Weekly Summary – 117 miles in 14 runs. Two fantastic workouts including 30km (18.6 miles) at 2h13 marathon pace. Feeling better every week. Great training momentum. Less than 3 weeks to go!

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and Twitter (@TylerCAndrews). And, of course, don’t forget to check out STRIVE’s 2016 Programs, including the newly announced STRIVE-Peru: Spring Break program! You can come do service work and train with me in Peru or Kenya and for 2016, we’ll once again have programs for High School and College students, and even a 10-day trip for adults and families, so be sure to take a look if you’re interested in an amazing summer experience!

IMG_0788

Lunes, 18 de Enero, 2016 – 10am: Ran later after morning STRIVE call. Brutal outside – 17F and 20mph winds. Started outside but finished indoors because I’m a baby. Felt surprisingly decent though. Finished with 5x strides barefoot. Total run 11M in 75’.

XT: Back/hips

4pm: Ran outside at first but so freaking brutal. Finished on treadmill with 1M quicker around MP (5’07). Felt surprisingly good the whole run and was running quick ~3’30/km without trying. Total run 5M in 29’.

XT: Core

Martes, 19 de Enero, 2016 – 8am: Ran earlier with a MD apt late morning. Cold again, in the teens and windy. Felt pretty good again out the door. Finished with 1M barefoot and 5 strides. Total run 8M in 52’.

XT: Back/hips (1x)

4pm: Easy run around CC to post office and bank and then around. Finished with 1M barefoot. Ethio cooldown. Total run 7M in 55’.

XT: Hips.

Miercoles, 20 de Enero, 2016 – Sparknotes: 10km moderate (36’), stopped and did full drills, 10x short hill sprints with full jog recovery, 1km jog, 10km in 30’19 (split 15’27/14’51) with fartlek of 1’ at 2’45-3’00/km/1’ at 3’10-20/km. Leg circuit to finish.

10:30am: Woke up later at 8:30am and had coffee and a few animal crackers before heading out. Warmed and less windy today, which was nice. Workout was lighter today. Goal was some moderate running, some hills, and some fartlek.

Started out with 10km out the door (no warmup or drills or anything) in 36’. Finished at the Marriott hill and stopped and did full drills. After, did 10x short hills with full jog recovery. These felt quite good.

After, jogged 1km to 1km road loop and then did fartlek of 1min on/1min off. Really eased into this (no more drills or anything) and started more like MP on and 90% off. After first km or so, was running more like MP for the OFF (recovery rep) and ~2’55-3’00 for the ON rep. This was great and felt quite sustainable. Really good to have MP feel like recovery after a minute at 2’55 pace! Ran through 9.5km and then ran the last 500m continuous in about 1’25 to round out to 10km. Had thought of doing up to 12km but was running much faster than I’d expected, so kept it to 10k.

This was a fantastic workout and right in line with my last fartlek (8km in 24’16, I think). This is much faster than I’ve been able to run these workouts before, so that’s really exciting. The effort felt just right, too. I was tired from the combined fatigue of the moderate, hills, and fartlek, but not too bad during any one part. Very good place to be with 3.5 weeks to go!

Finished with a jog to the gym for legs. Total run 15M+.

Splits
1 km 3’13.3 (3’13.3)
2 km 6’18.9 (3’05.6)
3 km 9’25.0 (3’06.1)
4 km 12’26.9 (3’01.9)
5 km 15’27.8 (3’00.9) (15’27.8)
6 km 18’28.4 (3’00.6)
7 km 21’27.5 (2’59.1)
8 km 24’26.1 (2’58.6)
9 km 27’26.6 (3’00.5)
10 km 30’19.2 (2’52.6) (14’51.4)

XT: Legs at the gym. 3 sets of [15x step ups, 20x overhead lunge, 24x dynamic lung, 12x squat (bar)]. (weighted, 2 sets only)

6pm: Ran with Mar at first very slow 1M and then 2M solo quicker(13’) on treadmill in sweats (1% inc). Down to ~3’30/km by the end, which felt fine. Hardly felt the morning at all. Total run 3M+.

Jueves, 21 de Enero, 2016 – 9am: Woke up earlier naturally. Warmer (in the 30s) and less windy today. Snowed last night so about an inch on MV. Just enough that it was still runable and not too slippery. Nice morning, though – sunny. Ran Matt’s loop for maybe the last time this winter as we’re about to get a blizzard this weekend. Finished with 1M barefoot with 5x strides. Total run 12M in 1h23.

XT: Back/hips

4pm: Ran on treadmill in sweats. Progressed from about 7’30->6’00 and then ran the last mile around 5’00. Finished with 1M easy barefoot. Total run 4M in 24’.

XT: Core.

Viernes, 22 de Enero, 2016 – 8am: Easy run on potomac park loop. Most of the snow was gone from yesterday and the giant blizzard doesn’t start until later today. Felt pretty good after a first few miles and held back with a big one tomorrow. Finished with 1M barefoot and 5x strides. Total run 11M in 73’.

XT: Back/hips.

4pm: Very easy run with Mar. A nice romp in the snow (the blizzard has started and we had about 3 inches already). Nice and quiet out there – a bit windy but otherwise not unpleasant. Fun! Total run 3M, NT.

XT: Hips.

Sabado, 23 de Enero, 2016 – Sparknotes: 30km (18.6 miles) in 1’34’52 (3’09.7/km, 5’05.3/M), 2’13’26 marathon pace. Big negative split: (10ks: 32’17, 31’33, 31’02). On treadmill (blizzard!) at 1% incline, warm 72F.

Woke up at 6:30am naturally – feeling good waking up early! Had a few animal crackers and pretzels by hunger and big cup of black coffee around 7-7:30am. Big dinner around 6pm last night and snacked by hunger until about 8pm, bed 9:30pm or so.

Goal today was 25-30km at goal MP and to really practice the plan of starting out behind pace and working into it by ~10km and then picking it up at the end. Thanks to “Winter Storm Jonas” – the blizzard currently dumping 2+ feet of snow outside and 30MPH winds – this was done on the treadmill at 1% incline. While I’d rather do these long runs outside, the silver lining is that it was warm in the gym (72F), which makes for good practice for LA, which will probably not be as cool as it’s been here lately.

The treadmill is definitely a bit monotonous, but I do like the precise pace control, especially when it comes to forcing myself to start out slow. I did this run at 1% incline on the same machine I’ve used in the past when I’ve had to finish some workouts indoors (and it’s actually the exact same machine I used 8 months ago when I did 20M 3 weeks out from Grandma’s). I think the pace/effort correlate fairly well with my efforts outside.

I left to warm up around 9:30am with a plan to start right at 10am. Ran 1M very easy and then did drills, took Gel #0 around 9:45am, and then practiced standing around with too much time to kill until right at 10am when I started.

I did basically exactly what we had planned, starting out well behind goal pace around 3’15/km and increasing a hair every few minutes to the point that I was running goal pace ~3’10/km by 10k (16’14 first 5k and 32’17 at 10k). After that, I held the pace fairly steady from 10-20km around 3’09-10/km and just tried to zone out and feel the pace. This felt quite comfortable for the most part, especially after the very conservative start. I went through 10M in 51’36 and HM in 67’20.

I was feeling very good at 20km but wanted to force myself to be patient and waited until 8km to go to start accelerating a bit more. Again, very slow increase of pace of maybe 1sec/km every couple minutes there, bringing me to 25k in 1’19’30 (15’39 split). At this point I felt really good and was running more like 3’06/km and decided to hold that until maybe the last 1-2km when I pushed in and ran the last 1km probably ~2’58. Last 5k was 15’22.

The total was 30km (18.6 miles) in 1’34’52 (3’09.7/km, 5’05.3/M), 2’13’26 marathon pace.

Some thoughts:

Shoes – I did wear the Clifton (size 9 – the half size smaller than normal). I tried them out around the house with a thin sock and they actually felt fine, so I did NOT run sockless. Absolutely no blister problems with a thin sock and shoes felt light and responsive. If I get the new pair flats in the next week or so, I might try them this coming weekend, but right now I am leaning towards the size 9 clifton.

Fueling/cramping – It was quite warm (72F) in the gym. I had a fan but I was still sweating an enormous amount very quickly. I actually had some stomach cramp/discomfort which was finally relieved by some gas around 26-27km (sorry treadmill neighbors…) that deterred me from drinking much. I think my weight was down like 8 pounds after this run. I’m not sure if the cramping was due to just something not agreeing with my stomach before the run or maybe my body not being used to the warmth and not drinking enough. I would like to talk about doing a bit more running indoors before the Trials, ideally some faster running, to test that out and potentially get my body a bit more used to running in a warm climate.

For comparison’s sake – in the spring, I did 20 miles at about 1sec/km slower. Based how fast I was able to run the last 10k, I think I could have easily run 20M at the same pace today. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever run 30km and the first time I’ve really felt like, yes I could run another 12km. I think this continues to cement that I’ve managed to get myself into “new territory” fitness; so, in one sense, we can already check one goal off the list.

Pacing – We’ll obviously need to think about this more once we can get a sense of race-day weather, but I think that planning to negative split by 45-90 seconds is going to be my best bet. Even if this were the LAST 30km of a marathon, and I’d run 12km before it at 3’15/km (39’00), that would bring me in at 2h14-mid. So, I could be behind pace as late as 22km and still make up for it. That said, I think running 68’00/66’00 might be a bit too extreme, but I could easily see being at 67’30 or a bit slower and then having the confidence to know I can run in the 66’xx range on the back half off of that, especially if I start out even slower (like 32’10-30 at 10k). Based off of the workouts in the past couple months, I think my absolute ideal race (on a fair day) would be something like 67’30/66’30 = 2’14’00.

Cooled down very short, 1km easy, ethio cooldown after.

Splits:
Fueling: Powerade every 5km (not much), gels at 0km, 10km, 20km
5 km 16’13.8 (16’13.8)
10 km 32’17.4 (16’03.6)
15 km 48’05.0 (15’47.6) 10M: 51’36.6
20 km 1’03’50.4 (15’45.4) HM: 1’07’20.1
25 km 1’19’30.1 (15’39.7)
30 km 1’34’52.5 (15’22.4) (Last 21.1km – 1’06’00.7)

4:30pm: Lazy afternoon snowed in. Thought about trying to run outside but 30MPH winds and the roads weren’t cleared, so opted for the mill again. Ran 3M from 10’00/M -> 6’40/M. Felt surprisingly decent. Total run 3M in 22’.

XT: OFF.

Domingo, 24 de Enero, 2016 – 8:30am: Achy night sleep. Woke up naturally early. Streets were disaster after 36 hour blizzard, so ran inside. Felt surprisingly decent once I got going. Finished with 1M barefoot and 5x strides. Ethio cooldown. Total run 11M in 70’.

XT: Back/hips

4pm: Ran very easy with Mar outside. Main streets were cleared, but still a lot of hopping over snowbanks/through slush. Nice out, though – in the 30s and sunny and not too windy. Ran all over CC. Total run 4M in 32’.

XT: Core
v