Incredibly Inspiring Inclusion

Today, I want to celebrate the power of inclusion in our running community.

Today is exactly one month before my book is launched on Amazon (gulp!).

Today is also a day that Oiselle opens up its Volée Team to new members.

It's obvious why I am so excited about the former. I've been pouring myself into this book, and am thoroughly enjoying the editing and revision process, going back through my own thoughts and the contributions of other incredible, strong runners. It has been an absolute blast! I am both excited in anticipation of the book's launch and lamenting the fact that this process will come to a close. Maybe soon, more opportunities will arise.

As for the Oiselle team openings, I feel what I can only really describe as that same excitement I felt that day I first arrived at my freshmen-year college dorm, meeting my roommate and dorm-mates for the first time. Such excitement in anticipation of future memories, friendships, and growth experiences for all of us.

Too much of the time, we only realize how important and special some experiences are after the fact. You know what they say about hindsight. For most of us, there are few times that we know how special something is in "real time". That we appreciate and understand its significance while it happens, or even before it happens. This is when we feel the most centered and enlightened in our lives, secure in the knowledge that "right now" is so good for us, its where we are supposed to be.

With fellow local Oiselle bird,
Mary Margaret Malone, at a February 5K

Being a part of the Oiselle Team, connecting with local runners here in St Pete, listening to podcasts such as Runners Connect and Marathon Training Academy, and most of all, writing my book, has been such a powerfully special inclusion of running joy in my life. As someone who has always been kind of a "lone wolf" athlete, I never expected this degree of connection to be so important to me. Yet it has not only strengthened my own running, it has also cultivated my experiences for the betterment of others, hence my book. I have never met most of my fellow Oiselle teammates, yet here I am giddy with excitement as the team opens up further, including more wonderful, strong women.

The bigger our broad community of runners, the bigger my heart swells with joy, pride, and excitement for all that we can achieve. We are a tribe, we are always connected, and we are better athletes because of it.

Short & Long Distance Predisposition

It's been too long since I've blogged!

Since recovering from the Tomoka Marathon, I have been turning my focus towards shorter distances, as many runners do following marathon training, certainly in the heat of the summer. My PR in the 5K is 19:56 and was run in 2010. Now, 20 months post-pregnancy, I am much, much fitter now than I have ever been. The steady increase in training volume and intensity over the past few years, even with the hiatus from pregnancy and then injury, has dramatically improved my times in the 15K up to the marathon. 

I've had many friends tell me how they have banked on their marathon fitness by racing a 5K about 4-6 weeks post-marathon, and wound up with a nice PR. Given how much my fitness has improved since my last 5K PR, by all accounts, I figured I should be able to hit a new PR after working some speed back into my routine. Using Jack Daniel's & Greg McMillan's equivalent race times calculators, given that my marathon time was 3:18:23, I should be able to run a 20:22 5K. Though I am skeptical of equivalent race time calculators; they assume equal and significant training consistency across all distances, and don't necessarily work both ways. When I ran a 19:56 5K, I was in no way ready to race a 3:14 marathon, even had I followed the same training plan I most recently used to run a 3:18. Fitness is cumulative. So take equivalent race times with a grain of salt. I did figure, though, at the very least, I should be able to run in the 20:30-ish range for a 5K.

Wrong. 

After adding about 3 weeks worth of speed work back into my routine, while working mileage back to around 35 miles/week (I was doing around 55 for the marathon), I ran a 21:03 5K. Not bad, by any means, but not as fast as I would have liked or expected.

It boils down to which training element has the biggest impact on improvement at the 5K distance: mileage or speed. I certainly had a great deal of mileage under my belt, so endurance was my strength. But even my interval and tempo runs had been, leading up to my marathon, specific for the marathon. So its possible that only three weeks of 5K-specific speed work left me lacking a bit.

Individual predisposition towards longer or shorter distances varies. Some runners are more pre-disposed to the longer race distances and some towards the shorter. While someone can certainly change their fitness for different race distances after several cycles of training, genetic and "fixed factors" such as body stature and max heart rate can definitely lend themselves more towards one type of running intensity than another, hence making someone more predisposed for some distances over others.

Coach Mark Hadley's Elite Marathoning website has some really excellent resources on this subject, and he even has charts showing differences in training paces and equivalent race times for "long distance predispositions" vs "short distance predispositions".

Check it out! Elite Marathoning Workouts