2015: Training and Tune-up

Objectives

I have few different running related objectives in the season 2015. I wanted to be able to run more than previous year, shatter my personal bests on 10K, 21K, and 42K distances, and try slightly different training approach to marathon training. I still consider the 42K my main goal, although I want to run good in 10K and 21K. I tried couple of local 5K fun runs in December 2014, but they felt very short and sprint-like. I might use 5K races in the future as pure practice runs as they are not that demanding for recovery but still take the body out of it's comfort zone. I wanted to train to run a 21K in April, but I was plagued by injuries in February (275 km) and March (129 km). I ended up not running any race and was pretty much out of running the whole April (74 km).

Back in the days I used to love racing and hate practicing. Today it's the other way around. OK, hate is a way too strong word here, but what I mean is that I have to push myself to want to race more. But I don't always have to be well prepared to race. Racing as a means of practice is called Tune-up Racing, and it's an effective way to push the body to do hard practice. The magic happens once you hang the number to your chest.

Training

Base Training

I got myself back on track with training in May, when I ran 330 km. I had to start building my fitness from lower level than I wanted and first I just ran Recovery Runs and Easy Runs while adding constantly a little bit of length to the training. I was building base for the upcoming 18-week Marathon Training program. Before the marathon training cycle started, I got in 4 to 5 weeks of Base Training with some Medium Long Runs and mileage equivalent of around 100 km per week.

Marathon Training

I included lots of long runs in this season's marathon training. The structure was that on Sundays I ran the true Long Run and then in midweek I ran twice a Medium Long Run up to 24 km. This enabled plenty of aerobic stimulant and endurance training. I started the program 8th of June. The first six weeks were entitled as Endurance training: I built up mileage while getting used to the structure of the program. The Table 1 below presents the second week of the training program.

Table 1: Marathon Training, week 2/18 (RR=Recovery Run, ER=Easy Run,
MLR=Medium Long Run, MPLR=Marathon Pace Long Run).

I ran 415 km and 555 km in June and July, respectively. The second phase of the training cycle was called Lactate Threshold + Endurance. This phase was 5 weeks long. At this point the mileage had been built up and it was time to start doing Tempo Runs and Long Intervals. Not that this training program went crazy with them, the structure of three long runs per week was pretty much intact. I ran up to 142 km on 7th week and 141 km on 11th week. The Long Intervals were ran at 5K pace and Tempo Runs at half marathon pace. Table 2 presents training log of week 11.

Table 2: Marathon Training, week 11/18 (RR=Recovery Run, ER=Easy Run,
MR=Moderate Run, MLR=Medium Long Run, wu/cd=warm up/cool down, 
ELR=Easy Long Run).

Here is a video of my Long Run on week 9:

I am currently at 14th week of the training cycle as I am writing this post. Weeks 13 to 15 are entitled as Race Preparation. That's when I run couple of Tune-up Races while easing up a little bit on the mileage, but still pushing my body hard because of the higher intensity of training. The last three weeks (weeks 16 to 18) before the Marathon Race are for Tapering.

Injuries

I managed to stay pretty healthy for the first 10 weeks of the training cycle. I slowed down for a week (that was enough) when I changed training environment from pancake flat concrete of Buenos Aires to somewhat hilly asphalt and gravel roads of Helsinki. When I got back to Buenos Aires, I started to develop injuries. The pace is fast and pounding is hard on the flat concrete. That might be where I went wrong this season. I should have respected more then change of training environment, let it be the change was for seemingly easier. The legs didn't agree. In just a couple of weeks I developed pain on the right hip that made running longer than 15 km painful, whatever the pace. After fighting it for about 10 days I finally got it better by stretching it and changing the worn out shoes to new ones. Then my left upper thigh and groin got increasingly painful. Currently I feel the pain on every step when the leg is carrying weight. Lifting the leg is perfectly alright. I ran both of my Tune-up Races with this injury. Warming up, cooling down and training is painful, but running a race is not that bad, although I can feel the injury every step. My new masseur found out that it is one of the tendons in my groin that is causing this pain. Next up is doctor's office. This shouldn't be anything serious (*knock on wood*), but it doesn't go away by ignoring the pain or by just stretching and massaging it.

Tune-up Races

I ran two Tune-up Races in this years marathon training. So, I doubled the amount of Tune-up Racing compared to previous year. I must say that now that my base fitness is quite solid, I should add more racing to my practice schedules. Running tune-up races gives valuable information where your running fitness is. It reveals weaknesses and can boost your confidence as you compare them to your previous training cycles' races.

Dale Vida 10K

Figure 1: Finishing third place.

This race was scheduled on the 12th week of the training cycle. It was a local race with less than 1,000 runners held up in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires. I had started to feel increasing pain in my left upper thigh and groin in the week coming up to this race. I rested couple of days to see if that would help with the injury. Well, it didn't. Nevertheless I could run this race and it was like a slap in the face. Humidity was very high (RH 90%) and I ended up running a time of 35:20 (3:32 min/km). That's about 30 seconds slower than my 10K last year. I knew that I didn't have enough Tempo Runs or Long Intervals under my belt to push a strong 10K. But anyway this race served as a very good practice to get that kind of training stimulus. The bonus was that I was placed third in the race and got to the podium first time in 13 years or something!

21K Axion energy Buenos Aires 2015

One week after the 10K I ran the Buenos Aires 21K. This is a huge event with over 20,000 runners. It featured almost all the top Argentinian distance runners. For me the race starts over half an hour before the gun goes off. That's when I go to the start line to get a good spot. Behind you is a massive chaos that I wanted to avoid. My thigh/groin injury was on and I didn't run this week except on Saturday some Long Intervals: 5 x 600 m at 5K Pace (3:20 min/km). The injury allowed me to run 21K almost pain free. Before the race I was thinking that with this injury and all, I'm going out and start running 3:40 min/km pace until my injury gets worse or I otherwise crash and then walk back if I have to. Nice battle plan right? No pressure.

I didn't lose time at the start and quickly dialed to a comfortable but firm 3:30-3:35 min/km pace. I was feeling good and quickly found others around me with similar pace and started to run according to my plan. I noticed I was running very fast for the first 5 kms, and I was growing vary that I might crash on the second half of the race. The kilometer 4 was the fastest kilometer of the race for me, 3:30 min. The women's race leaders passed me at about 7 km and I couldn't keep up with that bunch of runners. My 10 km split was around 36:15 (3:38 min/km). All good so far.

The course turned back at 11 kilometers and that's when the headwind started. I found myself alone at that point and chose to give up a little bit on pace and wait for other runners. My pace was over 3:40 min/km at that point. One train of runners passed me and I couldn't keep up with them. Then at about 13 km two runners passed me and I decided it was time to start revving up the engine so I tagged along. I was drafting behind them and running 3:42 min/km pace for the next few kilometers. Up until we got to the Planetarium (3,5 km from finish) when I decided to kick in and ditched my new crew. The last three kilometers I exchanged places with few runners gaining maybe couple positions overall and finished the race 81st with a new personal best of 1:17:22 (3:40 min/km). Almost two minutes faster than last year! Below is a video taken at 20,9 km.

During the race I noticed that my breathing was light and easy from the start to the finish. It must have been all those Long Runs and Medium Long Runs that I had done. The factor that limited my pace was my muscular fitness. My calves in particular were destroyed when I finished the race.

Five weeks to go until the 42K race, I can't run, I'm injured. So, I'm going to emphasize my training on things that I can do, and that is work on my muscular fitness and find a pool where I can do swimming or water jogging. My aerobic fitness is great at the moment and it would be a shame to lose it so close to the race. But one can just stay positive and concentrate on this that you can do. By the way I was getting sick of running those multiple long runs per week anyway, so doing circulation practice and swimming are good for a change, heh.

Notes (to myself)

• Ease up a little bit for one week if you change training environment, the body needs to get used to different training stimulants. No matter if the environment gets "easier" or "harder", it is the change that counts.
• Don't sacrifice muscular fitness for excessive running. You don't get faster and eventually you end up injured. Although you get a huge aerobic fitness!

Adidas Maraton 42K Buenos Aires Race Report

Introduction

There was technical difficulties with my data collection and sadly I ended up losing all my data from this race and about 3 weeks before it. I wrote most of this post soon after the race when the experience was still fresh in my memory. Then I waited for the possible data recovery, but that never happened. On the other hand, I managed to capture video clip and make a collection of photos for a video review from my point of view of the race. You can see the video at the end of this post.

Figure 1: Finishing it.

This event was my main goal of 2014. Everything I did during the year was ultimately aiming for this marathon race. Earlier in the year I trained specifically for 10K. Then I ran two half marathons during the year: one in Helsinki (June) and the other in Buenos Aires (September). In the end I did emphasize more on the Buenos Aires 21K five weeks before, because I thought I was in better shape for 21K than 42K. At that time, because of an injury, I didn't have enough recent long running under my belt. This turned out pretty good because I could enter the marathon race mentally more relaxed and I could stick to my more conservative pacing plan.

The Course

The race was held on the second weekend of October (Spring in the southern hemisphere). The course was almost the same as it has been for the previous years with only small and quite insignificant changes. The course is flat and fast. The humidity can be very high, though. The temperatures during the race were 19C at the start and 23C as I finished the race. There are only a couple of uphills and downhills, nothing too steep nor too long. Those ups and downs give you basically a chance to relax a bit from the otherwise monotonous pounding of flat marathon running.

Figure 2: The Course.

Plan and Execution

Five weeks before this race I ran half marathon in 1:19:01 (3:45 min/km). Based on that result I could aim for a pace of about 4:00 min/km in the marathon race. McMillan's pace calculator predicts a more optimistic result of 2:46:18 (3:56 min/km) for marathon. But I learned a lesson in last year's marathon race (see my report) when I had to abandon at 26,5 km. The lesson was that I am relatively faster at shorter distances than the calculator predicts at least in the range of 10K to marathon. Furthermore I suffered from Nerve Compression Syndrome on my right thigh for 7 weeks during my 20-week specific marathon training cycle (read here). But in the latter part of the training I was running healthy and my form was rapidly getting better. Based on my speedster characteristics, my not so ideal training cycle, and past experience I took a bit more conservative pacing plan. So I decided to go with a plan of running 4:00 min kilometers and trying to do it as easy as possible.

Figure 3: Discussing strategy at the start line.

There was a nice international field at the front of the pack: runners from obviously Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Kenya and so on. This marathon is in fact the biggest in South America (over 10,000 runners). I got a good place in the start right behind the Elite. I was carrying one energy gel in my hand and two more in my shorts back pocket. I lost the two gels from my pocket right off the bang. Before we hit the 1 kilometer mark, there were already forming small groups. Some runners were inquiring what pace the others planned to run and started working together early. I hooked up with two runners that were planning to run about 4:00 min/km. But I let them go shortly after and took it more cautiously. They were running 3:55 min/km and I wanted to start easier at about 4:05 min/km for the first couple kilometers. 

Another three runner group formed at about 9 km. We were running about 4:00 min/km and holding back. Between 13 and 16 km there was some headwind and our group worked it like cyclists pulling each other in turns through the wind. We gained on other runners without losing much energy. At this point I was starting to constantly pass on runners by just maintaining my 4:00 min/km pace. I was feeling fresh, I had evaded the pit of too fast start and was now full of strength and spirit to start running the real race.

My halfway split time was 1:25:39 (4:03 min/km) and I was feeling good. Many of the runners around me were visibly more fatigued. But obviously the distance had somewhat started to feel in the legs. Then I experienced some problems with liquid in my stomach between about 24 to 30 kms, and I decided to drink less at the aid stations. My wife was cheering at 25 km and gave me a couple kilometers later an energy gel to replace the ones that I had lost at the start. She then was with me on her bike from 32 km to the finish. From about 32 km I had the green light to pick up the pace if I could or try to hold on. It felt like I was picking up the pace, but in reality I'm not sure if I just held up the pace. Unfortunately I lost the heart rate data and split times so I don't have the data to analyze.

At 38 km I was pushing hard and started to feel cramps. I had to slow down a little bit to make sure I didn't have to stop because of a cramp. The last kilometers I was fighting at the limit of going as fast as I could without cramping. I was strong until the very end and I was constantly passing other runners in the last 10 kms. Here's the video that I made from photos and one video clip:

I finished the race 46th with an official time of 2:49:52 (4:02 min/km). I ran the second half in 1:24:13 (3:59 min/km). That resulted in a negative split of one and a half minute (-1:26) faster second part. I was very pleased with the execution of my strategy. Next time I'm going to carry the gels in hands and maybe try to push it a little bit harder earlier. The season 2014 ended here.