Road Racing and Training Thread, Week Ending October 6, 2019

LancRunner wrote:

Yes, I still like the "within the last year" standard, I just have no record at this point, so I'm giving everyone a pass, unless they want to give me a date for their last performance, which I'm updating in the spreadsheet. It'll be easy for me to maintain and just copy and paste each week. If anyone wants to give me a date, just throw it on the board here and I'll update.

That mile is definitely old and was downhill anyway. You can remove it and skew the table even further in favor of 5k performances.

stat - You want to submit a different race?

Great discussion here about mental tricks.

Whether it’s a workout or race, my go to mental trick is to tell myself to just get to halfway. That’s the point when the pain starts to creep in. At halfway I’ll start counting down the miles until I’m under 2 miles, the I start counting down from 8 laps to 0. I find this breaks up the monotony and gives me manageable milestones to shoot for. I also tell myself if I can just get to 1 mile to go then I’m golden — I can endure anything for a measly 6 minutes.

angryjohnny wrote:

Great discussion here about mental tricks.

Whether it’s a workout or race, my go to mental trick is to tell myself to just get to halfway. That’s the point when the pain starts to creep in. At halfway I’ll start counting down the miles until I’m under 2 miles, the I start counting down from 8 laps to 0. I find this breaks up the monotony and gives me manageable milestones to shoot for. I also tell myself if I can just get to 1 mile to go then I’m golden — I can endure anything for a measly 6 minutes.

I like this. The way I like to break up a marathon is with the first mental checkpoint not until the half, then mile 16, 30k, 20, 35k, 22, 23, then half miles til 25 and quarters from 25 to finish.

Funny, ask any athlete I’ve coached and they will tell you my most frequent line is: “I’ve never raced longer than a 400 in my life.” Its all about breaking into small chunks.

Well, that’s sort of true, after I took up the marathon it became “never longer than a mile,” but the point holds. Also, it’s my second most frequent line actually. (DBAP)

Still, you get it.

Lanc, thank you for taking that over. I'll not have anything to post until next April and it will be a 5k lol. Booked a hotel tonight now just need to get into the race.

Hey Lanc,

My 5k age-graded race score is a year old. Here's an update:

Age 51

10/6/2019

10km

42:40

72.53

Appreciate all the work! I hope to update that again soon.

The concept of "half way" really works for me; half way point, half of what's left, etc.

Very rarely do I feel that I should run farther than I want to. Maybe I have free time today but not tomorrow so I should go longish. I will do an out-and-back route for the mental effort savings. You only have to make yourself run 5 miles out. At that point you're practically done with the whole 10 because there is no other option but to run back.

In the summer I was doing a long run with a few tempo miles towards the end. Started mapping it out so that the faster miles were a little out and back section of their own. Easy enough to do the first half, and coming back the same way really made slowing down seem like a waste of the first half's effort. Like look how far you came already, might as well finish it up.

(7) taking fluids from a bottle is much easier than taking fluids from a cup. As a lifelong hobby jogger, I’ve always just taken the free cups of water or Gatorade that the race volunteers hand out. Inevitably I lose a breath or two in the process. Not a big deal early in the race, but deep in a marathon it can put you over the edge. At mile 14 or so of Berlin, dude from Cambridge handed me an extra bottle of sports drink that had a sports top. It was so much easier to drink from. No breath was lost and I didn’t end up with sticky all over my face.

(8) Be nice to people. You never when someone you just met might hand you a bottle at mile 14 of a marathon.

LancRunner wrote:

stat - You want to submit a different race?

Nah, I don't have anything very recent so I'll wait and put something up once I start racing again. Some time around Thanksgiving maybe...

Coach Jeff ROC wrote:

Hey Lanc,

My 5k age-graded race score is a year old. Here's an update:

Age 51

10/6/2019

10km

42:40

72.53

Appreciate all the work! I hope to update that again soon.

Thanks Coach Jeff. I've updated, however, I'm using the Howard Grubb calculator for 2015 (that is what we discussed a few weeks ago I believe) and when I enter this info in, I get 71.02%... am I doing something wrong?

angryjohnny wrote:

At mile 14 or so of Berlin, dude from Cambridge handed me an extra bottle of sports drink that had a sports top. It was so much easier to drink from. No breath was lost and I didn’t end up with sticky all over my face.

For my fastest marathons, I carried a straw. I found it very quick and efficient. At the time, I was surprised that more people didn't do it. At 7-minute-mile pace, though, I found the "pinch-the-cup" method works well enough.

At Montreal in 1981, cups with straws were at all the aid stations. That was when I realized how efficient it was. But, ugh, I imagine those many tens of thousands of plastic straws are still floating around the ocean somewhere ...

Why has no one invented a paper top that snaps on with an sippy tip lid.. would also make it easier for them to stack the cups

runrincerepeat wrote:

Why has no one invented a paper top that snaps on with an sippy tip lid.. would also make it easier for them to stack the cups

Because it would at least double the time to fill cups.

There is no greater gift during the marathon than when someone in the crowd is handing out bottles of water to runners.

Allen1959 wrote:

angryjohnny wrote:

At mile 14 or so of Berlin, dude from Cambridge handed me an extra bottle of sports drink that had a sports top. It was so much easier to drink from. No breath was lost and I didn’t end up with sticky all over my face.

For my fastest marathons, I carried a straw. I found it very quick and efficient. At the time, I was surprised that more people didn't do it. At 7-minute-mile pace, though, I found the "pinch-the-cup" method works well enough.

At Montreal in 1981, cups with straws were at all the aid stations. That was when I realized how efficient it was. But, ugh, I imagine those many tens of thousands of plastic straws are still floating around the ocean somewhere ...

During my first marathon, in a huge fail I didn't drink basically anything (before it was too late) just because of how hard it is to drink while running. I was totally unaware of the pinch the cup method, which my fiancee recommended now and I'm seeing here. I think the straw idea is pretty brilliant too.

Coach Jeff, regarding the weight loss. I've been a total bonehead regarding nutrition. Also I got sick this week and am down to 133lbs, which has my wife looking at me funny. I haven't been this light since I was training for an Ironman and got down to like 131, but that was just a ridiculous time.

My typical routine, which is awful, has been wake up, cup of coffee and a pop tart, kids to school, then its anywhere from 1-2.5 hours of running depending on the day. Upon return, I'm usually still on a runner's high and then excitedly pound more coffee, which of course suppresses appetite. As a result, there's been little eating before 12pm. Worked ok during maintenance season, but obviously not good, and not working now., three months ago 141 lbs and 50 mpw, today 133 lbs and 60-65 mpw, yikes but it's my own fault.

This week I finally decided to change that and am eating more substantial food pre run, like oatmeal, and post run, like a healthy smoothie and something with more protein like eggs or peanut butter. Making myself eat a minimum two solid meals before 12 pm. Ironically, I took a USATF Level 1 coaching class a few weeks ago and nutrition had its own section, it's really important.

Good luck to all this week.

At the risk of sounding obnoxious, I'll admit that I qualify for elite status and bottle service at some marathons. It makes a huge difference, for all the reasons discussed above.

For races where I don't get to place bottles out, I run with a small (10 oz) handheld. When that's empty, I remove the cap and tuck it in my sportsbra, and then slow to a jog at the next water station and empty 2-3 cups into my bottle, before screwing the cap on and easing back into the race. I've got this down to where it only costs me about 2-3 seconds, and I find it much easier to sip the water from my handheld over 2-3 miles than to gulp it down quickly from a cup.

Interesting discussion on drinking strategies. For this Chicago marathon, I actually practiced drinking out of cups because I was so bad at it. I've definitely seen some improvement. I'm using the double fold method, and it's been working pretty well for me. I ran 3 x 1 mile on the track this Tuesday and had a friend hand me cups at 3/4 of each repeat. Didn't spill too much and got most of them down. That being said, I do plan to have my wife hand me a water bottle of gatorade at around mile 11, maybe a 10 ounce bottle. Anything more is probably too heavy.

Napper wrote:

Interesting discussion on drinking strategies. For this Chicago marathon, I actually practiced drinking out of cups because I was so bad at it. I've definitely seen some improvement. I'm using the double fold method, and it's been working pretty well for me. I ran 3 x 1 mile on the track this Tuesday and had a friend hand me cups at 3/4 of each repeat. Didn't spill too much and got most of them down. That being said, I do plan to have my wife hand me a water bottle of gatorade at around mile 11, maybe a 10 ounce bottle. Anything more is probably too heavy.

Good call gonna get this for mile 13 in my race.