I did a race this last week with a friend of mine. I was trying to pace her to faster race. I think I managed to speed her up a little, but not a lot. I had her walk up the short steep hills, and occasionally take short walks. She commented afterward that she didn’t think the walk breaks worked for her. Her comment was that it was too hard to start running again, that an object at rest, stays at rest… I like walk breaks. Walking the hills I think saves a lot of energy. I have noticed that when I walk the hills, I am not going that much slower than the people who are running them. But I am using a lot less energy. I am also different muscles than I use when I run, or I am using the same muscles differently. That gives my running muscles a brief rest. All the brief rests add up and let the running muscles work just a little harder.
I use walking breaks during marathons. When I first started running, I would run four minutes, and walk one minute. Whenever the minutes on my watch hit a number divisible by 5, I would walk for one minute. I would also walk the hills. I trained like this for my second marathon. But as I got closer to the marathon, I played with only taking a walk break at the mile markers. This worked out well. I would take a one minute walk break each mile. These gave me a rest, but also served as a goal/reward. I would just run fast for 8 or 9 minutes, then I could walk for a minute. This worked very well.
When I ran my first ultramarathon, I was also training for a marathon. My marathon training schedule called for me to 19 miles at a 9:30 pace. So the solution I came up with was to run 3 minutes, and walk 2 minutes, and of course walk up the hills. This strategy worked quite well, though I ended up walking quite a bit more than I planned due to the extreme terrain of the race.
In my last few races, I have started to decrease the time I walk down to 45 seconds or even 30 seconds every mile. This has worked fairly well. But I will continue to play with walk breaks as my speed and fitness improves. I think most runners short of elite runners could probably benefit from walk breaks.
I was scheduled to run 20 miles @ 8:11 pace. I slept like crap last night. My wife snored most of the frigging night. I woke up with a headache. I had aikido class this morning. The rolling and falling didn’t help the headache. When I got home, I was planning on running, but I really didn’t feel like it. I ended up taking a nap for an hour. When I woke up, my headache had gotten worse. Ack! I didn’t feel like running at all. I procrastinated for quite a while. I finally put my running shorts on around 3pm. I think I put my running shoes on about 4pm. Somewhere around 5pm, I actually got onto the treadmill. I really didn’t feel like running. Have I ever mentioned that I really don’t like running? I ran 5 miles, then I joined my wife downstairs for a sub. Then I headed back up with plans to run another 5 miles see how I felt then. The movie I had been watching on TV had ended, so I popped in a DVD. It was movie titled 2 Seconds which has a lot of cycling. I ran the 5 miles, and actually felt a little better. I ran another 2 miles and decided to call it a day. So I ran 12 miles. I will run the remaining 8 miles first thing tomorrow morning. At least my head is feeling better. I didn’t get all mile mileage in, but at least I got a good chunk of it done, which is better than none.
I was concerned about dressing for the race as I am not used to running outside int he cold. But I dressed just right for the run. I wore compression shorts, Under Armour Cold Gear pants and Cold Gear shirt. Nylon shell pants and jacket. Hiking socks. Trail running shoes. And my tassled Grumpy hat. Gotta have some fun.
I ran with my friends Juli and Al. I was trying to pace Juli to a faster race. Al was just along for fun and to get a training run in. I think Juli was getting a little annoyed with me. I kept trying to encourage her, cajole her, push her, or whatever it took to get her to speed up. But it didn’t work. She started off well and wanted to go too fast. I slowed her down, then in the middle she slowed down. But towards the end she actually picked up the speed a bit. Al and I had a blast. It was an easy run for us. We finished the 7.5 miles in 1:21:16. LOL! So slow!!! 10:50 minute/miles.
Here are the results:
http://www.grtconline.org/2007Results/2007-08Freezeroo2Overall.html
http://www.grtconline.org/2007Results/2007-08Freezeroo2Age.html
I don’t take them seriously since we (Al and I) weren’t really trying at all. I am a little surprised that we didn’t finish last in our age group. We got close though. We gave it our best shot! LOL!
When I got home from the race, I ate, took a hot bath, ate some more, and then took a nap.
But I was also scheduled to run intervals too. So tonight I ran them too.
1 easy mile for warmup.
2 x .75 miles @ 6:03 pace.
4 x .50 miles @ 5:56 pace.
1 easy mile cooldown.
I was a great workout!
I have a friend who is going to try for a PR at a 7.5 mile race tomorrow. I don’t like running in the cold particularly. But I thought it could be fun. If I ran it as a race, I would probably try to run it at a 7:30 pace. Maybe even faster if I did walk breaks each mile. But my friend is going to try to run it at a 10:00 pace. She says she would be happy with a 10:30 pace.
I think in past races, she has started too fast. So I am going to try to slow her down at the beginning. Then I think she has slowed down in the middle, and not had a lot at the end. So hopefully I will be able to encourage her to keep going and push. If she starts to slow down, maybe I can convince he to take a short walk break for a minute, then start running again. I have another friend named Al who I know from the Las Vegas Marathon board, who is probably going to be joining us. It will be fun.
The hardest part is going to be figuring out how to dress for the cold. The weather forecast says a high of 34 degrees and snow. Yuck! But I do have some Under Armour Cold Gear, and some nylon shells. I may also wear a fleece jacket or something. I will dress in layers and see how it goes. It will only be for a little over an hour. I can manage. It will be fun.
I used the FIRST 3:30 schedule when training for the Las Vegas Marathon. It radically increased my speed, and I finished in 3:36:30. That’s just 5 1/2 minutes short of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I am going to try again in 2 1/2 months at the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, VA. But I want to hedge my bets a little bit. So I decided to use a more aggressive training schedule. The Furman FIRST schedule worked vey well for me. But I decided to use the 3:15 schedule. I don’t plan to run the marathon in 3:15, or even attempt to. I will probably run again at 8:00 pace, and try to hold it, and maybe finish with a little bit of a kick. Or I maybe target a 3:25 marathon. But I figure the faster training my give me a little more room to finish the marathon, and hit my 3:30 goal time.
Anyway, the intervals are faster, the tempo runs are faster, and the long runs are faster too. I have to look, but I think the long runs are longer. I think I have five 20 milers. Ack.
Back to what I was starting to talk about. The intervals are faster. As part of the schedule I ran a mile in 6:12. Actually, I ran three of them with a short rest between them. I am pretty sure I can run a mile at a sub 6 minute pace, but I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe next time I am schedule to run a mile repeat, I might try it.
Running that fast is not that hard. Running that fast for that long is tough. At first it is just running. But after a bit, my breathing increases. My throat starts to get dried out. My brain is telling me that it is okay to slow up, maybe take a short break. But I have to override that and keep going. I just keep looking at the timer and think only 3 minutes to go, only 2 minutes to go, etc. I also watch the distance. As I get closer to the end, I start counting down the hundreths of miles. Then I am done. I just have to push for 6 minutes. I can always rest afterwards.