2010 Eugene Marathon: Goals and plan

I guess I usually end up posting something about what my goals are before a big race. Here they are for Sunday’s 2010 Eugene Marathon.

Goal “A+”: 3:18:00. That would be a 7:33/mile average pace, but I’d get there by running 7:38 for miles 1-22 and finding the power to pick up the pace for the last four miles. I’d have to pick it up to (hang on while I run off and do some math… ok, got it) 7:07/mile over those last four miles to pull this off.

Goal “A”: 3:20:00. A steady 7:38/mile pace the whole way.

Goal “B”: 3:20:59. “B” stands for “Boston.” 3:20:59 is what I need to run to qualify for the 2011 Boston Marathon. (That’s the time you need if you’ll be 40-45 years old on Boston Marathon day.) This has been my big goal for this race for a long time now. The extra 59 seconds let me slip down to a  7:39.94/mile average pace. Can you imagine the kind of heart attack I’ll be having on Sunday if it comes down to the difference between 7:39.94 and 7:40/mile?

Goal “C”: 3:28:55, my current marathon PR. Look, the truth is, I’ll be pretty crushed if I can’t beat that. I set that record seven months ago, on a harder course, with my training completely interrupted by runner’s knee. I had to skip my last long run and my knee hurt from mile nine to the finish line.

Goal “D”: Finish the race. It’s 26 miles. Respect the distance. A finish is a finish.

My race plan is pretty simple. I’m going to be a slave to my Garmin Forerunner and crank out mile after mile of 7:38s. I use the Garmin’s “autolap” feature to measure my miles and the number I pay the most attention to is my “lap pace”, which is the average pace I’ve run during the course of the current mile. It’s much more useful than the wildly varying “instantaneous” pace display, for this sort of pacing. Note that I use autolap and not the course mile markers, for a couple of reasons. Reason one: I’d never remember to hit the lap button every time I need to. Reason two: the pace the Garmin shows me is going to be based on its idea of the mileage anyway. That does mean there will be some slop;  the Garmin nearly always shows that you’ve run longer than 26.21 miles after a marathon.

I’ll break the race down into three phases. During miles 1-10, I’ll eat a lot and conserve energy. For miles 10-20, I’ll focus on consistency. For the last six miles I’ll give it everything I’ve got.

A few hard miles

For this taper cycle, I’m finally embracing the notion that you should run less, but not run easier. Maybe I’ve been embracing it a little too eagerly, in fact.

Saturday’s 12 miler was on the hilliest section of Wildwood, and even if I didn’t push the pace, it still wasn’t a stroll in the woods. Monday I ran four miles with two of them at “tempo” pace, about 7:00 per mile in this case. So far, so sane.

Wednesday, though, may be another story. I’d planned four miles, and I’d imagined I’d just do them at a typical moderate 8:00 to 8:30 effort. But then events conspired to leave me just a half hour to squeeze in the run. At first I told myself I’d run 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back, and be satisfied with however far that took me. As soon as I started running, though, the little devil on my left shoulder convinced me that I should simply make sure I fit the four miles I had originally planned on into the 30 minutes. After all, 7:30 per mile would only be a few seconds faster than marathon pace (7:38). Never mind that the first two miles of the route I was on were uphill. And never mind that I actually ended up running 7:16, 7:28, 6:54, 6:58. A little crazy, maybe. Still, I don’t regret it — it was a great confidence builder.

The other bad news – every run this week has made my left knee a little sore afterwards, and every time I think about my knee, I start feeling some right-side sciatica. I think my training has left me just on the edge of what my body can handle for the moment, but I don’t think I’m over the cliff. I’m a little concerned that I might require extended recovery after the marathon, compromising my virgin 50-miler in July, but for this week, I’m making the marathon my one and only priority.

Eugene Marathon finish area maps

They’ve finally revealed exactly how the finish on the Hayward Field track is going to work.

(Full-sized PDF)

So we go in through the main gate and run the final turn and straightaway, in the correct direction, to the track’s normal finish line. Well done! Seeing ourselves on the Jumbo-Tron should be surreal. The checked-bag pick-up is in the food area, and it seems like it might be a big hassle if you forget to get your bag before you leave that area — but we’re all highly mentally alert after a marathon, so no problem, right? Hmm. The traffic flow under, behind, or through the west grandstand on the way out may be a little bit of an issue too, but hopefully it won’t be a big deal.

Eugene Marathon Race Day Weather

Some kook has a blog dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with the very latest news about what the weather in Eugene on the morning of May 2 will be like.

“A 10-day forecast is as meaningful as your kid’s promise that he’ll clean his room “later.” Very little confidence is in order. However, in as much as anxiety-cum-irrationality undergirds this itinerant blog, shouldn’t the 10-day forecast be right up our alley? Our cup of tea? Our thang? Yep, I say we peer into the narrow, dark tunnel that is the long-term forecast and attach real meaning to it. Accuweather is our co-conspirator in this crime against sober analysis.”

Awesome. Race Day Outlook

Eugene Marathon previews

The RunOregon blog is doing a mile-by-mile preview of the Eugene Marathon course this year. So far they’ve posted miles 1-6. In 2009, I wrote something similar for last year’s course, and more recently I discussed the changes for 2010.

More roads, fewer bikepaths in Springfield

I have a couple issues with RunOregon’s preview so far. The change to the start is nothing but a good thing; the old course had too many turns and hills in the first mile. And the hill up Center Way near mile five? OK, it’s no killer, but neither is it “very mild.” It’s a hill.

Last Long Run

Ah yes, the last long run before the marathon. I suppose this is my fourth one of these beasts — which may seem a little odd, since it’s my fifth marathon. But I was injured before Portland this year, and so made do without a real last long run. (My attempt turned into a 14-miler before I had to stop.)

Two things make the last long run hard: the distance and the pressure. Distance-wise, I finally settled on 23 miles. Choosing a distance a balancing act between getting the most training you can and not needing more time to recover than is left until the race. My 23 miles was an unscientific choice, just an arbitrary halfway point between the arbitrary “22 to 24 miles” I had penciled in months ago when sketching out my training plan. The pressure is a self-imposed thing. I have a hard time not viewing the last long run as some sort of omen. I want it to go well. It would be distressing if it didn’t. That creates some pressure.

Anyway. I wanted to run the first five or six miles at around an 9:00/mile pace, then do the bulk of it at 8:30, and finish up with 8:00s. The loop I was running was about 10.4 miles, so at the end of two loops, that would leave 2.2 miles to get to the full 23. With my car-based aid station at the end of the loop, I knew it might be asking too much to run all out for another 2.2 after stopping briefly at 20.8, so I decided to run the fast miles just to that point, and do the last couple as a cool-down.

I was running the flat Sellwood-to-Steel loop along the Willamette, in my usual clockwise direction. The weather, forecast for clouds and a chance of rain, turned out to be partly sunny instead. I was very glad that I had decided to put on some sunscreen at the last moment before leaving the house.

I was focused on the running itself and on hitting my goal times, as I knew I would need to be during the marathon itself. About the only distractions all day were dropping a candy bar (I stopped to pick it up), seeing a bald eagle fight another hawk in Oaks Bottom (cool), and losing my radio down my shorts (I stopped to retrieve it, and my dignity). It was also nice to see the amazing river of Portland Fit people out running once again.

I hit my goal times more or less on the nose and didn’t have any serious problems. My lungs felt good, my legs and overall energy lagged a little behind them. But keeping up any kind of goal pace for more than 20 miles is always going to be a bit of a struggle, so that’s OK. I finished the run in 3:14:39, with an 8:28 average pace, pretty much right on the money. My left knee felt odd now and again, but nothing major and nothing that grew worse. All in all, a good run. Bring it on, Eugene. I’m ready.

“McKenzie River Tail Run”, or, “I’m a Winner!”

I got through my first race lottery! This year, the McKenzie River Trail Run switched from a first-come-first-served mail-in application system to a lottery. They gave people a week to sign up on-line, then randomly weeded out enough people to get down to their entry limit. On their Facebook page, they said they had to eliminate about 1/3 of their applicants. You can see who else made it in at this page.

McKenzie River is September 11th. It’s a 50K trail run; I’ve had one person tell me it’s a bit easier than Hagg Lake, but I’m not sure. If anyone else has an opinion on that, leave me a comment, OK? I do know it’s a lot more scenic. I was signed up for McKenzie in 2008 but dropped out thanks to plantar fasciitis.

Between the PCT 50 miler in July and McKenzie in September, my summer is shaping up as I hoped — I’ll spend it putting in a lot of miles on hills and trails. After the Eugene Marathon on May 2, I plan to stop focusing as much on speed and start ramping up the miles instead, hopefully to 50 per week before the PCT and maybe 60 by September.

Remember, if you are going faster than seven minutes per mile, you are “running”

I’m sort of pre-tapering this week. My last, and longest, long run before Eugene is this upcoming Saturday, 22-24 miles. But two weeks is a short taper and to make sure I go into it with a head start on recovery, I’m going to run fewer miles during the days before the long one, and so have my weekly mileage balance out at my usual 40. The idea with the taper (and the pre-taper, I suppose) is to cut miles but not intensity.

So, Monday I ran six instead of seven, and Tuesday I ran just three. Monday’s was a tempo run, where I warmed up for a mile and a half, ran three hard miles, and cooled down for a mile and a half. The three hard ones were at 6:39, 6:42, and 6:46 per mile. That’s much faster than my 5K PR, but that’s OK, since I last ran a 5K 18 months ago. According to the McMillan calculator, my tempo runs should be at 6:43 to 7:01 per mile. I had some faster runners to try to keep up with on Monday, which I found to be a big psychological help for keeping up the pace. I found it fairly easy for the first mile and fairly brutal for the last, though I could tell the (subtle) difference between that pace and an all-out race effort.

“26.2″

Bad news for everyone with one of those “26.2″ bumper stickers. Or, God forbid, a tattoo. The modern marathon is not 26.2 miles. It’s 42.195 kilometers, which is quite close to the 26 miles 385 yards first run in the 1908 Olympics. To be precise, 42.195 kilometers is about 0.47 inches longer than 26 miles 385 yards. Close enough, right? Sure.

But 385 yards is not 0.2 miles. No, 0.2 miles is exactly 352 yards. You see the problem? If you run 26.2 miles, you’ve got 33 yards left to go still! (33 yards and 0.47 inches, if we’re being precise.) That’s 99 feet. That’s more than 30 meters.

A marathon is actually 26.21875 miles long. The difference may seem inconsequential. But say you are running an eight minute-per-mile pace. How long do you think those 33 yards are going to take? Nine seconds! I know someone who would have missed qualified for Boston if they were nine seconds slower. Every moment can count at the end.

(I know other issues actually swamp this one. First, nobody runs a perfect line. It’s likely that you’ll run hundreds of feet more than you need to on the course. Second, course measurement isn’t exact, and the certifying organizations actually require that a 0.1% “fudge factor” be added to the 26.21875 distance to account for any measuring error. They figure it’s OK if the course is measured long, but not short. That’s an extra 46.145 yards right there.)

Wildwood 16

My 16-miler on Wildwood (mileposts 9.25 to 17.25 and back) this Saturday went well. It was muddier than I was expecting. Tons of trilliums in bloom, still. I started out slowly and gradually picked it up at the halfway point. I pushed the speed hard for the last two or three miles. I was surprised at how quickly I was done.

Status update

Just three weeks and three days until the Eugene marathon! I feel like I am on track to get to the starting line in prime shape. My left knee has me less and less worried, and the only other tweak I have going on at the moment is a slightly sore right ankle. It’s a minor thing and it feels like it will go away in a few days.

I’m getting more and more comfortable running 40 miles a week, having done so in ten of the last twelve. I would have liked to have done a few more faster (“tempo”) runs over the last month, but all things considered, I’m satisfied. Between my weight loss (still holding steady at 150 pounds or just under) and my increased mileage, I’m confident that a Boston Qualifying time of 3:20:59 is sitting there in my legs ready to come out on May 2.

This weekend I’m running 16 miles on hilly trails, then I’m doing 22-24 road miles the next weekend for my last long run before a two-week taper.

A nervous 20

I was pretty nervous about this 20-miler. First off, it’s 20 miles. I know, I know: I’ve done 20 miles tons of times. I’ve been doing them for years. I’ve done a couple just in the last 30 days. And yet. It’s still 20 miles. It’s a long way to run on a Saturday morning. Especially if you’re not 100% healthy. Yes, that’s the main reason I was nervous: that damned left knee. It still wasn’t completely right. It would seem fine for hours or days, then I might twist it wrong, or hop a bit, and there it would be — a little pain, a little rubbing, a little tightness. Not much, but anything more than zero is too much when you want to run a fast marathon in a month.

Observation: my knee has felt better on trails than on roads these last few weeks. Theory: this isn’t only because the trail surfaces are softer, but also because I run quite a bit slower on trail, and, more to the point, with a cautious stride length that’s quite a bit shorter than I tend to have on pavement. Plan: deliberately keep a short stride for this training run and see how it goes. On Wednesday, I had tried running with a short choppy stride and discovered it didn’t necessarily slow me down much: I was still able to clock about 6:55 for the last mile of that six-miler. And it did seem like the shorter steps might be helping my knee… although it was hard to know for sure.

A competing theory: my knee does better on the trails because all the ups and downs let me use (and stretch) all the various running muscles better than I can when I’m pounding out flat mile after flat mile. If this were true, then the flat route I had planned to run this morning would leave me with a painfully inflamed knee whether or not I took short steps. Was this risk worth taking? Hard to say, but the Eugene Marathon is a flat paved course and I need the race-specific training if I’m going to do well there.

Just to make things more fun, the weather this morning was rainy and in the high 30s. I wore shorts, gloves, and a jacket over a tank top. (We runners come up with the craziest outfits sometimes.) I was cold for the first mile, but once I warmed up I seemed to be dressed about right. I had to roll up the jacket sleeves, but never took the gloves off.

Right from the start, I spent a lot of time worrying about my knee. Every time I would think about it, I was sure it wasn’t feeling right. Then I’d stop thinking about it for a while and notice it was OK. My knee was playing head games with me.

Other than that, I can’t remember much about the first hour of the run. Isn’t that weird? Happens all the time with long runs. The first bits of it just don’t stick much in my mind. I do recall noticing that the Cirque du Soleil tent was back in town, in its usual spot under the Marquam Bridge.

Heading back south along the east bank of the Willamette, I settled into steady 8:55 miles and was starting to feel a little more tired. A brisk headwind made sure that I kept working hard, even if I was running relatively slowly and taking tiny little steps. At mile 10.3 I made it back to my car to refill my water bottle and grab some pretzels. My knee wasn’t feeling great when I stopped, but after stretching and resting for a minute or two at my little aid station, it actually felt fine once I started up again. I found myself filled with a new confidence, a belief that maybe I might actually finish this training run.

Everything got better past that halfway point. (After I stopped choking on pretzel crumbs, anyway.) My knee was a pretty cooperative body part for the rest of the day. My “short stride length” theory has a little more supporting data now. As for the rest of my systems, I wasn’t pushing myself, and the miles were slipping by pretty easily. With a couple of miles left, I thought about speeding up, going for a fast finish — and firmly told myself no. That’s exactly the sort of test my knee didn’t need. Taking it easy all the way to the end, I was glad to be done, but I felt like I had another good ten miles left in me. That’s a good feeling to have. I was also filled with relief that the run had gone so much better than I had feared it might.