Running Shorts

Well, blog, it's been a while. Just about a year, actually. I haven't been writing much because I haven't been running much. In the meantime, I've moved to a new city, changed schools, and started assistant coaching the cross country and track teams at said school. Boston last year sucked (and that's all I really care to say about it), and in the year since then I've only run one other race: a 10k at the Mukilteo Turkey Trot  where I finished second. I'm used to being second in Thanksgiving races, but I'm not used to something that doesn't exist in Cincinnati -- prize money and pumpkin pie! Imagine that! /s (I joked after the race that Danielle and I picked up dessert for Thanksgiving dinner.) Since I moved cities, I've also picked up a new race kit and not-really-sponsor-but-brand-I-like-to-race-for: Janji . They're a small running-apparel company located out of Boston that sells globally-conscious running gear and donates a portion ...

2/26-3/04 Monday: 16 miles in 1:51:01 Tuesday: 9 mile fartlek in 56:03 Wednesday: 6 miles easy Thursday: OFF Friday: 6 miles easy + strides Saturday: 11 miles total - 5k race, 1st in 16:06 Sunday: OFF TOTAL :  48 miles in 5 days This week started well enough, I got in the long run I missed on Sunday and then a true fartlek workout on Tuesday. My plan had been to alternate longer easier days with shorter faster days in classic Lydiard fashion, and that's how this week started. I ran slow for my long run, but that's the only gear I had. For the fartlek I just ran hard for 30 seconds to 2 minutes whenever I felt like it. I felt more fatigued as the run went on, so this one was a mistake -- especially the day after the long run. I should have taken an easy day instead. I needed all easy days the rest of the week, especially since I had a low-key race that I was nervous about. I was planning on a longer marathon-effort tempo on Thursday, but I just didn...

Monday:  2 miles -- slow Tuesday: 3 miles -- slow Wednesday: Off Thursday: 8 miles Friday: 12 miles in 1:20:28 Saturday: 7 mile marathon effort tempo in 41:17 Sunday: Off TOTAL : 32 miles in 5 days Well this week was slightly less sucky. I had made up my mind to start off this week running, and I did on Monday and Tuesday...but all I had energy for was 2 and 3 miles, respectively. I was spent after each one. But hey, when you can run in a t-shirt in February, you take advantage of it. By Wednesday I knew I needed to be responsive and take the day off, and on Thursday I felt exponentially better. Not back to normal energy levels, but at least enough to run something of substance. Same deal with Friday. One of the keys to establishing aerobic endurance is to alternate longer, slower days with shorter, faster days (see Lydiard explained here ). That's going to be my general plan going forward, and since I had felt a kind of normalcy back in my running I wanted to p...

Monday:  Sick - no run Tuesday:  Sick - no run Wednesday:  Sick - no run Thursday:  Sick - no run Friday: 4 miles in 27:22 - Felt totally depleted Saturday:  Sick - no run Sunday:  Sick - no run TOTAL : 4 miles on 1 day of running Well this week sucked. What started last weekend just got worse all week. I had (still have) a cough I can't shake and I've been just totally drained of energy. It's just the kind of thing that there's no point in trying to train through. So now there's basically two months to race day, and my cram training is already off the rails. That's okay, because I've been re-evaluating my plan and I'll be making adjustments. I'm still working out the nuts and bolts, but here are the general focuses, in order of importance: Aerobic endurance , mostly at lower intensities (up to but generally not beyond Aerobic Threshold, or marathon effort). I'm a very slow twitch runner and I know I respond well to the consist...

Monday:  3 w/u; 2 x 6 x diagonals (4 min jog between sets), 1k in 3:02, 2 c/d Tuesday: Easy hour of running Wednesday: Planned off day Thursday: One hour of running with 5 surges by feeling in the second half Friday: 10 min up, 57 min marathon effort tempo, 1 mile c/d Saturday:  Very easy 8 recovery Sunday: Planned long run, but sick in the chest so no run today TOTAL : 48 miles on 5 days Well, for my first week back in a while this was...passable. I was almost really happy with it until I got sick over the weekend, but there's nothing you can do about that. Better to miss a day or two than to have a cold just drag on. Usually a head cold is fine to run through, but a nasty cough is something not to mess with. Monday's workout was exactly what I needed, both mentally and physically. Diagonals are a popular mid-distance workout in Kenya, and it consists of running diagonally from flag to flag across a soccer field, with a jog across the baseline for recovery. Th...

Welp, it's 10 weeks 'til marathon race day and I haven't run for the past two. As per usual (I feel like I've been saying this a lot) my Achilles was flaring up and small breaks weren't helping it, so I just decided to shut down for a couple weeks and hope that'll calm it down. January started with promise, but ended up being a pretty crappy month of training. So now I'm going to see what I can put together for this final stretch. In a weird sort of way, I'm actually kind of optimistic for the rest of training. Here's why: 1. Over the past two years of fighting my Achilles, I've learned that I can sustain decent training for about 8-12 weeks. Any more than that and things start to break down, but any less and I can't get into a decent rhythm. So 10 weeks to Boston? Perfect. 2. I've also overdone marathon training in the past (even just one too-hard workout or race without proper recovery can leave you crashing at the finish). But wi...

Despite the lack of activity on the blog, I have in fact been running. I did have brief Achilles flare-up in August and into September which derailed my original plans for a fall marathon (and even backup plans for a half marathon). I stayed active, but I had lost enough fitness that it wouldn't come back quickly enough for that season. However, I had a slight epiphany while I was injured: as I was cycling a lot, I saw how popular cyclocross was, and for the first time since college I missed racing cross country. As luck would have it, USATF Club XC was being hosted in December in Lexington, KY -- an easy drive only an hour and a half away and enough time to round into some semblance of racing shape. To sum up training, I did a six-week block of fundamental base-type workouts, which I then blended into about six more weeks of race-specific ones. I was definitely overly cautious with my training, because I didn't want to aggravate any injuries (I'm still managing my ...

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, but just haven't really gotten around to it. This is for anyone using the summer to gear up for a fall season of racing, whether that's a marathon, road races, or cross country. That said, this is especially for you high school and college athletes. Summer is the most important time of the season. It's when you build your base -- everything that's to come later in the fall is determined by the quality of this base. In fact, some might even say that your end-of-season peak is limited by how well you trained over the summer. Arthur Lydiard believed this. And his philosophies still form the foundation of modern-day distance training. You've probably heard (and maybe internalized) many of the common critiques of Lydiard-style training: it's old and outdated , or it's too hard, or, most common, it's just a lot of long slow distance. And low slow distance makes for long slow runners . The lat...

GEAR CHECK is another semi-regular-when-I'm-feeling-it series like the WORKOUT OF THE WEEK and various race recaps. There's a ton of different products out there marketed towards runners, so I wanted to highlight some of the things that I use and what I think about them. It might also be telling the stuff I don't use, but that's a whole 'nother topic. This trusty ol' watch came back from the dead yesterday. Running is a pretty simple sport; at least, that's the way it should be. In the modern era of mass marketing, the amount of stuff  that you're told you need  to have to be a real  runner is astounding. In my opinion, all you really need is a good pair of shoes and a watch. That's it. Of course, even then the industry will find ways to inflate your purchase. How about $160 shoes or a $300 watch? (Side note: that price for a GPS watch is in the mid-range of all available! How insane is that?!) Screw that. I prefer a watch that is reasonabl...

May 28, 2017 Burlington, VT 2:45:32 -- 17th Place Another marathon, another disaster. At least I finished this one. The Flying Pig Half beat me up more than I thought it did, and I never really recovered. Enter a marathon a little over the edge, and you'll end up with thigh smash before mile 10 and pitiful walking breaks after mile 20. But I don't want to dwell on this one too much. Lessons learned, for sure, but I'm really trying to approach my running from a much more positive mental framework. So this recap is going to be slightly different: I'm going to focus on some of the things that went well over the course of the whole spring season and then pick out some new things to work on over the summer and fall. POSITIVES Found joy in running again.  Stayed injury-free. Actually, my Achilles felt better as the season went on. Won the premier local race in an event record time. Returned to the same fitness level pre-injury. Refined what works for me in t...

Flying Pig Half Marathon 1st place 1:08:32 -- event record Well, I finally finished a major Flying Pig race -- I just had to drop down to the half. Actually, I did this race more out of a feeling of local obligation than true motivation. My focus really remains on the Vermont City Marathon, which is now less than three weeks away. But a minor race can be a great tune-up for a goal race; in fact, I think it's often the best preparation. (Just wait for my next blog post to explain that.) And that's what this race really was: a tune-up, practice for the real deal in Burlington, VT. So instead of focusing on the mile-by-mile details of the race (I pretty much ran solo the whole way and won by something like three minutes), I want to focus on my plans coming into it and how successful I was at executing them. 1. Run the first 9-10 miles at a controlled effort and then shift gears to race the last 5k. On this one I was very happy with my execution. I didn...

Ok wow, it's been a while. I have been running, I promise. Last fall I got so frustrated with my nagging Achilles injury that I just had to completely shut down. I got stuck in a cycle of: start running again, feel good, slowly feel that goodness deteriorate, end up back at square one needing more time off. Nothing seemed to be helping, so I finally just checked out of running entirely. After a few weeks in a walking boot, I decided to give it a cautious go one more time (this is around the beginning of November). I played it very safe, running without a schedule and entirely by feel, and by the end of December I was able to hit 60+ miles per week. Most importantly, though, I was simply enjoying running again. My goal for January and February, then, was to work in aerobic base training while gradually increasing my mileage and re-establishing some semblance of consistency.  I mostly succeeded -- my mileage didn't make it up to where I wanted it, but my base training went ...

Now that it's the heart of fall racing season and I'm getting antsy not  being able to race, I thought it'd be a good time for the first in a new series of posts. I write a lot about various aspects of training that go into race day and I also recap race efforts fairly often, but I haven't written much about the strategy and tactics  that go into each competition. In fact, not many people do talk about tactics. If anything, they get a bad rap in running circles -- as in a sarcastic, "oh great, another tactical race." When you hear people talk about tactics, they do so in a negative tone: a tactical race is one that is slow, where the runners just jog around for 90% of the time until someone finally sprints to the finish. Sit-n-kick. Of course, this is  one tactic (an effective one, at that) and one you see often in championship-style races, where place matters more than time and most athletes are of about the same fitness caliber. But race tactics can be m...

With Cincinnati's very own Queen Bee Half Marathon coming up, I wanted to get this out there: I absolutely abhor all-women's races. I don't think they should exist. I don't even think they should be called races. I'm not going to link to any race websites because I don't want to give them the dignity. They may be worse than color runs and other novelty events in my book. Before you call me a sexist and a male chauvinist pig, hear me out: I don't think all-women's events are necessary any more . This isn't the era of race directors physically pulling Katharine Switzer out of a race specifically because she's a woman; rather, women make up the majority of participants in running events today. Thirty or forty years ago, when road running was an all-male endeavor, women's-only events definitely had a place. But now, nearly every race is a majority female affair. Road races are already women's races -- making some specifically only  for wo...

This is a post for all you high school track and cross athletes looking to make the leap to the next level. This is a post for all you collegians at that level, shooting for the next step. This is a post for all you post-collegians eyeing the next Olympic Trials. This is a post for all runners, of all ages and abilities, who want to PR, PB, BQ, OTQ, or any other acronym you can think of. You want to get better? You can put away your training manual. Set aside the Hanson's program, or Pfitzinger, or Daniels or Higdon or Galloway or anyone else who writes a mass program. Most importantly, if you own Run Less, Run Faster : burn that crap. There is only one Way. Here it is: You need to run more. How much more? I don't know, but definitely more than you're doing now. Could be 30 miles a week. Could be 120. That part's up to you. It can't be that simple, can it? It is. For real. Running is a simple sport; stop trying to make it more complicated than it nee...

Well, this has easily been the worst training stretch of my life. Four months of constantly off and on running, never more than 45 miles in one week. No workouts, no races; no summer or fall season at all for me. But you know what? That's okay. I've been very lucky to (prior to this) never have missed more than three weeks at a time for injury. I suppose I was due for something more serious sooner or later, and I'm at least happy that it came immediately after  the Olympic Trials instead of before . Now that I'm slowly getting healthy and returning to jogging (not quite running yet, and definitely not training), there are a few lessons I've taken from this experience that I want to share. Listen to your body. When you feel something wrong, stop running -- don't try to run through it. My threshold for something wrong is this: does it change your stride? If so, then you're injured and you should not run. If not,  then you're probably just sore or ach...

Suffering from post-Olympics withdrawal? Turn on USA channel to find Law & Order instead of table tennis? Don't know what to do without sports on 24/7? Unsure of how to schedule out a day that doesn't revolved around a combination of live streaming, DVR recording, and spoiler avoiding? Yeah, me too. Which means it's the perfect time to talk about the Olympics that just happened! One week out, here are four of my biggest takeaways -- two about Athletics in general and two about the distance slate specifically. 1. Athletics (because that's what the rest of the world calls it) remains the premier event in the Olympics.  While in America NBC played up the swimming and women's gymnastics competitions -- because American dominance plays into the "America #1 heck yeah!" narrative -- the Athletics events were by far the most prestigious of the games. From the iconic marathon final on the last day (with the medal ceremony at the closing ceremony) to the Wor...

A word of advice: don't get out of shape. Once you are, getting back in shape sucks. And patience is hard. Coming back from injury, I've been running for three weeks; this current week will be my fourth. My progression has been as such: Week 1: 17.5 miles on 5 days (4.5 mile longest run) Week 2: 27 miles on 6 days (7 mile longest run) Week 3: 37 miles on 6 days (8 mile longest run) Week 4: GOAL 45-50 miles on 6 days with a 10-mile longest run Right now I'm just running to return to a semblance of fitness. It's base training for base training. No special workouts, and the only think I'm doing faster than easy runs are the occasional set of four strides at about marathon effort. It's tough. Progress is slow. My Achilles feels great some days and achy other days, so I have to really pay attention to it. I feel aerobically fit to run more and faster, but neuromuscularly my legs haven't caught up. I find myself almost holding back on most runs, b...

"You're really bad at being injured," my wife has been telling me on a semi-regularly basis this summer. It turns out that she -- as wives usually are -- is absolutely, 100% correct. I'm bad at being injured. But now, for the first significant time in my running career, I'm trying to be good at being injured. What the heck does that mean? But first, let me explain the title of the post... In dealing with runners for the better part of 15 years -- as a teammate, coach, running store clerk, and internet message board lurker -- a common refrain crops up across the spectrum: how can I avoid getting hurt? The short answer: you can't. Sorry. The long answer: running is a sport, and athletes who partake in sports get hurt; that's what you sign up for. If you are training right, then you're constantly pushing your boundaries; trying to train right up to the edge without going over. The paradox is that you never really know where that edge is until ...

In trying to capture the running spirit of days past, I've been especially interested in reading about some of the historic greats. Ah who am I kidding? I'm always interested in learning about running history, but allow me to indulge myself a bit. My interest in doing this particular one was piqued after reading a thread on the r/running  subreddit (yes, I'm a redditor) that was about New Balance shoes. New Balance recently launched a new line of shoes named " Vazee ," and the poster mentioned he had no idea where that name came from. Turns out the name is in reference to a French slang term, " vas-y ," which essentially means "Go!" or "Go for it!" Having worked at a running store, I'd heard this spiel before, but I had to learn more. Not only is the name a fancy French word, but it is also a reference to a popular cheer for former mile world record-holder Michel Jazy (the rhyme really is catchy, it's easy to see why it be...