Race Report of the Harrisburg Marathon, Harrisburg, PA. (11/9)

I took the train into Harrisburg for my last race of the year feeling tapered down, rested up and ready to take on my third marathon.  I was once again attempting to break the three-hour mark, but I knew I would have to have a perfect day to get it done.

It was a great day from the beginning because pretty much my entire family was there to cheer me on.  Great credit and appreciation must go to them.  It seems like every time it's possible, they are there to support me and actua

lly seem excited about it.

The course was a great one for spectators, as yo

u could see runners about three or four time throughout the race without moving at all.  Despite this, my adventurous brother, Matt, planned out the logistics so they could see me at even more points during the race.

During the pre-rac

e small talk with other racers while waiting for the gun to go off, I started a conversation with the guy standing next to me, Jason Elliott.  I aske

d him what sort of time he was aiming for.  He said, "three hours."  We quickly decided to run together, because it's always easier to run with someone.  It helps pass the time and creates a sort of extra motivation at the end of the race when you're feeling tired.  It's an extra incentive not to fall off pace or give up because you don't want to let the other person down.

We started the race and the small talk as well.  In the first few miles, I had found out that he had also gone to the University of Pittsburgh and studied finance (I think).  His previous marathon best was a 3:17, so he was really looking to knock off a huge amount of time to get his goal of three hours.

Pretty much the entire fist half of the race went by so quickly.  We had hit the half mark on perfect pace for three hours, we were in good spirits and, more importantly, our legs were still fresh.  It was a great help having the fam at so many points along the way.  It was also a surprise pick-me-up bec

ause Jason had two people following him all around the course on bikes, providing much encouragement. 

I noticed a few hints of tightness creeping into my legs around the miles 16 and 17.  Miles 18 and 19 went around a lake and featured many sharp, but short inclines.  It was not these inclines that took their toll, rather, it seemed to be the just-as-sharp downhills that followed that were responsible for pounding a lot out of my quads.  The tightness and fatigue that had found its way into my legs was no undeniable.  But my form was staying together at the arrival of mile 20.  The going was getting tough, but my brain 

took much relief in seeing the mile-20 marker.  Just a 10k to go.  My elapsed time at this point was about 2:17 or 2:18 so I knew that I probably wasn't going to make three hours, but I would break my personal best and redeem myself from the failure at the Boston Marathon.

I was really impressed with how tough Jason was hanging with me at this point.  We had paced a great race, and while he wasn't going to get his goal either, I though he was definitely at least going to qualify for Boston, something that he hadn't had the pleasure of doing yet.

Things got really tough after about 21.5 or 22 miles.  My pace had fallen to about 7:30/mile.  Jason actually started pulling away from me as I was falling off pace.  He was hanging about 20 or 30 yards in front of me for the next two and a half miles or so.  As the course dipped down to a trail right along the river, I managed to catch up with, and quickly drop, Jason.  I worked my way up to the bridge that signaled the final mile of the race.  I knew from my watch that I would beat my previous PR, but not by much.  I kicked it in for the finish and stopped the clock at 3:07:21.  I'm not sure what happened to my running partner, but he finished in 3:14.  I was disappointed for him because I th

ought he was going to qualify, no questions.  I couldn't believe that he had lost so much time in the mile and a half or so since I had passed him.

All in all it was a pretty good day.  I hadn't gotten my three hours, but it felt good to re-qualify for Boston and prove to myself that my first marathon wasn't a fluke.  I'm quite happy my season is finally over.  Time to sleep!

Things I Never Should Have Stopped Doing.

Simply put:

1.)  Yoga

2.) Hill sprints as speedwork

Less Simply put:

Okay, so maybe I can't quantifiably claim the benefits of yoga, but it definitely does make me feel better.  I'm still pretty surprised how tight and inflexible my shoulders and back have gotten from swimming.  Yoga session was on Monday evening and I still feel the soreness faintly between my shoulders.  Regardless, I have to make sure I keep doing it frequently...and not just for the off-season.

Hill sprints as speedwork, however, I'm pretty comfortable in saying actually work.  No questions.  I don't have any data to supply, all I know is I'm running faster.  I remember about a year and a half ago I read an article in Runner's World that had some silly tabloid tag line like, "A Faster Marathon in 10 Seconds."  Those always make me laugh.  They're on par with things like, "Eat Yourself to a Slimmer You" and "3-Month Online Advanced Astro-Physics Degree - It's That Easy".  

But I read the article anyway, probably because I was really bored and had read everything else in the magazine.  To make a long story short, it suggested, after a ten or fifteen minute warmup, to find a hill with about an 8 or 10 percent grade.  Simply sprint all out up the hill for ten seconds and walk back down for about a minute or so.  Repeat.  It suggested stopping after noticing a significant power decrease.  Add one repeat every week until getting ten repeats.  The concept sounded interesting to me.  Uphill so it requires more power and shorter intervals than one would have to do on the track.  Also a lot less strain on the knees - pretty much just straight-up quad work.

I started incorporating this into my weekly routine in preparation for the Richmond Marathon last year.  I didn't know if I was actually running faster because of it at the time because I didn't have a GPS watch or anything else to measure what I was doing.  But I did end up qualifying for Boston so perhaps it did indeed have something to do with it.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year when I started running outside again.  As I've noted many times before, I'm still a novice runner and there are tons of training techniques that I have not tried yet; track work being one of them.  So I ended up hitting the track once in a while for my speedwork this summer and completely forgot about hill sprints.  In my recent freak-out about the possibility of not being ready for the race, I started to do hill sprints again in hopes of finding the magic bullet to ensure my success in the race.  Of course this does not exist and is only a product of race performance insecurity...or maybe it does exist.

I went out for a bike/run brick session yesterday.  My standard run after a bike ride is a hilly three mile loop.  My only goal is to keep it under 7:00/mile pace.  Not fast by any stretch of the imagination for three miles, but not so bad after a couple-hour bike ride.  Well I was motoring along yesterday, feeling pretty average, and average pace for the run ended up being 6:38/mile!  Something tells me I shouldn't stop doing hill sprint sessions.

Well, I've got a bike ride to go on.  Maybe a bit of a swim later, then I'm going to go break three hours in a few days.

How it Feels to Do Nothing (and some fixed-gear action)

Tapering.  Necessary for allowing your body to recover, absorb the training that it has been through and top off its stores for a successful race day.  And by the way:  It's dead boring!

Last week was pretty low on the running side of things.  And the swimming side of things for that matter.  But I spent some QT with my favorite Trek TTX and it was pretty wonderful.  It gives me such a great feeling to make it to November and still be riding outside whenever I want to.  Once I make it about half-way through the month without having to go inside, I take it as a success.  I'm better prepared to take on the cold this year, so I'm sure I'll still be able to find some days to get out there well into December, but the majority of the work will start to be done inside on the trainer by that point.

I dove back into yoga last night.  I haven't really done any since last spring and summer, when I was doing it a few times a week.  I did some light stuff maybe for a half hour about two weeks ago just to find out exactly how inflexible I had gotten.  It turns out I'm a lot worse off than I thought.  I was under the impression that I could struggle through some without that much difficulty because it's not as though I've been inactive since I've stopped doing yoga regularly or anything.  I did a hard hour of it last night and my back is more sore than it ever has been from swimming.  I think my shoulders have gotten a lot more stiff than they used to be because it was killing me to do some of the poses.  But it felt great and I'm happy to get back into it.  

Had an 8-mile run this morning.  I was pretty sore from yoga the night before and my quads still burn a little from the hill sprints that I did over the weekend.  It was a pretty hilly run and I managed a 6:59/mile pace.  Not exactly impressive, but I'm sure once I'm completely tapered down, I'll be okay.  I have not been running for that long in the grand scheme of things - maybe for about two years - but I still cannot seem to comfortably sit on my marathon pace.  I don't mean that it is too difficult to handle, rather I find that I cannot trust myself to know what pace I am running.  Therefore, I feel like I go out a bit too hard.  On an easy flat run, I struggle to keep my pace around the 6:52/mile that I need to run for the marathon.  The first few miles usually end up in the 6:40/mile ballpark.  My pace doesn't end up suffering at the end on these eight-to-twelve mile runs, but I'm sure it will quite a bit when I start getting on in the race.

Tomorrow I've got a bike/run brick.  Maybe more of the same on Thursday with a bit of time at the pool and then that's it.  Time to find a good book or magazine and get used to sitting around and eating (a lot) for a few days.  Train leaves to Harrisburg on Saturday!

I have long lamented the absence of a commuter bike in my life.  My stable at the moment consists of my beloved Trek TTX and my old racing steed, a Trek Equinox 7 from a good three years ago.  I would gladly sell of the old bike to finance something like a Bianchi Pista or some other fixie, but I'm just not sure who would by the bike at this point.  On the other hand, I have seen many bikes that are much worse off than my old EQ 7 at some races, so maybe someone would take it.  I'm probably just a little jaded by my new ride.  I could have put it up on craigslist, but it just never happened.

Fast forward to last Friday when I was at Dirty Harry's hanging out with the best bike shop crew in town.  I'm talking to the one-and-only Evan Perrone, with whom I used to race on the cycling team.  I tell him how I'm sad that my old bike does not have horizontal drop-outs, or else I'd turn it into a fixed-gear commuter (I'm still not exactly sure why, but I've been told it is necessary for a bike to have such drop-outs to be converted to a fixie...it has something to do with getting the proper chain tension, I think).  "Not so", says my crazy friend.  A company called White Industries produces a hub called the ENO eccentric hub that is designed specifically to work with vertical drop-outs.  Apparently, it is elliptical instead of round so you can basically adjust the chain tension simply by rotating the axle.  Or something like that.  If you want to find out more, just visit here.  But it's also a flip-flop hub, so the other side is a singlespeed/freewheel configuration, allowing me to get used to riding fixie without killing myself.

So basically DH and their BA wheelbuilder is going to build up a rear wheel for me based around this hub so I can throw it on my old Equinox and use it as a fixie.  I'll need to make a few other adjustments, like taking off the aero bars and throwing on a standard drop bar.  I'm keeping the front brake on for safety measures.  The only thing I wish is that the decals on the bike were removable, but they are under the clear-coat so no luck.  I'm just afraid that my new frankenbike will attract a little too much attention as is.

Alas, this is a perfect, comparatively (especially with my sponsorship discount) inexpensive option to buying a completely new, or even used, commuter.

Enough nerd talk!  I've got some tapering to do.

Cheers!