Weekly Training Blog August 14 to 20, 2017

  I had a lot going on this week with the end of summer and the start of the school year approaching.  This included driving to Cincinnati, OH on Friday to help my Father in Law who works down there and splits his time between Mass and Ohio, move into a house he bought. I drove back on Monday, yesterday, which is why this blog is late.

  Monday AM 2.5 mile warm up with some drills and light strides, 14 mile fundamental tempo run around Phillips fields drifting from around 5:50 pace at the start down to 5:24 for the last mile, felt real good.  It helped that temps were down around 80 and the humidity was under 50%. Ran 1:19:17 for the 14 miles, about 5:40 pace.
Early PM drills, lifting and a circuit with Anna, then a bit of massage.  The massage hurt a lot more than the circuit.
PM 4 miles with Uta and Melissa around  Phillips fields in 32:31.

Tuesday early PM road 10 solo in 1:06:31
later in PM 4.5 miles around Phillips fields with Melissa and Uta in 36:25

Wednesday AM road 5 with Uta in 35:07, bit hot for her
PM road 10 in 1:07:31, trying to take it easy

Thursday no run in the AM but I did a few miles of walking with Uta, then loaded a Uhaul with furniture for the Father in Law, then cut down a dying tree in my yard that was dangerously close to the power lines.  This got a bit squirrely but a neighbor had a wedge with saved my butt- I owe him an edible arrangement or something!
PM 3.5 easy warm up with fellow UML alum Jason Dedonato, aka Dedo, we missed a turn.  Then some strides and a 30 second hard effort, few drills mixed in.  Race Saunders at Rye harbor 10k, goal was to run the first half at 5:10 pace and then open up.  Course is pretty flat, sorta false flat uphill for two miles after a flat opener, then false flat down hill for two miles before a flat last 2k.  I was in second until a water stop at about 2k then steadily pulled away.  Hit 3 miles in 15:29 but didn't feel nearly as good as I had hoped. I ran 5:07 then 5:03 and then had to fight like hell for a 5:15 and a long slow finish in 32:07, meaning that 6 mark may have been a bit short.   Not very happy with this but tried to remind myself that during the base you need to judge yourself based on your workouts not your races but I felt like I should be able to almost tempo a 32 at this point and really expected to be more in the 31:20 to 31:40 range at this point based on the 5k a couple weeks ago. 3+ cool down with Dedo.

Friday 5AM  8 miles easy in 58 minutes then about 15 hours in a Uhaul. Importantly I learned that Arby's makes a mean chocolate shake...

Saturday AM road 12 pretty hilly, 1:21:14, felt ok at best spent rest of day mostly moving furniture and eating junk food.

Sunday AM 3 mile warm up, light drills, 4x very steep .27 mile hill repeats with slow jog down- so steep I didn't have much choice about this.  ran 2:10, 2:11, 2:11, 2:07.  According to strava the grade on this bad larry was 19% and I believe it. Very much like Mount Washington in terms of steapness.  I was very happy that my calves and glutes were burning and hurting on this as well as my quads.  That is not normal for me, in fact it is the first time my glutes have really burned on hills in my life and I'm hoping that is sign of better form. 2.5 mile cool down

Summary low 90's for mileage, three good efforts. I was really feeling like shit most of the week and it could be the heat and the travel but as I was warming up on Sunday I sort of recognized that I felt like my iron was getting a bit low.  After it got too high a long while back I stopped taking iron supplements and recently I have not been eating nearly as much red meat.  Also in the summer is when I generally had trouble with this.  I am taking some dietary steps to address this and may get blood work, though it is unlikely I'll have time this week, if I do I'll post it.  However if this is the case I expect that an increased intake of iron and some cooler weather will make a world of difference.  I was super anemic in the summer of 2008 and after running a couple of 32 minute plus 10k type efforts in late June/early August and some abysmal workouts I got after the red meat and a few other things and the weather cooled off and I ran two of my best 10k's ever at The Classic 10k in Atlanta, 30:33 for a savagely hilly course getting some great scalps  I finished one place ahead of a 2:08 guy and once place behind a guy who had run mid 28's at Peachtree that year.   Then a 29:44 at Cow Harbor which is still my best time on that course and the only time I beat Jason Lehmkuhle.   It would be really nice if this is the case again this year as I really want to be sub 31 at cow harbor this year and just a little sharpening work alone isn't likely to pull me from 32:07 to that in 5 weeks.

Hope you are running well and looking forward to cross country!

Fartlek Friday Hammer the Hills

  It was a bit of a right of passage to do a hammer the hills fartlek when I ran for George Davis at UML.  He had a loop that was less than 5 miles long and had seven or eight hills.  There was a great variety from short to long and shallow to steep.  The toughest hill was the last one and in true George fashion there was a two way stop you had to run through, the unsafe way, half way up.  George used this as a staple in athletes returning from injury before letting us back in with the wolves and as a great workout for someone who wouldn't be able to workout with the rest of the team on a given day.  Simply it was a workout without any way to measure it objectively it was strictly a workout based on effort.  Beyond that it was a workout that was sure to get a great effort and really start toughing you up.

  So what is it?  Super simple.  You just hammer every time you go uphill.  I really like to be a stickler about this.  I mean a two stride bump in the road and I drop two hard strides.  You run at your regular pace between runs.  On a loop that is largely flat this is a nice moderate run with a few nice hard efforts to open up the system.  On a very hilly loop this can be one of your hardest sessions.  I would do this on a 1.5 mile loop in the Phillips Academy Sanctuary that is basically a loop around a valley so it has two killer long climbs each loop.  Six or seven loops in there and I would be DONE!

  When to do it?  First I'm a huge fan of fartlek and hills most anytime as a workout on a day when the main plan may have fallen through or as the second workout for the week.  Second this is a great bread and butter session if you are preparing for a cross country or hilly road racing.  You can adjust the distance of the fartlek depending on the the distance of the race you are preparing for.

  Goal Race   Fartlek distance

5k                    3 to 5 miles

8k/10k               5 to 10 miles

half marathon    8 to 15 miles

Marathon            10 to 25 miles

  What are you trying to accomplish with this workout?  First anytime you do hills you are building your muscular strength.  With this workout specifically you tend to get long breaks so you are working on flushing out latic acid completely which makes it a great transition workout between base work and heavy anaerobic work for 800 to 10k runners or early in cross country season.  This is also an awesome session for building mental fortitude.  It is real easy to get motivated for and not intimidating but you really have to dig down to get a good effort on tough hills later in the session.

  Variations

  You can run faster, as fast as fundamental tempo run pace, on the stretches between the hills to make this a specific prep for a race strategy where you plan to hammer the hills.  This makes it a great aerobic session and really forces your body to flush out a lot of acid at a quick pace on the recoveries.

  Another option is to do this on your long runs.  This can be a great first step towards some of the hard long workouts I and others advise for the marathon.  

  A variation on the long run is to find a place with real long climbs.  One summer I lived near Northfield Mountain in western Massachusetts and it has a ton of trails.  I would do my Sunday long runs up there.  I often would push the long uphills, 1 to 3 miles, and just recover and fly on the long downhills.  It was ok if I found myself completely hammering quads burning and gasping for air at 7 miles into a 22 mile long run because I was going to recover on the next downhill but it really can build the mental fortitude as well as the aerobic and muscular endurance.  This session was almost like doing a series of uphill tempos with 10 to 20 minute easy running breaks between them.  I'll tell you I never ran better on hills than I did the fall after I spent the summer doing those runs!

   So the next time you are about to skip a workout because life got in the way or whatever and you are about to just head out for your regular old training loop MAN UP and Hammer the Hills!!  You will sneak a workout in where you would other wise have just a regular training run, you will be tougher for having done it and chances are you'll have a lot of fun in the process.

Why do Short Hills

Why do I do short hill repeats if I'm training for a marathon and not a mile?
I do short hill repeats for 2 reasons the first goal, and most obvious, is to gain physical strength. Since strength is in our sport is often interchangeable with speed I see why it seems strange for a marathoner to be doing this type of a workout especially with such frequency. I mean why try to get a faster top end speed when even to run a world record I only need to run 4:45 or 4:46 a mile. The first reason is that every race is a race of speed, meaning that no matter how long the race is the fastest person over the distance wins. But that alone doesn't justify hill repeats one to three times a week. The real reason is strength and speed over the short distance equal efficiency. By doing these hills and getting stronger and faster in the maxim. I teach my body to consume less glycogen, and less oxygen when moving at sub maximal speeds. The less of these "fuels" the body consumes at a given pace the longer I can hold that pace.
the 2nd reason I do short hills is that they drive my heart rate way up in an extremely short period of time, to within 10 beats of max or higher in 10 seconds or less and then because my heart rate hasn't been up that long and no acid needs to be flushed out of my system (it takes 15 seconds of an exercise to begin to produce any lactic acid) my heart rate basically plummets back down to a relatively rested level, 120 to 130 beats per minute, in a short time 20seconds to a minute. This exercise on the heart teaches the heart efficiency as well meaning it takes less energy to pump more blood.
Now if I was training for the mile I would still do short hill repeats for the same reasons I have listed above but I would probably try to go a little longer (say 13 to 15 seconds rather then my usual 8 to 12) and I would try to do it on a slightly less steep hill and with better footing. Why? Because a miler would want to improve there efficiency, muscular as well as heart but he/she would also want to work more specifically on there top end speed and running uphill but with your form closer to that which you use to run over flat ground is a spectacular way of doing that.

Finally the greatest advantage of short hills is that you can reap huge long term benefits without having to sacrifice much of anything. They are very easy on the body and mind. Sure you run all out but only for a few seconds so they really are not hard and because little or no acid is accumulated in the system they take little recovery at all. This is why if I had one thing I would recommend to all runners to add to there program right now short hills would be it. They improve your basic speed, improve your efficiency and strengthen your heart and if you do them once or twice a week your body won't be any more tired or worse for the wear. It’s a win win situation. I am convinced that these, progression runs and the use of circuit training are the biggest reasons the Kenyans are so far beyond us here in the US. That said I believe we are starting to look to their training and we are closing the gap rapidly. So add progression runs and short hills to your routine and join the charge for world class running in the US, or at least a new pr.