countdown to Houston
Jan. 8th, 2012 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaIn just one week - on Sunday, January 15th - I'll be running the Houston Marathon. (Gulp.) Actually, I am quite excited about this, because unless I get injured or sick in the next week (KNOCK ON WOOD LIKE WHOA) I will be better-prepared for this one than for any previous marathon I've run. More miles, better fitness, a solid 10K six weeks prior. (BTW, I have added links to two race photos to my Winter Sun 10K race report - or you can use this Flickr Guest Pass to see them, along with the photo from The Other Half I'd posted before.) Fired up and ready to go!
My bib number is #3060. I believe you can track me, or at least check my results afterward, at http://alerts.houstonmarathon.com/. There is also a team competition, which is scored as (age group placement) / (number of people in age group) * 1000 for each person (so for example, if I come in at #10 in my AG out of 300 people, which incidentally is about how I expect to finish, my score would be 33), and the lowest three scores on each team of up to 6 people are added for the team score. I'm on a team called The Competitive Jerks, but my score is unlikely to count as everyone else on my team is a lot faster than I am (likely to get single digit scores). That's okay by me, though - it means the pressure is off!
Well, sort of. Because of course I have goals, and I am going to do my best to meet them. These are:
Can you see the mountains in the distance? I didn't know they were there until we drove over them the next day. But Bakersfield has the worst air quality in the US - just this morning our local paper ran an (AP) article about the horrible air quality there, with the helpful information that this year is the worst in over a decade, and that pollution has exceeded federal health standards nearly every day - and I was seriously wondering how much damage I was doing to my lungs.
Speaking of Bakersfield, I was a little worried about the damage to my diet as well. Britt was staying in an "Extended Stay" hotel with a kitchenette, but somewhat limited cooking gear, so while I was staying with him I relied a lot more on prepared or partly-prepared food than usual, for example using commercial cereal rather than my homemade granola , and store-bought cookies rather than homemade. Plus, we took the weekend off over New Year's Eve and went to Santa Barbara, eating lots of fancy seafood (yum!) in fancy restaurants, and drinking microbrewery beer and hey, the hotel we stayed at had free wine every afternoon, I kid you not!
Let me back up a little for context. As those of you who run may know, there is general agreement that the less you weigh (within healthy limits), the faster you run, and that the longer your event, the more advantageous it is to be light. An interesting article posted at the Runner's World website last month discusses the results of a survey of almost a hundred elite and national-class marathoners who competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials [note: this page is now gone, but the original survey is on the web here](this kind of stuff is showing up a lot in the run-up to this year's Trials, which incidentally are in Houston the day before my marathon - one reason I chose this race) and found the average BMI of men to be around 20, and of women to be around 19, which is decidedly on the skinny side of healthy. Conveniently for my own personal comparison, the average height of the women surveyed is 5'4", which happens to be my height, as well. Their average weight is around 112.4, which, um, I weighed in college.
But my weight has not varied all that much over the last 30 years. The most I have ever weighed has been around 127; more usually, my weight hovers between about 118 and 121 - unless I'm running a lot. As soon as I'm averaging more than 50mpw, my weight drifts down to the 116-118 range. This training cycle, my weight started dropping in late August, and as soon as I hit the magic 50mpw it started to plummet. Relatively speaking, of course - I'm still not down to that magic 112.4, and that's not actually a goal for me in any event - but by early December it was pretty much staying between 114 and 115. The day I left for California (I weigh myself first thing in the morning most days) I weighed 115.
The morning after I came back, I weighed 118.6.
Fortunately, I did not panic. I just went right back to my normal cooking and eating habits (real food from scratch, but also sweet treats and a lot of beer, wine, and liqueur) and whaddayaknow, my weight dropped again. Since my return it has been: 118.6, 116.4, 115.6, 114.0 (this morning). I don't believe I actually gained nearly 5 pounds in a week and lost it in 4 days. I'm guessing some of this is due to what I shall euphemistically call accumulated waste products.... I don't know. Maybe it's a sort of set-point thing, where my body's natural set point when I'm running a lot is 114 to 116, and when I'm not running a lot is 118 to 120, and that's just how it is.
Incidentally, that article about elite marathoners also listed the following breakdown of their mileage: 70% is slower than marathon pace, 10% marathon pace, 10% tempo (between half marathon and 10K pace), 6% 10K pace, and 4% 5K pace. I looked at my own mileage and did the math: even if I start counting in early October, when I started including some faster running, I have run 89% of my miles slower than MP (I used 8:10 for this, even though I'm hoping to actually run 7:55-8:00 pace), 5% at MP (7:50-8:10), 4% tempo (7:25-7:49) and a grand total of 2% faster than 7:25 pace.
Counting everything since I started running again in August (and adding the miles I'm expecting to run this week before the marathon) I will have run around 828 miles this training cycle. Yowza! Of course compared to the elites this is peanuts, but it's been a good cycle for me. The past eight weeks have been: 56, 61, 47, 51, 66, 66, 52, 54, and next week will be around 20. (The taper looks odd because I ran last week's 16-mile long run on Monday; if I swap Sunday and Monday the last weeks are 66 and 42.)
Today I ran my last long run before the marathon, which was not long at all, only 12 miles - and I went up and over the mesa, which is about a 600ft climb/descent, which is probably more than twice what I'll have in all 26.2 next week. Felt good, felt fast. Now it's time to taper hard and rest up, and get ready to run a marathon.
My bib number is #3060. I believe you can track me, or at least check my results afterward, at http://alerts.houstonmarathon.com/. There is also a team competition, which is scored as (age group placement) / (number of people in age group) * 1000 for each person (so for example, if I come in at #10 in my AG out of 300 people, which incidentally is about how I expect to finish, my score would be 33), and the lowest three scores on each team of up to 6 people are added for the team score. I'm on a team called The Competitive Jerks, but my score is unlikely to count as everyone else on my team is a lot faster than I am (likely to get single digit scores). That's okay by me, though - it means the pressure is off!
Well, sort of. Because of course I have goals, and I am going to do my best to meet them. These are:
A goal: 3:28 to 3:29:59 (sub-3:30)
B goal: 3:30 to 3:33:18 (better than an hour faster than my first marathon)
C goal: PR (under 3:35:57)
D goal: finish upright and uninjured. Okay, I want this no matter what.
I think these are realistic goals. My 10K PR points to something between 3:25 and 3:35, depending on what kind of assumptions one makes (it was downhill, but at altitude while the marathon is at sea level, my endurance tends to be pretty good, but I have only been running more than 50mpw for a short time, etc). I spent a week around New Year's in Bakersfield, CA, which is at 400ft, as Britt's working on a solar installation project there, and I did a test "marathon pace" run, 2 easy miles followed by 10 at MP (I was striving for between 7:50 and 8:00) - my average pace was 7:55.5 and my heart rate was perfectly flat at 76%HRR, or the low end of marathon pace HR. This, for those of you less geeky than I am, is a very good sign. Of course, the downside is that I was running in this: B goal: 3:30 to 3:33:18 (better than an hour faster than my first marathon)
C goal: PR (under 3:35:57)
D goal: finish upright and uninjured. Okay, I want this no matter what.
Can you see the mountains in the distance? I didn't know they were there until we drove over them the next day. But Bakersfield has the worst air quality in the US - just this morning our local paper ran an (AP) article about the horrible air quality there, with the helpful information that this year is the worst in over a decade, and that pollution has exceeded federal health standards nearly every day - and I was seriously wondering how much damage I was doing to my lungs.
Speaking of Bakersfield, I was a little worried about the damage to my diet as well. Britt was staying in an "Extended Stay" hotel with a kitchenette, but somewhat limited cooking gear, so while I was staying with him I relied a lot more on prepared or partly-prepared food than usual, for example using commercial cereal rather than my homemade granola , and store-bought cookies rather than homemade. Plus, we took the weekend off over New Year's Eve and went to Santa Barbara, eating lots of fancy seafood (yum!) in fancy restaurants, and drinking microbrewery beer and hey, the hotel we stayed at had free wine every afternoon, I kid you not!
Let me back up a little for context. As those of you who run may know, there is general agreement that the less you weigh (within healthy limits), the faster you run, and that the longer your event, the more advantageous it is to be light. An interesting article posted at the Runner's World website last month discusses the results of a survey of almost a hundred elite and national-class marathoners who competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials [note: this page is now gone, but the original survey is on the web here](this kind of stuff is showing up a lot in the run-up to this year's Trials, which incidentally are in Houston the day before my marathon - one reason I chose this race) and found the average BMI of men to be around 20, and of women to be around 19, which is decidedly on the skinny side of healthy. Conveniently for my own personal comparison, the average height of the women surveyed is 5'4", which happens to be my height, as well. Their average weight is around 112.4, which, um, I weighed in college.
But my weight has not varied all that much over the last 30 years. The most I have ever weighed has been around 127; more usually, my weight hovers between about 118 and 121 - unless I'm running a lot. As soon as I'm averaging more than 50mpw, my weight drifts down to the 116-118 range. This training cycle, my weight started dropping in late August, and as soon as I hit the magic 50mpw it started to plummet. Relatively speaking, of course - I'm still not down to that magic 112.4, and that's not actually a goal for me in any event - but by early December it was pretty much staying between 114 and 115. The day I left for California (I weigh myself first thing in the morning most days) I weighed 115.
The morning after I came back, I weighed 118.6.
Fortunately, I did not panic. I just went right back to my normal cooking and eating habits (real food from scratch, but also sweet treats and a lot of beer, wine, and liqueur) and whaddayaknow, my weight dropped again. Since my return it has been: 118.6, 116.4, 115.6, 114.0 (this morning). I don't believe I actually gained nearly 5 pounds in a week and lost it in 4 days. I'm guessing some of this is due to what I shall euphemistically call accumulated waste products.... I don't know. Maybe it's a sort of set-point thing, where my body's natural set point when I'm running a lot is 114 to 116, and when I'm not running a lot is 118 to 120, and that's just how it is.
Incidentally, that article about elite marathoners also listed the following breakdown of their mileage: 70% is slower than marathon pace, 10% marathon pace, 10% tempo (between half marathon and 10K pace), 6% 10K pace, and 4% 5K pace. I looked at my own mileage and did the math: even if I start counting in early October, when I started including some faster running, I have run 89% of my miles slower than MP (I used 8:10 for this, even though I'm hoping to actually run 7:55-8:00 pace), 5% at MP (7:50-8:10), 4% tempo (7:25-7:49) and a grand total of 2% faster than 7:25 pace.
Counting everything since I started running again in August (and adding the miles I'm expecting to run this week before the marathon) I will have run around 828 miles this training cycle. Yowza! Of course compared to the elites this is peanuts, but it's been a good cycle for me. The past eight weeks have been: 56, 61, 47, 51, 66, 66, 52, 54, and next week will be around 20. (The taper looks odd because I ran last week's 16-mile long run on Monday; if I swap Sunday and Monday the last weeks are 66 and 42.)
Today I ran my last long run before the marathon, which was not long at all, only 12 miles - and I went up and over the mesa, which is about a 600ft climb/descent, which is probably more than twice what I'll have in all 26.2 next week. Felt good, felt fast. Now it's time to taper hard and rest up, and get ready to run a marathon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 12:29 am (UTC)Good luck on your PR times at the marathon! Sounds like you are as prepared as you can be and ready to kick butt!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 12:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 01:25 am (UTC)Bakersfield. Been there once or twice- Not the most scenic destination. I hope your lungs are feeling better! I am anxious to click on your link to the RW BMI link. Your weight sounds like you are ready to run with a light chassis, definitely a perk.
Great mileage weeks, Ilana, and great indicators too. Can't wait to see how this finishes out for you! Best wishes!!!
I am giving up on the open ID!!!
Raina
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 03:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 04:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 05:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 04:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 05:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 05:18 am (UTC)I'm surprised marathoners' bmi's are as high as that - I thought they'd be more in the underweight category. Their muscles must make up a heck of a lot of that weight compared to mine :o)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 04:52 pm (UTC)Thank you for the good wishes!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 04:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-09 04:53 pm (UTC)RW Link
Date: 2012-01-12 07:51 pm (UTC)Good luck in Houston! Your last 8 weeks' mileage looks great. I think you will do very well. Looking forward to your race report.
Gary
Re: RW Link
Date: 2012-01-12 09:22 pm (UTC)I run very little at MP until shortly before the race (in the "sharpening" phase), which is a Hudson sort of thing (well, actually from Canova). The idea is that you begin training with easy long runs and very short moderately fast intervals and hill repeats, and gradually the distance increases and the speed converges toward MP.