I had a good run today. I’ve been struggling for a while now, especially with anything fast. Over the last two weeks, I had problems in two speed workouts. In one, up Paine Boulevard, which I’ve done many time but which is a bear of a climb, I found my quads going after about 40 seconds. I modified the run so that I ended up getting 8 hard efforts of about a minute. But even when I tried to relax and ratchet things down, boom, at 40 seconds it’d hit.
In the new, May 2011 Running Times, which has Molly Huddle on the cover and is chock-full of good stuff (my favorite being on the college club teams) but is not yet on-line, Pete Magill presents some counterintuitive workouts. One: What to do with sore quads? His answer, run really hard downhill. It’ll beat them up but the recovery will strengthen them. And you can’t do them mamby-pamby. 1500 pace.
I knew the hill I wanted. At the Rockies. Near Sleepy Hollow Road. By the underpass. So there I found myself on Saturday morning. You’d think downhill running would be easy. You’d be wrong. When you run hard, it’s, well, hard. And being a self-proclaimed lousy downhill runner, it was even harder (although doing this stuff once in a while may help on that score).
So I was pretty beat-up after the workout. I felt as though I had done a real intense bit of speedwork, but it was only 4 hard downhill runs, each taking about 68 seconds.
But that’s not the run I wanted to write about. I was reminded in another article in that Running Times, by Gordon Bakoulis (with a picture of CPTC’s Sid Howard), that Jack Daniels preaches running to your condition, i.e., run speedwork at a pace consistent with current shape. I’d been ignoring this prescription for a while, and trying to run by feel. But I’m a runner who needs guidance.
So to Scarsdale’s track I went after work. It was empty, being Passover. A bit of something, not enough to be called rain or even a drizzle. 20 minute tempo. Now I had tried this workout on this track a month or so ago and I blew up, stopping at about 3000. Today, though, instead of dreading it I was confident that if I kept things under control I’d be fine.
And I was. 5200 in 20:14, with all but the first 2 laps within a second of one another. Not a moment’s distress. One of those runs when you realize during it that you have a good one going. It was, indeed, the best bit of track work I’ve done in years.
Such ups and downs. Grete’s dead, and I think of the fleeting moments in which I raced her long ago. Somewhere I have a photo of her passing me in the rain of NY 1983 just before 24. London and Boston with spectacular results (even if I had to struggle for much of the former with out-of-sync commentary before suffering through who knows how many women finishers before we could return to the men’s race and had to cringe as to the latter as I kept hearing Tony Reavis speak of a “new world record” in an Al Michaels “do-you-believe-in-miracles” voice because Tony there can’t be a world record at Boston and you really should know that). The moment when Desiree Devila, who got an appreciation thread on LetsRun (and Patti on page 4 is Patti Catalano), quit in Boston’s final stretch (take a look at 3:07 of the video) and then decided to give it one last go and almost almost pulled it off, invoking Kara Goucher’s final lap at the 2007 Worlds 10,000 when she told herself that she’d never forgive herself were she not to give it her best and getting a bronze for the effort, in part at the expense of Kiwi Kim Smith, who went off the front from the gun yesterday but found her calf exploding in the race and displayed a stream of tears in an interview after, and I was so hoping she’d pull it off because there’s something about her crazy style and shyness that made me hope she’d pull it off and none of this causing me to think for even a moment that I wanted to run that race.
Today was the last day to enter NY. I did it yesterday. $167. Rich Temerian suggested that we wear armbands in memory of Grete. I think it a great idea.
11 comments
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April 20, 2011 at 12:59 am
cg9m
some random thoughts on training…(i’ll avoid the touchy marathon stuff on the edges)…you do seem to train for a very broad range of distances, however…which i would think would make it difficult to hone in on a focus race. i know you’ve said you don’t appreciate hearing ‘advice’ from slower folk, but i’ve observed faster people over the years at various dist’s, so am giving my two cents (and well hey, it’s just two cents).
i’ve divided long vs short dist people into two camps over the years…and admittedly came from ‘less mileage but overall faster’ ideology for middle dist training.
lately, i’m trying the ‘more is more’ approach…hence, doing a marathon last year. and for me, the marathon is a means to a shorter distance end…’run more;’ hopefully, ‘run faster’…it seems to be working. but, there’s the rub. (for me.)
-this is ‘out there’ and i’ve seen it in some places, but it relates to ‘older’ runners of whom i am now considering myself a part. the fact is, i simply can’t do the number of weekly speed workouts i could when younger. i’ve never considered myself a ‘long distance’ person, but somehow, running more slow distance seems to be allowing me to improve…why i’m trying this angle lately.
-in the end, i don’t know what will work well for you. we’re all individuals (annoyingly futile comment there)…my babble stream is just suggesting that the overall ‘volume’ and associated tempo speedwork required for marathon training may be adequate for an older runner to perform his best at longer distances….but that it may also *translate* into some (quite) respectable results for shorter stuff (tho not top-line). perhaps it’s b/c i’ve seen the opposite- ie, someone take the ‘intensity’ approach and run (ag) personal bests at shorter distances with a specific focus on speed. it seems more ‘injury-prone’ for older folk, however. but i’m (however trite) a believer in ‘you get what you train for’….
well, you have a coach. and she/he knows best. i think you could get back to your 2007-8 times, fwiw.
April 20, 2011 at 8:14 am
JoeGarland
Jeez, C, enough with the drama-queen stuff. You know that’s not true or that I won’t agree.
You have your marathon training on the one hand and your shorter-distance training on the other. At Sound Shore, we generally trained for the latter, but I tried to separate out those training for marathons. Thus most of us were training for 5Ks to HMs — as club runners we were not specializing beyond that — the stuff we were doing — repeats, tempos, intervals, hills — was translatable across that range. Remember, from Daniels, the pace one does is not based upon the race one is aiming for, just one’s current condition.
If one were focused on 5Ks, her longer runs would be shorter than for HMers and there’d be a second bit of speed during the week.
Then the marathon — and road relays, which I view as largely requiring marathon training — you have more long runs, more mileage, marathon-pace runs, and fewer intervals, maybe only a couple of sessions. But we still did repeats (for form and the mental break of running fast) and tempos.
As to aging, that’s a big wild-card. I find that I am not recovering as quickly now as I did a few years ago, and I have to take that into account. But perhaps counterintuitively, I’ll send you back to a post I did that was a reprint of an article by John Kellogg on the importance and benefits of more speed for oldsters. Again, if you keep the pace under control and give yourself time to recover, such speed work should be manageable. And a part of that, I’ll admit, is mental, not doubting your ability to carry on.
Indeed, after the Scotland Run, Rich Temerian said he thinks that the only way us really old guys can get faster is by racing a lot. And so someone like Mark T may have been right all along with his high-frequency approach.
April 20, 2011 at 3:48 am
Mark Thompson
Hi Joe-There was a workout suggestion I came across a couple of years ago, that mentioned downhill repeats. I think it may have been Runner’s World, but I’m not sure. I remember trying them a few times. Maybe I’ll reincorporate. Running Times has some good suggestions. The May 2010 issue had an article by Jay Johnston called “Speed Development”. He suggested among other things doing exercises that strengthen your posterior chain. As someone who works in physical therapy, it made a lot of sense to me, so I started doing these exercises. I’ve been having a string of excellent race results lately so maybe there is a correlation…….
April 20, 2011 at 12:46 pm
JoeGarland
I don’t know if you made it, but one of our tougher SSRMC workouts was an up-flat-down. Up Paine, across to Broadview, down Broadview in New Rochelle. I think we did it just once but I recall how tough it was to power downhill. We probably did four reps. I recall my legs screaming on the last one, and I was a bit surprised that I made it to the top of Paine, let alone to the bottom of Broadview. Ah, good times.
April 20, 2011 at 5:26 am
Stephane
Training downhill is great for leg turnover. However this is not so great for the knees, the feet and IT-band. I got injured the last time I did with the team the infamous 8×400 uphill, sprinting 200 downhill.
April 20, 2011 at 12:48 pm
JoeGarland
Fortunately although I was running hard, I never felt that my mechanics were getting screwed up and made it through without any damage. I hope. But your’s is a cautionary tale.
April 20, 2011 at 11:18 am
threlkeld
I have a great place for hill repeats: Grand Blvd, just Northeast of the intersection between Harney and Bronx River Pkwy. For an even steeper hill, try Quinby Ave between Walworth and Rte 22.
I’m glad things are going well. We need to catch up and compare notes sometime soon.
April 20, 2011 at 12:43 pm
JoeGarland
Two things of which there are no shortages in southern Westchester are taxes and hills. I’ve long thought I became a good hill runner in part because I’d finish my runs from home up Grant to Fairview to Harrison in Tuckahoe. If you want steeper, Terrace is one block over.
I’m partial to Paine for .3 mile hill repeats. Not too steep/not too flat. Hewitt Avenue in Eastchester (they say Bronxville) near Siwanoy is an easy jog from home for me and is another good one. For you, there’s always Lincoln out of Crestwood to Eastchester HS. Indeed, it can sometimes be hard not to find a hill in these parts.
April 23, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Ewen
Joe, the downhill repeats idea has merit. Locally, I know the runners who’ve represented Aus in World Mtn Running swear by hard downhill sessions to ‘condition’ the quads in the lead-up to major events. I take it Magill suggests 1500m pace for these? There’s also the example of Hosaka (M60 WR marathon) who does 1k up/down repeats, with the downs at 3/5k race pace (from memory) and the ups at half/marathon pace, so not as intense as the Magill version for the downs.
Online I was hoping for Kim to ‘do a Joanie’ — we have a soft spot for Kiwis (especially around Anzac Day) — they’re honorary Aussies in my book.
June 14, 2011 at 8:36 pm
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[...] important. And I surprised myself. Just as it was 2 months ago, when I was encouraged by another tempo run, so it was tonight. Indeed, almost exactly the pace from before, this time 14 laps in 21:43 (a 6:13 [...]
December 28, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Boxing Day: A Run « RunWestchester
[...] do a nice loop near the southern tip of the Park. Which is what I did, running up the hill I used months ago for downhill intervals to work on my quads, following Pete Magill’s advice from Running [...]