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May 14, 2011
well hello there
yeah, I haven't written in a while. Yeah, most people who aren't commentspammers who read this blog know that I am more often found on facebook or twitter or chrunners.net. I'm not writing this for those people, or the commentspammers. I'm just writing this for me, because it's more than 140 characters and I wanted to get it down in 1s and 0s anyway.
I am in a running funk.
In February I ran a PR marathon (a PR at 47! jeez) and busted a longstanding time goal. Great. After that race, a friend invited me to run a big out-of-state 10k in May, and that sounded like fun. My coach thought it would be cool to actually train for it, so that's what we did. I started running moderate mileage (60-70) but with some kind of workout every couple of days. Some 5k pace, some 10k pace, some tempo, etc. Some mile pace stuff even. And suddenly: I suck ass.
In this training cycle I've run 3 races: a 10k in March; a 5k last week; and a 5-mile today. I ran the 10k at the same pace I ran a 10-miler last summer. I ran the 5k at the pace my coach wishes I could muster for 10k. I ran today's 5-miler a bit faster than half-marathon pace. Not PR half-marathon pace, but the pace I ran for a half-marathon I was using as a marathon training race 3 months ago.
I have learned a lot from my coach, the most important thing being patience in races. I love races of attrition. I can go along at some sort of subobtimal pace for a long time, slowly swallowing up people who have gone out too fast, and then sort of feed off that to push hard(er) for the last mile or two or 6 of a long race. But patience doesn't work in short races. You have to be willing to hurt, and I'm not, not in that way, anyway.
My best short races have been those where I've gone out way too fast and tried to hold on. I never did actually succeed in holding on, but the initial too-fastness got me quickly into the this-fucking-hurts zone. I didn't spend the whole race anticipating, and then ultimately putting off the pain.
I follow a lot of running blogs and I see people going through various problems where they are injured, dissatisfied with their training, their coaches, their weight, their bodies, their shoes, etc. Everyone's looking for the One Thing they need to do to turn everything around. New therapist, new coach, new club, new supplements, what have you. For me, there is no one magic thing I can change, because the problem is just: me.
Posted by joe positive at May 14, 2011 6:28 PM
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Comments
Well, hello! I was happy to see you pop up in my reader. Was anticipating a post something like this after reading "9 miles including sucky 5 mile race" on Twitter. Can't recall if you read Flo's blog http://www.girlinmotion.com/ but she had a good link a few posts back to a thread on LR 'training without interval work' -- anyway, your coach knows you best.
There were a couple of posts in there of interest. Of slow-twitch runners doing their best short races soon off the back of solid mileage with later races becoming slower. I think regular short racing (weekly) while maintaining 'normal' mileage is good training for short races for ST runners.
Posted by: Ewen at May 15, 2011 6:56 AM