do for next time, even if next time isn’t going to get here for a little while.

I worked hard to prepare for and run Vancouver, and while I improved my endurance and strength in a variety of ways, there’s a number of things that even before the race I knew I wanted and needed to improve.

There’s a lot of goals I have regarding how fast I want to run races, how fast I know I’m capable of running races, and there remains a substantial gap between what I can do and what I want to be able to do… a gap I believe I can substantially close starting even before the beginning of my next training cycle….

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May 04 2019
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Marathon

Finishing the Job

VancouverMarathonTomorrow morning I’ll wake up in Vancouver, probably eat a little something and have a shot of espresso, gear up and then head down to Queen Elizabeth Park to finish what I had hoped to do last year before everything caved in on itself.

Crossing the Vancouver Marathon start line shortly before 9am (the gun is at 8:30am but we go in waves and I’ll be among the middle wave) feeling ready to run will be a substantial improvement over last year’s sickly start and DNF.

Passing West 49th and Maple, where I had to drop out last year, will be a win in itself… let alone every other milestone I slowly (and, as the race progresses, more painfully) pass en route to circuiting Stanley Park and eventually crossing the uphill finish line on Pender near Coal Harbour.

I admit I came back this year in large part to close the book on unfinished business from last year. How exactly I do in this year’s race, other than finishing strong, is not at all a concern to me. It could take 5-6 hours for all I care (though I’d like to imagine I’m at least trained to run a bit better than that). Crossing the finish line is what matters.

Even if work and health hadn’t turned upside down at the worst possible time, I look back in hindsight and think it would not have gone well anyway. In fact, getting derailed might have saved me. The start of the race was a dreadfully warm 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I stumbled on my pre-race meal planning and execution, and probably ran around town a bit too much in the final two days before the race. I also was more aggressive in my overall race pace goal than I should have been.

Maybe it wouldn’t have worked out even if work was fine, I had slept okay on the trip, and I hadn’t gotten ill. Perhaps I’d have run out too hard, and that combined with the heat could have sunk me anymore.

So, never minding it’s in the past, I can’t preoccupy myself too much over what went wrong. Objectively I can see a variety of factors last year that would have worked against me given where I was at. It probably wasn’t meant to be either way.

This year, even without as much of the speed and tempo work as I would have liked, even losing the better part of two weeks late in training to illness… I feel a lot better prepared, even if I didn’t log any 50+ mile weeks or as many 20 milers as I’d like.

I focused more on developing aerobic endurance in longer regular runs, longer haul runs. I ran a lot stronger late in my long runs this time. And though I didn’t plan it, having to run some key later runs into the wind also helped develop extra neuromuscular fitness and hone my form.

There’s a lot I’ll still want to work on next time around, and I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. For now, the only bridge I plan to cross is the Burrard Bridge about 30km into tomorrow’s marathon.

Tomorrow, the goal is to finish the Revenge Tour, and the Vancouver Marathon. Talk again soon.

VanRevengeTour

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Apr 27 2019
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Exercise, Marathon, Running, Training

Headwinds are a training blessing in disguise

agriculture alternative energy clouds countryside

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’ve spent a busy April mostly off the grid. I am running the Vancouver Marathon in 8 days. Since muscle damage takes about 14 days to fully repair and quality training’s benefits take about 10 days to manifest in your running, I am done with high volume quality training or any tough workouts. Now it’s about maintaining conditioning and resting up for the marathon.

After getting sick a few weeks ago I had to abbreviate peak training, and I ran a final 17 mile peak run last weekend. The 20 miler I ran in mid-March would be my only one this training cycle, and the 40-45 mile weeks I had that month would be as high as my volume would get.

So, that final long run. Due to weather forecasts and other needs, I had to run it on a Friday right after work. Even though it was the best possible weather of any time I could run that weekend, I had to do most of the run into a stiff 25-30 mph headwind.

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Mar 08 2019
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Marathon, Running, Training

A Better Long Run: The 55-5 Long Run Method

road nature trees branches

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

As with a lot of training approaches, runners have a very polarized approach to how they handle long runs.

Either they do a simple easy run over a long distance, or they add in some tempo with the long run (either trying to run the whole thing at a tougher moderate pace, or mixing in tempo segments with easy running), turning it into a grueling exercise.

Both polarized approaches have substantial drawbacks.

The long easy paced run may develop long aerobic endurance, but it also accustoms you to only handling your longest distances at an easy pace. Any attempt to race longer distances thus becomes a huge struggle, because you haven’t practiced running faster at max distance.

The mixed tempo run may address that issue, but creates another issue: It asks you to work especially hard at points on a run that is already fairly difficult due to its duration. This increases the burnout and injury risks, and at the least makes long runs such a miserable experience that many just forego any sort of intermediate tempo work on those runs. (It’s the biggest issue with the Daniels Marathon Plans. Those quality long runs are super-demanding. Few outside of elites and hardened distance running vets can consistently handle them.)

Regular readers can probably sense where I’m going with this point: There is a vast and mostly-unexplored middle ground to long runs that will allow you to work on and develop aerobic strength (aka the ability to maintain faster paces over longer distances), without demanding so much from you.

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