Week 4 Training Recap: Mar 19 - 25

54 miles total this week. 4 weeks out and rapidly approaching race day. Life is moving at warp speed too. I am writing my training recap as I am sitting in the Monterey, CA airport eagerly wanting to get home after being here for a work conference for several days.

I'm thinking about mixing in some new content with the steady stream of training recaps as we get toward marathon day, stay tuned for some "team sport reports". As if I don't have enough going on :-)

M: 5mi in 36:26. This was the day after New Bedford Half Marathon. My mindset was that it was an achievement just getting out the door.

T/a.m.: 7.6mi: 1.25mi warmup, then 20x 400m at 5K to 10K pace (planned), ran a bit slower than that at first and built up to faster intervals by the end, then 1.5mi cooldown

T/p.m.: 2.5mi super easy 28:05 with my 10 year old daughter who asked to go out on a run with me. She wants to run a 5K road race coming up soon and asked for me to help her get ready! A very nice relaxing run and conversation with her.

W:  12.2mi in 1:29:43. This is the second to last 12 mile mid-week longer run of the training program before taper time! Thank goodness, these are a real project, starting even earlier than usual at 05:00 to be done at a reasonable time.

T:  7.5mi tot: 6.8mi in 47:55, followed by 6x 150m strides
F:  off
S: 22K total. 2K warmup, 10 alternations of 1K@6:34 + 1K@7:07/mi pace (plan). Had foot pain in the later part of the workout and decided to slow down and cut short just slightly the overall workout. Here are the paces (min/mi) for each of the alternations:

• 6:32/mi, 7:10/mi
• 6:26, 7:06
• 6:23, 6:58
• 6:32, 7:00
• 6:40, 7:06
• 6:45, 6:55
• 6:22, 6:45
• 6:29, 7:32 <--- Pain here in that 6:29/mi 1K interval
• 6:47, 7:57
• 6:40, 7:43

S: 5.7mi: 6:27, 6:30, 6:42, 6:05, 6:10, 6:10/mi
11 hours on a plane trip to California preceded this effort. I think being cooped up in a plane so long made me feel obligated to get out there and hit it harder than usual.

Week 5, New Bedford Half Marathon Recap: Mar 12 - 18

For the week 5 recap I'll skip the day by day training details and focus on the fun - the race! After all, that's why we put in all this hard work, to have it show up in a strong performance on race day.

55 miles total for the week. Other than the New Bedford Half Marathon on sunday, the most noteworthy training run was a hill workout on thursday. I ran 8 miles including a warmup and cooldown, and in the middle these repeats (6x):

• 60 sec up at 5K race pace
• 2 minutes recovery pace continuing up the hill
• turn and run downhill hard for 2 minutes
• recover for 90 seconds to the bottom of the hill

Jitters
A good marathon training program includes a long distance race toward the end of the program before the big event. My training partner Joe Loureiro and I ran this half marathon, and another training partner Will Swenson will run the Eastern States 20 miler. It's typical to have pre-race butterflies sometimes days in advance of a big test like this. But this time I was both preoccupied with work and family activities as always, and also thinking ahead to my ultimate goal - Boston. So I felt no jitters whatsoever. I posted this the day before the race: A Cold Blooded Tweet. Well, those jitters finally appeared, and they came up big on race day morning as we traveled to New Bedford. There are a lot of details to be concerned with on race day from sleep to nutrition to hydration, etc. But foremost is the idea that you want to put all of that incredible training effort to good use right now - today.

A Good Field
This race is a pretty big event in New England and there are several runners I know or follow who participated. I traveled with Joe and some runners from the Merrimack Valley Striders running club, and knew I would be seeing friends including Erica Ouellette, Matt Story, Denis Tranchemontagne and Yvonne Yen. And a prominent local runner Nate Jenkins would be competing (and likely challenging for the overall race victory - he did, and placed second overall in another very impressive performance).

Beating Expectations
Before the race I guessed maybe I could on a very good day race 1:25 and beat my previous 1:27+ performance in the Bay State Half Marathon in Oct. 2011. I did some back of the envelope calculations, imagining I might turn this into an interval workout (4x 5K intervals with very short rest periods in between), and maybe put together a 1:25 result. Well, I guess I was way off because I finished this race in 1:21:48!!!!

There are two hills on the course, but also long stretches of gentle downhill running that I think greatly assisted my pace. I started to notice some very fast (for me) mile splits especially on the downhills starting in mile 3/4 and just kept going with it as long as I could. Well, when I came up upon my friend Denis at about 11.5 miles I still had enough left in the tank to finish strong. He told me if I put in a good kick I could get under 1:22 for the race. After a fist bump and exchanging some encouraging words I gave it a shot. He was right - as I turned the final corner I could see the official race clock ahead ticking off 1:21:40, 41, ... and I knew I had it. What a great feeling to be running strong down a straight stretch to the finish line knowing you've just beat your best time by nearly 6 minutes - fantastic! Now that is the definition of a good day on the race course!

My mile by mile time splits from the New Bedford Half Marathon

Race Results from coolrunning.com

Also very gratifying to see was that nearly everyone I know managed a PR or very close to it. Joe Loureiro managed his best half, even in the face of some physical challenges in recent weeks of training. I'm so glad to see Yvonne get a sub 2 hour half as she is preparing for the Chicago Marathon. Erica Ouellette her training partner and Chicago teammate also got her best time. Matt Story too got a PR while battling some pain during the race. And Denis just about matched his best time also set in New Bedford last year.

Me and Joe (wearing the MVS singlet). Still smiling early in the race! Both photos courtesy of http://krissyk.smugmug.com/ Krissy Kozlosky

Working hard in the first half of the race. No smiling now!

Training Recap Week 6: Mar 5 - 11

43mi this week

M: off (my legs needed it after a busy weekend of running 23+ and 6+ including the Claddagh Pub 4 miler)

T: 7+mi tot: 1.35mi warmup, then 12x {400m, and 200m recovery}, 1.6mi cooldown. The 400m runs were done in 3 sets of 4 at 1/2 marathon, 10K, 5K and 3K effort.

• Set 1: 1:43, 1:39, 1:39, 1:34
• Set 2: 1:43, 1:36, 1:34, 1:26
• Set 3: 1:44, 1:39, 1:38, 1:30

W: 12.28mi in 1:28 7:12/mi pace.
Wednesday is our mid-week medium/long run that started at about 6 miles way back in Week 22 (November last year) and is now at its peak of 12 miles now here in week 6 from now until the marathon (except final taper weeks possibly). 5 weeks to go! (but really, who's counting?)

T: 5.7mi tot: 5mi in 36:51, and then 6x150m strides following the run
In mile 5 I decided to throw in a random surge / sprint for about 1/10 mile just to mix it up (you could say just for fun) and make the otherwise ordinary workout more "interesting"

F: off

S: 17.4mi long run with tempo intervals, a really challenging workout!
Here the plan was: 1K warmup, 6K @ 6:58/mi, 5K @ 6:54, 4K@6:46, 3K@6:38, 2K@6:34, 1K@max effort with 1K recovery 7:21-7:41/mi pace between the intervals

Here is the workout data, I think I did pretty well compared to the plan (except the 3K interval)! A real highlight of the workout is that I managed a 6:55/mi pace for the whole workout (including those slower 1K recovery runs) - very encouraging!
runningahead log entry here

S: off

Summary after 17 weeks of training for Boston:

Claddagh Pub 4 Miler, March 4 2012 - Photo Credit Ted Tyler jimrhoades.com

Training Recap Week 7: Feb 27 - Mar 04

Another very good week of training is in the books. Like last week it featured a contrast in weather (Florida/vacation then back home to New England where I endured two downright messy workouts in snow and rain). It also included new personal mileage records (58 miles for the week, and a single long run of 23 miles)!

M: 3.5mi, 30:36 easy pace, barefoot running on the beach at Lovers Key State Park
(map)
I was thinking about sneaking in the next day's longer, faster workout here. However, there are tons of hard, sharp shells on this beach and it just wasn't going to happen. I had to watch every step and adjust to avoid painful landings. So I took it easy and that was fine by me after logging lots of miles in the previous week including 15 and 8 miles in the prior two days.
 
T: 7.8mi tot: 1.7mi warmup, then 3x {8 min at ~6:30/mi pace, 2min recovery), 1.6mi cooldown
(final workout in Florida, early a.m. before flying home in the afternoon)

W: 11mi in 1:19, lots of miles in the 7:10s and 6:33 final mile - feeling good!

T: 7.2mi in 53:50 easy 7:30/mi pace in some very sloppy conditions with lots of water and some snow accumulated on the ground

F: off

S: 23.25mi in 2:54, 7:30/mi overall in very sloppy weather conditions.
More snow had accumulated overnight and we had some light freezing rain at the beginning of this long run. The plan was to run a 25 mile (yes 25) tempo run at 90 to 95% of goal marathon pace. The route included two 12+ mile loops. I was very well soaked by the time I ran by my house after "lap" 1. I decided to keep going since I really wanted to have another 20+ mile run logged at this point after having only run one several weeks ago. So I soldiered on and got a lot more soaked including getting sprayed with snow by the tires of oncoming motorists - about 4 or 5 times (I practiced some hand gestures and voice work at this point :-). I cut about a mile from the end of the second loop to simply put an end to it. Had some pain in the feet on one of the late downhill sections, and then my leg muscles all wanted to cramp / spasm after I finished running.

S: 6.2mi tot, 4mi race!
The training plan was to run 4 miles easy. My training partner Joe Loureiro had signed up for The Claddagh Pub 4 mile race so I decided to join him and add a little flavor to an otherwise mundane training run. I wondered if my legs would be up for this but I did some stretching between saturday's long run and this day. Well, the legs did just fine - I ran a 6:18 first mile, 6:37 mile 2 that featured quite a hill climb to the mile marker. Then, I used the downhill at the beginning of the 3rd mile to build a fast pace that I ended up holding the rest of the way to the finish line! Miles 3 and 4 were both 6:01/mi!

6:20/mi pace for the race, 14th place overall, and 4th out of 159 runners in my age category! That felt good!

Training Recap Week 8: Feb 20 - 26

Well things are moving right along and as I write this it is actually already March. Less than 45 days to go until Patriots' Day! I think the hype machine is going to get fired up very soon now, as I complete my training and reach (and hopefully well surpass) my goal to raise $4000 for the American Red Cross of Eastern Massachusetts. You can contribute to my efforts by visiting this page:
http://american.redcross.org/goto/KenCain

This week was split between cold New England and very warm Florida (Fort Myers and Sanibel Island) where we took a family vacation during the school vacation week. So I only had to wear my cold weather gear twice and got to use shorts and tank tops the rest of the week!

55 miles this week!

M: 7mi trail run!
Plan was for 4mi of simple road running, but noticed a couple of other runners heading down toward a trail head and decided to join them. After a few miles running and talking we discovered we had a mutual friend Scott Graham who himself is a 25 time veteran of the Boston Marathon! So one of the guys I joined on this day told me if I wanted to get him going, to ask Scott about the one time he beat Dave Dunham in a marathon. Dave was running with Dan Verrington, both very accomplished runners. Maybe I'll try that some day Scott :-)

T: 7.6mi tot: 1.5mi warmup, then 20x {200m on, 200m recover}, ~1.4mi cooldown
This was an early a.m. workout at home before flying to Florida later in the day

W: 11mi from Fort Myers just out to the beginning of Sanibel Island and back. The only "hill" is the big causeway bridge 0.25mi "up" and 0.25mi back down
RunningAhead Log/Map 1

T:  6.35mi tot
5.5mi in 37:10, 6:45/mi pace in the Florida mid-day heat (somewhere in the 80's F)
RunningAhead Log/Map 2

then, 6x 180m strides following the run

F: off
S: 15.1 in 1:48 7:11/mi overall. An "out and back" course to the Sanibel Island Lighthouse pictured below.
RunningAhead Log/Map 3

S/XT: Family bike ride on Sanibel Island, 8+mi a real challenge for the kids but we took lots of breaks including one at a nice playground
RunningAhead Log/Map 4

S: 8mi in 55:28 (planned 4-5 easy), from the Island Cow restaurant where my family had dinner,back to the hotel. They passed me just before the end of this point to point course!
RunningAhead Log/Map 5