By the spring of 2012 I nearly settled that my best
racing days were behind me. I just completed the Boston Marathon at 3:15:15.
Although 2012 was the year of the notorious “clam bake,” with the mercury
nearly reaching 90 degrees – not my expectation for an April New England day –
my life goal of a sub three hour marathon felt unachievable. I just turned 30
and perhaps my window of opportunity closed with my 20’s.
Nevertheless,
I had New York City, a bucket list marathon, in my plans for the fall, and
began to map out a training strategy. As I researched, I stumbled across a Runner’s World article advising base buildup. In short, the six week pre-training plan includes
a high volume of miles, but, and here’s the key, at a slower pace. Gradually
the program integrates one interval session a week. I had more than sufficient
time to train for New York, so I decided to attempt this six week plan.
The program’s instructions
to temper my pace would test both my patience and ego. I reveal my competitive
drive even on my bi-weekly fun runs, always darting out in front of everyone,
so they know I’m fast, really fast. My patience, not among my strengths, would
also come into play as I’m anxious just to finish the damn run!
The mileage
additionally would be a challenge. With longer, slower miles, simply adds up to
consuming a huge portion of my life. To continue running with evening group,
about 6 miles in length, I would have to add a second run in. Fortunately, my
office building has a locker room and showers, so I can fit in a lunch break
run, or as one of my local running friends called “runch,” rather than the
dreaded 5 AM wakeup.
I had incidentally
registered for a pair of June 5 milers, one scheduled after four weeks into my
base building plan, and the other one week after completion. I followed the
program exactly, even forcing myself to run at a very relaxed pace.
I entered my first of
two June 5 milers with little expectations. I still assumed I was past my peak
and settled with that. Yet, surprising to me, I completed that race in 29:38,
seven seconds short of my PR set one decade prior and nearly two minutes
improved from a December 2011 8k on a much more favorable course. Three weeks
later, on a hilly course and a muggy late June day, I set a personal best
(29:23). I had renewed faith in myself if I only just follow a successful
training plan.
I researched more into
effective training programs, and as it turns out, a relaxed, conversational
pace through all but their hardest workouts. Matt Fitzgerald, writing in Competitor piece “Train
Slower, Race Faster” observes the typical workout regime of
the world’s top runners:
“Studies on the training intensity distribution of
elite runners have found that most elite runners run at low intensities most of
the time. For example, a survey of male and female runners who competed in the 2004
U.S. Olympic Team Trials Men’s and Women’s Marathons revealed that the men did
almost three-quarters of their training slower than their marathon race pace,
while women did more than two-thirds of their training at slower paces.
Why do the fastest runners do most of their running
at slow speeds? Because they run a lot, and if they ran a lot and did most of
their running at high intensities they would quickly burn out. But you can also
turn this answer upside down and say that elite runners run slowly most of the
time so that they can run a lot. Research has shown that average weekly running
mileage is the best training predictor of racing performance in runners. The
more we run, the faster we race. Keeping the pace slow most of the time enables
runners to run more without burning out.”
Note
the two sides to this equation: More miles and slowing down through most of
them. When we run most of our miles easy, we get a lot more out of our key hard
workouts. Beyond many long, slow miles, elite runners add another important
aspect to their training plans: extremely tough key workouts. An October, 2013
article in Runners World notes the
benefits of polarized
training:
“Elite runners typically follow a lopsided polarized
plan, in which they devote about 75 percent of their training time to easy
running, 10 percent to threshold work, and 15 percent to very hard efforts.
Tempo runs are important, but that middle-intensity zone is still the smallest.
Use a heart-rate monitor to stay in the zone. On
easy days, your heart rate should always be below 80 percent of maximum; on
hard days, it should get above 90 percent. If you're spending long stretches
between 80 and 90 percent, then you're going too fast for a recovery day and
too slow for a truly hard workout.”
With
renewed confidence that new PR’s were a very real possibility for upcoming fall
races, I designed a training plan applying these rules. I consulted with my
best friend and superior runner on the best workout plan. He advised, in
addition to more and slower miles and an intense weekly track workout,
modifying my weekly long run into a progression run – start slow and gradually
build up so I’m running at tempo to race pace when I complete it. I added one
additional tempo run, but, in hindsight, that turned out to be too much.
The
results turned out even better than expected. My previous half marathon PR
stood at 1:20:15 four years earlier. In my first half marathon of the fall, I
aimed to break 1:20 and setting a new PR. I achieved that with time to spare:
1:17:49.
The New York City Marathon
was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy, but I refused to let my training, and my
new experiment, go to waste. A found another marathon one week later, along
with many other displaced marathoners, and ran a 2:52:50.
The following spring, I
continued the same training outline and raced more PR’s I thought unachievable:
2:49:51 marathon, 1:15:50 half marathon, 56:43 10 miler, 29:11 5 miler, and
17:01 5k.
In my bi-weekly running
group I created confusion. How could they explain the disparity between my
racing times and performance on fun run nights? With a smile, I calmly
explained that slow running is part of the training and if they want to achieve
times they thought never possible, the solution is simple: Bulk up and slow
down.
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