Run to Win

• This week last year, I concentrated on the Eastern States 20 Miler. The night before the race, I published my race plan, which I followed up with a report card on how well I followed the plan. It is a good case study for those interested in doing such things themselves.
• In other racing news, I offered a reader some advice about running sub-16 in the 5k after a few years off. I also pointed out how to bypass the Mount Washington lottery without having already won the race. One of these days I’ll have to try to get into that race; it only has 1 hill.
• Continuing with this month’s theme on audio, I offered up some podcasts for runners. As far as I know, most of them are still going, although I don’t listen to them very often.
• The movie 300 involved a lot of actors who had to get into really good shape. Before shooting for the film started, they had a workout that was a “right of passage” of sorts for folks working the film, called the 300 workout. It is pretty tough, and I haven’t managed to do it yet. I also haven’t really tried.
• This week 2 years ago, I continued the animated lifting series with a demonstration of how to do an overhead triceps extension using a pulley, and the weekly series about the New Rules of Lifting continued, this time exploring the fourth and the fifth rules.

Official race photographs from the Eastern States 20 Miler are now available. You can search for photos of yourself and your friends at Capstone Photography. My race number was 364 if you would like to see some washed out pictures of me during the race.

Last night, I published my Eastern States 20 Miler race plan. The race was going to be my last long run before beginning my taper for the Boston Marathon. My race plan had four distinct sections to it.

Miles 1 and 2
The first couple of miles were going to serve as my warm up. I meant to get a mile or two of actual warm up before the race, but I got busy chatting with some of the other runners and only jogged around for a minimal amount. I thought that the race had gone out really slow, until we crossed over into New Hampshire at the 1 mile marker and I realized that I was running faster than I wanted to be. That trend continued for another mile, despite chatting with the guys around me.

Miles 2 through 12
The next 10 miles were supposed to be the meat of my workout. I wanted to run between 6:10 and 6:20 pace, and I pretty much managed that. I think that mile 4 was a little long (making mile 5 a little short), which would mean that I basically ran right around 6:10 or a little quicker the entire time. I felt quite comfortable and I am confident that I can run at that pace for most of my marathon, so I think that Boston should turn in a good time for me. I did miss a few mile markers in a row; those three miles took 18 minutes and 33 seconds to run.

Miles 13 through 18
The next 6 miles were supposed to just be junk miles to get through. I wanted to run around 6:25 or 6:30 pace through these miles. I mostly was in the 6:20 to 6:30 range; I’m not really sure exactly how long I spent on these miles since they didn’t seem very accurate. I did impress myself, however, by declining to race with somebody. I kept up the pace that I was supposed to be running, and let him burn himself out chasing down the next guy. By the end of mile 18 I was ready to see what I had left, since I figured that I could probably run in the 5:30 or 5:40 range without much trouble.

Miles 19 and 20
Mile 18 was definitely short. This was lucky, since I wanted to start racing and was getting antsy. The side effect of this, though, is that my 5:40 or 5:50 pace for mile 19 came through as 7:26. I did run a 5:38 for the 20^th mile. The goal pace had been to see what was left, and I had just penciled in 6:10 and 6:00.
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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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