21 Mile Long Run

 2011 Boston Marathon Training  Comments Off on 21 Mile Long Run
Mar 272011
 

waiting-to-start-4
Yesterday was the day of the big 21 mile long run from Hopkinton to Boston College in Boston.  The Boston Athletic Association assisted in organizing the police, water stops and the staggering of the start times so that everything would go smoothly.

All the charity teams met at Boston College at 7:00 and were bused to Hopkinton around 7:30.  There were a *lot* of buses and I heard from several people that there were over 500 charity runners registered to partitpate in this last and most important training run.   The mood on my bus seemed pretty low key, even though one of the coaches tried a couple of times to rev everyone up.  After a few half hearted cheers in response to “IS EVERYONE EXCITED!!!!” the coach settled back into his seat as the bus took off.   The bus ride took a long time, and considering a lot of it was spent on Route 90 west it started to sink in just how far we would be running today.

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 Posted by at 7:30 pm

Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-27

 Training Log  Comments Off on Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-27
Mar 262011
 

Workouts 3
Time 367 min
Running 35.0 miles

  • tue: Recovery from long run. Easy pace 1.5 – 2 minutes behind marathon pace. Ran 7.0 miles for 70 minutes at 10:02 pace. My shins were still hurting this run
  • thu: 1 Mile warm up, 3 miles of marathon pace, 1 mile cool down. Ran 7.0 miles for 70 minutes at 10:02 pace. Feeling better than Tuesday
  • sat: Long run with walk breaks. Ran 21.0 miles for 227 minutes at 10:50 pace. It went well for the first 14 miles or so, then I started to run low on gas. I introduced walk breaks by mile 16 but it was really too late by then. I had to walk a lot at the end.
 Posted by at 8:00 pm

Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-20

 Training Log  Comments Off on Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-20
Mar 192011
 

Workouts 2
Time 132 min
Running 12.8 miles

  • tue: Alternate between 1 minutes of hard running followed by 4 minutes of easy running. Ran 6.1 miles for 62 minutes at 10:12 pace. Garmin Edge 205305
  • thu: 1 Mile warm up, 3 miles of marathon pace, 1 mile cool down. Ran 6.7 miles for 69 minutes at 10:21 pace. Garmin Edge 205305
 Posted by at 8:00 pm

Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-13

 Training Log  Comments Off on Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-13
Mar 122011
 

Workouts 3
Time 175 min
Running 17.0 miles

  • mon: Recovery from long run. Easy pace 1.5 – 2 minutes behind marathon pace. Ran 7.0 miles for 75 minutes at 10:43 pace. Perhaps a bit fast today. Need to slow down
  • tue: Measured mile plus speed work. Ran 5.0 miles for 45 minutes at 9:00 pace. MM was 7:40. Huge gain since the fall
  • thu: 1 Mile warm up, 3 miles of marathon pace, 1 mile cool down. Ran 5.0 miles for 55 minutes at 11:02 pace. Shins hurt, didn’t go well
 Posted by at 8:00 pm

Week 20 Training Update for Boston Marathon 2011

 2011 Boston Marathon Training  Comments Off on Week 20 Training Update for Boston Marathon 2011
Mar 122011
 

gathering
Today marks the end of my 20th week of training, which I started in October.  My total training miles is 468 miles so far, with 5 more weeks to go.  I frequently asked how training is going and it is sometimes very hard to answer that question.  “It is going great!” is my usual response, but truth be told training is a roller coaster of highs and lows.   This part of the training schedule is the very hardest because the miles you run each week are at the highest they will get (40+ miles) and your weekend “long run” is at the very max (18-21 miles).   15 people on my marathon team are down with injuries and it looks like most of them are out completely for Boston 2011.

Newbie mistake of the week: “Going out too fast”

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 Posted by at 11:34 am

Week 19 Update

 2011 Boston Marathon Training  Comments Off on Week 19 Update
Mar 072011
 

All in all a good week in training (for me):

Mon: 7 mi recovery run easy pace
Tue: 6 mi Fartlek run
Wed: Rest day
Thu: 6 mi tempo run
Fri : x-train 11,000 meter row + strength training
Sat: 17 mile on marathon course (natick, Wellesley, Newton)
Sun: 10,000 meter row

Total miles: 36

longrun-2011-03-05
The long run was challenging since I ran down through Wellesely, then up heartbreak hill, on to BU and then reversed it all. Other than the hills I ran to keep my HR very low (for me) but let it drift upward on the steeper hills but never really pushed it. Finished feeling very tired. The reverse hills coming back up rt 16 really suck but it is good practice since I will be hitting hills around 16 miles on marathon day. I will say the traffic is really bad on rt 16 is really bad and ice is still a problem. The carriage road on Comm Ave is great though.

Once thing that was nice is I had someone to run with on the first 7 miles since one of my team members is recovering from a hip injury and was running nice and slow like me He turned around at 7 and I turned around at 8.5. I was last team member back to starting point (out of 50 runners).

 Posted by at 10:03 am

Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-06

 Training Log  Comments Off on Weekly Training Report for 2011-03-06
Mar 052011
 

Workouts 4
Time 381 min
Running 36.0 miles

  • mon: Recovery from long run. Easy pace 1.5 – 2 minutes behind marathon pace. Ran 7.0 miles for 70 minutes at 10:02 pace. Once again I ran a recovery run too fast
  • tue: Alternate between 1 minutes of hard running followed by 4 minutes of easy running. Ran 6.0 miles for 57 minutes at 9:30 pace. Pretty good pace and no real issues.
  • thu: 1 Mile warm up, 3 miles of marathon pace, 1 mile cool down. Ran 6.0 miles for 60 minutes at 10:00 pace. Nice solid run, no issues
  • sat: Long run on marathon course. Ran 17.0 miles for 193 minutes at 11:24 pace. Very tough run. I took no walk breaks. Stopped a few times at water stops. Tough hills in both directions including heartbreak hill
 Posted by at 8:00 pm

Being the “Turtle”

 2011 Boston Marathon Training  Comments Off on Being the “Turtle”
Mar 042011
 

turtle
I am 7 weeks out from my first marathon! That seems so close now!

I have something weighing on my mind as I write this.

I just need to express my frustration at my pace. I cannot believe how many runners who look much more out of shape then me can sustain far faster paces than I. I see a lot of men with bear bellies and heavily overweight ladies moving at 9:00 paces for their training runs, while I (whose MP is 10:00) am doing long training runs at 11-11:30. Out of the 100 members of my charity I am the slowest, by a far margin. When weather is bad and I use a local indoor track I have occasion to see a lot of runners and observe them carefully. I just can’t figure out why they are all moving so fast except the obvious… their cardiovascular system are in far, far better shape than mine. This of course undermines my own pathetic reasons for running slowly (I am 45, I could still lose 20 pounds, etc). I watched one older guy (60ish) running in regular cargo shorts. He looked to me to be about 245, 5’9 with that tight as a drum beer belly that implies a lot of visceral fat around his organs, and he ran with this shambling, bouncing step… for 6 straight miles at a far faster pace than me. I found it really disillusioning to me since I am 5’10 175 pounds, running 40 miles a week with a smooth efficient stride. I do my fartleks and my tempo runs and my long runs. I read tons of books on running (just finished Hal’s how to run fast) The only thing that seems to hold me back is my Vo2 max. Yes, I had 20 years of no exercise, and I was 70 pounds heaver a few years ago and I only started running seriously in October, but should I not be further along at this point? Someone please tell me it takes 2-3 years to get to a pace of 7mm-9mm no matter how hard you try so I can stop trying to rush it!

 Posted by at 7:42 am