Tanking It

It's getting close to the Vermont City Marathon, a little over a week away at this point. I guess that means it is time to start tanking. Actually I have been a little like the 2006-07 Boston Celtics and have been tanking for some time now. One of my major problems in college (arrived at by a lot of self-reflection and analysis) is that I did not take recovery seriously enough. Instead of allowing my body the proper time to heal after strenuous workouts or runs I would instead continue to beat it up. Now, there is a certain amount of "gutting it out" that has to occur in order to achieve success. I can't spend more time recovering than working hard, that just doesn't make sense to me. However, I can't just drive myself in to the ground either. Overall, I have made adjustments that I think will pay dividends next weekend.

First, I want to shed some light on my mentality leading up to this year. This an example of a typical cycle I would run in college. I would like to state at this time, that this is a bad idea.

Saturday: 8k Cross Country Race, 12 miles total for day
Sunday: Long Run 16-17 miles
Monday: Recovery Run 11 miles
Tuesday: Grafton workout (5-8k worth of work), 12 miles total
Wednesday: Recovery Run 10-11
Thursday: Over-distance run (aka Charles Street Thursday), 13 miles
Friday: 8 mile pre-race run
Saturday: 8k Cross Country Race. 12 miles total for day
Repeat

So, for a second lets examine some of the finer points of this schedule. First I "love" the idea of racing, then doing a long run, then one recovery day before a workout. What's fantastic is that during one of my years we raced, did a long run, then ran our workout on Mondays. Speechless. At what point did we think we were gaining anything from a) the race b) the long run or c) the workout? The concept of recovery in this schedule is non-existent.

Above I wrote "Recovery Run 11 miles" because some of us actually believed we were recovering on those days. Now I am not saying that we should have tanked our mileage on those days, but it we should have taken it easier. Training pace was always estimated on our team at 7 minute-per-mile pace. I have news for my fellow Jumbos, it was faster. We probably rolled most days at 6:30 and didn't even know it. Now, it's ok to train that fast, but on recovery days we should have been running 7:15 pace. I acknowledge that I am to blame for this. I didn't know this was a bad idea, and looking back I would have trained a little slower on "easy days."

Another thing to think about was our idea that taking it easy the day before a race made a difference. Well, no. In fact all this did throw me off my rhythm. At one point Matt Lacey and I decided to run at least 10 the day before a race for a few weeks, it made no difference at all. This was purely a mental ruse designed to trick us into believing that we allowed out bodies to recover. (Sorry for the run-on sentence) On another occasion Peter Bromka and I ran 13+ around Watertown at 7pm the night before a race (in 5 degree weather) and experienced few side-effects, besides bombing a 3k/5k the next day of course. However I don't blame that run, I blame the 90 miles we ran that week without recovery, combined with the expectation that we would "just train through it." Note to everyone, "just training through it" is the biggest excuse in the world, one I am not above using of course. Somehow we have to justify the fact that we were'nt on our A-Game that day, so why not blame the training, it's an easy target. However, I was and still am the idiot who decided to go out and do said training and had high expectations.

This is another thing that in reflection I f0und particularly frustrating, my inability to set realistic expectations. During my four years of high-school, college, and even now I see the ultimate goal as being a time when I can go out and run my best any day and everyday. Not only that, but that I should win all of the time, and that if I am not winning or surprising the hell out of everyone, I haven't done a good job. So my options were/are to either a) set a pr b) beat someone much better than me c) thoroughly dominate my competition or d) bomb the race from fear of failure. Guess which one happened the most, that's right you guessed it. (see: every nationals race not held at St. Olaf) This is worth entirely separate reflection piece, but seriously, why couldn't I just allow myself to race within myself on a regular basis? Unfortunately I can't put the answer in to words, but here is a story that might help explain it.

When I was a freshman in high school I won my first outdoor track race at the first meet. It was an away meet at Goffstown and I won the 3200m run in a blazing 10:45 (I think). From what I remember I lapped almost the entire field, including our team's supposed best 2-miler. After I finished the race my mom was so excited and hugged me, she couldn't believe I beat everyone like that. To tell you the truth I couldn't either. Then she hands a cellphone to me so I can talk to my father. The first thing out of my father's mouth was, "so what was your time?" "10:45," I responded. "Eughh," he said. Now I love my dad, but after winning my first race in high school you think he would have been a little bit more excited. I joke about this story with him today, because in the end his reactions helped me from ever becoming complacent. At the same time I have difficulty appreciating certain accomplishments as well. So, I'm a mental case, we all are.

Now, where are we, oh yeah recovery. So for my marathon prep I have frequently built in recovery days after long runs, as well as spacing my workouts between long runs adequately. The other huge key is daily training pace. During the fall I was running pretty hard on my daily runs. Even early this winter I was out there hammering too hard. So, after reading a great article on letsrun about training, I decided to slow down out there. To make a long story short, this worked out. I am not going to say I felt great out there everyday, but my long runs always seemed to go well. Simply put, I started to listen to my body a little bit better. Instead of worrying about what my totals looked like on the mileage log, I worried about how I felt. Now, that's not to say I didn't care about my totals, but I rested when I needed rest.

So, the taper plan I am using can be found in a book called "Advance Marathon Training" by former Olympian Pete Pfitzinger. So far, it's working out well. Two Sunday's ago I did my "dress rehearsal" tempo run. This run consisted of a 1 mile warm-up, then 20 miles hard, then a mile cool down. Now, the plan was to run the first 10 at 6 min pace, and try to run the second 10 at 5:45 pace. Instead I went out at 5:39 and was never able to get in rhythm. In the end I averaged 5:47 for 20 miles and finished just under 1:56 for my total time. I probably ran too hard, but after going out in 5:39 I found it difficult to keep slowing down. Following that run I felt terrible for a couple of days, and even took a day off. I tried a tempo run that next Thursday and could only make it through three miles before pulling the plug. Simply put, my body wasn't ready for it. A couple days later I ran a 17 mile long run at 7:10 pace and things felt better. Yesterday was my last "workout" and consisted of 5x1000 at 3:00 with 400m jog rest. This was not easy, but not really that hard either. I have a short tempo planned for next week, designed to keep my legs moving prior to the marathon but overall my work is done.

So, what does all of my blabbering sum up to? I don't know, but I guess we'll find out next week.