Well, it happened again. I felt burnt out in the summer, so I took a bit of a break, and I never could quite come back from it. It was hard to get motivated, when there was no race on the horizon.

The real wake up call came a few weeks ago, when I had to claim my place for the spring Kentucky Derby Marathon. It will be a stupid staggered start race, but it will provide an official time, and that's nice. Except that I'm in a shit form with low MPW, so I better start training!

I've done two weeks of regular running now. MPW is still low: 31.5 for last week. But it isn't outrageous, if I'm OK with Pfitzinger's lower mileage plan. I could potentially start that plan after this week.

Race day: April 24.

April 18: Race week.

April 11: Week 1.

April 4: Week 2.

March 28: Week 3.

March 21: Week 4.

March 14: Week 5.

March 7: Week 6.

February 28: Week 7.

February 21: Week 8.

February 14: Week 9.

February 7: Week 10.

January 31: Week 11.

January 24: Week 12.

Obviously, there is not enough time to do 18 week plan, so the 12 week must do.

It is probably best to just do mileage until then. I can do 35 miles this week, and then

January 3 - 9: 38.5 (5.5 per day)

January 10 - 16: 42 (6 per day)

January 17 - 23: 46.5 (6.5 per day)

The goal can be decided later, but for now, it seem like a 3:10 has a good chance to be a BQ for an old fart like me. That's a 7:15 pace, which looks entirely doable. I can probably even train a bit faster. We will reevaluate this in January, when race training starts.

First week of Phase III is done. This went quite well. I did the VO2max workout in the gym. (90 degrees outside.) Good choice. I managed to do it and it felt OK. Hard, but fine. It was 5 x 4 minutes (3 min jogs), and I ran the fast intervals at 10 mph (6 min/mile), while the recoveries were at 6 mph (10 min/mile).

I ran the threshold run at the track, even though it was still hot. 5 x 1600 m with 1 min rests. I was aiming for 6:30 splits, but managed a bit better: 6:26, 6:28, 6:30, 6:26, 6:23. This was also reasonable.

It seems like I'm getting pretty close to 3-hour shape. In fact these training paces are spot on for a 3-hour marathon according to Jack Daniel's on-line calculator. According to that, a 3-hour marathon corresponds to 53.5 VDOT, which is 5:58 min/mile interval pace, and 6:29/mile (~6:27/1600 m) threshold.

Of course hills are extra hard, but maybe there is hope now for a 3-hour marathon in the fall.

Last week of Phase II was OK. I ran the VO2max workout (5 x 3 min w/ 2 min jog) around the block, and it wasn't fast... Paces were 6:13, 6:14, 6:13, 6:11, 6:11, for an average of 6:12. This shows I'm getting slower in these: 6:07 to 6:10 to 6:12. Who knows why. The weather was getting warmer, the last one was run on a day when I didn't have much sleep, I was nervous, and on my feet all day long (roofing of our house). All-in-all these correspond to VDOT about 51, quite a bit worse than what was suggested by the LT workouts in Phase I.

Also, this means that my 200's on Thursday should have been 42 seconds. Granted, I only set my GPS to 0.12 miles (193 meters) but it is still weird that I manage 38, 39, 39, 37, 39, 40, 39, 40, and 38, 39, 38, 38, 40, 39, 39, 39 without much difficulty.

The last obstacle, the long run went quite well. I drank a lot, but managed a good pace and a very strong finish on over 15 miles.

Now onto Phase III:

M: 75 min E (1 or 2 runs)
T: 20 min E + 5 x 4 min H w/ 3 min jog + 20 min E
W: 75 min E (1 or 2 runs)
T: Rest
F: 20 min E + 5 x 1 mile T w/ 1 min rest + 10 min E
S: 60 min E (1 or 2 runs)
S: 120 min L

I think I'll try to do my workouts in the gym. I took a rest day yesterday (Tuesday), because we had a family program, so I'll do my VO2max workout today. It's very hot outside, and gyms opened up on June 1.

I finished the second week of Phase II more or less successfully. My 2 x 8 x 200 went fine, though I *was* ready to be done after the 16th rep. Rep times were 43, 38, 42, 37, 39, 39, 38, 39, (jog), 38, 40, 38, 40, 40, 40, 38, 36 (all GPS measured, some hills, 0.12 mile). As usual, all ran by feel. I didn't know any of the splits until until I downloaded the data.

The long run was quite bad. I went early in the morning without enough sleep. I started at 7am. This was after lots of rain on the day before and during the night, so humidity was truly 100%. It was raining under the trees. The temperature was between 70 and 80 degrees, increasing, but higher temps actually felt better, because humidity was falling.

I started a bit too fast, and didn't drink enough. I was completely saturated with sweat after the first hour (like, running down on my legs). I had a bout of trots (fortunately I was in my neighborhood). The last bit was a real struggle, but I managed to finish it at an average pace of 7:54/mile. I was badly dehydrated. Hopefully I can recover by tomorrow for my next VO2 max workout. I'd love to ace that at least once out of three.

So, as suggested, next week is the last Phase II week. Phase III will up the VO2 max training to do 5 x 4 min, and swaps out the 200's for threshold miles. I wish I could test myself in a race.

I ran a second 5 x 3 minute workout yesterday. This is, 20 minutes warmup, 5 x 3 minutes interval at VO2 max pace with 2 minutes of jogging in between for recovery, and 20 minutes of cooldown. I do it entirely by feel, except when my pace goes out of the 5:40-6:20 interval, my watch warns me.

I felt pretty tired by the last one, and I had to speed up multiple times to keep myself in the correct speed range. My paces were 6:07, 6:02, 6:09, 6:16, 6:18. Of course averaging paces is probably not the best way to measure performance, but due to the low precision of distance for these intervals, it is probably the best we can do: 6:10. This is worse than last week's 6:07, but maybe not statistically significantly worse. These correspond to VDOTs 51.8, 51.3 respectively. The corresponding 200 rep time would be 43 seconds!

It is important to note though that these are not run on a track! There are some hills, wind, etc. So track times would definitely be better.

Clearly there is a mismatch in aspects of my training. My endurance and speed are fine, my threshold is OK, my VO2 max is bad. This is OK. This is what training is for.

I successfully finished week 1 of Phase II.

It has two workouts: a VO2 max with 3 minute hard bursts, and one with 200 m reps.

The 200's are not hard, but there are 16 of them (with 5 minutes of jogging halfway). Still, I somehow managed to crank them out fast: 38, 41, 39, 39, 39, 39, 35, 39; 39, 36, 39, 37, 38, 37, 38. One split is missing, because I messed up and I actually ran it during the 5 minute jog (and then I skipped the first fast interval of the second block). This was, of course, run on the road, so there may be GPS error.

On the other hand, the 3 minute intervals were not that great. The mile paces were 5:55, 6:03, 6:13, 6:09, 6:17. This does show that I lack fitness. I have strength and endurance, just not fitness. It's OK. I can fix this. And maybe it was just not a good day.

The VO2max run was on Tuesday, the 200's on Friday, and I did feel that my legs were trashed for my long run on Sunday. I also got a bit dehydrated... stupid Parklands are trying to kill people by keeping water fountains closed. But my endurance is actually fine. I had no trouble keeping my pace despite the issues.

Two more weeks of this. I'm getting into shape for nothing...

Phase I of Daniels's Gold plan is almost done! Two days left, and no more workouts, just an easy and a long run.

The most important signals are the threshold runs: 20 minutes each week. I decided to run them by feel, just 20 minutes, no splits, and this worked well. The averages were 6:29/mile in week 1, 6:35/mile in week 2, and 6:24/mile in week 3. Week 2 was relatively warm (73 degrees); this shouldn't matter much, but I had no water on me, and I didn't drink after the warmup, so who knows. I'm afraid I may have pushed week 3 a bit too hard (beyond threshold), though it felt like I could do at least 5 more minutes, so maybe not. It was around our house block, so it also wasn't the easiest psychologically.

All this points to 53-54 VDOT, which is not bad at all; it is definitely good sign for a strong fall marathon, if one is held. But until then, let's just continue the standard fitness training; so VDOT doesn't matter all that much. I'll run everything by feel.

Phase II:
M: 75 min E
T: 20 min E + 5 x 3 min H w/ 2 min jg + 20 min E
W: 1 or 2 E runs, 30-40 min each
T: Rest
F: 20 min E + 8 x 200 R w/ 200 jg + 5 min E + 8 x 200 R w/ 200 jg + 5 min E
S: 60 min E (1 or 2 runs)
S: 120 min L

I dropped the strides. I just hate them, they don't make me any faster IMO, there is not a good way to do them, so this is it.

I wish I found a track where I don't have to hop the fence and worry about trespassing charges.

After that suspension of marathon training, I lost a few days due to business and lack of motivation. It is much harder to get yourself out the door in the dark, or in bad weather, when you don't have a race to train for.

Then somehow I injured my right knee. I'm not sure if I kneeled or squatted the wrong way, but I woke up one morning, and my knee was hurting bad. I had to skip a few days, and that added to the low-motivation non-running days turned into a 10-day break.

So following Jack Daniels, I staged a careful comeback. My first full-load day was April 18, when I ran a 15-miler. It felt great.

Now I'm back on Daniel's Gold plan. It doesn't seem like I lost much fitness. I ran a 20-minute threshold run yesterday entirely by feel, and I ran a pretty consistent 6:30 pace. It didn't feel harder than a threshold run should. This was two days after I ran a 10 x 1/4 mile workout, which was also fine. (No treadmill running for a while though - we are under pandemic lockdown.)

Now I'm planning to run the Louisville Marathon in the fall. I used to think I cold possibly run 3 hours there, but that sounds hard, especially if there is an Epsilon Camp, in which case no real training can be expected for the second half of July. Let's just make no time goal plans right now. And let's hope the race will actually be held.

An 18-week plan would start on July 12 (Sunday), which is a good milestone anyway, because Epsilon Camp would start around then. So it is a sensible plan to do Daniels' Gold Plan until then. That gives me 12 weeks on that plan including the one I'm finishing now. So the schedule looks like this:

Phase I: April 20 - May 10
Phase II: May 11 - May 31
Phase III: June 1 - June 21
Phase IV: June 22 - July 12

For Phase I, the training plan is in my previous post. Not sure about all those strides though. I'll do them, if I feel like it, which probably means, mostly I won't do them. :)

Just one day after a made that previous post, the organizers of the Kentucky Derby Marathon announced that the race will not be held until the Fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It promptly made me bail on my Wednesday run. I took the whole week easy, doing only one run: a workout with Esther on Thursday.

So I do feel refreshed, and until better times, it is most appropriate to do some fitness training. Access to tracks is a bit of an issue, but at least I definitely won't have to dodge high school runners. I'll change to Jack Daniels' Gold Plan, which is a general fitness plan that one can repeat indefinitely. My understanding is that even though it is in phases, it only does this for better variety of training. It doesn't actually peak you for anything.

Phase I, for 4 weeks:
M: 75 min E (1 or 2 runs)
T: 20 min E + 10 x 400 R w/400 jg + 10 min E
W: 60 min E (1 or 2 runs) + 6 ST
T: Rest
F: 20 min E + 6 ST + 20 min T + 6 ST + 10 min E
S: 60 min E
S: 120 min L

Somehow I survived week -6.

The VO2 max workout on Wednesday (5 x 1200) was hard, but the hardest thing was that I had to do 15 miles the following day, then 10 miles, and after a one-day recovery, a 18-miler with 12 at marathon pace.

Surprisingly, I felt better than last week. And even though both the VO2 max workout and the marathon paced were marginal, I guess they were good enough.

Here are the splits for the 5 x 1200: 4:23, 4:30, 4:33 (delayed), 4:33, 4:31. Split #3 was delayed, because there was track practice on the high school track, and they forced me into lane eight for a lap. I'm guessing that cost me about 3 seconds, so with that, the average would have been 4:29, not too bad. (Goal was 4:30.)

Here are the splits for the 12 marathon paced miles: 6:44, 6:55, 6:56, 6:51, 6:54, 6:43, 7:04, 7:01, 7:06, 7:02, 7:02, 7:05. An average of 6:57. Not too bad, again (goal was 7:00), though it does show some serious slowdown. Nevertheless, one reason of that was terrain, and in the mile last from third: traffic (about 3-4 seconds).

I'm almost certain that the marathon will be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I'll train anyway, at least until I know it for sure.

Week -5:
M: Rest
T: 9 GA w/ 10 x 100
W: 15 MLR
T: 7 R
F: 12 w/ 7 @ LT
S: 6 R
S: 21 L

Friday seems impossible, and Sunday, of course is very long. We'll see. I'll try my best on Friday to run fast, but if I have to slow it down, so be it.

My "recovery" week turned out to be 62 miles. not 59. The book has an error. I'm not sure if the some of the days are wrong, or just incorrectly added up, but it's too late anyway. I did 62. It was not much a of break, but I did feel slightly less tired day-to-day. Also interesting that in the third edition, the arithmetic error is present, but the 7 miles GA on Friday is changed to 7 miles recovery.

As for the workouts themselves, they were OK. I struggled to maintain 6:30 pace during my lactate threshold workout (6:34, 6:33, 6:29, 6:34), and I got slightly dehydrated on my long run. We had 37 degrees and windy on Friday, 65 and sunny on Sunday, so I couldn't acclimate. All in all, the week went reasonably fine. I wish I was a bit faster, but we are where we are.

Now on for the brutal weeks.

Week -6:
M: Rest
T: 6R + 4R
W: 11 w/ 5 x 1200 @ VO2 max
T: 15 MLR
F: 10 GA
S: 6 R
S: 18 w/ 12 @ MP

Both Wednesday and Sunday are very hard, and it is 70 miles. We'll see how it goes. Less than 7 weeks to race day.

Week -8 went reasonably well, though it wasn't as good as the ones before. I probably hadn't realized just how hard it was. The rest day on Monday was not nearly enough to recover from the Sunday marathon paced run, and I followed that up with 13 miles on Tuesday, and 15 miles of Wednesday. Both days I started at 6pm, which meant that I finished well after dark. It was also pretty cold every day. Then one recovery day, and then the threshold run on Friday.

It was supposed to be a continuous 5-mile run, but my schedule and my stomach was messed up, and I had to stop for a bathroom break after the second fast mile. It was cold, windy, I was tired, bad stomach, bad traffic, and too much work the during the day - I was predisposed to run poorly.

So it was 6:47, 6:30, break, 6:30, 6:35, 6:29. The first mile doesn't look right: I'm pretty sure I was just as fast as in the others (and the partial mile splits looked right), so it must have been due to the traffic that held me up in an intersection. So I guess it's OK. Not terrific, because it was broken up, and that first mile is suspect, but not terrible either.

Then another recovery day, and my first 18-miler on Sunday. The difficulty of which is the tired legs from all week. 66 miles. Some records: largest volume, longest tempo, longest run in about a year (Boston training).

Next week is recovery, but not easy.

Week -7:

M: Rest
T: 8 GA w/ 10 x 100 ST
W: 15 MLR
T: 5 R
F: 10 w/ 4 @ LT (6:30)
S: 7 GA
S: 17 L

Total: 59 miles. (Edit: in fact it is 62. The book has an error.) Seems doable; there is nothing here I haven't done recently. Also, hopefully, the weather is getting better.

Then week -6 and -5 are two brutal 70 mile weeks, the two hardest weeks of the whole cycle.

Week -9 went OK. The crux of the week was the marathon paced run on Sunday: 17 miles of which 10 at marathon pace. My fast splits were 6:39, 6:57, 6:58, 6:48, 7:05, 7:01, 7:08, 6:57, 7:06, 6:54. The strong wind and the terrain is largely responsible for the variation in pace, though I did start a bit fast, and I developed side stitches after 5 miles. I took a 5-second "stop - slow breath out - go" to get rid of it, and it worked.

This is a 6:57 average. I was aiming for 7 minutes, but 6:57 is perfectly fine. This would translate to a 3:02:xx marathon, but if we add the hills, you get 3:05.

I still obviously do need to develop all three aspects of my running: endurance (marathon paced and long runs), stamina (lactate threshold), and fitness (VO2 max), because the last miles were not easy, and this only 10 (or 17, depending on how you count), not 26. Though I have to keep in mind that this has been my largest volume week for almost a year, and I have had some good workouts recently, so I was running on tired legs (and I definitely felt it).

So I think we are on track for 3:05. Getting to 3 hours again seems incredibly hard, but let's do one step at a time.

Another important note: the 12-week cycle is short, and so definitely not ideal for me.

Week -8:
M: Rest
T: 13 MLR
W: 15 MLR
T: 5 R
F: 10 w/ 5 @ LT (6:30/mile)
S: 5 R
S: 18 L

Seems doable, the crux being the threshold run on Friday. Then the following week is recovery (with 59 miles, LOL)!

Week -10 was an unambiguous success. The first difficulty was the two longs runs at the beginning of week, and it was indeed pretty hard: by the end of my 11-miler on Wednesday I started to bonk. But I had just enough energy to finish it anyway. Then just a short day until Friday: the LT run. It got quite cold, and being acclimated, I decided to better do it on a treadmill. And the run went just right. It was hard enough that I struggled a bit at the end, but I didn't need to slow down, and I probably could have done another mile. Finally, the week ended with a 17-mile run: my longest since Boston. I went to Turkey Run Park to make is hilly, and though it was tiring, I was able to finish strong at marathon pace.

So there is a good reason to be optimistic. Here is week -9:

M: Rest
T: 9 GA w/ 10x100
W: 14 MLR
T: 5 R
F: 12 MLR
S: 5 R
S: 17 w/ 10 @ MP (7:00/mile)

It doesn't look terrible, except for the Sunday long run. The 17-miler was hard enough, and now 10 at race pace! But hopefully I will be stronger, and I'll do the bare minimum for each run to get ready for Sunday. That is, GA and MLR runs should be just under 8 min/mile, and recovery should definitely be over. Marathon paced long run should be mostly flat, probably on my neighborhood lap.

One day left from week -11 (which I heavily modified to fit in the 4-miler). All is well, assuming that I can finish my 15-miler tomorrow on my raced legs. Here is week -10:

M: Rest
T: 12 MLR
W: 11 MLR
T: 5 R
F: 9 w/ 4 T (try 6:32/mile)
S: 5 R
S: 17 L

Snowman Shuffle Race Report

Goal: start at threshold pace, and try to pick it up on the hills. Would be happy with 26:00.

This race was after the first week of marathon training. I've done high miles, and little rest in the last few weeks, so all I was hoping for is treating this as a fast tempo, and hopefully win my age group. I didn't have high hopes for the Master's win, because there was a guy in the first two races, who was much faster than me. And I knew that if he didn't show up, I would almost certainly win the Master's group of the Polar Bear Grand Prix anyway. So the goal was to make this a good threshold run, maybe a bit harder at the end, and hope for a 6:30 overall pace, which would bring me close to 6:20-ish lactate threshold, which is a 55 VDOT, and a strong indicator of being on track for a 3:05 marathon.

It's always hard to get the family started in the morning, so we left pretty late, and we arrived at 8:20-ish for the 9am start. I did 2 miles of warmup right away, bathroom, change, drink, and line-up. Worked just fine.

The weather was lousy: 33 degrees and very humid, so it felt colder. The course was wet asphalt with puddles, and anything off the road was covered with a thin layer of snow, so my shoes were wet even before the race started.

The course had two hills, and we started on the top of one. We went down in the first half mile, then it was flat until mile 2.7. The last 1.3 miles was up-down-up. Lots of turns.

We were off at 9am. I ran by my threshold feeling, which made a fast descent from the hill. A passed several people, but I was aware that they would catch me. It's just my running form: I'm faster downhill than most people of similar speed. So this is indeed what happened: by mile 1, I was passed by a few people. I was just running my perceived LT pace.

Mile 1: 5:58 (my GPS systematically underestimated distance on this course, so I'm correcting for error linearly)

We were on the out and back portion of the course. I was in decent position, and I had some suspicion that the Masters winner from the first two races was not here. It didn't change my strategy, so I was just running by feel. I cheered on both Flora and Melinda when they came by. This was an entirely flat mile.

Mile 2: 6:21

If this is really my LT, then it;s a great sign. I do have some doubt though. I think I'm closer to 6:30, and the race gave me some extra adrenaline to run a bit faster. Also, my watch measured a 6:27 pace here, so I didn't get overly excited.

Soon enough we started to climb. My fitness sucks. I know this for two reasons: (1) it is actually hard to maintain my LT for more than 2 miles - cf. beginning Boston marathon training a year ago (2) climbing needs more oxygen, and I couldn't get it fast enough to my cells. I slowed quite a bit, and a woman passed me (her name is April - she is the one I had a conversation with during the 4K). Maybe if I risked more, or considered this an important race, I could have followed, but not today. She beat me by 15 seconds in the finish.

Mile 3: 6:55

Soon we reached the crest of the hill. I was still somewhat conservative downhill, trying to catch breath enough to have something in the tank for the last hill. It was quite a bit harder than expected. I got passed by a 16-year old uphill (yes, the same one I wrote about in the 5K). He was super nice and cheered me on, but I couldn't follow him. He beat me by 9 seconds in the finish. Once we reached the flat part (the last 100 meters), I realized that my GPS was lying to me. Before the last hill, I've seen that I've been doing a 6:33 pace, so I determined that 26 minutes is hopeless. But I was closing on to the finish line, and the clock still showed 25:52. I tried to sprint, but I missed 26 minutes by 1 second! Chip time was actually 26:00.5, so I'll generously call it 26 minutes, and determine that I reached my time goal. I learned at these local road races that now matter how lame you are, you must be proud of yourself. :)

Mile 4: 6:46

Total time: 26:00. 12th overall, 1st in age group, after the Masters winner is taken out.

Also, to my surprise, that Ben guy, who was the Masters winner in the first two races didn't show up today. So even though I had three 2nd places in the Masters division, I ended up taking the Masters trophy in the Polar Bear Grand Prix. They changed the (nonexisting) rules at random again this year, and they actually counted overall points for age group places. I think this is a better system, but it's messed up that the rules are not published and decided after the race.

The organization otherwise was not terrible, but they did have issues with the results. It is all so temping to start an organizer and timing company...

Flora got second in her age group, and Melinda improved a whole lot on her 5K pace. All in all a good day for the family.

So this race shows that my lactate threshold is probably no worse than 6:30, which indicates a 53 VDOT. If this is true, it is an excellent starting point for marathon training for 3:05. Now I just have to survive it.

The die is cast. I am signed up for the Derby Marathon. 12 weeks, training started today with 8 miles of general aerobic run. Goal is still 3:05. Since I'm old as dirt, my BQ base time will be 3:20, starting at 2021, so I'll set 3:15 as a secondary goal, even tough it seems too easy.

Everything is good and steady since the 5K. I managed to go out for runs even when I really didn't feel like doing it. I've done two 60-mile weeks (including race week), and I'm on my third one, with two more runs left (one of them is long).

I'm planning to start my marathon training on February 3. That means that Snowman Shuffle 4-miler will be on the first weekend of training. I need some adjustment of training then. The first adjustment is, since I want to frontload the race week, is to shift my rest day to Friday. I can start working on this next week.

01/25: 9 E
01/26: 15 E

01/27: 9 E
01/28: 9 E
01/29: 9 E
01/30: Rest
01/31: 9 E
02/01: 9 E
02/02: 15 L

02/03: 8 GA w/ 10x100
02/04: 11 ML
02/05: 5 R
02/06: 8 GA
02/07: Rest
02/08: 2 wu + 4 race + 2 cd
02/09: 15 L

02/10: Resume marathon training. We can consider shifting it up by one day (so marathon day is Saturday, not Sunday), for which this would the perfect opportunity, having already taken a rest day on Friday. However, that would place rest days for Sunday, and mid week long runs for Tuesday, which works terribly with my real life schedule.

Frostbite 5K Race Report

Goal: nothing particular, just run for the best placement I can get

So this is the second race of the Polar Bear Grand Prix. Very obviously I wasn't trained for this. All I did is base mileage and no workouts, because I really do marathon base building. But these races serve well as workouts.

The whole family was there again, which always makes this a bit more stressful. We arrived early, so I did a very good warmup of 2.2 miles, strides, and dynamic stretching. Legs felt heavy, which is no surprise with the training I've been doing.

It was 65 degrees with very high humidity (in January), so I was all sweaty after the warmup. But the heat didn't bother me, at at this short distance. It was also a full cloud cover.

The race started right at 9:00. This course had the same two hills as the 4K, but this time they added an extra out-and-back section for the extra kilometer. By the way, I'm pretty sure they messed up the cone placement and the course ended up being about 0.1 mile too long. That's about 40 seconds! But it's OK. I wasn't going to PR today anyway.

This time the race start was at a different place, and so the race starts with the harder of the two hills. We are gaining 85 ft in 0.4 mile. I pushed the uphill a bit: I tried to keep myself at my VO2 max. I knew it was not sustainable, but my plan was to ease off a bit on the downhill. This may not be the best strategy, but I figured it would be the best for me today.

I was running behind a shirtless high school kid on the uphill, but he slowed a bit toward the top. I still tried to tuck behind him, because there was strong wind with some crazy gusts, especially on the hill. But he was slowing more, and I made the jump to the next group on the top of the hill. This was two people: a young guy in a white T-shirt, who told me at the start he was going to start at a 7:15 pace (we were averaging 6:3x here even with the hill), and a young woman (her name is Bailey), who looked like a serious runner with the right gear.

The terrain flatted out, and we quickly left the guy behind. I just tucked behind Bailey.

Mile 1: 6:30

This seems very strong with my current shape and the hill. I knew I had to conserve some energy. but Bailey ran just the right pace for me. We started the next hill, and it was quite brutal, but I didn't let her go. We both got passed by the high school kid (I was surprised how he came back). He was way too fast uphill for me to follow. At 1.3 miles, we reached the top, and I knew there were no more hills today. Now I just had to rest up for the last mile, and then give everything. But I wasn't trying to pace myself. I just followed Bailey.

Mile 2: 6:34

Esther was standing at the mile marker, where the out and back section started. She cheered so enthusiastically that I just had to pass Bailey. Now I was on my own, trying not to go crazy. The out-and-back portion was quite a bit longer than I expected. By the turnaround, the high school kid ahead was quite a distance away, and Bailey was quite a distance behind me, so I decided to keep this position. That meant a bit of conservative running.

Mile 3: 6:32

When we hit this marker I was surprised to see how far the finish still is. Nevertheless, I did have some energy in reserve, and I pushed all the way to the finish. It took me 1:18 to reach the finish line: Strava tells me this was at a 6:01 pace, which seems right, though that would mean the course was 3.22 miles. I'm willing to believe that my Garmin overcounts, but not by this much, not here in the park.

Total: 20:54, (but more like 20:15 for a 5K).

14th overall, 1st in AG, though I was beaten by a 40 year old and a 55 year old by almost two minutes (they ran within two seconds of each other). They took the masters and grandmasters victory, so I could get the lowly AG award.

Flora also won her age group, and Melinda did very well, too. I ran a nice cooldown, by which it started to rain heavily. Everything looks well on track for a 3:05 marathon in the spring. It will be challenging, but doable. Just right.

If I run 16 miles tomorrow, I'll hit 60 this week. I will do three more weeks of 60 miles, maybe with a workout each. Probably lactate threshold. Or some kind of Daniels Gold training. Marathon training starts on February 3.

Training didn't quite work the way I wanted. The week after the 4K was fine: I did run 50 miles with a 15-mile long run, but the week after that got interrupted by travel. I ended up running my last run of that week on Monday on a terrible hotel treadmill in a terrible hotel gym in like 75 degrees and high humidity. With that, I ran 55 miles that week, but the "week" was 8 days long, or putting it in another way, there was an extra rest day between my two weeks.

After that poor experience, I decided that there is not much point of beating myself up in that hotel gym, so I stuck to cross country skiing. Pretty good sport, though I'm not good at the technique, which also limits how much cardio I can get out of it. It ended up being a week of zero running, if we don't consider the Monday run, which really belonged to the previous week.

Then the following week was the race week for the 5K in the Polar Bear Grand Prix. This was supposed to be a cutback week, but of course I couldn't do that after no running the week before. So I jumped back into training hard: 9 miles a day from Monday to Thursday. It was hard, but I need to build mileage for the marathon training. I rested on Friday, and I ran the 5K today. Race report in a separate post.