Run to Win

The Eastern States 20 Miler and half marathon was today. Temperatures were in the low to mid 40s with a slight but negligible headwind. Casey Carroll outsprinted Kibrom Temeslo over the last few miles to win in 1:54:51. Megah Doshi of the Greater Boston Track Club posted an impressive 12 minutes over 2^nd place to win the women’s division. Casey Moulton, who holds the 20 mile course record, won the half marathon in 1:07:57. Leslie Dillon won her first half-marathon in 1:26:48. There were 507 finishers in the 20 miler and 184 half-marathon finishers.

I really enjoyed this race. They do a lot of things right, despite a few difficulties here and there. The course has a few small hills early on and one late in the course, but it is basically flat the entire way. There are a few trestle bridges over the first few miles that are difficult to run across, and late in the race traffic is very close when crossing another bridge. Quite a bit of the course has a steep camber, but a few places have a bit of a shoulder that you can run on instead of the road.

The race has some amazing views along the way. A lot of the race goes through some neighborhoods, but there are plenty of ocean views as you get along. The entire race is along the coastline, the closer to Massachussetts that you get, the more ocean that you can see as you are running.
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Tomorrow is the Eastern States 20 Miler, which will be my last long training run before the Boston Marathon. The race itself is 20 miles, which goes from Maine to Massachussetts. I will probably get a few more miles in on top of that, I would guess.

My goal is not to treat this as a race. This is a difficult thing for me; when I have paid for a race or I have people around me, then my inclination is to beat as many people as I can. Preferably, all of them. I think that if I can go into this race with a strategy that will serve me for Boston, then I might be able to stick to it.

My plan is to go out slow. My first few miles should be around 6:50 or 7:00 minute pace. This will allow me to only take a short warm up before the race, as I will be running for 13 or 14 minutes at this easy pace. The next ten miles I would like to race around my projected pace for Boston. I want to run around 62 or 63 minutes for this stretch of the race, which means running at around 6:10 to 6:20 pace. That should be the easy part.

Once I have gotten in a good 10 miles at race pace, I want to back off a little until the end. Not a lot; perhaps 6:30 or 6:40 pace or somewhere in the vicinity for the next 6 or 7 miles. That would leave me a mile or two to drop a few hammers and see what is left in my gas tank. If I feel good, then I will race in the last two miles, and if not, then I’ll settle for one mile to pick people off. I should be able to manage at least 6:10 pace, but I expect that I can get down to around 6:00 minute pace or under. I do not want to go too far under 6:00 minute pace, as this still will in essence be a training run. In Boston, the goal will be to run from mile 24 to the finish in around twelve and a half minutes, around 5:45 pace or under.

Here are my projected splits. After the race tomorrow, I will update the table with how I actually did so that we can see how well my race plan worked out for me.
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This week last year was pretty straightforward, with a few off season football notes and a lot of talk about weight lifting.

• I continued the animated lifting series with a demonstration of how to do an overhead triceps extension using a pulley.
• I reported on the New Bedford Half Marathon results, which I didn’t run again this year.
• In football news, Paul Tagliabue retired, and Adam Vinatieri signed with the Colts. The Colts have half of their games in one of his favorite places to kick.
• The weekly series about the New Rules of Lifting continued, this time exploring the fourth rule (take time to rest) and the fifth rule (set new records.)

Photo by Random FactorI wrote last week about how the winners of the Mount Washington race get to bypass the lottery system for future races and obtain a guarenteed entry into the race. Now that the 2007 lottery has closed, and the lottery winners announced, did you make the list? If you have been trying to get into the race and never seem to be chosen as one of the lucky few, there is good news.

You can bypass the Mount Washington Road Race lottery without having to win the race. In fact, you do not have to win any race; you just need to run in a few of them. You need to run in 6 races, to be exact.
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I read the other day about the making of a Spartan, where Chris at Strength News pointed out some articles about how the actors trained for the movie 300. This morning, Alwyn Cosgrove wrote about the 300 Workout, which is relevant as he was one of the trainers.

“The second misconception surrounds the idea of the Spartan workout, aka “300” [or the 300 workout], how frequently it was done or who actually finished it. “300” is a one-time test, an invitation-only challenge undertaken by those deemed ready for it. By the end of our four-month project 17 people had done the workout (Logan and I were two of them). This constitutes about 50% of the cast and stunt crew. We supervised every test, evaluated each rep for quality and only counted those that achieved our standards for form and range of motion. Like many workouts “300” is not hard once you’ve done it but the apprehension built up ahead of it – something we encouraged – was enough to make some guys fear it to the degree that performance was compromised. This workout was a crucible that some passed through and others still have hanging over them.

“300 Spartan Workout”

25x Pull-up +
50x Deadlift @ 135lbs +
50x Push-up +
50x Box Jump @ 24” box +
50x Floor Wiper @ 135lbs (one-count) +
50x KB Clean and Press @ 36lbs (KB must touch floor between reps) +
25x Pull-up
300 reps total”

(The actors and stunt men performed the workout against the clock).

That’s a helluva workout, and I doubt that I would ever bother myself to do it. I can understand how some of the actors built up a certain apprehension before attempting it.

That being said, the interesting part about Alwyn Cosgrove’s article was the methodology that they went to in order to get the cut look that the actors in the movie had. They did not give the actors a diet and work out regimen that they thought would lead to an aesthetically pleasing appearance; they gave them a diet and regimen that would get them strong and fit and let their bodies figure out what to do in terms of appearance. They wanted the actors to be able to perform great athletic feats, and not just look like they should be able to.

It is a great lesson, and even though most of us will probably never get paid nearly as much money to get into shape, we can still do our best to better our abilities. Skip the bicep curls the next time you are at the gym, and throw in an extra set or three of squats or deadlifts. They will give you more functional strength, if you manage to keep that up long enough will lead to having a better looking body anyway.

And don’t forget to check out Alwyn Cosgrove’s article if you are interested in seeing a before and after comparison of one of the actors.

Ima asked me the following question in a comment on my article about running workouts:

Good morning,

I came across your website this morning and am interested in asking your advice. I have been out of running for a couple of years due to injury and am looking to get back into it. My goal is to go sub 16 minutes for a 5k, hopefully this fall. Do you think this is realistic and what would your training advice be? My last 5k was about a year ago with no training I ran just over 19 minutes.

Thanks!

I can not say off hand whether Ima is likely to run a sub 16 5k this Autumn, since I do not really have enough information and have never met Ima. As such, I will approach this in very general terms and extrapolate whether I think that I could do it under similar circumstances.
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In a continuing collaboration with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, March is the month of Music and other audio topics. This week, I would like to discuss some podcasts that have running related themes.

First on the list has to be Phedippidations. I reviewed the show about a year ago when I started listening to it regularly. Steve “Runner” Walker produces the show, and he explores a new running topic every week. He has talked about famous runners, he has talked about race directing, he has talked about dogs that give chase, and he has even recorded shows during some of his races which he splices together into an interesting story.

Second on the list would be Get Your Geek On (GYGO), which is a podcast about triathletes. It is recorded by “Kahuna” of Tri-Geek Dreams and “Iron Wil” of Through the Wall.

Burning Twenty is a podcast by Adam Tinkoff, who resolved to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks in 2006. In order to keep himself on track, he created the podcast to help motivate himself and anybody that listened. This year, his goal is to run 1000 miles.

The Dump Runner’s Club is another weekly podcast that deals with running and features interviews and race reviews.

Running Injury Free provides advice to runners who don’t want to get hurt. While it aims more for the crowd that are running for fun and not necessarily for speed and competition (not that the two are mutually exclusive), much of the advice crosses over just fine.

There are other shows that I have seen mentioned, but these are the ones that I used to listen to. I have not really been listening to any podcasts for the past 3 or 4 months due to time constraints at work. A 3 person IT department being wittled down to 1 person does not leave long stretches of time without interruptions!

What are your favorite running shows? Let’s add them to the list!

The Men’s 8k went off this morning but not without a few hitches. The race was originally scheduled for yesterday morning, but the snow caused the race to be delayed for a day. The course was also changed to use the 1.7 mile lower loop, which was cleared of snow and left the road with fine footing.

Anthony Famiglietti won the race in 22:34 after making a move around mile 3. He was 30 seconds off of Alberto Salazar’s 8k record of 22:04 in 1981, but Famiglietti wanted to win and did not try for the record due to the weather. Abdi Abdirahman was six seconds behind him in 22:40.

Two of my former teammates from RIT were running for the Genesee Valley Harriers, and they ran very respectable times and placed 2^nd and 3^rd for their team. Hopefully I will get to race them some time this year in my Dirigo uniform, although I have a feeling that either one could probably smoke me at most distances under 20 miles.

(Full Story: NYRR)