Return to the Marathon

After nearly three years without a full marathon, I'm back.

Those three years were spent doing shorter-distance training a couple of half-marathons here and there, and some 5Ks. Twice I was registered for a Full, and had to drop prior to the races due to injury.

But most importantly, those two years were spent attempting to understand my thyroid condition, Hashimoto's Disease, and achieve the proper dosage of medication.

For anyone else who struggles with this condition or any other metabolic disease, frustrating doesn't even begin to describe it. One day your body feels entirely "normal" and the next you don't recognize yourself. It's a process, and if you are going through it, just know that it does indeed take time. You WILL return to feeling like your normal self.

My family recently relocated to northern Massachusetts, and I couldn't have been more excited to begin a new running life: cooler weather (if not extremely cold in the winter), more trail running possibilities, and hills. I was registered to run the Space Coast Marathon in December, back in Florida. After a couple of months of running the roads of Ashburnham, I was developing greater fitness, but also some knee problems. Those problems hit a breaking point when I ran the B.A.A Half Marathon in October and caused a severe strain on my right knee that required about 6 weeks of rest to fully heal. During that time, I did some light stationary biking and as much strength training as I could without doing further damage to the knee.

The Bodybuilding.com app helped with this greatly. I had not previously been as consistent in strength training as I should have been, and this was a great boost to my overall body strength and resiliency. I was not going to allow weaknesses in my form or frame to allow me to be injured again. Eventually, I was able to start running again. Only two days per week on the treadmill at first, and then worked back to Sunday long runs (outside, weather permitting).

I decided I wanted to refocus my sights on another marathon. A local one, if possible. After some research, I chose the Shipyard Marathon in Maine, slated for the first weekend of May. I had already been planning on running the Half, but with my strength returning, I decided to aim for the Full. Worst case, I drop down to the Half. Given the successes I had with my strength and crosstraining routine of late, I researched a marathon method that would be geared towards injury prevention.

Behold Furman University's F.I.R.S.T marathon training program.

Here are the details of the program

This plan is rather radical for marathoners, as it posits only 3 days per week of running and the other days spent crosstraining. As a marathoner who is firmly ingrained into the 'more mileage equals faster' mentality, this is still a challenging concept for me to wrap my head around.

But make no mistake, 3 days of running is NOT easy. Those three days are all intense, quality workouts: one speed repeats, one tempo, one long run (at a sustained, slightly elevated pace). And the success of the program also depends strongly on consistent crosstraining on the other days. I have chosen to stick with the stationary bike for this purpose, and the types of acceptable workouts are 30-45 min of intervals. Essentially, you don't lose cardio fitness. You simply swap the easy runs you would be doing in a more traditional program with non-impact biking, swimming, elliptical or other.

Reviews for this program were somewhat mixed, but by consulting fellow Oiselle Volee runners, I got a much more positive picture from others like myself: working moms about my age who struggle with the same challenges, at all levels and abilities. This system kept them injury-free, and some commented that the program's emphasis on speed work resulted in tremendous gains.

In the month prior to starting the program, I started to get myself into the routine, by doing three runs per week, with the same emphases: speed, tempo, long. I started off gently adding in the speed, and running by feel more than time. By the end of the month, I was already regaining some comfort with those paces.

As for strength training, I have decided to shift from the Bodybuilding.com plans to a more running-specific routine. As much as I loved developing a "total athlete" body from BB, they are not always well suited to the needs of marathon runners. So for this, I am going to use a strength training plan that I have had great success with in the past from Runner's Connect:

Here are the details on Runner's Connect: Strength Training for Runners Programs

So here I stand at the beginning of the training program and have decided to blog my progress weekly. This is more for my own benefit than anything, but if it proves in any way helpful to you, reader, then that brings me happiness as well.

Wish me luck!!

End of 2015...and First Half of 2016!

Well I have sufficiently ignored my blog for about half a year now...yikes!

Due largely to one thing: in January of 2016, I accepted a long-term substitute teaching position at a local private school that then turned into a full-time position. I am SO excited to be a part of this school community, and back to full-time teaching.

What happened regarding my blogging: since I went from being a teacher of three online classes to a teacher of three online classes plus four face-to-face classes (that's 7 different preps...), trained for Boston, and ran out of every last ounce of spare time I might have maybe had once.

But enough excuses. I pledge to being a better author/blogger, now that my life has settled back into full-time work routine, plus my growing training regimen!

A quick recap of the past 6-7 months:

December 2015

- Was on a routine morning run, and this happened...Jogger Saves Sleeping Mother and Child from Burning Home. Because we are out in the early morning, we runners often witness things unfold before the sleeping do. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.



- Didn't quite run a PR at the Florida Holiday Halfathon, but was only about 6 seconds off, 1:32:18. 5th place overall female, and still retaining my position of 2nd in the series.

January 2016

- Ran a 19:51 at the Kettle Krush 5K in Downtown St Pete, 3rd overall female. 
- Had an insane race at the Clearwater Halfathon! Winds sustained around 25mph and gusting in the 30s. Was feeling sick the day before. Suffice to say, this was not my best race. 1:36:04. But it was SO worth it to meet this running legend! Bill Rogers...

 

February 2016

- OMG...got to meet Meb and Shalane...

 

- This was just before the Gasparilla Distance Classic 15K, which was a great race for me, 15K PR, 1:03:07!
- Started getting coached by Mark Hadley! Very excited to have a coach for the first time since high school. Loved coaching myself, but was becoming too stressed out by the process, and began to second-guess myself significantly. Mark also coaches my training buddy Christina, who is a rockstar Masters runner, so now we are on the same training cycle. 

March 2016

- Florida Beach Halfathon at Ft. DeSoto, awesome race and big PR, 1:28:54. 4th overall female, but won 2nd in the series! This was my first time wining big prize money for running.

April 2016

- Boston Marathon! Amazing experience, but tough race-day conditions: hot, headwind, full sunlight, and I did not hydrate nor rest properly in the days leading up. So no PR for me, finished 3:24:48. All in all, not a bad time considering everything else.



May 2016

- Mayfaire 5K in Lakeland, no expectations since it was only a couple of weeks post-Boston. But still OK...ran 20:08, 2nd overall female, won new Mizuno running shoes, and got to race with my awesome little brother...



June 2016

- While in Arizona for my high school reunion, ran in the Yarnell Memorial 5K in honor of the 19 firefighters who lost their lives in 2013, one of whom was a classmate of mine at Orme. Had a great time with my long-time friend, Sue, and ran 19:44...though my Garmin said the course was 3.0 miles. 1st place overall finisher! Not bad for a race at 5,000 feet elevation and 90 degrees. But hey, its a dry heat.



- Watermelon Run #2 5K in Lakeland, was hoping for PR but ran 19:54, 1st overall female. Despite not hitting a PR, I felt the best I have ever felt at mile 2 during a 5K, my first two mile splits were 6:15, 6:14, setting an in-race 2-mile PR of 12:28-ish. The last mile absolutely killed me with the heat and humidity (80 degrees / 80% humidity), which seems to affect me much worse than elevation. Still, promising results.

So that is my racing history since my last post. Many exciting races to come this summer, including a track (yes, TRACK) series starting on July 6th with a mile, then two weeks later with a 2-mile, then two weeks later with a 5K. Haven't raced on a track since high school....but this will be good for me, I am sure!

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