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Seacost Half race recap

My legs are totally dead today as I write this. I rarely question SC and his coaching, but I found myself wondering why I was doing a 2:15 minute run this morning at a 150 average HR over a hilly course. My legs felt pretty shredded for the last 30 minutes. I covered 21.9 miles @ 6:12 per mile. Coming off a hard run half marathon two days ago, I'll take it! Hopefully my body won't break into a thousand pieces now. Here we go-- as I try and break down the finer details of my race at the Seacoast Half on Sunday in Portsmouth.

I knew it would be between myself and Leuchanka for the win. I also knew we were both readily capable of breaking the course record, it was just a matter of who would come out with the win. A week prior to this race, on Saturday morning, we met up at the Newfields-Manchester rail trail and did a 5x6:00 tempo workout with 2:00 rest between each repeat. We were both running pretty hard, potentially testing the limits of each other and our respective "tempo" zones, but regardless, I got the sense that we were pretty evenly matched in our current fitness levels. I got the feeling that he'd be a tough guy to beat in a race-- someone who can latch on and just hang for dear life, and for a long time if need be. I took a lot from that workout both mentally and physically-- I enjoyed the element of having someone else there alongside me as we cranked through the minutes. It was an otherwise cold, thankless early morning (7:00) workout in the woods. From a training perspective, that was my last hard run before taking a few easy days to get myself ready for the race. 

In the week leading up to the half, post workout with Leuchanka I felt less than ideal. Let's say garbage actually. I had seemingly strained a muscle, albeit very slightly, in my glute doing hill repeats the week before the race. I took two days off to let that heal, then did some shorter distance runs with pickups to try and keep my legs ready for the race. My legs felt heavy and soft. Going from running 110+ miles a week with multiple workouts to single runs of 5-8 miles a few days later is a huge change and makes it a nightmare to stay positive, especially going into a race that you know won't be easy. The physical and mental shock to the system was hard for me. I was having doubts and plenty of weird aches. Deep down, I knew I needed it though, both from a mini taper perspective and a health perspective, and I tried to focus on that aspect of it. Sometimes you have to go through those weeks when there's a bigger goal down the line. I was glad once Friday came around that things were starting to come together for me.  

I knew going into the race that I had been doing a lot more volume that Leuchanka, which gave me a sense of confidence that I didn't quite have when we raced Great Island 5k a few weeks prior. I also knew my overall fitness had improved since then. Were those two things enough to beat him? That's where the race starts.

As the gun went off, Leuchanka and I sprinted down the hill from the high school and basically kept sprinting (or what felt like sprinting) until we hit the mile mark. We went through that mile in 4:57 if I remember correctly, which was certainly helped by the downhill and overall excitement of the race going off. Over the next few miles we clicked off some 5:00-5:09s and I was starting to felt pretty confident about how I stacked up. He seemed to be working a little harder than me at that moment, although that's impossible to gauge with real confidence. As I said before, I felt that racing a longer distance played into my strengths, and I wanted to play up that perceived advantage as best I could. I wanted to press the pace early and often, and just hope I had enough in the tank to make it home. Around mile 4 as we took a turn along the beach, I sensed our pace slow down almost imperceptively, at which point I picked it up to test Alex and see how he responded. I grabbed a slight gap, and knowing the wind was brutal I kept pressing on and tried to establish a little more real estate so he wouldn't be able to draft off me. Before I knew it I was running by myself. I didn't have a great idea of how much distance I had put on him, and not wanting to look behind me, I kept pressing the issue and pushing forward. People told me I had 50-200 meters on him at different points, but I think he stayed pretty much 10-20 seconds behind me for the rest of the race. Not enough to relax by any means. 

My race plan was to run roughly 5:05 pace for the first few miles, check my pace slightly going through New Castle at about the 7-8 mile mark (gets a little hilly), then crank it home back around 5:00 pace for the last couple miles. I think I'm probably fit enough to run a half in the 66-67 minute range but the issue I had at Seacost (that was shared by everyone) was that very windy conditions prevented any super fast times. In a way, the race plan faded out of my mind once I was crossing the causeway in New Castle and felt like I was getting punched in the stomach by the wind. 

Things got a little desperate feeling at that point as I wondered how much cushion I had. My legs were screaming at me and I felt like I was running sideways. Luckily we both slowed down at basically the same rate-- I had a couple 5:20+ miles in there that felt particularly awful around miles 9-12. I checked behind me taking that final turn toward the high school and was finally able to relax. I saw Ali as I turned up the hill and seeing her standing there smiling was the best feeling of the day. Crossing the finish line was great, but not as good as seeing her and turning up the hill. Even though my time was a minute or two slower than I was hoping, the effort was there and my body responded when it needed to. There's not much to be disappointed about.

 Ali and I at the finish. She's usually stuck with holding something of mine at the end of races

                                             I know I just posted this photo, but I couldn't resist

    My mom came to watch! Loved seeing her there

On a side note, I felt so happy to hear so many volunteers and racers cheering me on. Seeing so many people I knew made the race that much more enjoyable. Definitely a positive to running a local event!

As I'm coming off this race and looking ahead, the real training begins.

Onward!

AH

Seacoast Half

The Seacoast Half Marathon was this morning, which, after all is said and done, ended up being a pretty satisfying day for me. There's a lot I want to say about the race as it unfolded, specifics on strategy and the mental battles going on in my brain, but I want to leave that for my next post when I have the chance to digest the race for 24-48 hours. I wanted to stick with the basics and say that I'm feeling especially grateful to be able to run at this level again. That's about it. No doubt I have a long road to keep improving, but this was a major stepping stone for me in both a mental and physical sense. I know deep down that I have a higher ceiling that I haven't touched yet. I have a lot more to give. Now things will really start to crank up for me as I head into the real marathon building phase with about three months until the Trials. I'll leave it at that for now.

AH

Busy

Training is picking up a notch for sure this week. While I was feeling a little flat early in the week and even at the end of last week, today the legs were a little more spry. So funny how cyclical training like this is. I said to Ali that my mental and physical state after some really good or bad runs usually means down the road, whether that's 4 or 14 days later, things are bound to flip to the opposite side, usually with the same intensity. What's that they say about actions and reactions....

It's just impossible and unrealistic to be feeling good all the time. Making real gains in your training means having ups and downs. Big ones and little ones, and staying level headed as best you can throughout the process.

This past weekend I was also in upstate NY for my college friend Streets' bachelor party. It's always so fun seeing my college buddies. Such an entertaining group dynamic that I really miss sometimes. As you might imagine, that weekend wasn't super conducive to hard training, so I moved some days around and took a day off (which was planned) and an easy run. On Monday I was still feeling pretty flat trying to do a "step up" style workout which was 2x15 minutes at tempo (z3) HR immediately followed by 5 minutes at z4 HR. I couldn't make it happen for the second set and had to bail towards the beginning of the 5 minute chunk. I think my body was still catching up on sleep and recovery from the weekend.

Tuesday I did 21.6 miles in Jackson at mostly z2 pace. Sort of stayed on the edge of z1 and z2. Average for the run was 6:15 pace, and my legs were feeling a little better at this point. I was dealing with some pain in my right hip area that was a little concerning. I have since done a bunch of hip exercises and things have definitely calmed down a lot and I'm not as worried about it. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes for me right now. I can't slack on that stuff. Easy 30:00 double later that afternoon.

This morning was an easy 7 miles followed by an hour long "plyo run" in the PM. This entailed a warmup, then 4x strides, butt kicks, high knees, karaoke, and high skips for 30 seconds each with 30 seconds rest in between each drill. Harder than you'd think. Very different than just straight running, as doing all that repetitive jumping felt like I was waking up other aspects of my gait cycle that I don't typically use. I covered about 8 miles during that run, bringing me to about 43 miles in the last three days. Fairly typical mileage wise from the last couple weeks. I do have some more intense workouts later in the week which should add to the workload a lot compared to previous weeks. Hills tomorrow, then some quick track work on Friday.

AH    

10 mile progression

Got out this morning for a planned 10 mile progression run. HR zone 1-2 for first 3, then z3 for miles 4-6, then z4-5 for 7-9. My legs were still feelin' it for yesterday's 20 miler so being able to execute this well was a big plus. 

Happy this went well. I had my doubts in the beginning as my calves were sore and the top of my foot was achy. I worked through the kinks and am quite pleased. 

AH

Two hours

Went for a two hour run this morning, planned zone 2 HR the whole way. Zone 2 is characterized as "aerobic," for SC, aka not recovery, but not tempo. Kind of a sweet spot. I maintained what I thought was a solid pace throughout, averaging 5:54 pace with a HR average of 155, covering 20.6 miles. I looked back at a similar workout from April of 2014 when I did 90 minutes of zone 2 running and averaged 155bpm and 5:55 pace. Pretty. Darn. Similar. This made me happy because that was two months before Grandma's and I know I was pretty darn fit at that time. The contexts are certainly different but still interesting to see the similarities.

Need to work on some speed, but otherwise I'm feeling good and mentally amped to dive into the week ahead.

AH

Great Island 5K race recap

Yesterday I ran the Great Island 5k in New Castle. It was a perfect fall day for a race and I was pumped to be out there. I found out when I arrived that Nate Jenkins and Aliaksandr (sp?) Leuchanka (AL) were running as well so I knew I wasn't going to be walking away with this one easily. AL has been running well all season and Nate is always a super tough competitor when I've raced him in the past. I didn't know exactly what kind of shape each of them were in, so I focused on myself. I tried not to think too much about the training I had put in over the previous 5 days, as the miles have really piled on. I actually didn't add it all up until just now, where I count 93 miles of running in 6 days if you include the mileage from race day.

I knew I was in for a battle as soon as the gun went off. The three of us separated from the pack and it was clear nobody else was in the picture. I got out and led for about the first mile, which we covered in 4:48, the quickest of the race. I felt good, straining, but ok. I felt some slight twinges in my right groin but overall nothing too scary. I threw in a surge or two here and there to try and test those guys but they hung really tough. From that point I knew it would come down to the last few hundred meters.

I relaxed slightly and Nate jumped ahead going around this corner by the water that led into a quick little downhill. He was trying to break open a little gap by using the downhill, but AL and I stuck with him. Ripping through some of those turns was really fun, and the race itself can be pretty tactical from that perspective. Especially when you add in all the little tiny ups and downs.

Me, dude in the back, in my attempts to stay with the leaders

Through the next mile or so I was hanging on the back of these two as we were all clearly working pretty damn hard. Turning down on Pit Lane and then back onto 1B I was gassed, let off the pedal for a moment and lost a little bit of ground on the two of them. I worked my way back a little bit and was momentarily inspired by the cheering crowd with about 500m to go, but was burning on all cylinders at that point and though I was gaining for a short time, it wasn't something I could keep up through the finish. I ended up crossing in third, momentarily disappointed to have lost, but overall pretty pleased with the way I competed and the time I was rewarded with. After just a couple months of dedicated training, and only a few weeks of hard training, I was pretty proud of myself.

When I add in the fact that I'd run a moderately hard 13 miles the day before and done plenty of tough running and mileage over the days prior, I had a lot to be optimistic about. At the same fitness level but with fresh legs I'm confident I could've run much faster and been more competitive with those guys in the latter stages of the race.

Looking back, it was a lot of fun really racing people again. It's been a long while since I've been in those dire late race scenarios where everyone is just crushing each other and themselves for a small little edge. It's without a doubt the best and most exhilarating part of running. Also the most stressful. Too bad I didn't come across with the win on this one, but hey, there are always more races on the calendar.

AH
 
Results:
http://www.coolrunning.com/results/15/nh/Oct11_22ndGr_set1.shtml

Seacoast Online article:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20151011/SPORTS/151019886