Spring Lake 5

On Wednesday I went to the University of Maryland track to do 5 by 1000 with a 200 jog for rest. I like doing 1000s on a race week. I have found that while I might have to work harder than expected to hit my times, I often wind up averaging that pace in the race. For some reason 1000s prepare my system to race. I would have preferred, however, to do this workout on Tuesday and get that extra day of recovery. Unfortunately my work schedule did not permit that.

It was my first time back at the Maryland track since mid-March, shortly after I returned from Niger. I was scheduled to do 1000s that day as well; I went there thinking I could run 3:07-3:10. After the first 1000 I looked at my watch: 3:29! On the second I practically gave it everything I had: 3:18! I took off my watch and finished the workout. Clearly I was not anywhere nearly as fit as I thought I was: It goes to show that while good volume in training is key to success in long distance running, too many months (or years) without steady 5k-10k anaerobic efforts will take its toll. Since that workout I had stayed off the (non-asphalt) track and done timed simulation workouts on the roads and trails. Why go to the track and leave disappointed?

But last Wednesday I felt like I was ready to return. My coach thought I could run 3:12s (projected 5k pace). Completing the workout and having that data could give me confidence going into Saturday's race. In line with his prediction, I was able to run 3:12s, and while a bad day for 1000s when I was training for the 5000 in 2004 was 3:05s, it nonetheless seemed like I was lining up about a 26:25 on Spring Lake's fast course.

The Spring Lake 5 -- the first of five races in the Jersey Shore Grand Prix -- is one of the largest 5-mile road races in the U.S. This year there were 7,500 runners. My Dad has been running this race for at least 20 years. Top 10 get a piece of crystal. Top 100 get a coffee mug. Everyone gets a beer glass. At this point, just about every mug in the house bears Spring Lake 5 insignia. 

The morning of this race is like "Groundhog Day." Dad likes to leave at 5:45 a.m. and park in the same spot in front of 100 Mercer Avenue, which is close to the t-shirt pickup spot, bathrooms and starting line. He is nervous; I am nervous. Mom's in the back seat, quiet. Dad and I make easy conversation: recent performances by local runners, Levon Helm, whether or not the national deficit has any real measurable effect on the national economy.

We got a good day this morning. Because the race starts on the road adjacent to the ocean, a headwind for the opening mile is expected. After the first mile the course curves past a lake -- the wind continues to whip -- and you run back in the opposite direction through neighborhoods. The final half-mile on Ocean Avenue is dead into the wind. This, however, is considered to be part of the course (and if you do not happen to feel what you will feel in its place is deadly heat). In other words, the wind at Spring Lake is expected. All you hope for is cool weather, and we got that. The temperature was in the 50s.

I did not perform as well as I would have liked. In similar fashion to the Rumson Run, I was 15:46 through three miles, almost right on pace, but I struggled to keep rolling the last two miles. In my previous two races at Spring Lake I took 8th and 9th. Today I got bumped to 11th in the last 50 meters. 26:59. Did the Wednesday workout take a little too much out of me? (Four reps may have been better than 5.) Did the long week of work and six hours in a car yesterday have any effect? I would say probably not: I felt fresh this morning. And my coach noted that improvements in workouts might not necessarily indicate improvement during maximal efforts: That could take longer. Plus, the workouts I am doing are not specifically tailored to 8- or 10k. While I am not technically in a marathon cycle, I am also not training specifically for shorter distances: A lot of the workouts, particularly the tempo runs, will benefit me more at marathon paces than they will for 5 or 8k. 

I have chosen the race I want to succeed in. Maybe success will take a summer of mediocre racing.

Dad ran great: 30:50. He cheered me up while we walked to the car. 

Another year. Another coffee mug.

I will post my week after tomorrow's long run.

Back to work

On May 5 we moved to Takoma Park, Md., a mile northeast of Washington, D.C. On May 6 I started a job with Southern Maryland News: As the Weekend Editor, I write, design and edit a regional weekend guide which runs on Fridays in the Maryland Independent, The Calvert Recorder and The Enterprise. It takes an hour to drive to my office in Waldorf.

My fitness, meanwhile, seems to be improving every week. My 5-mile tempo run on May 8 was done in 29:06. On May 17 I did the same workout in 28:40. I am starting to accrue some of the physiological adaptions that come with consistent weeks of good mileage with a couple hard workouts. 

While there is no one set program or philosophy for a runner to follow, the principals of long distance running should not exactly be likened to neuroscience. Frank Shorter had it right: put in a lot of mileage, go long on Sunday, run your guts out twice a week. There you have it, the basic foundation. The more tricky thing is to set it all up so you run your best in the races you want to peak for. A creative photographer might show you a photograph and tell you about the great lengths he or she went to capture it in a frame. But what if there is nothing particularly compelling about the image? What if the photograph is just not very good?

Training in Takoma Park can be less than ideal. The metropolitan D.C. area is extremely busy, and on weekday mornings the roads are clogged with commuters. The beautiful Sligo Creek bike trail is already like a treadmill for me, although I'm getting good at negotiating the street-crossings. 

One resource I have found is an asphalt track at the Takoma Park elementary school. I have been doing my tempo workouts there (and an 800 workout when I was short on time). A lot of people would probably think I'm crazy to do a 5-mile tempo around a track, but I think the monotony is a good mental exercise for the marathon. Tempo workouts are supposed to be slower than race pace but markedly faster than general training pace. I try to settle into an effort that is difficult yet contained; it gets hard toward the end but not quite as hard as a race.

All in all, my training the past two weeks went on with few interruptions, save the inability to double-up some days -- due to work assignments at night -- when 6 in the morning and 6 at night could have provided more recovery than a 10- or 12-miler (especially when you end up getting lost and winding up in downtown D.C. and a crossing guard tells you to take a left on South Dakota and then a right at the "chicken place").

May 5-11
Monday - 10
Tuesday - 9
Wednesday - 11 - 3 warmup, 5-mile tempo in 29:06 on track (5:55, 5:53, 5:51, 5:44, 5:41), 3 cooldown
Thurday - 15 - intended to go 12
Friday - 9 in pouring rain
Saturday - 10 - 6 by 800 with lap jog rest, 4 by 150. 2:35 avg. for 800s. Wore training shoes.
Sunday - 16 in cold hard rain
Total - 80

May 12-18
Monday - 10
Tuesday - 10, ice bath
Wednesday - 10 with 7 by 2 minutes hard, two minutes easy; 5 by 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy
Thursday - AM 8 PM 6
Friday - 10
Saturday - 10 - 3 warmup, 5-mile tempo in 28:40 (5:38, 5:34, 5:41, 5:50, 5:55), 4 by 150 meters
Sunday - 16
Total 80

I will race the Spring Lake 5 on May 24.

Rumson-Fair Haven Run

Rolf Reinalda is one of my best friends. He is 6 feet 6 inches tall. We graduated in 2000 from Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School. Rolf got a football scholarship to Northwestern.

In the Rumson-Fair Haven Run this morning, as I passed three miles on River Road, I could see my rather formidable friend from what seemed like a quarter-mile away.

He wore a light blue t-shirt. "Team Lynn" was printed on the front in block letters.

When I saw Rolf I had just been dropped by the lead pack, despite a slow 5:15 pace through the first three miles. Jeff Peterson, Robert Cavanaugh and Tim Morgan had another gear (and maybe another after that). I did not.

"Team Lynn" was formed for Lynn Reinalda, Rolf's mom. Lynn is battling brain cancer. When I think of Lynn I think of her and my mother dragging a young Rolf and I -- often with some resistance -- through the Metropolitan Museum. 12-year-olds didn't really understand the French impressionists; in our twenties, however, we are both "creative types."

My mother, Joan, was on Team Lynn, as was Rolf's sister, Greer, and his father, Old Rolf.

I was nervous this morning. As nervous as I might be before a marathon.

For the Rumson-Fair Haven 5-miler? For a community race?

Not exactly the Olympics.

But this is my hometown race, and I wanted to put up a decent performance.

The race starts in front of Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, my alma mater, and ends with about 200 meters on the school's track, where I knew my good friend, not to mention former Harvard All-American, Tim McLoone, would be announcing the finish. The course cuts through my hometown. Shortly after passing Woodland Dr., the street where I grew up, I passed by the driveway to my grandparents' house.

For the first time, the Rumson-Fair Haven Run offered prize money, and the quality of competition was deeper today than it had been in recent years.

I did not think I could run faster than 26:50.

The early pack included Peterson, Cavanaugh, Morgan, myself, and the high school's top distance runner, Max Sparshatt.

By three miles Sparshatt had fallen back, and when the other three accelerated, I was left spinning wheels in their wake. It felt like I was still holding 5:15s, but I was holding more like 5:30s: my anaerobic system is still way behind the strength accrued through marathoning from 2005 to 2006 and long runs through the desert the past 15 months.

"The reality of the situation is setting in," Rolf said to me later at breakfast. My friend's strength through this has been nothing less than remarkable.

When I saw Rolf I forced myself to accelerate. I did not actually accelerate. But sometimes you have to grit your teeth just to keep your wheels on the tracks.

I held on for 26:49, 4th place.

Training log from last week:

Monday - 0 - We drove from Nashville to Easton, PA., where my wife's parents live.

Tuesday - 10

Wednesday - 10 - 7 by 2 minutes hard with 2 minutes rest btw; 5 by 30 seconds hard and 30 seconds rest. Did this on the roads in Easton.

Thursday - AM 8 PM 8

Friday - 10

Saturday 6, strides

Sunday - 10, Rumson-Fair Haven 5-miler

Total - 62 ... Not great, but OK for a day off and no long-run. Making progress. We are moving to Takoma Park, Md. tomorrow, and I start a new job the next day.

ANOTHER NOTE: My dad finished 11th in 31:10. He is 52 and cleaned up in his age group. What can I say? He is the high school's cross country coach (with McLoone) and runs faster than most of the kids he coaches. He is a total animal.

Effortless Effort

It is interesting how the way one "feels" can vary so much from day to day.

Last Thursday, in Nashville, I ran 10 miles on a bike path with mile markers. Curious about pace, I took a few mile splits in the middle: 7:20, 7:20, 7:20.

This afternoon I ran 8 miles -- 8 figure-eight loops -- at a park in New Jersey. 6:38, 6:38, 6:38. 

And yet the effort level for both workouts was the same. When you are trying to put in decent volume and doing it alone and aiming for something many months away, you must simply learn to accept that some days your "normal" effort will produce 6:38s when on other days it might only produce 7:20s. It's not about training at an exact pace; it's about training within the correct zone of effort. You want to settle into an intuitive cadence that will provide a certain amount of stimulus but also allow you to recovery prior to more-important workouts. What is "easy" and what is "hard" will naturally vary from day to day.

Last Thursday I was up at 3:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. flight. The weather that afternoon was hot. I felt sluggish. I was worried about the half marathon in two days. 

Today the weather was clear and cool. The dirt trail was easy on my body. The second 8-miler turned out to be smoother than my first one in the morning.

Tomorrow morning I might feel lousy.

But the important thing is consistency. Steadiness. Day after day, you put in the work.