That course just isn't very friendly! Good luck on the race, hope you achieve your goals

Congrats ont the milestone but dang, that's a harsh course! You sure that spike is "only" 7-9%? Looks almost like 15-20% ;) The scale is kinda wonky though. That spike is 80-90 feet up but over half a mile... Did I get this right?

You plan on letting it all out on the long downhills to make up time?

Sounds like a sweet good time when you got your loved ones cheering for you on race day. And on Father's Day no less! Have fun!

Sadly, I'll be doing me second race in a row without my cheer team. This Sunday's race is the craziest of my races, a 13.5K romp through the staircases of the Old Quebec City. Some 1925 steps (1277 going up, 648 going down) and plenty of running around town. This is gonna be rough. No clue about time or pacing other than I'll try to keep my running pace as close to my 10 or 15K pace, but the stairs might throw a wrench into that plan as fatigue wears the legs down toward the end... The last 2 km might be a challenge since I the last big staircase is 309 steps going up and happens with 2 km to go...

No cheer team for me because my wife's doing four hip hop dance shows with her school and my youngest son has a swimming meet all weekend long. My race start is 8am and my son's swimming meet is at 1pm so I'll come back home, shower and will head out with him to the pool before attending my wife's last show of the weekend on Sunday night. This'll be a pretty full Father's Day for me... :)

As for Athlinks, as I said in my dynasty thread, it doesn't track races in Canada but most races I'm going to seem to use the same timing chip provider, Sportstats that have a searchable database so I can track "rivals" with whom I can sorta compare my times...

FM

That is a crazy course Alan. That hill between 2 and 3 makes the most legendary hill climb look tame.



Hopefully the weather cooperates and you can make a run at your PR.

Hit 2000 miles this morning right at the peak of my tempo progression run when I was going the fastest. I found it is very tough taking a photo while running that fast lol.



Here is a different view of the hill elevation for this Sunday:



The entire thing is roughly 1/2 mile, but it has that dip down and re-climb near the top. The bulk of it is roughly 76ft in 1/3rd of a mile for an average grade of 4.5% which isn't too too bad. The tough part is the beginning where it is 8-9% for the first 1/5th of a mile though and then it becomes a little less steep.

I think as long as I take it fairly easy up that hill, it is only 1/3rd of a
mile so I can bank some time in order to not thrash my legs or cardio pushing too much on the hill.

the scales they use for the Y and the X axis are just out of whack. I mean, on the elevation side, it's 197 pixels for 100 feet of elevation while on the distance side, it's 92 pixels for a mile, or 92 pixels for 5280 feet.

When you look at the peak in either of your elevation graphs, you'd have to be climbing with your hands on the ground to be able to go up...

Still 4-5% elevation is nothing to sneeze at, nor is 8-9% over maybe 1000 feet. Probably better not to kill yourself trying to keep your pace intact, put some time in the bank on the downhill and keep the HR as even as possible on the uphills...

Good luck with it!

FM

Off to do the half in the Manitoba Marathon this morning. Been raining cats and dogs for the past 24 hours and is supposed to continue all day, but its currently stopped for the moment. Here's hoping it stays that way for a few more hours!

When I was stationed overseas in Germany, I ran a morning 3 mile run that included a steep climb for about 1,000 feet. I couldn't tell you the grade, but when I first encountered it, I would just put my head down and look at my feet...but I couldn't make it to the top. Walking uphill proved more painful...so it became my goal to conquer that hill (which came at about the 2 mile marker along the route). Over the course of a couple of weeks I would make it to the top and be forced to stop and walk for a moment....and then a couple more weeks it was conquered and I didn't have to stop at all. So it took a month to beat it. And once beaten, I felt like a million dollars reaching the top and continuing on with the random onlooker being my imaginary fan-base. :)

You only need 90 minutes of no rain anyway. Good luck!

Well, I felt good about how I handled my hill. The wind on the other hand I did not do as good of a job handling. In the end, I feel that I did pretty well on my race today. Mile 11 was the one that killed me though. I think I mentally checked out for a bit there.

Ended up coming in 3 seconds too slow for my Personal record. Oh well :)

Time to start back up marathon training for the fall.

3 seconds? Sounds like you're well within the acceptable margin of error. PB! :D

Race recap: started out just misty, which was nice. I got trapped really bad over the first mile, and I used a lot of energy just trying to fight my way out of the slower people around me. Lots of zigs and zags and up on the boulevards, which sucked because they were muddy and slippery. The next several miles went ok although my pace slowed sooner than I had hoped. Nothing too bad though, and after 8 miles I was still pretty happy where things were at.

Things went downhill from there. The mist turned to a downpour for most of the second half. My right leg started to tighten up and by mile 10 I really hit the wall. I was starting to limp/run and basically my left leg did all of the pushing for the last 2 miles. My shorts also became so waterlogged that they were falling down, so I had to repeatedly pull them up as I ran, which was probably more mentally exhausting than anything but very annoying. I managed to fight through and get to the end, and my leg feels fine in the hours since, but it wasn't a super pleasant final 20-30 minutes.

Stats:
1:36:19 official finish (1:34:01 last year)
43:13 6 mile split (39:50 last year)
124th overall (106 last year)
8/195 M35-39 (13/239 last year)

Overall the run was bitter-sweet. My time was indeed slower than the past 2 years, but was not too far off and if I look back 2 months I can say that I made very solid progress. Coming in top 10 for my age/gender category was a nice surprise, but its tempered a bit by the lower turnout this year. Ultimately no injuries and a decent finish, with visible strides made over recent weeks, which adds fuel to make me want to come back stronger for next year. Just need to fight through those winter blahs!

Kudos to both Alan and Fidatelo, great work guys!

As for me, kinda crossposting from my dynasty... It was a crazy day yesterday but a crazy weekend overall...

My son had a two day swim meet (Saturday & Sunday afternoon) while my wife was dancing in 4 shows (Saturday & Sunday afternoon and evening) with her hip hop dance school. So yesterday I had my race, then "ran" back home to pick up my son, spend the afternoon at the pool and "ran" back home to have dinner and go see my wife. It was an awesome Father's Day, wouldn't have it any other way. :D

I finished my 13.5K Staircase Challenge, that my Garmin actually reported as 13.9 km, in 1:14:19. Average pace is kinda unimportant cause it doesn't compare to anything else I've done before.

Placements:
37th out of 1165 finishers overall (top 3.2%)
6th out of 111 in M40-49 (top 5.4%)

VERY happy with how it went. That was a tough kind of race in a unique setting. More to come at some point with a report.

FM

Race Report: ABC Into the Summer 5K
 

I just finished a 5K run this morning. It was the anniversary race of my first 5K race of my career. This time the course was moved to run around the local mall parking lot twice around. Not much fun, but it was an easy, fast course.

65F degrees at the gun, and warming up fast. Despite the increasing temps, my pace improved during the second lap around the mall, with a really strong finish.

Not much else to report, other than my Garmin measured the course short of a full 5K, at 4.95K.

Official results:
Time: 42:38
Pace: 13:43/min
Overall Place: 303/444
Age Group: 17/23 (M 40-44)

For what it is worth, running 13.1 miles on a day I was going to need to walk around a major airport like CLT is not the BEST decision I have ever made...

Did my first 100 ride today. Admittedly it was km rather than miles, but I'm claiming it!

Running with purpose: Erica Hill joins the fight against cystic fibrosis - allDAY - TODAY.com

Inspiring story about Liz Shuman, a woman with cystic fibrosis who is using running as part of her fight to help find a cure for the disease. She lives a town over from me in Madison, CT. Pretty inspiring story. There's a group called OutRUN the Odds on Facebook if any of you guys want to join up.

Hehe. Uploaded my Garmin running data onto Strava and was amazed to see that it reckoned my best estimated mile was 5:14 :eek:

When I was at school I ran either a 4:50 or a 5:10 (I can never remember which, know it was 10 seconds off 5 minutes though!) but that was a looooong time ago and I'm nowhere near that now, and never will be again.

Clicked on the link to this time, and then found it was one of the long downhill sections on a regular run back home. Was slightly disappointed tbh :D

Cross posting from facebook:

You're awesome, Alan. Very inspiring!

With yesterday's 12Km for first time since October 2013, June ended being a record month for me too and big jump over previous one.

Distance: 93.6 km (previous was 88.4 August 2013)
Duration: 9:56:27 (previous was 9:26:58 August 2013)
Calories Burned 9,400 (previous was 8730 August 2013)
Average Pace: 6:18 (Record still 6:02 November 2013)
Activities:14 (previous was 13 August 2013)

Basically I'm almost in same shape that i was at the end of past summer, that is not bad knowing i stopped running from Dec to March and that I still have the whole summer to keep improving.

Hope won't stop next winter so i don't have to start all over again.

Awesome numbers Alan, as Kodos said, you are an inspiration. Icy, it's also good to see you back into it, very well done!

For me, the month of June was a good bounce back month, following the low mileage month that was May, you know with the faceplant and almost a week off running (was only three days but still, felt like a week ;)). Following your format:

Miles: 140.98 (second most to April 2014, 142.62)
Time: 20:24:09 (most ever)
Ascending: 680m (2231 feet but I did a solid treadmill session with work at 15%)
Avg Pace: 8:41
Calories burned: 14,521 C (most ever)

After sorta going with HR based training for my easy runs, really slowing down my long runs, and introducing recovery runs on Mondays, my avg pace has really slowed down overall but my hard pace and how I can hit interval repeats with lower heart rates have both improved so I couldn't care less about an avarage pace over a month's worth of runs. It simply means very little overall, at least for now, until my whole view of what an average pace can be changes...

Take for example how this morning I ran some 400m intervals @ 5K pace (about 6:26/mile, that'd give me a 5K in 20 minutes) and over 6 repeats with 300m easy jog for rest in between, I averaged a pace of 6:10 with an average heart rate at about 140. I could almost feel that I was able to relax during some of those repeats while just a month or two ago, they were a piece of work and I would often look at my watch to see the distance left tick down.

FM

oh and Alan, that month of July looks rough for you, 185 miles!?! :eek:

I also am looking at my highest mileage month ever but I should "only" top at 160 miles ;)

FM

Wow, that's 3.3% of the month running :eek: not sure whether that's impressive or crazy! We'll go with impressive :)

I may be crazy, but just for the record Subby beats me pretty consistently every week by about 2-3 hours on average (biking for him though). Other than last week which he didn't do as much.

My guess is he is over 34 hours for last month :)

You guys are awesome. I have no idea how you find the time and energy to put in those miles but that is fantastic. Good job!

yeah, commuting by bike to work really has him put a lot of time on. Great job on his part, and he's staying injury free for now too! :thumbsup:

FM

Thanks, I often say that I don't find time, I make time. Wake up at 5, run from 5:30 (or even 5:20) to 6:15 or so 4 mornings a week, then Saturday and Sunday. If I don't run before work, I won't find time later on. Take some time to get used to it but it works now.

FM

Shameless bragging now, and about having the 484th best time on Strava up a hill no less :D

This was the hill I set myself as the target a couple of years ago: only 0.5 mile, but an average of 13% and at point it gets over 20%. Tried it twice, had to stop each time before I got to the top. Then snapped my ankle playing football. Tried again twice more after more than a year break rehabbing - again had to stop before the top...

Fifth attempt was the charm! All the way up in one go, and happier about it than pretty much anything I've done on the bike, even though it's nearly twice as slow as the quickest time!



Beer time!

Looking at your ride, I'm not sure which one is "the hill" but there looked like a few pretty steep climbs on that ride!

It was the big one pretty much exactly half way through. To be fair I've built it up to be the Ventoux or Mur de Huy in my mind!

ran my first ever timed 5K race today. All signs indicated that a sub-20 minutes time was possible and that's what I set as my goal aftre running a 2.5 km stretch in 9:57 earlier this week. Well, I crushed that goal with a unofficial finish time in 19:28!!!

No need to say I'm ecstatic with that time, VERY happy!

:banana:

FM

Wow great work!!

Not a bad debut 5k ...

Very impressive! Nice work!

FM and Alan both had great races this weekend. Hard work paid off this weekend.

I wanted to find a race for yesterday or today but the local events were gimmicky, color type runs.

Wow awesome!

thanks guys, official timing and placement came to 19:26.1, 30th overall out of 369 finishers (top 8.1%), 25th out of 136 in men (top 18.4%) and 4th out of 36 in M40-49 (top 11.1%).

The overall winner finished in 14:58.1 :eek:
The M40-49 winner finished in 18:14.1

8 runners in M40-49 finished in under 20 minutes so 4 within 26 seconds behind me and one that was only 1.3 seconds behind me. That final push of mine was golden! :)

FM

Great job FM. The more you run, the more incredible your results become!

For me, I ran the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on Friday. It is the largest 10k I think in the world, or at least the U.S. with 60,000 runners. It is also the National 10k championship with a $50,000 prize so pulls many of the elite U.S. runners to it. It was simply an experience like none other that I have had. Nothing like any of the other races that I have done. The sheer enormity of it was mind blowing, and it was just amazing to have thousands of spectators along the entire course. Many were cheering or handing out various homemade pizza, cupcakes, or others were handing out things like beer even. It was like one huge party.

For me, I started way in the back in Wave X, the next to last wave. This was due to being registered without a qualifying time so I was running it with the masses. Every wave had something like 3,000 - 5,000 people in it I would guess, and they started 5 minutes after the previous wave. My hope was to try to make it through my wave and then I was thinking the crowds might thin out some as you get further in the race, making it easier to run....

I was waaaaaay wrong.

What I actually ended up having happen was after getting through one wave of people, I would then hit the previous wave and have to weave my way through those people only to hit the next wave before that. Quite an experience that I've never had before in a race. It actually made most of the race kind of like Nascar where I was constantly looking for holes to move in to so I could pass people.

I figured with the course being alot of up and downs, plus the Atlanta heat, this wasn't going to be a PR performance for me, so I actually just focused on the experience and trying to see how many waves I could catch up to during the race as my goals. What ended up happening though was the weather ended up being surprisingly cool (only about 70 degrees) and pretty easy compared to what I have been running in lately, so was not a factor at all for me.

I found due to the numbers of people, I never really got tired, and it was quite empowering hitting "Cardiac Hill", their version of heartbreak hill, where there were hundreds of people walking up it, and I just chugged up without any real feeling of tiredness at all. That mile was my slowest mile, but I handled the hill at around a 9:30 pace and got over it without feeling any wear at all.

I ended up getting to mile 5 and realized that I was not tired at all and had plenty left in the tank, so I started running alot faster... it was about 1/2 way into that mile that I suddenly heard from behind me some shouting "Meb on your left... Meb coming..." Meb, the winner of the Boston marathon was running this race, but started in the very back with the goal of trying to pass something like 25,000 runners for charity. I happened to be running on the left side too, and looked over and saw Meb coming up really fast to me. I didn't get in his way, but then tried to move in behind him and see how long I could keep up with him. I increased my pace to somewhere around 7:00min/mile and he just left me in the dust. Probably by about 3 minutes later, I could no longer see him :)

I did finish mile 6 in under 8 minutes though and coasted on in to the finish feeling like I did really great. My watch decided to have issues though from mile 5 on with all kinds of bad data tracks and gave weird times when I first uploaded it. (Some of you saw that it had given me some PRs on many distances, including a 10k PR of 50 minutes). None of that was correct as the data tracks were off.

I ended up re-editing the file, and uploaded a new one tonight, and it looks like it gave me a 10k time of 52:58, which is 5 seconds slower than my 10k PR. Which I find hilarious considering my recent half marathon I ended up 3 seconds behind my PR. :) I totally will take it though as I was not expecting a PR anyways on a hilly course in Atlanta during the summer with 60,000 runners!

The official time from the Peachtree road race was 54:33 and I finished 8045 out of 60,000 runners.

Big congrats to FrogMan and Alan T! This thread continues to be inspirational.

Good to see another cyclist here, too...enjoying looking at Alex B's rides!

Passed my total mileage from 2013 yesterday. Still not quite on target for my yearly goals, thanks to a lazy first quarter, but expect to be caught up in another month or so.

Not sure if serious ...
Nocturnal Lands

I guess thanks to Groupon for bringing this to my attention?

Nice job! It should pay off this fall for you!



These type of runs (Color Run, Electric Run, Foam Run, etc) have been popping up all over in an effort to try to get money from less serious runners by making it an event. I tend to stay away from them myself since they tend to :

1) Be overly packed, not timed and mostly just people walking from place to place in the more reputable ones such as the Color Runs..

or

2) Pretty shady/scammy and not anything close to what they advertised such as the Foam runs.


Still, I guess on the good side, it does get some more people off of the couch that wouldn't otherwise get exercise of any kind

thanks Alan, I have said it before, I am a bit amazed at what my body can do. Incredible is the word I guess. Training seemed to point that way but as I said in my dynasty, my mind needed convincing...

And kudos to you too on your 10K. Man, 60,000 runners, that must have been crazy, and then to get passed by Meb, woah. Must have been quite an experience...

thanks everyone for the kind words, full race report with pictures is available in my dynasty thread, link in my signature...

FM

great job!

FM

bit of the reasons why I don't like the specialty events myself. I said it before, I race to test myself, see how fast I can make this 43 yo body go with training. Not to see how dirty with colour I can get or how muddy I can get or if I can get away from prison guards...

Incidentally, Runner's World is reporting about one of those mud races going bankrupt:
Hard Charge Mud Race Series Goes Out of Business | Runner's World & Running Times


FM

This foam run looks like a blast!



My wife and daughter did a 5k Color Run a few weeks back and it was a very well organized event. They had a great time but I wouldn't want to run through those color sprays and breathe in that junk. My 5 year old refuses to get anywhere near the jogging stroller now so that gave me a good excuse to cheer them on instead.

Geez, Alan! 139 kms for July on July 13th? :eek:

yeah, when I saw I had received the 80 km badge for July on Strava and saw right below he had just received the 120 km badge, I almost felt disappointed with my numbers :D

FWIW, I'm at 102 km for July because 6.8 or so didn't count on the Strava challenge, having been done on the tredmill. In line for my best month ever...

FM

So far, still feeling pretty good as far as wear and tear goes on the legs. Keeping the recovery runs at a slower pace seems to be doing the trick for me.

To be honest, I'm struggling far more from heat and direct sunlight than the miles right now. Even getting up at 5am to run, still having to deal with 80+ degrees by the end of the runs with 90+% humidity is draining me a bit. The days that I have no choice but to run at noon are pretty brutal.

I'm leaving in about 10 days on a vacation in the southern hemisphere though where it is winter time, so hopefully that will make things nicer for a bit. However I am sure it will be a shock when I return home :)

Yeah, the heat and humidity are killers. I was feeling it toward the end up my 8 mile run yesterday.

I would kill for some heat. The high was 12 degrees celcius yesterday. Technically that's probably really good running weather but I just want a stretch of nice, hot sunny days to run in for awhile.

Not that I ran yesterday, but still :)

Yesterday i was going to run 12k, but at 34ºC (93F) at 21:00! I was wasted after 7K and ran 3k more to a total of 10k, when i had to stop and walk back home the remaining 2k.

I guess it was because the temperature even drinking at every k (ran with a camelback water pack).

It was 96 when I finished today but the rest of the week looks quite nice with highs in the lower 80's on Thursday and Friday. I'm trying not to let the heat hold me back outside of pace but I have cut back drastically on my weekly long runs.

Does anyone else have the problem where their arm falls asleep when they run? On many of my longer runs, my left arm ends up falling asleep or feeling numb. It's pretty annoying.

I had that happen on one of my half marathons I ran, but normally not an issue for me. My belief was that during the race that I had the arm fall asleep, I was running with my upper body too clenched/too much stress and that tightness eventually ended up causing it to fall asleep.

Usually I try to run with my entire body relaxed to avoid that from happening, and if I find myself clenching my fists or holding my shoulders too tight, I'll make an effort to relax them.

Yeah that happens to me sometimes, also on the longer runs. It's not usually my whole arms, but more my fingers. I've often wondered if it is some sort of heart-attack precursor, but I haven't dropped yet so I just put it out of my mind and keep chugging along :)

I originally thought it was from holding my phone in my left hand, so I got a belt to carry the phone in. But that didn't stop it. I don't think I tense the arm or hand up, but I do make a conscious effort to have the hand open/relaxed, rather than clenched in a fist. I end up trying to elevate the arm over my head to try to revive it, but it's not really effective. It feels best when I let it hang like a limp sausage.

I've had those secret thoughts that this must be a heart attack warning, but I realize that's pretty silly. My hypochondriac theory goes more along the lines of "blood clot waiting to shoot into my heart" thoughts.

Not sure if it has been posted before, but for those of you who use Strava and want more fun with data, check out this awesome site: http://veloviewer.com/

It has tons of statistical goodies.

Pretty funny that you mention this. I actually had posted this to my facebook yesterday. It is my running history in graph form from Veloviewer. My comment on facebook is that I'm about 220 miles ahead of this time last year, and I think I have an outside chance of running 1500 miles this year if I manage to avoid injuries.

yeah, after seeing Alan's FB post about mileage and him reminding me it was from veloviewer, I revisited the site. Really lots of interesting info.

Attached is my mileage chart as well as a color coded for distance every day. Pretty interesting to see how I went building up my long runs gradually...

I only started running on May 30th last year so it's no big surprise that I'm over by a lot at the same time last year, but I'm still already some 170 km over my whole total for last year. I should be in line to do about 1300 miles. I had a goal of 1000 miles when I started the year...

FM

Wow - that looks like the model of perfection. A personal trainer couldn't have drawn up a better plan than that. You can see a 3-month period of figuring things out, then a slow, steady progression of building up miles.

By contrast, here's the model of inconsistency below. Since starting 5/1/2013 around when this thread started, I've run 500+ miles, gained 10 pounds, and gotten markedly slower.

Here's mine. :)

thanks, ever since picking up my first Hal Higdon plan, I've been pretty good at sticking to it, adjusting it from training cycle to training cycle. It sure helps me to have a reason for the training, at least that I semi-know what I'm doing, or where I wanna go...

Still plenty of room to build, we'll take it one step at a time.

FM

hey, nice increase from last year to this year! Well done! :)

FM

Yeah, this spring was the first time I was really able to run consistently on an every-other-day basis. I'm happy with my progress.

On Kodos' graph, you can kind of see where the winter ended :)

lol, and same for me if I exclude my treadmill runs ;)

FM

Yep. I need to get a treadmill. Any recommendations?

You guys put me to shame on these things, but here's mine:

This is the model I bought last September:
Commercial 1750 Treadmill | NordicTrack Treadmills

Bought it straight from nordictrack.ca and paid $1500 for it. Maybe the best decision I have ever made. I love that it does decline (down to -3%) as well as incline and there's no maintenance on it whatsoever. No lubing or whatever.

I see they seem to have a newer model, C1630 available to $1000.
C 1630 Pro | NordicTrack

They ship for free.

FM

I think my favorite part of that site is the Run Bests section. I knew Strava was tracking it all but, at least in the unpaid version, there is no way to see it all in one place.

Last night I ran the 5k race that I've been training for over the past couple of months.

When I ran this last year it was my first 5k; 2nd run, but the Chase challenge is 3.5 miles so a weird distance. I had a target time of 26:30 and posted a 25:20 so I was really excited about the progress I was making. Two days later, I had another 5k and lowered that time to 25:05.

I didn't schedule another 5k until Halloween that year, fearing the hot August months and for whatever reason struggling to get an event on the books in September. My running tailed off without having the carrot of a race in front of me and I didn't adequately pick up the pace as the race got close. It was cold outside (or at least cold enough for me to make excuses) in October and I had grown to dislike the treadmill runs. That Halloween run came in at 25:04, which was a little galling as I felt like I screwed up not getting my times under 25 last year.

Anyway, I didn't run in any meaningful way at all this winter. Let my weight creep up another 5-10 pounds in the process and when I got outside for my first runs this spring my 5k runs had me finishing in the 28+ minute range. Which was a little dismaying, as I wasn't prepared for that much of a backslide. I got the time down to 26:30 for an early April run and then got to work with a more aggressive commitment to running this year with the goal of lowering my times below where they had been this year. 24 was the written goal (on Smashrun) along with 1,000 miles for the year.

Subsequent runs this year have been a bit goofy. There was a small run 15 minutes from home in the first week in May where the course turned out to be 4.4km. On that day I wasn't going to get 25 minutes, but obviously it was disappointing to not see the final time at the right distance. The Chicago iteration of the Chase Corporate Challenge was three weeks later, but that is a 3.5 mile race. My pace for that run was right around 25:00 but still no PR to hang my hat on under what had become a bit of a mental block.

Three weeks later, I finally broke through on a training run and posted a 24.34 time. So at this point, my goals for the July 5k race changed, and I wanted to see if I could run at 24.00. I stuck religiously to the Hal Higdon intermediate training plan for the next 5 weeks, breaking it only in the final week as I had this 5k followed by a 10k on Saturday. The plan called for a number of easy runs and long runs, with only the tempo runs giving me meaningful insight into where I was on my 5k time. That last week I adjusted to provide me with a little different taper (3 days rest), and in the two days before the rest I wanted to see what I could do with some speed running last weekend to let me know if I was on target for my 24 minute goal.

The 5k test run on Saturday came in at 24:44. It wasn't a great test, as I originally started the run adhering to the 5 mile fast HH recommendation, but changed my mind about 2km into the run. My pacing was a bit off, there were a few more hills than I would do for a flat track, and other things I could rationalize in my head but this still was a fair amount away from my goal.

I had figured out that I wanted to try and (near) negative split the 5k, breaking it into the following intervals:
1km - 5:00
2km - 4:50
3km - 4:40
4km - 4:40
5km - 4:40

Which would represent a 23:50 time. However, I had never run 3km at a 4:40 pace before, let alone the closing 3km of a race. So Sunday I set out to run 3km at the fastest pace I could hold, and posted a time that represented an average of 4:30. Mission accomplished, time for my rest, and to see if the 24 mark was falling.

Weather was perfect for the run. 70 degrees, nothing scary on humidity front, running on Lake Michigan with maybe 8mph winds. I was running with a bunch of people from work and we were late making our way over to the start. There were no gates segregating runners here, so our position was not optimal. 800 runners, we were middle of the pack, and looking around me I was pretty sure I was going to have to be pretty aggressive passing people around me out of the chute if I wanted to get off to the fast start needed to hit my time.

Which is exactly what I did. The race was run on a pretty wide bike path, so I was swerving off the fine gravel surface onto grass pretty regularly over the first 1/2km in an effort to find a group running at my pace. Which was about 4:40 ... hmm, time to change attack plans and see if I could run the first 3 km at 4:40 and then hold on tight for the last two km. I knew I was running fairly easy now, but I also recalled just how gassed I was on Sunday after 3km at 4:30.

At the 3km mark I was on pace for my 4:40 plan. Looking at the Strava data, the splits were 4:39/4:39/4:36 but I was starting to hit a wall. The two mile mark is regularly where I start to suffer on my training runs, and where I would sometimes stop last year. Now I am better about slowing my pace and finishing the run with a lesser time, but that wasn't a real option for me if I wanted to hit my 24:00 goal. I wasn't running the numbers in my head super-clearly at this point, but I did know that I would have to sustain 5 minute kilometers the rest of the way to hit my goal. Which was doable, but probably not if I fell back to 5:00 for my 4th km. So time to push through ...

4th km time was 4:46, which let me know that I was in really good shape for hitting my goal. That was reassuring because I was gassed at this point. I made a point of refusing to look at my heart rate for fear that it would demoralize me. It definitely would have, as my average heart rate for the 4th km was 181. The 3rd kilometer was 177, which also falls into my "anaerobic" zone. As I pushed down the stretch the pace on my watch was showing somewhere in the 4:45 range, so I was going to post a nice mid-23 time.

Only the race was coming to an end too soon. My watch said 4.5km, but I could see the finish line. No way that was another 1/2km away. My legs were shot, but I tried to push it up to another gear to close out the race. I think I managed to pass about the same number of people who passed me at this point but it wasn't much of a finishing kick. Some of my co-workers were cheering me on with about 150m to go, with one yelling, "don't look at your time, just dig in!" without realizing that I wasn't sweating time but the fact that there was no way in hell that this was going to be a 5km race.

I crossed the finish line with the distance being about 4.85km and kept my run going for a few paces. Here was my inner monologue at this point:
- "Just keep running until your watch says 5.0km so this is official on your watch, if not on the race site"
- "I'm being a little rude barreling through this crowd of people, sucking on orange slices and having their post race conversations with family/friends"
- "I'm really, really, really tired"

So I cut bait at 4.9km, with a time of 22:54. No official 5k race time under 25 minutes to call my own, but I do know that the training over the past two months (120km last month, probably a smidge more this month) has paid off in much faster times. I need to get another 5k on the books soon; no waiting until October this year. And then I'll see if I can post a time under 23 minutes this year, which was my goal time internally before my fat, out-of-shape ass posted 28+ minutes on the first run of the spring.

10k on Saturday. It will be my first time running a race at that distance, although I've done weekend runs at this distance several times, including just about every weekend in June and July. My best time for a 10k is just under 55 minutes, and I'm hoping to improve that by a couple of minutes tomorrow. But I'm not going into it with the same kind of emphasis on time as I had for this 5k. I don't really know what I can run at this distance, and accept that if I push for something like a 52:00 that I may end up crashing and burning. So whatever happens, happens. I just want to feel good about this run and set a time to target for the next time I get out and run at this distance.

One final note - will be retiring my shoes after the 10k. My wife has started a Couch-to-5k and is about halfway through. She was shopping for some new shoes online when I intervened and told her that we should go to a running store to help her find the right pair. I want her to have the best opportunity to keep running after she finishes this program and I figure getting the right pair of shoes would help her with motivation. And if I happened to to look at a couple of pairs of shoes that day, well so much the better given the 250-300 or so miles I had accumulated on the current pair.

So, I've got a pair of Brooks Ghost 7's sitting in a box right now. I wasn't going to swap out shoes 10 days before my 5k/10k runs, even though the person at the running store strongly advocated I do exactly that. I knew what I was getting with my current shoes, had put all my training time in with those shoes, and the Ghost's will have the opportunity to mark the start of the next chapter of my running life. The current Brooks Adrenaline's get to see me through Saturday's race before surrendering the foot pod and being shipped off to the glue factory (ie - rain day runs, walks with family, etc.)

Does anyone know if there is a feature where you can plug Strava into a treadmill to track how far you have gone, times, etc...I am going to start running at the Y on really hot/ stormy. etc...days

hoopsguy, Great job on the race. Was the course certified? If so, you can safely trust the certification over your watch measurement as the watch is going to be a little off. I have the Ghosts too and they're a great shoe. In my experience, Brooks hold up so much better than other brands.

Latham, you can use foot pods for tracking treadmill runs.

For indoor runs, using the strava iphone app only, you have to just enter it into Strava manually by copying in the information from the treadmill.

If you find yourself getting more serious about it or planning on doing a bunch more indoor running, you have a few options, but both require purchases. As Todd said above, you can get a footpod that keeps track of how many steps that you have taken while running and converts it into distance/pace. The footpod has to connect to something either, I believe there are some footpods you can get that will work natively with the iphone app, but I do not know which ones those are.. or what many of us have done is purchase a GPS running watch that also has a footpod sync to it, and then you don't have to worry about using your iphone while running anymore.

As I said on strava, great job! As Todd mentioned, if this was a certified course then it was wheel measured at 5k and trumps your watch for the legitimacy of the distance. If uncertified, then at least you know that you easily had a sub 24 minute 5k time there, and you absolutely have been doing great in improving!

Thanks for the recommendations. You've been pretty satisfied with the $1500 version? My wife wants to replace our stationary bike, and she seems open to a treadmill, which obviously would be great for me come winter.

Anyone else have any recommendations?

anyone ever use a sportband or something similar?

My wifes boss swears by hers.

Nike+ FuelBand SE. Nike Store

And let me pile on with another "Nice job!", hoopsguy. You can see your work starting to pay off!

awesome job hoopsguy, no matter if the course was the right distance, or if your watch was off or not, the best is you now know you can push it and that was proof that the training paid off. Is there anything better than that? To get confirmation that the hard work was not in vain? I think not...

I also run with Ghost 7, in fact alternating between a pair of 6 and my newer 7. Love them, great neutral shoes. Thinking about finding a pair with a slightly sturdier sole for winter running though. I liked my Asics Nimbus las winter and have the feeling the Ghost might be a bit soft for packed snow/icy surface running, just an impression...

FM

I'd like to pick the brains of our running experts here. I have a 5K coming up on Saturday, August 2nd. Below is what is scheduled from my Intermediate Half Marathon training plan on RunKeeper. Obviously, running 9 miles two days before would not be conducive to a good result. I'm thinking of maybe shifting the next 9 mile run to Sunday (July 27th), then maybe a 5 mile recovery run on Tuesday. Maybe a shorter run on Thursday, around 4 miles. Does that seem like a decent plan?

Just a warning, Nike fired all of their fuelband staff and I believe are not going to be continuing that product line. It sounds like they are going a different direction by integrating with another hardware vendor (perhaps apple). So you may want to hold off on getting a fuelband.

If you want something similar though, I know fitbits are pretty popular, but they seem to be more geared for walking or hiking than running.

One of the newer options out that may interest you based on your previous question about keeping track of distance on a treadmill is Garmin's new FR15 which is a combination of a low end/budget GPS watch plus a sportband type tracker like a fitbit/fuelband.

Full details on Garmin’s new FR15 combined GPS watch + activity monitor | DC Rainmaker

Are you meaning race the 5k on Saturday the 2nd followed by run 9 miles on Sunday the 3rd? If so, I think I would caution against that. Even though a 5k is a short distance, if you are racing it, you'll likely be red-lined for almost the entire thing which means you will be thrashing your muscles. In a half marathon training plan, generally your "hard days" are your speed work and your long runs. All other runs are considered easy days. I wouldn't go back to back on two straight "hard days" even if different types of workouts.

What I probably would do if I felt i absolutely wanted to race the 5k hard would be something like: August 2: Run very easy 1 mile warm up - Race 5k (3.1 miles) - Run a very easy 2 mile recovery / August 3: Easy 3 mile recovery run.

You'll combine a total of 9 miles between the two days, but substitute a long run with a speed workout essentially. Then just continue on with your schedule as it is written out from there.

No, I mean this Sunday I would run 9 miles, then taper things off during the week in preparation for the race.

Yep, it was a CARA certified course which is a big part of the reason I was confused with the distance being off.

Yeah I don't see that would be a big deal. You could essentially swap the workouts from the 27th and 30th if you wanted. Just keep the 30th very easy pace.

Yeah, if it is certified, they generally wheel measure it. What likely happened is when you take corners with a gps watch, depending on how locked in the GPS accuracy is (sometimes more sketchy in wooded areas or among high buildings), the GPS can cut across to connect up the dots rather than take the actual curve path you take. This is actually pretty common on paths with a big hook like your race appeared to have at a turn around point. Most likely the GPS watch just cut off a little bit of the distance for you.

Cool, thanks Alan. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't a flaw in my plan.

absolutely satisfied with it. I have put some 773 km on it, close to 69 hours. It has a iPad holder on which I rest my iPad and watch downloaded TV shows. Only way I could keep up with Arrow and Agents of Shield during the season, so much so that I sill have a couple episodes of each to watch since I started running outdoor before their seasons ended...

that $1000 model didn't exist at the time though and I'm pretty sure it could do the trick quite well... Both console look very similar other than mine having an Android tablet for screen. Could use it to surf the web but I'd never do that while running anyway...

FM

I personally wouldn't see any problem with that switch.

FM

Hardly an expert, but having just gone through mixing/matching calendar the week before a 5k I figured I would chime in. The 4 mile "recovery" run would probably be fine for that Thursday. But I'm not sure it would be the end of the world to skip the day altogether either. What does your 10k training plan call for in terms of taper period the week before the run? I'm guessing lower distances and 2-3 days off. If you aren't doing any pull-back on distances for those runs 4-7 days out then the 3 day rest period might make sense.

I ended up taking three days off before the 5k, which might have been too much. But I had a hard time talking myself into something like 2mi easy for the Tuesday so just figured that 3 days downtime wasn't going to kill me even if the cool weather was practically begging me to get out and stretch my legs.

This a pretty amazing story!

BBC Sport - Steve Way: From cigarettes and alcohol to marathon man

the more I play with Veloviewer, the more I'm impressed by it and the data it's got. I'm seriously thinking I will not view my runs through Strava anymore but right from Veloviewer just after importing them through Strava.

The 3D view is very neat...

FM

First 10k in the books this Saturday. Pretty pleased with time; it is a little slower than my 5k pace from the same race last year and about 3.5 minutes faster than my last training run at this distance.

Now time to break in the new shoes, find another 5k to run, and hope that Chicago's unseasonably cool July bleeds into August.

great stuff hoops... Reminds me I need to get into some of the events around Chicago. Where do you run mostly? Lakefront? I have been running the Montrose-Central-Irving Park rd-Cicero loop for a few months and need to add distance and new locales. My goal is by years end to make it from Portage Park to Montrose Beach and back.

I should probably update my profile, as I'm actually out in the west burbs these days. So most weekdays I'm running in Hanover Park/Bartlett/Carol Stream and sometimes getting out to Winfield/Wheaton on the weekends. I'm hoping that over the summer/fall that I'm able to stretch out a little farther on my longer runs to cover more distance on this trail:

Great Western Trail Illinois Trail Reviews

As far as races, I'm probably about 50/50 between Chicago and races within 15 miles of home. If you have one in mind to run at some point this year let me know and would try to sign up for it.

This week didn't go as planned.

After a few good weeks I was hoping to get my first 160 mile month in July. All I needed was 5 runs of 5 miles a day with 6 days left in the month. That should have been easy enough but we had a family beach trip in Port Aransas, TX. The humidity there just beat me down. I got 5 runs in but went on Friday and not Thursday. I also didn't reach 5 miles for any of my runs and ended up with around 150 miles for the month and then an extra 4 on Friday. The goal was not reached but I did have some runs with great scenery and produced massive amounts of sweat.

I also forgot to pack my Garmin charger cable with me. My old Nike watch wouldn't make it 3 runs without draining completely. My Garmin still had around 50% battery left over. I thought that was very impressive.

My plan for August is to cut back a bit. I'm thinking about training for the Dallas Marathon in December and training would start near the beginning of September. I'm thinking about cutting back on the number of runs per week from 6/7 to 4/5 per week and maybe concentrating more on the long runs a little more. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I've tried Google'ing what to do the month before training begins but I haven't found anything.

Just got back in the country yesterday, trying to catch up on the forums.. great job on the 10k Hoops!

Todd, the various marathon plans that I've used have suggested that you do not want to start the first week of the marathon training with a huge jump in the miles. So for example, if the plan you are using starts you off at around 30-35 miles per week in week 1 you want to be easily running at least 25 miles per week the week or two before starting.

Most marathon plans seem to use the first few weeks as base building before really getting into lactate threshold runs, so probably anything you do the month before you could likely just keep easy aerobic pace to keep the miles going without it being overly taxing on you.

As far as cutting back on days from 6/7 to 4/5 per week, there seems to be different schools of thought on that. Most of the ones that seem to work for me suggest cutting back on days doesn't really help your running and doesn't prevent overtraining. What does is making sure that a few of those days are super easy pace so they aren't tough to run and where they are pretty enjoyable. The largest reasons to cut back tend to be more focused on busy real life that just makes running more days tougher.. or doing other types of physical training in addition to running (lifting/cycling/triathlon/crossfit/etc).

I think right now I'm on a plan that has 5 running days per week myself, the other 2 days are either rest days or crosstraining days, but as the plan continues to add miles, I lose the 2nd rest day and go to 6 runs per week .