Weekly Summary – 110 miles in 10 runs. Two low day due to travel. Started off in Colombia at sea level, a few nice easy days in paradise and then back to business. Great workout on Wednesday and then a great race on Sunday. Continuing to feel good in training and looking forward to one last race next week (Liga Quito 10km) and then focusing on solid training for a while. Hasta pronto!

Lunes, 9 Septiembre, 2013 – 9am: Babies don’t sleep this well. I woke up after crashing around 8pm feeling rejuvenated. I was pretty sore from a 27 mile day yesterday, but after a bit of walking around and some coffee, I was feeling better. I headed out a bit before 9am and ran the opposite direction of yesterday, on the beach road out towards the airport. I felt good and was drenched in sweat within a few minutes once again. It was probably already 90F and extremely humid, but I didn’t care. It just felt good to be out in the sun. Ran a bit past the airport and then back the same way. Finished with a quick lap around the old-town looking for a smoothie lady. Cold shower after.

Total run 8M in 65’.

4:30pm: Headed out to run and saw some very dark thunderclouds coming. A light rain felt really nice, but I was wary of the big impending storm. Decided to just run to big laps around the whole old city, so I was never too exposed. Felt okay, very easy again.

Total run 6M in 50’.

Martes, 10 Septiembre, 2013 – 6am: Up early to run before a travel day back to Quito via a long layover in Medellin. Ran out and back on the beach road all the way out to the end of the modern point. Super nice this early in the morning, a bit cooler and way fewer cars and people on the sidewalks. Felt good at the end so ran last mile a good bit quicker. Legs felt good to turn over a bit. Breathing felt super easy, as expected at sea level!

Total run 8M+ in 60’.

PM: Off. Long day of travel back to Quito.

Miercoles, 11 Septiembre, 2013 – 10am: Had a couple cups of coffee and two bananas around 8am and then left at 10 to head to the park. Legs feeling pretty good today after a few light days, so I decided I would indeed try the workout this morning as opposed to waiting until tomorrow.

I warmed up 6km to the park and went right into it – no drills or strides, wanted to keep it continuous. The workout was a muscular endurance workout. A high volume of reps at a pace which is quite fast for altitude, but about goal half marathon pace at sea level. One of the things I’ve found in racing lower after training up here is that even if my aerobic system is super ready and feels great from all that extra oxygen, if my legs aren’t used to mechanically running at the pace I need to run, I’ll fall apart later in the race – this is part of what happened in Medellin, I think. Basically, it’s important to train your aerobic system by running at the EFFORT you want to race at sea level, but you also need to train your legs to run the PACE you want to run at sea level. Today was about running pace.

The goal was to run 25x400m with 400m moderate recovery (~7’00 pace). The fast 400s were supposed to be around 75-76 and the easy ones would end up being 1’45 (actually, 1’39 as the track I’m working out on in the park is 780m, randomly, so it’s 400m/380m). With one extra 500m at the end, this comes out to 20km at about 6’00 pace. It was a pretty intimidating workout on paper, especially as I hadn’t done this kind of volume yet of quality, but I went into it with an open mind.

In very long workouts, I tend to break things up into chunks I can manage. For today, I broke the workout up into 5 sets of 5 reps. There was no difference from set to set, it just made it mentally easier to stay engaged and easier to keep track of where I was in the workout.

I started out running the 400s right on but my rest was quite quick, around 90 seconds for the first few, or in the mid 6 minute range. After that, I settled into a consistent rhythm of about 75/95. After two sets, or 10 reps, I was thinking about just stopping after 15. My legs were already quite tired. But the recovery was just enough that the discomfort seemed to have reached a plateau. I was running hard, but it wasn’t getting any harder. By 20 reps, I figured I would be able to finish. The last 5 were very tough, as my legs were muscularly totally shot from so much running at a pace that I hadn’t run in a while, but I managed to keep them all in the range I was hoping. The “rest” segments were the only ones that slowed, with the slowest in the 1’45 range (around 7’20 pace). After #25, I ran one last 500m to get the total up to 20km (due to the 380m rest segments) hard in 1’36. The fact that I couldn’t tap into that “other gear” showed that I really was working my legs muscularly the way that I’d wanted. The total for the 20km was 1’13’55 (an average of 5’57 pace).

I jogged right into the cooldown – again to keep the whole run continuous – and headed back home. The cooldown was fairly quick (mostly because I was going to be late for work!), covering 6km in 23’. This brought the total run to 32km (20M) in 2’03’45, an average of 6’11 pace. A very solid workout, and the first of many long workouts to come in the transition into marathon training.

Total run 20M in 2’03’45

5:30pm: EASY 10km to the park and back. Total run 6M+ in 52’.

Jueves, 12 Septiembre, 2013 – 10am: Worked this morning so ran later. Easy run to the park and two big laps. Felt good on the way back so picked it up for the last 4km or so. Probably running around 6’. Total run 18km, 11M+

5:30pm: Easy run down to parque, on big lap, and back. Raining pretty hard on the way but cleared after. Felt good again. Total run 14km, 8M++.

Viernes, 13 Septiembre, 2013 – 10am: Slept for a long time last night, a bit groggy this morning. Easy run to the park, one big lap, and then back, some drills and 6x hard short hill sprints (8-15 seconds) on Olmedo. Quite tough. Hill is quite steep and altitude makes recovery much longer. Felt good though. About 3-4 minutes recovery between each. Last one all out as long as possible, maybe 15-20 seconds. Very hard. Total run 10M+.

5:30pm: Easy shakeout to the park and back. Total run 10km, 6M+, NT.

Sabado, 14 Septiembre, 2013 – 6am: Easy shakeout down to el Ejido before work. Total run 3M+.

11am: Easy shakeout again around el ejido and then tacked on. Total run 5M.

PM: Travel to Ibarra, packet pickup, course tour. Rest.

Domingo, 15 Septiembre, 2013 – AM: Woke up around 5am after a pretty decent sleep. Javier – my Colombian roommate for the night – was still sleeping, so I tried to be as quiet as I could. Had a big cup of black coffee and a piece of bread right when I woke up. After, just walked around through the halls a bit to loosen feet a bit.

Javier got up about 6am and we chatted a bit before just relaxing and getting ready to go. I packed up and left my stuff at reception while we waited for the girls. We had planned to share a cab with the two elite Ecuadorian women who were also staying in our hotel, but, as usual, they were late.

We ended up leaving around 7:15 or so, and found a taxi by 7:20. Luckily, we were only a few minutes away from the start, so we were still there by 7:25 or so, which was 50 minutes before the 8:15am start. I met up with Marlon, the race director, and dropped my bag with him and headed to warm up.

I ran for 25 minutes on the course and honestly didn’t feel great. Legs just felt a bit tired. Weather was great, though – cloudy and in the 60s probably. The one thing that was kind of annoying was that the streets were all cobblestoned which made it kind of rough on the feet. sI got back and took of my warm ups, changed into racing shoes, and did some light jogging and drills. I was feeling a lot better at this point and was just about ready. I ran into Javier who told me that the race was about to go off, so we headed to the start line.

Once there, I made my way right to the front of the start (even heard my name called, which was pretty cool!) Javier had pointed out one of the elites that he recognized as a legit guy, so I decided I would key off of him and stood next to him on the line. As we were walked forward from the corral onto the actual starting line, I got swarmed by a bunch of Ecuadorians and ended up in about the 4th row of people. I was right next to my Ecuadorian friend, so I felt fine.

There was no gun, people just started running. It was a bit unorganized. I was probably in 50th or 100th. There were a lot of people in front of me. But I didn’t panic, as I was still keying off of Pablo and we worked our way up through the throngs, calm as anything.

The pace actually felt great, and I knew that this guy was very good (like sub 1’05 half marathon at altitude good), so I was pretty pumped to have the pace feel that comfortable. Within 800m, we had worked our way up to the front of the race and I was in about 10th. I could see that Pablo and two other guys were breaking away, but they had picked up the pace to a level where I wasn’t comfortable (and I was a bit more cautious after burning out hard in Medellin).

So, I found myself in a small chase pack around 1-2km. At that point, we hit a long, tough hill between 2 and 4km. It is hear that the altitude affects one (or at least me) way more than at sea level. I can run quite well on flat ground, but I feel the difference between flat and uphill running is really accentuated here. That 2km was run in 7’26 – by far the slowest of the race, but I stayed in my pack which was what I was going for.

After that, we crested and started running quicker, passing 5km in a super slow 17’43 thanks to that brutal climb. The course then rolled and we got quicker and quicker, our pack thinning out.

We hit the other significant hill around 7km, where the course drops steeply down to a river, crosses over a bridge, and then climb up incredibly steeply on the other side. The gradients had broken up our pack into more of a strung out line and I think I was in about 7th place. I could see at least 3 places in the 100m or so in front of me and I knew that there were cash prizes for top-5, so at that point I just tried to push and focus on keeping the pedal down.

I started picking people off after 8km and found myself in 5th at 9km, with a dude in a Montufar singlet that I’d been yo-yoing with for a lot of the race. We almost took a wrong turn in that last km, and I took advantage of the split second hesitation to make a bid and go past him. At that point, I didn’t look back and just tried to push all the way to the finish.

The last 500m or so are into the stadium and around the track. It’s a pretty awesome finish, except that I didn’t realize that we were winding way around to the back before entering the track, so for a second, I thought I was lost and was about to be really pissed. But then I popped out into the open and there was the red rubber track below me.

As soon as I hit the track, I was running pretty much all out. It was about 300m around and there was a lot of noise – people and music. It was pretty much instinctual to start sprinting once I hit that rubber, though. It’s a cool feeling to go from the beat-up cobblestones to the lovely rubber track.

Cooled down around the infield and then got interviewed, prize ceremony, and some snacks. Finally headed back to the hotel where I jogged a bit more before having a great lunch with some other elites and coaches up in Yauacocha (a town built next to a huge lake, famous for delicious fresh trout). From there, it was a long bus ride back to Ibarra to Quito to La Y to Plaza Grande before finally walking back. Long day, but well worth it.

Being interview post-race for Ecuadorian Sprots Radio

Quick Thoughts from the Race

I finished in 4th and negative split pretty seriously (17’43/16’28). More importantly, I felt very good about the way I’d stuck in the race and dealt with being way far back and then moving up constantly. I didn’t go balls out to stick with the leaders, which in a way was resigning myself to finish outside the top 3 (unless one of THEM was going out way too hard), but in doing that I also managed to not end up blowing up hugely in the second half and finish in the 20s again. My college coach, Ethan, always used to say something along the lines of “your first priority should being trying to secure that A-minus day.” Basically, it can be better to lose the shot at the A+ day if going for it could mean risking a D+ day.

Second thought – I’ve basically given up on caring about the times in these races. The altitude is such a wild-card that it feels more like cross country, where I really only care about racing (and beating) people, and less about the time on the clock. I remember around 2km into the race when I’d settled into a pack, I thought “Okay, we’re in a real race now. Don’t worry about the splits. Just beat all of these guys.” My coach, Jon Waldron, said to me a long time ago that if you just focus on racing the people around you (and beating them), then the times will follow.

Finally, this is my third race in 15 days during a big block of heavy mileage and workouts. Over the last month, I’ve averaged 117 miles per week or about 17 miles per day, with some pretty heavy workouts and long runs in there as I prepare for some half marathons later in the season. This is definitely “early season” racing and it’s gone pretty well so far. I’m pretty excited to see what I can do when I am more well-rested in a couple months.

I am racing once more next weekend, which will be 4 races in 22 days. I’m excited but I’m also starting to put even more emphasis on training volume and half-marathon specific workouts. We’ll see how it goes!

Total run 13M.

On the podium. I guess we weren’t supposed to smile.

Splits:

3’25.4
3’26.0 (6’51.4)
3’47.7 (10’39.1)
3’39.1 (14’18.2)
3’25.0 (17’43.2)
3’20.1 (21’03.3)
3’27.0 (24’30.3)
3’14.6 (27’44.9)
3’11.1 (30’56.0)
3’15.4 (34’11.4) (16’28.2 last 5km)

5pm: Got back here and had a nice shakeout after a series of long bus rides. Total 5M, NT.