Road Racing and Training Thread - Week Ending 11-4-18

Good luck tomorrow OR.

Pappy - Thanks very much. Will do my best tomorrow.

Just got back from my meal. Had three plates. It was good. Full now. Still undecided about clothing for tomorrow. I have the various options spread out on the bed. Hmm...

RRR - Not sure how many days it has been since you have been beer-less (alcoholic beer, that is), but I wanted to mention that you have been an inspiration to me all along. I really like what you have done, and I look forward to the day down the road when you get to the marathon.

Good luck tomorrow, outsiderunner!! You've been destroying the workouts and now it's time to put all of that stored potential in motion!!!

I'm rooting for you!!!

BE outsiderunner!!

Sincerely,

Toadlips

Toadlips wrote:

Good luck tomorrow, outsiderunner!! You've been destroying the workouts and now it's time to put all of that stored potential in motion!!!

I'm rooting for you!!!

BE outsiderunner!!

Sincerely,

Toadlips

WOW!! I was thinking of you on the drive down here, Toadlips! Remember—you are responsible for all of this.

Indeed, I will BE the outsiderunner tomorrow. Have I mentioned that in my last couple of races, I repeated “I am the outsiderunner” to myself toward the end? It was a mantra of sorts. Also, I will be saying to myself: “This is just another long training run.” And on that note, I think of Coach Jeff...especially since I just selected my shirt (white) and pinned on bib 203. So, CJ, I am ready for another “bibbed flyer.”

I love you guys.

outsiderunner wrote:

Still undecided about clothing for tomorrow. I have the various options spread out on the bed. Hmm...

Looks like low 40s, low wind, mostly sunny. I would advise against the full tights. You'll be uncomfortably warm, I think. I would race in regular shorts and a singlet. Or one of those modern tee shirts (although in the '80s I used to wear cotton tees with no problem -- that's1980s, not 80 degrees!). If you like the half tights, they shoukd be OK. Maybe throwaway gloves for the first couple miles. Of course, whatever works for you! Sleep well. Run well.

Allen1959 wrote:

outsiderunner wrote:

Still undecided about clothing for tomorrow. I have the various options spread out on the bed. Hmm...

Looks like low 40s, low wind, mostly sunny. I would advise against the full tights. You'll be uncomfortably warm, I think. I would race in regular shorts and a singlet. Or one of those modern tee shirts (although in the '80s I used to wear cotton tees with no problem -- that's1980s, not 80 degrees!). If you like the half tights, they shoukd be OK. Maybe throwaway gloves for the first couple miles. Of course, whatever works for you! Sleep well. Run well.

That is pretty much what I am going to do. The shirt is an old short sleeve tech shirt that is lightweight and nice and soft. Will pair that with homemade arm warmers (from socks), which I will discard once I get a few miles in and am warmed up. I have some throwaway knit gloves and a throwaway knit hat, again for getting warm early on. The gloves may stay with me some, though. Will see. The only thing I have not decided on yet is half vs. full tights. I ran Shamrock in full tights and felt good. Temps were about the same. Since my body has so little insulation, I tend to get cold...so, I sometimes err on the side of a bit more warmth.

Before I forget...weather.com is showing the wind as NW at 13, and so that is a bit less than ideal for me. Not horrible, but less than ideal.

I’ll go with 2:45 low. Good luck man. Give em hell.

You bet, AJ.

OR - give it hell tomorrow and don’t be afraid of going hard sooner than you are comfortable. Just effing go for it!

It’s been almost 100 days. Caveat. I had a hot toddy last night. A slight pour of whiskey and lemon/hot tea. Been under the weather this week. Woke up Tuesday w a sore throat but still pushed through a 10mile steady tempo. Congestion rest of week. It helped as I slept almost 9 hours and very heavily waking up feeling much better today. I count that as medicinal and not as “off the wagon”. The test for that will come Sunday/Monday w Veterans Day and all that stuff. Anyways.

I ramble. Just give it hell. And the thon is coming... Tuesday gave me some confidence of my full Mary potential Down the line (after I figure out the half)

RRR - No worries. I like your rambling. Regarding the race...I feel you...totally understand your point of view. I must say that I have the urge to go for the effing jugular. I have trained so hard. All of those sweaty, hilly summer miles are built up inside me. Will see how that wind feels. Stone’s confidence in me gives me confidence.

I’ll chime in once more as well, OR.

Do not fear your greatness.

I repeat, do not fear your greatness.

The only barriers that exist are the ones we ourselves construct.

“Find something out of your reach and go for it.”

2:44:xx.

Because you will close like hell the last 10k when it hurts the most.

You will turn the race into a flyer you have run hundreds of times.

The only difference is you are wearing a bib and you’ll have people to chase.

Catch the best version of you that you have been chasing...

OR - You're ready for a good one this weekend, just go out there and do your thing. Consider the following an homage to the flyer...

Gordon Tremeshko wrote:

GoFaMiAnHo - I know you mentioned non GPS watch only, but doesn't running the same tried and true loops and knowing how long it takes you to complete them today versus a previous week/month/year kinda function the same way? Or do you block that out? I think I'd still be comparing to times I've previously run "Robert's Hill easy" even if unintentionally.

Interesting question, Gordon - gave me something to think about on my run around Robert's Hill yesterday! Picking up on what you said about different approaches to training being partly a matter of personality, it would probably be fair to say that my own approach, over time, has tended to go back and forth between "worrywart GoFaMiAnHo" and "space cadet GoFaMiAnHo." So, an honest answer to your question would have to acknowledge that sometimes I have tended to lean more one way, and sometimes I have tended to lean more the other. That being said, I've come to recognize that running like a space cadet works a lot better for me than running like a worrywart. (Just to be clear, the space cadet vs. worrywart thing is intended strictly as a description of my own personality, not as a knock on anyone else's approach to running, whether more structured or less. And nothing that I say below is intended as a knock on anyone else's approach, either - it's just an attempt to describe what has worked best for me.)

So, speaking from the perspective of space cadet GFMAH, when I go for an easy run, and especially an easy trail run, comparing times in the way that you're talking about is something that I just don't worry about that much, even if I'm doing a route that I run on a regular basis. It's not that I block it out, exactly - that suggests a level of mental effort that's not really taking place, and the fact is that I do have a pretty good idea of how long a given route will take if it's something that I run regularly. So, for example, I can tell you that if I'm running my usual route in the Sawmill Hills, it's something like 8-10 minutes to the top of the first climb, 15-17 minutes to the brook, 22-24 minutes to the cliff, 28-30 minutes to the flat rock, and so on. But it's not like I'm really thinking that I want to hit checkpoint x in time y or faster. It's more like, "I want to run for about an hour, so if I go to the flat rock and back that should work out about right." Sometimes I'll go slower, sometimes I'll go faster, but as long as I get in what feels like the right effort for the day, whether a given run ends up taking a few minutes shorter or longer just isn't something I worry or even really think about.

Of course, "run your easy runs easy" is something that many people do, even in the context of approaches that are much more structured than my space cadet training. With that in mind, I think the bigger difference may be that I try to run primarily by feel for more demanding runs/workouts as well - and in fact, the more demanding a workout is, the more I try to consciously emphasize running by feel, to the point that the most demanding parts of the most demanding workouts would be the least planned out ahead of time.

How does this work in practice? Let's say I felt like doing a workout. I would decide what general kind of workout I felt like doing. Very often I would make the decision during or after my warmup. I would then try to start the workout at the kind of effort that too hot calls "comfortably hard" and look to sustain or build from there, depending on how things went. A lot of the time the effort would pretty much stay in the comfortably hard range. Workouts of that kind tend to fall into a fairly predictable pattern (trolley track steady, trolley track fartlek, 4 x park loop, whatever), and I tend not to worry about the details with them much more than I would with an easy run, say. It's just get the work in and whatever it is is whatever it is. But if I'm feeling really good, and it seems like a good day to go a little harder, then sometimes I will go ahead and do something a little harder, and occasionally quite a lot harder.

To give a concrete example, when I was training for my second marathon, I did a workout of 8 x mile with a 400 jog recovery. The first one, which I ran with some guys with my club, was something like 6:10 or 6:15. From there they got progressively faster until I finished the last one, solo, in 5:08. I realize that's not very fast for a lot of people, but it was for me - my mile PR at the time was 4:59, and that was a time that I had struggled for years to achieve. I didn't go into the workout planning to run any specific number of repeats, or any specific pace or progression of paces, I just went with the flow. To borrow OR's term, it was a flyer in mile repeat form, and it blew the roof off of what I thought I was capable of. And the thing is, while the effort was very intense, it wasn't like I was suffering - it was more like I couldn't help myself, like I was being consumed by some kind of animal appetite. To put it another way, it was less like baking cookies and more like becoming Cookie Monster. Most of my best races have been the same way.

So, in short, for space cadet GFMAH, running by feel isn't just something to do while preparing for/recovering from more structured workouts, it's a path to more and more intensely running by feel. And again, it's not so much about "blocking out" external data or training an internal clock (as Stone Cutter has talked about in the past) as it is about tuning in to my own body, gradually training it for progressively stronger efforts, and getting the Cookie Monster good and hungry so that he's ready when his time comes. In my experience, that's the approach that has worked the best for me.

Go get yourself some cookies, OR!

Pappy has been teaching me to run by feel. Do I use my GPS. Of course. I glance. And use the data of pace along w my feelings of that pace to kind of quantify things.

To run by feel..in races.. don’t you need to know how fast you are running while feeling what you feel ?

Stone - Got it. And thank you. Will look to do something great tomorrow

GFMAH - Wow, what a thoughtful post...”it was more like I couldn’t help myself, like I was being consumed by some kind of animal appetite.” That’s it exactly. That is the essence of the flyer...and it was made for me.

Good night, gentlemen...

Go get it, OR. Looking forward to the race report.

Thanks for the write up GoFaMiAnHo. I was mostly curious because I didn't understand why you would go to the trouble of tracking fartlek or steady park loops (of I assumed preset distance) to the second if it wasn't something you followed over time. The use of 'worrywart' to describe yourself when you start to consider structure and paces is a good exemplification of why I think a lot of the preference differences are personality based. Seeing a time in a workout doesn't usually worry me. I just view it as additional information to plan my next steps. I've got a quote here from "Meb for Mortals" that I think encapsulates some of it...

Also in paging through the book to re-find this I realized his section on goal setting aligns a lot with what I was rationalizing this week (specificity, accountability, challenging but reasonable)...so maybe that's where I got that from and I'd just forgotten the source. It's pretty typical "S.M.A.R.T" goal setting stuff though so maybe it's from setting objectives at work. Hard to say.

OR you are fit and ready. I'd wish you luck but you don't need it. Fly away.

runrincerepeat wrote:

Pappy has been teaching me to run by feel. Do I use my GPS. Of course. I glance. And use the data of pace along w my feelings of that pace to kind of quantify things.

To run by feel..in races.. don’t you need to know how fast you are running while feeling what you feel ?

To save too hot the trouble of typing. NO!

I’m confused.

No means no!