For Whom the Dogs Bark

68F, 90%, S 5 mph.  Met Wade for 5 LLHR miles, 5.39 miles in 56:40, 10:31/mile, 118 bpm.  Felt good, and this was a new low heart rate PR, suprisingly.  For some reason, after running very hard, like yesterday, the low heart rate miles get faster rather than slower.  There is always something new about running.

72F, 95%, calm.  LLHR run with Wade, 5.54 miles in 59:05, 10:40/mile, 121 bpm.  Heat made it a little slower than last LLHR run, but still a good time.

64F, 60%, NNE 9-17 mph, cloudy.  Cooled off a little, was going to run 15 at LLHR but I turned off my alarm and didn't wake up until 6:30, decided to run 10 instead at long run pace.  First one came in at 8:49, then everything after that was between 8:01 and 8:11 with a reasonable heart rate.  10.10 miles in 1:22:52, 8:12/mile, 149 bpm average, 154 bpm on the last mile.  If I feel as good as I felt this morning I can see myself running 7:45 for the marathon, just need to get some more miles in next week above 160 bpm.  Base conditioning is there but the higher heart rates are still uncomfortable for me.

70F, 88%, S 5 mph, low cloud cover.  Probably lots of rain this week.  Warmed up 2 miles, then 5 at 160 bpm, trying to see how much deterioration there is at that heart rate.  I figured out that this is the hole in my training, being able to sustain a moderately high heart rate.  It is probably a long term thing, but I'm going to work it a little this week.  The speed decline was definitely there:  7:32 (158), 7:35 (161), 7:42 (160), 7:47 (161) and 8:01 (161).  A lot of this is attributable to the heat, but not all of it.  Definitely found my achilles heel.  It will be a challenge this week to get everything packed in.  Overall 10.0 in 1:23:27, 8:21/mile, 150 bpm.

PM:  Vitamin D run, 6 from office, out along the north side of Buffalo Bayou.  No watch or HR monitor, but felt like about 9:00 pace going out and 8:40 coming back.  82F, wind about 20 mph, partly cloudy but enough sun to get some redness to my southern neck.  This trail is quite hilly, but nothing long -- still, this is a good substitute for hills on the treadmill.  Pretty beat after this run.  (From measurement later in the week, this run was 6.19 miles)

71F, 87%, S 6 mph.  Getting hotter by the day right now.  Slept right until my alarm, out the door at 5:30 and Wade was already out there.  He had run a 5K at speed already, thinking I was going to do LHR after yesterday.  But I wanted to get 5 more at 160 bpm.  Legs were trashed after running in the sun yesterday afternoon, but finally warmed up a little bit after 2 miles and I accelerated right into the fast part, Wade hanging in for 3 of them:  7:20 (153), 7:26 (158), 7:32 (161), 7:41 (162) and 7:44 (162).  1.13 cooldown.  Altogether 8.12 miles in 1:05:18, 8:03/mile, 150 bpm average, 164 max.  Yesterday's decline was 29 seconds/mile, today's was 24, and overall speed improved by 11 seconds/mile at about the same heart rate, even though my legs were tired.  My heart rate right now (and whatever systems it measures) seem to be immune to heavy workouts, it is back at normal within a few hours.  This must mean something.

73F, 88%, SSE 6 mph and cloudy.  10.2 miles in 1:23:07, 8:09/mile, 152 bpm, 170 max.  Fast ones were 7:35 (155), 7:39 (160), 7:40 (162), 7:26 (162) and 7:27 (167), average 7:33/mile, 161 bpm, felt like quite a drop from yesterday though it wasn't that far off.  The difference was I let my heart rate build up, finishing faster rather than slower.  From the first step this morning I never felt good, and felt like I was running almost at max by the time I got very far into the workout portion.  I have a 10K on Saturday but I won't be doing any other fast miles this week.  If I recover from these it will be good enough.

PM: 6.19 late afternoon miles along the bayou from work, 81F and a brisk wind.  Average pace was hard to measure because the watch didn't sync until about 1/3 of a mile into the run.  But the last 5 were 8:32, 8:29, 8:11, 8:03 and 8:28, so about 8:25 overall pace including the first mile.  No HRM, pace felt moderately difficult but mainly because I was on very tired legs.

74F, 87%, S 11 mph, gusting to 22 mph.  Not particularly pleasant conditions.  We are supposed to have rain by now, but even when it arrives the forecast is not for cooling.  I almost collapsed into my bed last night, but still woke up at 4:30, old man's body.  Went out for LLHR miles, half of them with Wade.  10.0 in 1:47:48, 10:47/mile, 121 bpm.  Never felt really good, but glad I could hold this pace in the heat and with the fatigue.  

Forgot to get a weather report, but about 60F until the sun came up, then about 65F for the race.  Didn't run yesterday because of work pressures, and woke up earlier than I intended.  So I went out and ran LLHR miles in the neighborhood, 4.15 miles at 11:00/mile.  

Picked up Wade at 6:00 and we headed to Brennam, TX, which is an hour west of Houston on the eastern edge of the Texas hill country.  This race benefits the local high school and is popular throughout the region because they serve Blue Bell Ice Cream, a confectionary delight known locally as the National Ice Cream of Texas.  Wade and I ran a little bit of the course to get a feel for the hills, 2.0 miles at a 9:00 pace.  Main reason to race today was to warm up for the Newton Hills in 9 days.  

The race started about 3 minutes late, first mile largely downhill.  Ran with Wade until I caught my breath at the first corner then took off, as Wade is still not fully recovered from a bad cold he had a couple of weeks ago.  I decided there was no reason whatsoever to hold back, just run as hard as I could.  Faded a bit as a result, but not badly.  Lots of hills in this race, five in all I think, a couple of them respectably steep and long.  Splits were 6:41 (165), 7:03 (178), 7:05 (179), 7:08 (178), 7:18 (177), 7:25 (179) and 6:12 (180) (downhill through the finishing chute).  Tried to maintain a high heart rate and not worry too much about time, which worked generally OK except for mile 5.  It was fun racing people today, went back and forth with several runners, beat some of them and some beat me.  Next guy in my new age group was 2:30 behind me, so this isn't going to be much fun.  I also won the 55-59 age group, but we left early in any event because it was taking too long to announce awards.  40th overall out of 1129 runners, nice to be back in the top 5% of these local fun runs, it has been a while.

So about 7:05/mile, which grades out to 7:25/mile for a half and 7:45/mile for a full.  I think I may be in better marathon shape right now than 10K shape, but the race itself will determine that.  If I break 8:00/mile on The Race Day that will be good enough. 10 day forecast for Boston now includes Patriots Day, 57H, 46L, SW 10 mph, 10% chance of rain.  That's good enough if it holds.

70F, 92%, ESE 5 mph, swinging to NW.  No running yesterday due to work schedule, but didn't really need to run.  Was planning on running later in the day but that never panned out.  

To bed at 12:30 last night, figured I would miss again this morning, then old man wakeup at 6:00, so I ran anyway.  5 miles: 1 warmup (8:41), three fast ones:  7:42 (155), 7:25 (161) and 7:15 (166, max 169), then 1 cooldown at 7:56 (162, ending at 155).  The cooldown mile was a good indication, marathon pace in the heat with heart rate retreating.

I’m going to do the same thing in the morning, not too hard but enough to get my heart rate up.

59F, 90%, NNW 3 mph, thunder approaching.  Plan was to meet Wade for 5, 3 fast, he was already out there when I got there.  Lightning was moving in closer so we quit after one loop.  Got in 1.7 fast ones, 7:23 and 7:33 (155), then scurried back inside.  Might go out again, since I won't be running tomorrow, but the way my day usually goes it might not happen.

Late AM:  The sky cleared up beautifully, and by the time I got to work it was cool, breezy and sunny outside, low 60s.  I got to a stopping point late morning and couldn't resist, especially since this morning's run got cut short and I need to stay sharp.  Dressed out and went out for another 6, 1 quick warm-up mile (8:29) followed by 5 at tempo, 7:28 average for the 5, then short cooldown.  Felt good, I have no injuries or fatigue, running is pretty great right now.

65F, 93%, SE 3 mph. 5.0 LLHR miles @ 11:01/mile.  Huge thunderstorms last night, the whole neighborhood seemed like it was torn up, but it was only trees, boiloff from the pavement even though it wasn't that hot.  Now leaving for Boston tomorow instead of today, so I'll probably run 5 more in the morning, mix in a couple of fast ones to keep circulation going.  Current headwind forecast is 17 mph, hard to believe, I hope it moderates a little bit.

68F, 96%, calm and cloudy, getting ready for the next line of thunderstorms.  Despite the moderate temperature, the air felt stifling because of all the water on the ground, it has been raining heavily for 2 or 3 days now.

Last shakeout run this morning, 2 warmup at brisk pace, 2 at tempo (7:39 (157), 7:24(161)), then 1 cooldown and that's it. 5.0 in 40:20, 8:04/mile.  

Heading to the airport in a couple of hours.  Feels like I have latent head cold symptoms, hopefully just the taper blues.

Bib number is 17192.  Starting time for my wave is 10:50 Eastern, I'm in the second corral, so a few minutes after that I presume.

Good luck to all who are running on Monday, or anytime else for that matter.

Boston weather forecast for tomorrow at the finish, 47F, 21 mph headwind and driving rain.  Couldn’t be happier about my life right now.

I found a headband and gloves at the expo (there was a run on them, I think I may have gotten the last pair).  Also have a banana, bagel/crème cheese and baked plain potato chips for in the morning.  Eating cold pizza right now, decided that is better than traipsing around any more looking for a last carb fix.  Don’t know what else I could possibly do, other than run another one when conditions are more reasonable, like 80F and bright sun, with rising steam from a recent thunderstorm -- that would be more my type of race.  

There are people still running the sidewalks here in their marathon shirts, less than 18 hours from the start.  They don’t seem to understand that training is over.

Sleep tight everybody, I know I will, since my fate is already decided.

PR by about 2 minutes today.  3:28:34, half in 1:43:45, so lost only one minute on the second half. 

Late on Monday night here.  Conditions in the early evening are 47F, still raining, ENE 14.  It was similar to that out on the course, except the wind was higher according to reports (somebody said 20 mph gusting to 30, don’t know how accurate that is).  But I don’t think the wind slowed me down by more than 2 minutes, just hard to tell, though I do know that a tailwind would have pushed me through rather nicely.  Perusing the elite results (one of whom is on our blog), I see that times were several minutes slower this year, so maybe the wind had more effect than I realized.  For my part, my legs just did their thing and pretty soon I was at the finish line.  Totally hypothermic, however, took several hours of shivering in bed to finally get warm.

It was a very good day for me.  I feel like I pushed the sun up a little bit on the western horizon, for at least this one day.  I had a bad attitude about the weather, because I thought it would probably prevent me from getting the PR that I had put in the work to get.  My attitude got even worse on the way up, when it started raining on our bus, rain wasn’t supposed to start until noon.  But everybody stuck with the program, all the waves started like clockwork.  The village was quite a scene, runners shivering in the tents while anti-terrorist squads roamed the school rooftop.

My wave started right at 10:50 and I was across the line about 5 minutes after that.  I noticed right away that I was running with young women and old men.  All the young men, by definition, were a lot further up in the queue.  As is typical for races like this, I started to feel better once we got going.  The first mile was a mess, however, no room to maneuver at all.  At one point somebody clipped my trailing foot and I almost went down.  Looked at my watch at the half-mile point and it showed an 8:50 pace, I knew I had to be a little more proactive in finding lanes to run in, and managed to get the first mile down to 8:20, which was acceptable.  Another thing that was going on was higher than expected heart rate; it is still a mystery to me why it always goes up on race day.  I had it in the low 50s sitting in the tent, but it was immediately in the 160-165 range from the beginning.  But it held steady and I felt good, so I went with it.  That said, today was definitely a day when I needed the discipline of my watch, both to speed up and to slow down, as well as to maintain a steady effort level by monitoring my heart rate. 

My Garmin splits weren’t matching the official mile markers.  Part of it is that it is hard to run tangents on this course with all the crowds, but there weren’t a lot of tangents and I did a reasonably good job of it.  But by the halfway point I knew I had to average in the low 7:50s to break 3:30.  Luckily I was able to do that.

First miles were mostly downhill, but not all, a couple of rollers just to remind us of what was to come.  Then pretty much rollers after that through the half.  Halfway through mile 11 my left shoelace came loose, unbelievably.  I had to sit down on the curb and tie it, lost at least 25 seconds doing that, based on splits.  Took a gulp of water shortly after that and another one at mile 22.  They were preaching hydration, but if I’m not thirsty I don’t drink, that’s the way it’s always been, no need to change it on a cold rainy day.

But my legs were doing their thing, just pumped out the miles.  About 8 miles in I realized that they had 30 miles in them.  Wasn’t quite so sure about that at the top of the Newton Hills, but they had enough left in them to get me in.

Went through the Wellesley scream tunnel running in the middle of the road with my head down, emerged with my honor intact.  Not sure the course profile was right for the Newton hills.  They started right on schedule after the 16-mile mark and lasted a full 5 miles, all as advertised.  Supposedly there are only 4 of them, but I read it wrong or they counted wrong, because I think there were at least 6 significant climbs and a few minor ones.  Heartbreak was gut check time.  I tried to maintain a little bit of turnover, pumped my arms a lot and probably lost only about 20-25 seconds in mile 21.  There were people walking up the hill who had better PRs than I do based on their bib numbers, some of them much better.  I couldn’t fathom just giving up my race like that, so I kept going.  The crowd at this point was my favorite.  They knew what was going on, almost as if they had done it themselves, and they were extremely supportive.  If I ever by-stand this race that is where I am going to station myself.

I had promised myself when I got to the top of Heartbreak that I would find the courage to race it in no matter how I felt, and indeed I got good splits for mile 22 and 23.  I couldn’t maintain it, but never slowed down dramatically.  Most of the runners in my wave lost it going up the hills.  I was passing almost as many runners almost as I did in the second half of SGM 2013, both going up and coming down the other side.  I decided that I didn’t care if I threw up at the finish line or before, I was taking this one on in, I knew I had a PR by that point if I could maintain some semblance of a pace.  When I made the left onto Boylston I was ecstatic.  My name was announced at the finish line, although Nike hasn’t called just yet.  Me and one other old guy had our hands on our knees and moisture in our eyes that wasn’t from the rain. Knuckle bumps and we were on our separate ways back to our lives in the office.

Splits:  1: 8:20 (164); 2: 7:55 (173); 3: 7:34 (161); 4: 7:37 (162); 5: 7:59 (163); 6: 7:46 (163); 7: 7:48 (163); 8: 7:55 (163); 9: 7:48 (162); 10: 7:50 (165); 11: 8:13 (165); 12: 7:40 (165); 13: 7:47 (166); 14: 7:43 (167); 15: 7:58 (167); 16: 7:33 (167); 17: 8:05 (169); 18: 8:04 (170); 19: 7:49 (168); 20: 8:06 (169); 21: 8:17 (171); 22: 7:35 (170); 23: 7:45 (169); 24: 7:54 (168); 25: 7:54 (167); 26: 8:19 (167); 26.22: 7:44 (167) (0.22); 26.50: 6:03 (168) (0.28)  Overall:  3:28:34, 167 bpm. 

First shakeout run since racing.  No watch but felt very good, though not ready yet to start training again.

75F, 95%, swirling wind.  Heard a little bit of thunder but went out anyway.  Quickly saw that was a bad idea, it started raining hard and was coming down in sheets when I finally got back to the house after 2.5, dodging lightning bolts.  (Garmin is broken, probably from getting rained on for four hours at Boston, can't get it started no matter what hard reset or soft reset I try.)  Shortly after I returned a strong cell came through, 60 or 70 mph winds, so good thing I quit.  Retired to the neighborhood gym and ran 7.5 on the TM while my daughter did weights.  I started at 6.7 mph and ended up at 9.0 mph for the last half mile.  Still feeling good, easing back into a routine.  I am very thankful I made it to the starting line healthy and am still healthy.

I did some calculations to see how fast my race would have been on a regular course on a regular day.  I compared my starting bib number to my finishing place, corrected for no-shows (about 10%) and reserved bib numbers (about 3%), which gave me an approximate number of runners passed.  Then "assigning" myself to a higher corral as if I got a bib number equivalent to the runners I finished with, and based on the qualifying times of those runners based on their corral placement, I probably would have run about 3:22, which is what I thought I might be capable of if everything went well.  (The other thing is the course was 100 seconds long, but it is Boston and they get to do that -- measurements weren't that accurate in 1897.)

Next target race is a half marathon in October in Susanville, CA, my wife's home.  It has some altitude but is also gradual downhill, which I think makes it somewhat equivalent to a sea-level course for a guy like me going up to altitude.  More importantly, the tempertature should be fine.  I have some PR-type goals for it, but still honing a training plan.  I was planning to go back to Grand Rapids to run the 25K in May, but I think doing that might interrupt training too much.

66F, 90%, N 8 mph.  Didn't run yesterday morning due to a thunderstorm, then couldn't get out the rest of the day, so whiff on that one.  Plan is to do all LLHR this week, have lost a little of that base as I was getting ready for Boston.  Also, need a little time to decide on the best way to get through the summer and ready for a couple of fall races.  Today was 10.4, broken Garmin but I ran somewhere between 11:30 and 11:45 per mile, heart rate felt about right but it was a guess.

53F, 90%, NNW 1 mph, clear skies.  Rare running weather this morning.  Have developed a little bit of back pain, but couldn't pass it up for the second day in a row.  Same LLHR run as Tuesday, 10.4, no watch yet.

PM:  6.2 on the TM after work, starting at 6.7 mph, got impatient and worked up to 8.7 mph.  Took a little bit more out of me than I intended, but felt good.