Fat

Yesterday I had the gym measure my body fat. 13.5%. Last winter a personal trainer measured with those calibers and said it was 7%, and one of the $200 weight scales at a marathon expo said I was 10%. At that time, I think I was 8 lbs heavier. Odly enough, if 13.5% is accurate, I'm more relieved than bummed. Just a little relieved... everyone wants to have a low body fat, right? However, what this means is that I have rooom to lose weight without looking like I'm malnutritioned! I'm only 5'7.5" and weigh 167. That's officially a BMI of "fat." My guess is there are not a lot of sub 3 hour marathoners carrying that much weight on such short legs.

My plan is to get a daily nutrition plan this week, and stick to it next week. See if I can drop 1 - 1.5 lbs per week between now and my marathon. Now it's time for some fun with FitDay to guess at my caloric intake needs and protein/carb/fat distribution.

Pensacola Race Report

When I asked Paul if it was a bad idea to do a marathon instead of 22 miles as part of my marathon training, he said it was a great idea if I ran the right pace. Of course Paul is the race director, so obviously he said to run it. My goal pace for my A race 7:10, so I asked if I could run 8:00's to get a PR. He said no, more like 8:30. I laid in bed the night before the race wondering what pace I should go out at. 8:20 is the number that I settled on before falling asleep.

Since it was a local race, there were lots of people there that I knew. At the starting line I ran into Steve, Ty, Ron, and Mark. The one person that I didn't see was Eamen. He was the person that was going to run close to my pace.

The first 2 miles I felt like I was shuffling but my Garmin said I was going too fast (7:52 and 7:45), which I thought was fine. I'd rather look down and see that I need to slow down then look down and see I need to speed up. Soon I saw Christine, whom I've seen a few times at the morning group runs. She was running the half. We chatted a little, and I found out she was doing the Flying Pig Marathon in May. The Flying Pig is the only marathon I've done, so I told her what I thought of the course and my experience. We didn't talk about much else before seperating.

The next few miles were consistant and I felt great. 7:51, 8:05, 8:06, 7:58, 7:53, 7:51, 7:57, 7:51, 7:56. My ave HR never went over 148 for the mile splits. With about 1 mile to go before the half marathon finish, I saw Suzanne at the bottom of the hill. I let myself speed up on the downhill to catch her. Her husband (Ty) had a goal of running under 3:30, which would put him right around where we were, but she said he was up ahead somewhere.

Shortly after the halfway point I grabbed 2nd gel. Usually I can stomach 3-4 before getting sick of them, but the 2nd one did it for me today. The idea was 3 gels and water, but I took Heed instead of the 3rd gel. Next long run I'm going to try sports beans or the gummy things. I can't have my stomach feeling upset during a race.

Mile 15 or so I caught Ty. He was on pace for a sub 3:30. Excellent considering his first marathon was 4 months ago, and I think it was a 4:45. I let him know I was there, but I didn't want to try to have a conversation with someone working on getting a PR. He dropped back a bit and I continued my 8 min/mile pace.

Then I went past the 23 mile marker. There must be something about that mile, because it's where I slowed down in my other marathon. For 23 miles, I felt fine. In fact, I felt like I was holding back. All the sudden my feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my muscles were sore, and my legs were heavy. Mile 24 was 8:54. Next mile was 9:59, including some walking, then the last mile was 8:57.

Finished in 3:32:17. 12 seconds slower than my other marathon. I wasn't bummed about missing a PR, but I was bummed that the end of the race hurt so much. It was supposed to be easy. Aemen finished in 3:45, which would would of been a much better pace for em.

Here is all the data from my Garmin on the race:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7633144

cause or effect?

This morning I felt great after my morning run. It got me thinking... I try to justify the days that I don't exercise by telling myself I'm feeling overtrained. What else could be the reason for feeling so lethargic? Well, I think the lack of energy could be from skipping a session. Sometimes people "listen" by only hearing what they want to hear. The same is true when it comes to listening to your body.

Plan to Qualify for Boston

Just in case this works, I thought I should document my training plan. In order to qualify for Boston, I need to run a 3:10 marathon. My goal is a 3:07 pace, just in case I need to slow or stop for something, I won't have to make up lost ground. The person that created my plan is the local shoe store owner, Paul. He's in his early to mid 40's, and ran 2:46 at New York last year.

38 Total 12 Long (3 tempo) - first week of plan
42 Total 14 Long (4 race/tempo) - 4 weeks ago
45 Total 14 Long (8atMP) - 3 weeks ago
37 Total 10 Long - 2 weeks ago
47 Total 16 Long (4 mile tempo) - last week
50 Total 18 Long - This week
52 Total 20 Long - Next week
45 Total 16 Long - 7 weeks out
60 Total 26.2 Long - 4 mile tempo, Marathon at 8:15/mi
56 Total 17 Long (12 at MP)
55 Total 20 Long (5 mi Tempo)
48 Total 18 Long (12 at MP)
44 Total 16 Long - 2 weeks out
37 Total 10 Long - 1 week out
?? Total Race week

Breaking it down... 656 miles over 14 weeks. 46.8 miles per week average. Each week I do a long run and a medium long run. Both of these runs start at 20% (8:36) of my marathon pace for up to 5 miles, and end at 10% (7:53) of my marathon pace for up to 5 miles. The other miles should be somewhere between these 2 paces. Every few weeks I do a long run with a significant portion of the miles at my marathon pace.

The goal pace for a tempo run is 6:20. Originally I didn't think I could do that, so I aimed for 6:30 the first week. The second week I did a 4 mile race at 6:11 pace. I guess I can do tempo runs at 6:20.

A portion of my miles have been way to fast (7:10-7:30 pace) for 6 miles on Tuesday and Thursday mornings with a group. During lunch I account for the rest of my miles. Lunch miles are between 4 to 6 miles, and around 8:00 pace.

Other than that, I do four 75m strides once a week after an easy run. No hills, no reapeats, no weights, no water running, no parachutes, or lunges. I have biked 170 miles in the first 7 weeks, but that's far from my goal of 50 miles/week.

Golfing Next Year

This weekend I attempted to make progress in getting a nutritional plan. At 6:30am it was raining pretty heavy, so I setup the trainer and laptop in the garage. This was probably a good thing. My HR stays lower when I'm on the trainer, and it's easy to adjust my nutrition.

Logged on to Hulu.com and started watching 24. Four episodes, 2.5 hours, 1 banana, 2 gu gels, half a clif bar, and 30 oz of gatorade later, I was ready for my run. The plan was to run 16 miles, but my runs have not been going according to plan lately.

I have a 4.5 mile route that I was able to add another half mile to. As expected, I started off way too fast. Goal was 8:30 for the first 5 miles. One would think I would slow down after passing the first mile at 7:30, but I didn't. Maybe I was thinking I wanted to get done faster. Maybe I thought I was in much better shape than I was a few days ago. Maybe I wasn't thinking.

After 5 miles I ate half a banana, mouthful of gatorade, grabbed the headphones, and started the next 5. Passed my house again around mile 10, drank more gatorade, and started the hard part. My first 5 miles of a long run should be at 8:30 pace, and the last 5 should be at 7:40 pace. Miles 11 and 12 felt fine. Mile 13 I wanted to quit. Mile 14 I started to walk, and Mile 15 was basically a cooldown. Mile 16 never happened.

Falling Off Plan

Up until last week, I was following my training plan for running very well. If the training log is accurate, I was 8.5 miles short. It was a recovery week, so maybe I'm just more recovered? Don't think so. This week I'm going to be more than 2 miles over. This morning I was planning on doing my 16 mile long run, but it turned into a 9 mile medium long run. Woke up at 3:10, but didn't get out the door until 3:55 due to issues with the dog and a lost glove. Sub 30 degrees, so going without a glove did not sound like fun.

Now I need to do 16 on Sunday. Hopefully this will give me a opportunity to test a nutritional plan. If I can manage a 3-4 hour bike ride before my run, it will be a good week.

Training Plans

This week I'm going though my training plan debate. Usually I go through it once every month or two. This time I even posted about it on the TriFuel forums. The replies gave very good input, but it's an impossible question to answer.

It seems like we have the Mark Allen / Phil Maffetone approach in one corner. It preaches that going at a low heart rate for a long time will build a solid base, then over time your speed will get faster while keeping the same low HR. In the other corner, we have Endurance Nation / Michael Mccormack with the opposite approach. Instead of going long and slow in the off season, they tell us to work on short and fast sessions. This builds up speed, then you can increase endurance during the peak of the season.

For now, I need to avoid injuries, and have fun. When the day comes that I stop improving, I'll worry about what plan I'm using.