Week 14: More Miles & a Half Marathon Tuneup Race

Week 14 finally brought some speed to marathon training.  Since I knew that I was running a half marathon at the end of the week, I did a few intervals while running on the treadmill to get my legs used to turning over at more than a complete turtle speed.  I ran a lower mileage than the previous week.  I definitely didn't taper in the true sense of the word, but I used this week as a cutback week.

Day 92 (September 28):  Easy day!  I did a 1.3 mile streak run on the treadmill along with some recovery yoga.  I wanted an active recovery day from the long run on Sunday.

Day 93 (September 29): 7 miles on the treadmill.  I kept my speed on the treadmill set at 5.2 miles per hour, but did 6 x .5 miles at 5.5 miles per hour.  I think that doing intervals on the treadmill keeps me entertained and makes the workouts much less boring.  I've also started hitting the lap button on my watch at the end of every mile.  I had just been using my watch as a fancy stopwatch, which is helpful if I hop off of the treadmill or when the damn thing stops on me after an hour.

Day 94 (September 30): 7.5 miles on the treadmill.  I make this run easier than the previous one by running at 5.2 miles per hour and then bumping it to 5.3 or 5.4 during the commercial breaks on hulu.

Day 95 (October 1): 6.2 miles outside.  I wore my new running clothes to test them out.  It was super windy and blustery out and I overdressed a bit for the temperature, but I just shed my top layer after the first mile and felt good to go.

Day 96 (October 2): 4.3 miles on the treadmill - mostly at 5.2 miles per hours with jumps up to 5.7 miles per hour during the commercial breaks.  It felt good to move my legs a little faster.

Day 97 (October 3): 1.2 miles on the treadmill, just a very quick streak/shakeout run.

Day 98 (October 4): The big event: Grete's Great Gallop Half Marathon.  When I set up my training plan I decided that this would be my main tuneup run and help me get a good idea of my fitness.  I have mostly been logging all easy miles during training because I am terrified of injuring myself and not getting to the marathon starting line.  That said, I still needed some measurement of my fitness.  My half marathon PR going into this race was 2:18:58.  This was definitely a tougher course than my marathon PR course, but I thought my fitness was better.  I guessed that I was probably in 2:15 shape, so I made a custom pace band for 2:16.  I didn't want to risk blowing up during the race or injuring myself.

Before the race I met up with the Runners United group outside of the band shell.

The Runners United Group before the race.

I had facebook chatted with Vince before the race and he agreed to run with me, which was very kind of him because I'm much slower runner than he is :-)  I told him my plan was to go out at about a 10:30 pace and see what happened.

While I chatted with the Runners United crew I made sure to use my inhaler and eat my first two shot bloks. I had bundled up for the start, and waited until the last minute to take off my outer layers and drop my bag.  I hit the nice bathrooms right before the start, jogged an easy half mile or so, and then got to my corral and stood next to the 2:15 pacer so that Vince could find me.  The race started and I took off my final stripper layer, one of Ed's old button down work shirts.  The 2:15 pacer set out at a fast clip and I decided it wasn't worth it to keep up with him.

The Grete's Gallop course is two loops full loops of the park starting on the west side at 64th street and ending after getting back to the east side on the 72nd street traverse.  I hit the first mile marker in 10:34, which according to my watch was at a 10:19 pace at 1.02 miles into the race.  That makes sense given the weaving.  The second mile included cat hill and I hit mile 2 at 21:05 (10:31) and was settling in nicely and starting to warm up.  I took a shot blok here and drank some water.  The third mile felt pretty good because I was finally warmed up and not fighting so many hills and I hit the mile marker at 31:14 (10:08).  I knew that the dreaded Harlem hill was coming up and I'd slow down substantially but I got to mile 4 at 42:04 (10:50).  The really annoying thing about Harlem hill is that it is then followed by some rollers on the west side of the park, so I hit mile 5 at 52:27 (10:23).  I took my second shot blok right around the 5 mile mark.  After the rollers, however, it is a nice flat/speedy slightly downhill portion.  Still, I was shocked when I hit the mile 6 marker at 1:01:35 (9:07) because there's no way that I ran a 9:07 mile.  Indeed, looking at my watch later it definitely was placed early.  But at least the first loop was done!

Moving onto the second loop, I had to keep in mind that the mile 6 marker was placed early and as a result, I didn't hit the mile 7 marker until 1:12:56 (11:21).  It wasn't me running an inconsistent pace, it was NYRR placing the mile markers at the incorrect places!  I'm glad that I sort of knew this.  I mentioned it to Vince and he agreed that the mile markers were off. During mile 8 I started wearing down a bit and knew that I had to buckle down and focus,  I took another shot blok and hit the mile 8 marker at 1:23:18 (10:22).  Mile 9 was the nice downhill before the dreaded Harlem Hill for the second time, and we hit the marker at 1:33:17 (9:58).  Going up Harlem hill again in mile 10 was just hellish and I slowed down a lot but I didn't walk, we hit the mile 10 marker at 1:44:13 (10:56) and at this point I was pretty certain that I would PR.  I had thought that mentally as long as I made it to 10 miles by 1:45 then I had over 33 minutes to run a 5k, which I was confident that I could do.  I wanted to take my final shot blok but there wasn't another water station until nearly the mile 11 maker.  Vince kept cheering me on and encouraging me to keep it up. In dealing with the west side rollers, tiredness, and looking for the water station my 11th mile was slow and I didn't hit the marker until 1:55:14 (11:01).  After mile 11 it was time to drop the hammer and just go for it!  I hit the mile 12 marker at 2:04:50 (9:35) and then just had to hold on!  I hit mile 13 at 2:15:04 (10:14), and wound up with a final time of 2:16:05.  Result: a new PR by over two minutes.  This is a 10:24 average pace, and makes McMillan think that I can run a 4:46:xx marathon :-)  

I feel really happy with how I performed during this race.  I was able to maintain my focus and keep just about the pace that I wanted.  I think that overall I negative split.  I probably could have run it a minute or two faster, but my ultimate goal for this training cycle is the NYC Marathon.  I proved to myself that lots of really easy miles do indeed improve fitness.  Doing several runs longer than half marathon distance have also made it much less daunting to get to the half marathon distance.

Now onward to the last week of hard training before taper time.

Week 14 Summary:

Miles: 41.4

Average Pace: 11:04 min/mile

Stayed on Plan:  Sure, for the most part.  I even squeezed in yoga at least once. ;-)