Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Long-winded race report below...
Taper and Race Week
Tue: 10km easy
Wed: 11.5 General aerobic with around 3km at race effort/pace. This was into a howling headwind, so I accounted for that.
Fri: 7.5 Recovery
Sat: Planned to do a “shakeout,” but when I woke, I was raining hard and I was looking forward to a 10-hour work day. I rolled over and slept for another hour, with a completely clean conscience.
Sun: Goal Race: Taipei Marathon
Previous best (2014) 3:30:06
New PR: 3:15:29
1st Half: 1:37:36
2nd Half: 1:37:53
I know you guys can appreciate what a big deal this is for me. So, what do you need to know? I arrived in corral B without warming up or stretching with 12 minutes to spare. The time/temperature clock above the starting plaza was at 12 degrees C (about 54), the sky was overcast, and there was misty drizzle whispering through the air. Perfect. Literally the best running day of the year in a country that almost never sees more than a handful of passable ones. No excuses for anyone today. Can’t waste this.
Back in March, my umpteenth attempt at breaking 3:30 had ended in an ugly 3:44. My training for that race had been an experiment; I had read the book Primal Endurance, and it intrigued me enough to give it a try. I had spent a little over a year as a vegetarian (after reading Scott Jurek’s book), but I switched over to a HFLC diet and began using Maffetone’s (wicked wicked wicked) low heart rate to train (for me, 132). One result was that I dropped about 10 lbs from a body that had been running marathons for 15 years. Another was that I began to hate running. That heart rate was so low that I spent more time cursing than cruising. But I stuck to it (as I always do with my experiments). Hating the training is not ideal, but if it brings results… It did not. I had never experienced so much muscle and joint discomfort as I did in that race. Disappointed but ready to learn from the experience, I posited that it was the result of the Maffetone hear rate training. It might have been good for my cardio, but it didn’t prepare my legs because they were never subjected to the pounding they would receive in a race.
So, based on that hypothesis, I made the right move. Several things came together and something clicked. It was palpable. You guys have all probably read the Hadd training thread on this board at some point. I’ve read that thread dozens of times over the past 10 years, and every time I thought, “Hell yeah. It makes sense.” However, I never stuck with it because I could never keep my HR under 145, as he suggested. But wait… Now, after months and months of 132, 145 would feel like sprinting! It did. I suddenly loved running again. I followed the Hadd base-building principles strictly and it was obvious quite early on that it was working… I was running paces at heart rates I had never seen before. It was clear that my body had moved past a plateau that I had mistaken for my summit.
I wanted to expand on my early training, because I credit my success mostly to that Maffetone-to-Hadd progression. When my number came up in the Taipei Marathon lottery, I had about 12 weeks to do a “marathon cycle.” I jumped right into the appropriate week of Pfitz’s 18/55 and, more or less, followed the mileage and intensity progressions.
So I was planning to run 4:47/km for a 3:22. I was fast over the first 10km, but the pace felt right. You guys know that feeling, yes? “This is not what I had planned for today, but I have this.” After a perfect training cycle, on a perfect day, I decided “I am, in fact a 3:1X, marathoner. This actually is who I am now. I’m not a 3:4x guy waiting to crash and burn. I’m in control. Today is mine.”
So, I ran with guys when groups were available, especially in the windy parts. I chose to run alone for stretches as I was simply running faster than the current group. I picked it up until I caught another group, tucked in for a while, and then repeated the process.
Yeah, it was perfect. Pretty much perfectly even split, given the extra challenges of the second half of the race.
Thank you to everyone here who played a role in convincing me that I am, in fact, the new me. Seriously, guys. It seems odd to say, but you random guys believing in me helped me to believe in myself.