Dear readers,
It's been awhile since I've written a blog post! I've been busy with writing projects for my real job, and while I didn't intend to put aside the blog for more than 6 months, that is what has happened.
After the disappointing marathon relay in late February, I was in a bit of a running funk. I continued running about 4 days a week, but wasn't doing long runs, so totaling no more than 20 miles total per week. In spring I had a series of races where I had trouble completing the distance: a 5K where I was exhausted after 2-1/2 miles, a 15K with 10 good kilometers but when I tried to pick up the speed, I was deflated within the first couple of minutes. Peachtree Road Race, 10K, was good for 4 miles, but the second hill after the famous Cardiac Hill defeated me. I walked for awhile, but picked up the pace in the final kilometer to finish a few seconds under 1 hour.
I began working with a nutritionist in June. Weight Watchers wasn't working well for me lately, or maybe I wasn't working well with Weight Watchers, but in any case, it's been helpful to try a different approach. It turns out that I had made so many changes when I lost weight 11-12 years ago, including introducing running exercise after two decades of sedentary living, that my body was now conditioned to running, so that I wasn't going to lose weight just from the exercise alone. Somewhere else I had read "You can't outrun a bad diet." I've made a few small changes, mostly shifting to more lean protein and green vegetables and cutting back on fruit. I'm down 6 pounds in 4 months, which I think is good and sustainable progress. My running has also improved. In August I set a couple of post-age 60 personal bests in the 5K distance. Maybe I'll write more about those in a later post, but not today.
After the Peachtree Road Race on Independence Day, I set up a training program, mostly adapting what Coach Carl Leivers had written for speed workouts for me a year ago, and gradually increasing long runs, with the goal of The Race Half-Marathon today, three months later. By September, I was thinking seriously about the Houston Marathon in January 2025. I had wanted to wait until after today's race result to commit, but when I counted up the weeks, I realized that the marathon is only 15 weeks away, and that I needed to begin training without further delay. I reached out to Coach Carl in early September, and started a marathon training program with him two weeks ago. Fortunately the half-marathon build had served as decent pre-training.
The rest of this post is from an update that I sent to Coach Carl earlier today. I realized having written up a note for him, I already had the rest of a blog post ready to share!
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Subject: week 2 report, and mostly about The Race this morning
From: Frank McDonald
To: Coach Carl
"Hi Carl,
This week has gone well, as I’ve been able to complete the workouts as written. The speed workout Tuesday night seemed to go as I hoped: First rep was an easy track mile in 10:48, then aiming for a 10 min / mi marathon pace, I had no trouble with 9:55, and with more effort got to 9:08 for half-marathon pace. The one deviation from the workout was that I walked a lap (4:03) before resuming easy running for a mile in 10:49, then 9:51 and 9:03, and one lap walk to cool down. The last running lap I had to consciously pick up the pace in the final lap to get below 9:15.
I was thinking that I shouldn’t have taken the walk lap, probably gave me too much of a break, and it should have been a clue that I had to work in the final mile at “half-marathon pace”.
Nonetheless I set out this morning with the goal of a sub-2 hour finish. I started just behind the 2:00 pacers. By my watch, I thought they were several seconds per mile too fast, but their timing seemed to line up better with the mile markers. I ran about 50 feet behind their scrum, and after seeing someone in that group take a fall, I thought that it was a good move to stay out of the crowd. Intuitively the pace did feel a bit fast for me, and my heart rate was in the 150s by the mile 1 marker, closer to threshold than was probably wise, so I was wondering if I was able to maintain the 9 minute / mile pace for 12 more miles. At the mile 4 marker, I was still able to multiply 9:09 x 4 and realize that I was only about 10 seconds fast, and that my brain was working properly.
After an hour, somewhere after the 6 mile point, I began to have more trouble going uphill. I had leaned on my mantra “relax and glide” going uphill in the earlier miles, but now I was definitely beginning to slow down. But I felt that the goal was still in reach until past the 8 mile marker, when I finally gave into the temptation of an unscheduled walk break.
From that stage, it was a grind to the finish line. On a couple of occasions, I caught a second wind and passed some people who had gotten ahead of me during a walk break, and I ran fairly well in the last few blocks including some uphill running, but it took me 2:07:06 to get to the finish line. Consolation was a 3rd place age group award, and I outran another 62-year-old man that I know from the Atlanta Run Meetup – although he was expecting a ~2:10 finish when we had talked during a group run on Monday evening, and that’s exactly what he accomplished (2:09:57!).
I had a lot of time to think about this on the drive home. While I probably could have picked a more modest goal, say running 9:30 min / mile pace from the beginning, perhaps with a sub-2:05 goal, I did want to find out what I was capable of doing, and I was willing to take that chance. But I didn’t connect the extra walk break that I took in the Tuesday evening speed workout with today’s outcome, until well after the race. Overall, I think my biggest mistake may have been going into The Race with only Plan A. I didn’t have Plan B or Plan C. If I had been prepared with a Plan B and C (negative split by any means possible, for example for Plan B) I might have slowed down after the first mile when I saw that my heart rate was already higher than expected. I did have a negative split in mind but that was part of Plan A, i.e. the fantasy was to pass the pacers in the last half-mile.
I hope you find this account amusing as well as informative. I’m tired but uninjured, and looking forward to the brisk walk recovery tomorrow morning. My confidence about running a marathon in 15 weeks was a bit shaken by mile 10 this morning, but on the other hand it was useful to get a reality check today, while it is still very early in training.
The 10-miler is two weeks from tomorrow. I had not set a goal time for that race. And the goal now, is to do whatever you think will be most helpful on that day to build for the Houston Marathon.
Best regards,
Frank"
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