Marathon #6

by Brandon  
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I’m just one week out from running my 6th marathon, the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon here in Anchorage a week from today. This is my first marathon since last October when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., making this my first marathon as a Marathon Maniac – you bet I’ll be wearing my Maniac shirt loud and proud!

This will be my 2nd time running this marathon (having run it for the first time last year), and there’s a certain amount of comfort in that. I know the course – where the hills are, where the flat spots are, and where I can likely make up time late in the race if I’m feeling up to it. There’s one particularly nasty hill right in the final mile. It kicked my butt last year, so I’ve been attacking it repeatedly on my long runs.

My current marathon PR is 4:00:35 at the Moose’s Tooth Marathon last August. Both my training and my performances in shorter races so far this year tell me that I’m in shape to set a big PR, but as we all know, anything can happen on race day. If you plug my recent 1/2 marathon time of 1:37:21 into the McMillan Race Pace calculator, it claims my “equivalent performance” would be a 3:25:19 marathon. Maybe it’s purely mental again (I didn’t think I could pull off sub-1:40 going into that last 1/2 marathon), but 3:25 seems completely bonkers to me. Besides, the “equivalent performance” moniker assumes that your training has been at that level, and mine simply hasn’t. Coming from a 4 hour marathon, 3:25 just seems insanely fast, so my training hasn’t reflected that type of speed. The pace I’ve been running my track sessions and tempo runs at has been targetting a 3:35-3:40 finish time. More on my exact goals for this race later.

I feel like I’ve prepared as well as I can. I think (and hope) that my ultra training will pay off. All of the back-to-back long runs have definitely improved my endurance and gotten me more used to running on tired legs. I’ve also done more speed and tempo work than I’ve ever done in the past, the results of which have definitely shown themselves in my shorter races this year. For now, I just have to wait until the big day and hope for the best. Until then, I’m in the midst of taper madness, convincing myself that the reduced running is going to make me slow and fat – despite the fact that I’ve managed to drop a few extra pounds since last month (I’m currently hovering around 207).

My goals for the race? I say goals plural because I think it’s important to lay out A/B/C goals, acknowledging the fact that no matter how good your training, anything can happen on race day – bad weather, upset stomach, or maybe it’s simply not your day. If you only set THE be-all-end-all goal, then it can be quite dissapointing if you fall short.

C goal: 3:59:59 – This is my fallback goal. On a good day, I know I’m capable of quite a bit faster than this. But even if everything goes wrong, I still want to see a 3 at the start of my finishing time, just to get that sub-4 monkey off my back.

B goal: 3:40 – This is my reasonable goal of what I feel I can run if things go at least relatively smoothly for me on race day.

A goal: 3:35 – This is my “stretch” goal. Everything would have to go pretty much perfectly for this to happen. I’m talking sun shining, birds singing, puppies playing perfect. I’m going to start out on pace for a 3:40 finish, and I’ll reassess how I’m feeling as the race progresses. After about mile 14.5, it’s pretty much all downhill or flat, aside from that nasty hill in the final mile. Once I reach that point, if I feel like I’ve still got some in the tank, I’ll try speeding up bit by bit in the final miles.

I’m finding myself getting anxious for next Saturday to finally roll around. Waiting is the hardest part. After all these weeks and months of training, I’m excited to see what I can do come race day!

Glacier 1/2 Marathon Recap

by Brandon  
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Spoiler alert: HOLY PR BATMAN!

Going into this race, I said that my goal time was 1:42. Of course, in the back of my mind, I had a “stretch” goal of 1:40. I planned to run the first half on pace for 1:42 and see how I felt after that. The weather was perfect (overcast, low 50’s), and I was feeling really good from the start. I ended up hitting the turnaround point in just over 50 minutes, right on track for a 1:40. Even going at the faster pace than I had planned for the first half, I could feel that I still had some left in the tank, so I dropped the hammer on the way back in the 2nd half of the race, and decided to just go for it. It’s a pretty flat course, with most of the hills being in the first half, so I knew I had it relatively easy going back.

The last few miles I was definitely starting to hurt, but I kept pushing hard, and the last 2 miles were actually my fastest of the race, at 6:48 and 7:01. I crossed the finish line in 1:37:21, setting a new PR by 11 minutes!

This is a pretty low-key race put on by the Anchorage Running Club. There are no shirts and no medals, but it’s only $20 for running club members – tough to beat for a 1/2 marathon! What they do though, is take your time from the last time you’ve run this race, and give you an age-adjusted goal for this year. If you meet or beat your goal time, you get a race mug. I think that’s a fun little twist on your usual race swag. And since I finished 19 minutes faster than I did last year, I gladly accepted my prize, which I put to good use almost immediately after getting home:

Next stop: Mayor’s Marathon on June 23! After today’s performance, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about what I’m going to set my goal time at for that race.

Setting a Race Goal: How Low Can I Go?

by Brandon  
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This Saturday I’ve got my first “big” race of the year, the Glacier 1/2 Marathon. I already saw at my 10k 2 weekends ago that I’ve picked up a lot of speed over the winter, knocking around 9 minutes off my time from the previous year.

Since the snow and ice have melted, and I’ve really been able to open things up during my tempo runs, I’ve really begun to notice how much faster I’m getting. Even on tired legs, I’ve been able to maintain paces that I wouldn’t have even thought about last fall. It seems that all those miles during the cold snowy winter have really paid off! A few weeks ago, I set out for the second of my back-to-back long runs. I hadn’t set out intending to run particularly fast, but over 12.5 miles I kept a pace that would have missed my 1/2 marathon PR by just a minute. On a training run. A day after running 22 miles.

Needless to say, I’m excited to see what kind of speed I’m capable of maintaining over a longer race like this. Plus, I’m planning to use my results from this race to help me finalize my goal for Mayor’s Marathon next month. But setting a goal time for a race is tricky business. There’s a fine line between pushing yourself really hard, and not pushing so hard that your pace suffers the last few miles. I want to challenge myself and leave everything out there, but I also don’t want to blow up at mile 10 because I set too aggressive of a goal.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
– Steve Prefontaine

My current 1/2 marathon PR is 1:48:04 at last October’s Zombie 1/2 Marathon. Part of me would really like to try for sub-1:40, which would mean averaging 7:38 miles. Maybe it’s purely mental on my part, but that feels a bit out of reach at this point. Instead, I’m going to go a tad more conservative and aim for 1:42. That would still mean 6 minutes off my PR, with a more manageable 7:47 average pace.

(Yikes! Did I really just use “7:47 average pace” and “manageable” in the same sentence?)

Altra Instinct Review

by Brandon  
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The short version: I absolutely LOVE these shoes!

The longer version:

Altra is a relatively new shoe company that makes a line of zero drop shoes. Zero drop means that there is no difference in height between the heel and the toe of the shoe. For comparison’s sake, a pair of “regular” shoes typically have a 10-14mm heal-to-toe drop. I really liked the idea of these shoes, because they are a minimal shoe, with the zero drop giving you a much more “natural” feel, while still providing a decent amount of cushioning – unlike something like Vibram FiveFingers. I thought it sounded like a great compromise, and was excited to try them out. The Instinct is their road running shoe, awarded “Best Debut” this year by Runner’s World.

Image via birthdayshoes.com

One of the other big selling points of Altra’s shoes is a wide toe box, allowing your toes to splay out more naturally, as opposed to most running shoes that seem to crunch your toes together. The wide toe box had me sold from the very first moment I put the shoes on. My initial impression was “wow, I never knew a pair of running shoes could be this comfortable!” I knew that if these shoes felt even half as good while running as they did just standing there, I would really be in love!

I’ve now got a little over 200 miles on my pair of Instincts, and they have been nothing short of fabulous. I’ve run about half a dozen 18-22 mile training runs in them so far, and they’re the shoe I plan on wearing for Mayor’s Marathon coming up next month. These shoes feel great to run in, they’re light and airy, and once again the wide toe box is awesome.

The combination of Altra Instincts and a pair of Injinji socks seems to be a nearly fool-proof method of preventing blisters. Previously, I would fairly regularly get small blisters in between my toes, or on the outside of my little toes. Since I started running consistently in my Instincts, I haven’t had a single blister.

Next up? I’m doing my best to acquire a pair of Lone Peaks, Altra’s trail running shoe. However, my sasquatch-like size 14 feet are foiling me again, as it seems everyone is currently out of that size. But it’s only a matter of time, and I can’t wait to give them a try!