66 Mile Week, Reflections and Goals, and A Possible Boston Qualifier Attempt

I just ran 66.20 miles this week (the highest mileage week in my life by 6 miles), and I feel great. I have run 13 days consecutively without break. My body feels fresh. There really is no pain or mobility issues. Now it’s time to reflect on what’s been done on this cycle and look forward to the future.

Reflections

There are less than 7 weeks left until the Illinois Marathon. I haven’t written a blog posts in the last 3 weeks since I’ve been busy with school and research. Surely these three weeks have been crucial for my training. I have been thinking a lot about my future as a runner, the goals I want to accomplish, and the races I want to run. One resolution that I made for myself for the New Year was to run more easy mileage and try to reduce my volume. I have in fact met the first resolution but definitely not the second. This is pretty conclusive based on some data that I have. As a graduate researcher, you basically design experiments to test one dependent variable against a set of other independent variables. For our lab, we focus on compound semiconductor growth for optoelectronic devices like LEDs, lasers, and solar cells. A typical scatter plot that someone in our lab would generate would be something like the dislocation density of a sample versus its growth temperature or the open-circuit voltage of a solar cell versus the growth rate. With enough data points you can pretty quickly gather trends; some are really obvious while others are pretty subtle! Marathon running is no different, you can see some pretty neat trends from workouts or training that will help guide direction for racing. With Garmin, there is an abundance of data. Here’s some data I want to show: the average weekly pace for each week of my respective marathon training cycles plotted against that week’s respective mileage.

 Average Weekly Pace Plotted Against Weekly Volume for Current and Past Marathon Cycles

To be fair, I am actually missing a couple data points in this scatter plot. I chose not to include some base-building weeks from December and early January. During those times, I was dealing with some small injuries, lacked time due to finals (don’t take three classes at once in grad school), and decided not to run as much to spend more time with my family. Additionally, the San Francisco training cycle only has twelve data points starting from late May in 2017 after I graduated until the race on July 23, 2017. The Illinois Half Marathon cycle following the San Francisco cycle served as a base-building phase (I averaged 50+ miles a week in February of 2017 for half marathon training); this initial pre-phase training cycle was actually pretty high volume for a half marathon cycle with a lot of quality workouts. I ended up bonking at the Illinois Half Marathon, but I still believe I was in great shape with minor injuries with some concern of overtraining. Additionally, in this chart, some of the lower mileage weeks from the San Francisco and Springfield/Indianapolis training cycles are during taper weeks. I was also pretty sick one week in September where my training volume was significantly reduced. The final disclaimer too is that for each of these cycles, I have run my long runs all differently. San Francisco training cycle was completely solo, Springfield/Indianapolis was with one running partner, and the current cycle is with a different running partner.

Okay, I am guilty of one of my pet peeves with this blog: a nontrivial spatial separation of the data analysis text with respect to the actual figures. This can be a real pain in the ass when you’re reading scientific journal articles as a grad student! Nonetheless, I’ll explain some key points from this plot. The pacing in my current Illinois cycle is a lot more consistent. There’s about a 10 second spread in between my average pace in this cycle in contrast to the 30 and 32 second ranges in average weekly pace for the Springfield/Indianapolis and San Francisco Marathon cycles. The average pace for this current cycle is 7:26, where my previous paces were 7:07 (yikes!) and 7:13 for the Springfield/Indianapolis and San Francisco Marathon cycles. My mileage is obviously a lot higher for the current cycle. Like I mentioned before, the data is incomplete since I’m missing my taper mileage for this cycle, but currently I am averaging greater than 51 miles a week in comparison to 37-38 miles a week for the other cycles. In the future I definitely hope to put more data points further right on the x axis! A point missing here too I guess would be total mileage for the training cycle. Both of the San Francisco and Springfield/Indianapolis cycles were 12 weeks, whereas my current cycle will end up at 16 weeks (*knock on wood). A crazy thing to note is that my integrated cycle mileage is currently already higher in my 9 weeks of training for this race than both of the total mileage values for each of the previous cycles! I have a little less than 7 weeks left to go! For the San Francisco and Springfield/Indianapolis cycles, my integrated mileage was respectively 454.68 and 460.61 miles. My current mileage total for the past 9 weeks of training for this current cycle is 462.19 miles! I anticipate adding at least 300-320 miles in the rest of the cycle, putting my total to at least around 760 miles.

This would be the point where my advisor would tell me that this data is nice, but what does it all mean? I’ll give my best shot. My training I believe is very consistent now. There is a healthy progression of mileage where I’m able to increase my weekly volume while still maintaining an okay average training pace for those miles. If you denote the pace as P and the average weekly mileage as V, you’ll notice that dP/dV for the magenta dots are a lot lower than the other data sets. dP/dV looks to be a lot greater for the San Francisco and Springfield/Indianapolis cycles. I think this demonstrates that I didn’t progress properly when ramping up mileage for those cycles. This caused minor injuries that hampered me during some workouts and reduced my ability to recover properly. It also tells me that there really was not enough easy cushion mileage to guide my aerobic fitness while still letting my body recover. If you look at this current cycle, the slope dP/dV is actually somewhat negative meaning I’m able to run faster paces at my higher mileage weeks. In fact, my fastest average weekly pace was actually during this past week where I ran my current mileage high at 66.20 miles. I’m not going to give a linear fit to each set due to a poor fit, but you can visibly see what I’m talking about.

           

Another clear piece of data seen in this plot is the difference in paces between this current cycle and the past ones. At first glance, an observer would make the point that I’m running considerably slower during this cycle than the other cycles. What isn’t shown here is how I’m distributing those miles. In the past two cycles, I really put in no speed, intervals, tempos, hills, or lactate-threshold level runs. This cycle is a complete 180. I have been incorporating at least one speed workout a week with usually one tempo as well as well as the usual Friday or Saturday distance run. I have been making sure to recover very slowly in my off-workout days in order to ensure proper recovery. I honestly am running these runs at between 7:40 and 7:50 pace and am really just chilling out. In the past, there really was no notion of a recovery day. My typical recovery days now are between 6 and 10 miles between 7:37 and 7:52 pace whereas before I would usually just run 4-6 miles between 6:55 and 7:15 pace. This was a terrible mistake. I think this will really help me in the future. My body is thriving currently; no major injuries or aches. I am definitely paying more attention to stretching and foam rolling in this cycle as well.

Data from 8 Mile Tempo on 3-11-18

I now also want to take note of a key part of some recent workouts that I think will lead to future success: negative split runs. Negative split runs are exactly what they sound like: start the workout at a slow, almost-too comfortable pace and continually work down to something resembling a medium to hard effort to tempo pace run. In my previous marathons, I have really struggled with this. I usually flopped somewhere between mile 18 and 22 which destroyed any chance of a negative split run. I had tried negative split runs in the past on distance days, but I really struggled with this. I will point two key workouts I had this week: a generally negative split 16 mile distance run and a completely negative 8 mile tempo run completed at 6:40 pace. Take a look at the data above and below! I don’t think this needs much explaining

Data from 16 Mile Distance on 3-9-18 (Done Solo)

I’ll quickly summarize some key workouts I have done since my last blog post.

2-20-18: 8x90 sec treadmill hill intervals between 6:35 and 6:22 pace at 5% incline

2-23-18: 16 miler

2-24-18: 8 at 6:51 pace (the day after a 16 miler!)

2-27-18: 8 at 7:06 for marathon pace simulation

2-28-18: 4xmile on race street (6:09, 5:57, 6:01, 5:53)

3-1-18: 22 miler starting at 5:35 AM (I then proceeded to grow GaAs through MBE an hour after the run)

3-6-18: 6 mile tempo at 6:29.5 pace

3-9-18: 16 mile tempo with a generally negative split trend finishing the last mile at 6:52

3-11-18: Completely negative 8 mile tempo run

Here are the past 3 weeks as seen from my logarun account

Looking Forward to the Future

Oh yeah, I got new shoes! I got a pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS 18. I have pretty flat feet, so I need moderate motion control for my feet. I plan to work with these for the next 4 weeks, and then I will get another pair that I will use for the actual race. When I’m done with these cycle, I will have two relatively good shoes I can use to train starting in May.

New Shoes! :)

Just this past week as I was stretching after an easy 8 miler, I was thinking about what races I wanted to run in the future. Depending on how this race goes, I might try a destination race for the fall. I was considering running the Philadelphia Marathon or the California International Marathon in Sacramento. A lot of this planning was contingent about when I was seriously considering to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I had to plan my cycles accordingly to get long enough running cycles to actually put a good shot for Boston. Then it hit me, why not now? I have put up great training this cycle, my health is stable, and my slim free time as a graduate student has somehow allowed me to train and rest properly as I would like for a serious Boston qualifying cycle. Why not now? I think the only person stopping me from trying is myself. I have to convince myself that the time is now. I have to believe in me. Running a Boston qualifier is no joke. If you’re in the 18-34 category (I’m 22) you have to run at least a 3:05. In recent years, this number has actually gotten closer to around 3:03. Although slightly intimidated by these numbers, I am starting to believe that I have it in me. I will only have a chance on running in Boston on Patriot’s Day if I believe in myself completely. Any doubt will lead to failure. I have a plan to run three of the World Marathon Majors within the next 3-4 years. Why not try to qualify for one of them right now? I guess it’s all about mindset now.

When the time comes, I want to leave everything out there. Chances like this are few and far from each other. Life is unknowing and variable: health, work, and family are all non-absolutes. I came into this cycle with an open mind. Honestly, the goal of this fourth marathon was to duplicate my previous PR. My time was not now. April 28^th was just a date for a deferred dream. It might be a long shot, but the times for my dreams could be now. The thing that will kill me the most is knowing I had more to give. I have worked too hard not to see my full potential at this point. I don’t cram in 50-60 mile weeks into my life as a busy engineering graduate student not to at least attempt a Boston-qualifier. It might be high-risk high-reward, but that’s the point. It is high reward. There’s probably a greater than 50% chance that I bonk at this race with this approach, but there is also a chance that I don’t. The mindset is now focused to a singular goal. I will toe the line knowing that there is a sub 3:05 marathoner in me. Failure in this sense is not aiming for my best. As long as I go out there and try to run the fastest possible time I can on that 26.2 mile course, I will be satisfied. Only time will tell.

48 days remain.