How Much Marathon Training Do You Really Need?

That was the question posed by a recent article from Active.com.  The article proposes a 14 week marathon crash course.  The plan includes quite a few 100m and 200m repeats.  It has been at least a decade since I’ve run a 100m or 200m track repeat.  The plan also recommends long runs with 5 miles race-pace surges.  It would be good to incorporate that kind of workout into my training. 

There are seven weeks to go until the Colfax Marathon.  I have done only three runs of 20 or more miles.  I have little confidence I can run the marathon distance at a decent pace.  My speed training is producing good results, but I wonder if I have the stamina for 26.2 miles.  This year I will be racing up to the marathon distance.  Lucky for me, the RMRR has their Spring Marathon Training Series (MTS). 

Today was the first edition of the series.  Because I am running the Platte River ½ Marathon next weekend, I ran the 10 mile option.  I covered the course in just under 63 minutes – 6:18 / mile pace.  I will have the opportunity to run two twenty mile races in the next month or so. 

I stumbled onto a new pre-race eating plan which was quite helpful in today’s race.  My daughters attended the Andrew McMahon concert on Friday night downtown at the Marquis Theater.  Because we are helicopter parents, Mary and decided to make it a family outing.  Mary and I dropped the girls off at the venue and had dinner at the Buenos Aires Pizzeria, which is about a block away from the Marquis. 

We had:

Napolitana Salad (Fresh mozzarella, Tomato, Red Onion, Fresh Basil, Black Olives, Oregano, Olive Oil, Red Vinegar ) and Arugula Salad (Arugula, Caramelized Pears, Red Onion, Olive Oil).  We shared a large pizza which was half Chapita (Mozzarella, Pineapple, Jalapeño, Fresh Mint Leaves) and half Recoleta (Mozzarella, Asparagus, Roasted red pepper).

We had a few hours to kill before the end of the concert, so we went to the Rock Bottom Brewery to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. Mary had a Milk Stout; I had water. It was 11:00 when we got back to the van and I was hungry, so I ate a slice of cold pizza.  Does anyone remember how good cold pizza tastes? 

I was pleasantly full when I got to bed at midnight.  I awoke six hours later and had a Kenyan breakfast of tea and ugali (see my last blog).  Having a late meal before going to bed and a lighter breakfast helped me.  I felt well-nourished, but not stuffed and I had no gastric issues before or during the race. 

This year the Phidippides Track Club underwrote singlets for its members.  They look great.  Steve and Ryan wore them during today’s race.  I wore my Syracuse singlet in honor of my alma mater’s basketball team, which beat Marquette to advance to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament.  I will be wearing that singlet next Sunday at the Platte River ½ Marathon either in mourning or in celebration depending on how the Orange perform Saturday night against Michigan. 

Running, Vicariously, with the Kenyans

Have you ever thought about moving to Kenya to train for a marathon with the fastest endurance runners in the world?  What would that entail?  Obtaining a six month sabbatical from your job.  Purchasing jewelry to get the green light from your wife.  Taking your children out of school and exposing them to a totally different culture.  Making all of the arrangements. 

Well, Adharanand Finn did just that, and he wrote a book about it.  I am reading Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth.  It is a very interesting story.  I can identify with Finn.  His personal best for a half marathon was 1:26 before going to Kenya, so he'd slide right into our training runs.  (read his blog -http://runningwithkenyans.blogspot.com/)

Finn uprooted his family of five, including three small children, and traveled to Iten, a small, town in the Rift Valley.  Iten is a mecca for long-distance runners thanks to its high altitude, endless running paths, and some of the top training camps in the world.  There are hundreds of world-class runners living in Iten.  It is probably the only place where you could miss-dial a 2:04 marathoner’s phone number and speak with a 2:05 marathoner. 

Finn ran with Olympic champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren.  He wanted to find out why the Kenyans dominate long-distance running and kept a record of their “secrets”.  Is it the shoes, or Kenyans’ lack thereof?  The food, or lack thereof?  The high-altitude training?  Is it the active childhood that often includes running to school and the lack of easier modes of transportation?  Is it Kenya’s pervasive running culture, their desire to win at all costs, and the simple lack of job alternatives?  The answer is yes to all.

Here are some of my observations:

There is a concentrated group of very fast runners.  They are single focused – they run, eat and rest, that’s it. 

Competition is fierce to be one of the few runners taken to major races.  The rewards are significant and life-altering for these poor athletes.  A few thousand dollars in prize money allows a runner to buy a big enough farm, with cows, to provide a comfortable future for his family.

They run mostly in groups.  The runs I’ve read about so far have not been that long, an hour to an hour and a half.  Those group runs start at a relatively easy pace, around 7:30 / mile, and get progressively faster until they are a race pace.

They train at 8,500 feet above sea level which is like us training in Woodland Park. 

Their diet is very simple and almost entirely plant-based.  Their favorite food is ugali, a polenta-like dish made from corn meal and water. 

The kids run to school, mostly because they don’t want to be late.  Teachers hit the late students with sticks.  Some run over three miles each way.  Most of them run barefoot.  In contrast, my elementary school was about half a mile from my home.  My high school was about a mile away.  I never ran to, or from, school and I wore sneakers even to the beach. 

When they are not running or eating, they rest.  By rest I mean they sit around or sleep.  One famously fast runner was notorious for sleeping 16 hours per day!  Imagine how much faster you’d be if you got over twice as much sleep as you do now.

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In other news, this week’s Phidippides track workout was the annual two mile time trial.  I ran the distance in 11:18, three seconds faster than last year. 

Spring Training

It is St. Patrick’s Day.  Opening day of the 2013 Major League Baseball season is two weeks away, the same day as the RMRR’s Spring Marathon Training Series 20 mile race.  The Easter Bunny will be hopping the next day.  The azaleas are in bloom at Augusta National.  The third Monday in April, Patriots’ Day, is a month away and the Boston Athletic Association is in full-on marathon readiness mode.

Cherry Creek State Park was full of activity this Saturday morning.  Runners and bikers deftly avoided one another the paths.  The report of rifles could be heard from the shooting range.  The air was calm and there was the buzz from the radio controlled airplanes at the airfield.  Wildlife of all sorts, real and imagined, could be seen.  A coyote bolted after its prey.  Deer were sunning themselves in the fields by the road. 

On the lake crew shells bobbed in the swells.  The air and water temperatures were about the same, 40 degrees.  It reminded me of the first on-the-water workouts we had on the Erie Canal.  The launches would power back and forth on the river to break up the ice.  With almost every stroke, we would hit a chunk of ice, sometimes missing water completely.  That first spring my hands ached from the cold, then never again.  I can only imagine what nerve damage I did to my hands.

Friday was unseasonably warm with temperatures around 70 degrees.  That was enough of an invitation for about 100 campers in RVs to come and hook up for the night.  But the low of Friday turned into the high of Saturday, which made for a chilly wake up.

We were commenting on the few long runs we’ve put in so far this year.  By this time last year I had logged eight runs of 20+ miles.  This was my third 20+ miler of the year.  I ended up running 21.5 miles at an average pace of 7:14 / mile.  If I could hold that pace, it would yield a 3:09:25 marathon, which I would be delighted with.  My legs were sore like I'd run a marathon on Sunday and I needed to rest.  I have two months to get ready for the Colfax Marathon and I need more long runs.

I Wanna, Wanna Shock Treatment

Gimme Shock Treatment is the second song on the Ramones’ second album, Leave Home.  It is a little ditty that lasts 1:38, which is about how long it takes me to run a quarter of a mile at my half marathon pace.  The genesis of the song is that Joey Ramone used to date a girl who was an inmate in a mental institution who didn't recognize him after she’d had shock treatment.  It is hard to find something positive in that last sentence.  Just to draw a parallel, I’m not sure I’d recognize my wife after I ran, say, 100 miles. 

I thought about that last Saturday as I was running through the Essex County Hospital Center in Verona, NJ.  I was in New Jersey for my father’s birthday.  When I was growing up the hospital was known as the Overbrook Asylum and, long before that, as Essex County Asylum for the Insane. 

The hospital was built on 325 wooded acres in 1896.  At its peak in the 1930s until the 1950s it held about 3,000 inmates.  But the introduction of the so-called “wonder drugs” for the treatment of brain disorders over the last half-century or so meant the deinstitutionalization of thousands of patients in psychiatric centers across the nation.  Gradually, the Essex County hospital lost most of its patients and started its long decline into ruination and decay.  Today it is the scene of much mischief by local hoodlums who refer to their pranks as going to “The Asylum,” “The Bin,” or “The Hilltop”.

When I was in middle school I sang in a boy’s choir and we performed at Overbrook a few times.  After one of our performances I was having a conversation with a man I thought was an orderly.  Then a nurse came, wrapped her arms around the guy and said “OK, It’s time to go.” and she escorted the patient back to his room.

I ran 14 miles on Saturday.  One of the benefits of running in northern New Jersey is that I ran through five towns: Montclair, West Orange, Verona, Cedar Grove and Little Falls.  I could run a 14 mile loop and not leave Highlands Ranch.  

My hometown, Montclair, is about one mile wide and four miles long.  On Sunday I decided to run back and forth across the town as I made my way from west to east.  This run down memory lane ended up being 10.5 miles.

I ran to Montclair State University where our high school held its swim meets.  I went into the building to have a look around.  The facility has changed little since I held the pool record in the 500 yard freestyle in 1982.

Unlike past visits where I ran on quiet residential roads and through parks, this time I ran along the main business streets.  It was early Sunday morning and there were few people about.  Many of the stores that I shopped at as a kid are still in business today. 

On this trip my father and I visited two historic sites that were prominent in the Revolutionary War era, Paterson Falls and Fort Nonsense.  When I was eight years old I saw Karl Wallenda walk a tight rope across Paterson Falls.  Fort Nonsense is where George Washington camped his men during the brutal winter of 1779 – 1780.  By all accounts that winter was worse than the winter they spent in Valley Forge, PA. 

I enjoy these visits to my hometown because I get to spend time with my siblings and because of the connection I feel with the place where I grew up.  It puts me in a good mood. 

And that’s me.  Happy happy happy all the time.

There, but for the Grace

I have often said that if you substitute any deviant behavior for running in my life, you’d probably want to lock me up.  If you have even a modestly addictive personality or are slightly obsessive / compulsive, you know how easy it is to over-indulge in the habit of running.  You hear it in the subtle choice of words.  “I want to” versus “I have to” versus “I need to” go for a run.  You see evidence of it in people’s cars, homes and cubicles.  You smell it from the well worn race T-shirts. 

But does that equation work the other way?  What happens if you substitute running for the deviant behavior?  On Saturday morning’s long run (my first 20 miler of the year), Scott told me about a group organized by Nick and Shane Sterner (father and son) at the Denver Rescue Mission.  This is an inspiring story and it is worth taking a few minutes to research. http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/amazing/Sterner031108.aspx   They lead Activity Inspired Rehabilitation, an organization confronting homelessness and addiction through distance running.  The program introduces homeless people to running and shows them how to change their focus and live productive lives.

Here are the principles behind the program:

-Goal Setting helps participants stay focused on becoming healthy and productive members of the Denver community.

-Incremental Accomplishment through training and races builds self-esteem and self-confidence as program members create new identities.

-Health and Fitness Training creates lasting change in the health and fitness levels of AIR members, building a foundation for a lifetime of health and self-sufficiency.

-Positive Connection With The Community changes the way members feel about themselves, allowing them to make a positive connection to the people around them and become role models for others in need.

In 2010 23 men participated in the Rock-n-Roll Denver Marathon and Half-Marathon as part of the Denver Rescue Mission Marathon Team.  Preparing for and running a marathon changes you physiologically and psychologically.  For those who participate in Shane’s program, these changes bring them back to life.

We have all had the experience of running alone in the last few miles of a marathon with only our thoughts for company.  In some ways it is like a vision quest.  We all know the feelings of pain that pass over us as we try to reach our goal.  We know that we do not suffer alone.  There are those who have suffered more than we have.