Sweet and Sour Peaks

There are two workouts per week I dislike very much.  The first is the treadmill from hell workout on Tuesdays, and the second is the trainer from hell workout on Wednesday.

Regrettably…today is Tuesday.  This is sad for two reasons.  First – the girl is now gone for 10 days (before I join her for a tri down in Florida – woohooo to joining her though!).  Secondarily, I had to run the treadmill from hell workout.  For those that aren’t as familiar with that piece of work, it is:

@ 1 deg Warm-up Run :10 Z2. :05 Z3 :05 Z4a, :05 Z4b, :05 Z2
then…

5 x Elevation pyramid
[:01 @ Z4b pace @ 1 deg
:01 @ Z4b pace @ 2 deg
:01 @ Z4b pace @ 3 deg
:01 @ Z4b pace -.3 @ 4 deg
:01 @ Z4b pace -.6 @ 5 deg
:03 Z2 @ 1 deg between pyramids]
:05 easy
then…
4 x (35” at Z4b pace + .9 with :02 easy between intervals)

:05 CD

So, all in 1 hour and 24 minutes on the treadmill, which netted me 10.5 miles in theory (much like a track workout, there are easier periods in each set – thus reducing the overall mileage).  In reality, I moved about an inch.  And with the continuous ascending (it was a moose of a hill workout basically), in theory I climbed a ton, yet again at the end of the day… I went nowhere.

(Apparently I was a bit excited at the beginning there…fail, should have been a gradual build.) 

I was in a new pair of shoes tonight, which really helped things.  Usually I’m really on top of my shoe mileage, but this last pair I somehow forgot to write down when I first started using them and things got really out of control*.  And they got worn pretty badly – enough that it started bothering my knee again.  However, after getting a new pair (same as the old pair), things felt quite good after my usual 20-miler on Saturday, and again great after tonight.  And no knee issues – woot!

*Estimation mileage of 800-1000 miles – yikes!

(Side note, I’m sitting here watching the Silverman Triathlon, which I TiVo’d earlier in the week.  Crazy whacky-ass course)

(Finally…done and time to head home) 

But unlike the peaks I was climbing on the treadmill, I made a much sweeter rendition last night.  Well, I actually started them Sunday night after my 40+ mile bike ride.  The girl had a girls night last night, so I made cupcakes for them.  This was good for two reasons – one, it gave me an excuse to make cupcakes, and two it then got rid of the cupcakes – which is far more important.

I decided on a chocolate devils cake base, and then a vanilla meringue topping, which I lightly toasted with a little blow torch.  I LOVE playing with the blow torch.

As always, the first step is to make the cupcake, then from there I line them up…because it looks interesting.

Then I made the ‘frosting’, or the meringue in this case.  Anything involving 5 minutes of super-high speed whipping with the mixer is always fun.

Then I realized the fun was over.  I had to top all these dang things.  And it turns out, that’s a solid pain.in.the.butt.  Unlike a big pie or something, cupcakes are tiny, and creating the ‘peaks’ on them is tough.  First I tried pastry bag tips with a Ziploc, then I tried a spoon, then a spatula, followed by a cake icing tool.  I ended up using a chopstick, which sorta worked.

(Secondary Silverman TV show side note – they were just showing these 18% hills it has in the bike course, just really nasty stuff.  Yikes!)

After getting one done successfully, I decided to take a break.  This was going to take a while.  Plus, I needed to…ummm…’test’…my work.  Shortly thereafter there was one less cupcake.  Oppsie.

Finally, I got enough done for their girls night.  And then a few more on a separate plate for my own little one-person Rainmaker night. :)

Racing the line – understanding how courses are measured

Last week on one of my review posts, someone asked why their Garmin GPS showed a longer distance than the actual course distance of the National Marathon.  Of course, there are two possible explanations, but likely only one is the case.  The first is that due to a race-day placement issue - a cone, turn or otherwise - was incorrectly executed.  But the second and more likely explanation is that you ran longer than the official course distance.

How is that so you might ask?  Well, it takes an understanding of how courses are measured.  The good news, is this topic is documented in incredible detail on the USATF site (some might say painful detail).

The first step in the process of getting a course certified is to fill out this nifty registration PDF form with USATF (USA Track and Field).  However, the real meat of the course certification process is actually measuring the course by a certified measuring person.  This is all contained in a sizable 1MB PDF file.  And it’s in this document where the gooey details are. 

For example, let’s look at a simple two-turn case.  In the below scenario, the actual course distance is officially measured 30cm from the curb.  The total course also has a .1% error factor (added to it to ensure it’s never short).

(Taken from page 19 of the USATF measuring manual) 

Now imagine the typical case where a few thousand (or tens of thousands) of runners are running the course, where will you likely end up?  Probably the red line instead.  Weaving and swerving around runners.

(Professional MSPaint skillz on top of page 19 from the USATF manual)

So how much extra does this one measly turn add?  Well…we’ll get there in a second.  The next scenario to look at is the twisting road case.

In this scenario, the official course cuts the corners.  But in real life?  You’re likely swaying through the full width of the road with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Now, let’s see how this all adds up.  I went out to my street and measured a simple turn – just like the first example above.

First I measured the inside of the curve.  There were actually two successes there – one in getting the measurement, and two in not getting hit by a car.  That would have been a fail.

(Pretty sweet ehh?  I’ve actually got a rolling measuring stick.  Fun details here.)

And then I measured the outer edge of the curve.

 

From there, these are what the numbers look like:

Yes, I’ll give you a moment to continue admiring my mad paint abilities.

Ok.  Moment over.

Now you say – so what, that’s only 40 feet?  Well, next we pull up the course diagram for the National Marathon this year.  You can search all certified courses here.  From that we can pull the official course map.

Of course, I could count all the turns.  But I’m lazy.  I happen to know that the National Marathon also listed them all out on their website to make things kinda simple.  Each turn had someone there to help runners along.  In total, there were 64 turns on this course.  They add up pretty quickly, don’t they?  They also list them on this map in small print next to each turn.

Now, my math only is for a simple kinda skinny two-lane road.  In the case of National, it’s actually a four to six lane road in most cases, plus curbs, making for 2-3 times the lengths I discuss.  But we’ll stick with my measurements for the point of this.

So, let’s take 40 feet and multiple it by 64 turns.  That’s a total of 2,560 feet.  Or .48 miles.  Yes – almost HALF A MILE extra! 

Oh, but here’s the best part, we haven’t even accounted for all the swerving you do.  How many times did you hit up the water stop on the opposite side of the road because it seemed more interesting (yes, I have)?  Or go around a pack of runners?  Or just switch sides to give a bunch of kids high-fives?  Yup, they all add up.

Imagine if you had that extra half a mile back?  That’d be probably 5+ minutes for most runners on a marathon.  A fair bit, right?

Here’s a quick snippet from MotionBased.com for a bunch of people who have uploaded their runs.  I did note there is an interesting pattern that faster runners tended to run less (either due to less congestion, or running a straighter line).

(Green implies the shortest or fasted, and red implies the slowest or longest.  Note it’s just automated Excel gradient using the values provided – not saying that 5 hours is bad or anything.)

Finally, there’s actually one additional explanation.  Different software programs use different algorithms to determine how far you ran between GPS track points.  Your GPS file is actually a bunch of ‘track points’ – like a breadcrumb trail.  And software (either on the device itself, or your desktop) interpolates all that and determines how far you ran.  Some software is smarter than others, and can remove erroneous data points (for example, going into a tunnel you occasionally get incorrect data points on the exit from the tunnel).  So I often see cases where my Garmin on the watch will say one thing, and on Sports Tracks it will say something else.  Generally Sports Tracks is smarter though…  Obviously if you have a foot-pod based system (i.e. many Polars), then the GPS variance won’t apply – but running the wrong line still does.

So, the point being if you’re off by a little bit, it’s probably not because the course is mis-measured, it’s more than likely you simply ran a little bit extra. ;)  Think of it as extra training in the bank…

And for those curious – I ran 13.2 miles at the National Half this year.  So, relatively close all things considered.  But that still would have cost me in the neighborhood of about 40 or so seconds.  Win some…lose some.

Random tidbits – I was featured on TrainingPeaks.com

Just in case some of you missed it (well, everyone but Bill)…I was featured on the front page of the Training Peaks website two weeks ago as part of their member profile series.  The front page was then linked to a big ole post on me (complete with pictures!).  I was in Spain at the time, but did manage to grab a couple of quick screenshots for later - because no photos = no proof, right?  Plus – who would ever believe I was featured on the same page as running legend Hal Higdon?  (Btw, I actually used his free marathon training plan for my first marathon a few years back.)  Anyway…

I use TP (Training Peaks) to upload all my workouts so my coach can ‘critique’ them when he logs into Training Peaks.  I also use it to track resting heart rate (RHR)/sleep/weight and occasionally use it to track what I eat.  You can read all the deets as part of the full article here.

Training while travelling

After my trip to Spain, some folks asked me how I manage to find places to train while I’m travelling.  Given how often I travel (for work or holiday), it’s pretty important to be able to stay on top of my training even while on the road (no, not the cycling road, the travelling road).

There’s a bunch of tricks to training while I travel, which I’ll dive into later, but the biggest issues is always the question of ‘Where?’.  As in – Where can I swim?  Where can I run?

So here’s how I find places to complete each of the three sports:

Swim:

Surprisingly enough, finding a place to swim is actually the easiest of the three sports.  Now… I didn’t say the cheapest.  Nor did I say the easiest to actually complete.  I just said finding a place is the easiest.  I use Swimmersguide.com to locate a pool.  It has a gazillion pools in it’s database.  Below is just a snapshot of the town near where I stayed in Spain for example.  You can then click on links of each pool to find additional information.  With a little upfront legwork you can easily find a pool.  But…

…sometimes it’ll cost ya.  For example, the YMCA’s located all around the US are incredibly expensive for a single-use pass.  Your general best best is scoping out a hotel with a 25y/m pool ahead of time.  I find this helps me to squish in swims at odd hours (like 11PM), especially on those business trips where time is tight.

Bike:

So cycling while on the road is tough.  At least with a real bike anyway… However, let’s assume you have a bike or can rent one (many bike shops will rent road bikes btw).  I use Motionbased.com to find routes near the cities I’m going to. 

Motionbased.com is part of Garmin’s portfolio of online sites where anybody using a GPS watch can upload their workouts to it.  Therefore, it has a TON of peoples workout data (like hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of activities).

This is great because it allows me to find ‘safe’ routes that cyclists use.  You just search on a city and then sift through the results.  I used this method last year when trying to see if there were routes to bike when I was down in Ixtapa, Mexico.

If you don’t have a bike or can’t beg/borrow/steal one (no, don’t steal one…) – then a spin bike may be the way to go.  You can use good ol’ Google to find rec centers in the city you are going to (I just search for the city name + rec center).  However, virtually every hotel on earth has at least one stationary bike- and I find that well worth the time savings.

Run:

Out of all of the sports, this is the easiest to accomplish.  You just run.  If it’s a city/town with a little more ‘sketch’ to it, I might check out Motionbased.com first to find some good local running routes (again, locals are likely uploading their workout data constantly, so I guarantee you’ll find a running route in there).  And if it’s a bit of a ‘friendlier’ city, then I’ll just run wherever.  When I was in Dubai and Egypt I used satellite maps to find out where I could run in conjunction with Motionbased.

(My run on the Egyptian coast)

One other thing I’ve done is occasionally search for various running groups in the location I’m going to.  This has two benefits.  First, you can find people to run with at usually pre-established times each week.  Secondly, most of these running groups have sites which in turn have maps of their weekly runs.  Generally these runs are good…cause if they sucked, they likely wouldn’t run them over and over and over and over again.  Just sayin’…

Bunch of random tips:

Here’s a bunch of random things that comes to mind when I think about training while travelling:

1. You have to make it a part of your schedule.  If you go into the trip saying “I’ll find time somewhere”, then it probably won’t get done.  I actually schedule time in my calendar for my workouts when I’m travelling – including driving to/from wherever I’m working out (i.e. the pool).  My life revolves around my Outlook calendar.  If it’s not in Outlook, it’s not happening.
   
   Here’s a recent trip to Seattle, with workouts in purple, and transit times in gray:
   
2. Try to keep your workouts within your home time zone.  This will help you when you return, and help keep your workouts at a higher quality.  Meaning, if you’re travelling to the West Coast from the East Coast – try to avoid a 7PM track workout – it’s like trying to do it at 10PM.  Especially after an already long day.
3. If you’re travelling from East to West, take advantage of being up earlier because of the time zones, and knock out workouts early in the morning.  If you’re travelling from West to East…sorry.
4. By training early in the morning, you can avoid issues such as impromptu/unplanned business/work dinners hosing up your evening training plans.
5. Keep an eye on your stress level and resting heart rate.  Sometimes it is better to skip a workout – especially towards the end of a long travel week.  This is especially true when travelling internationally.  I skipped my last workout in Spain (a tempo run) in an attempt to reduce the stress of the trip.
6. Finding a track is also pretty easy – just lookup the local high schools using “City name + school district”, and then go from there.  I’ll usually give a quick call to the school to validate nothings going on before I head to the track.  Note however that if you’re in Dallas, kids apparently practice football at 5AM.  But in Vegas, it’s only open for a few hours.  Go figure.
7. If you can, plan your monthly training schedule around your trips.  For example, I have a crazy-busy spring coming up with respect to travel.  The domestic stuff I have dates on, so the coach is already aware and he can incorporate it into build/recovery weeks.  But I have some stuff with unknown dates that makes life a bit more difficult…so like Forest Gump says…stuff happens.  Or something like that…

Hope this helps some folks get those workouts in.  Have a good week, especially if you’re travelling!

Ya win some, ya lose some: National Half Marathon

I knew on Tuesday things were going to be rough.  My HR’s were way higher than normal – both on and off the track.  I was hoping I might slide by with enough recovery such that by Saturday things would be normalized.  And to some degree they did improve.  By Friday my RHR was within 4 beats of normal – but my run HR’s weren’t quite where I needed them to be.  For my target Half-Marathon HR of 170-173, my short Friday run splits were all in the 6’s – 6:05-6:15; instead of where they needed to be in the upper 5’s – 5:45-5:55.  It may not sound like a big difference, but HR’s and speeds are fickle things.

However…back to the beginning…

 

After getting my outfit all situated the night before, my ‘get ready time’ this morning was fairly minimal.  I got to RFK Stadium around 6AM and wandered over to the super-short porta potty lines.

From there it was off to drop off my bag and then head out for a short 20 minute (2-3 mile) warm-up run.  Just to get everything loosened up and get my HR up so it wouldn’t be shocked when the gun went off.

I arrived back within 5 minutes of the start as planned.  I then found my pre-assigned corral and prepared for the start.

(No matter how you slice it, those times are painful)

I briefly ran into Eric and his GF, getting ready to embark on PR’s (Eric kicked ass btw today).

They announced a two minute warning and then they allowed us (Corral 1) to fall in line behind the elites…and then we were off!

The first few miles I mostly hit my splits +/- a few seconds (6:05ish).  But, that was the easy part – being both the first few miles and on the flats.  And by mile one I knew my HR wasn’t where I needed it to be.  It was about 2-3 beats higher.  This matters because it pushed me right over and into my lactate threshold, not ideal for a race of this distance.  I did see Peter though volunteering at the one mile marker, and then Rebecca a short bit later at the three mile marker.

And then I found hills.  I knew they were there, I just didn’t think they’d slow me as much as they did.  My plan is always to keep the HR relatively constant on hills this early in the course – but I slowed more than the plan allowed for.

Once I cleared the hills, I was ‘scheduled’ to increase my turnover for the sloped 3-mile downhill section in miles 8-11ish, gaining back most of the lost time.  But I just couldn’t get the pace back down and keep it sub-6.  And certainly not far enough sub-6 to make up for the massive ground I lost on the hills.

And, on a race this short, you just can’t make up ground as easily as a longer race.  The below graph shows the first few miles, and then things going downhill.  The middle line marked 0:00 is my overall average pace (6:28), whereas the first three blue blocks shows where I should have been for the majority of the race (minus two miles of the hills)

So, I wandered through the finish at 1:24:44, a few minutes short of my 1:20 goal.  But, I did still manage a couple minute PR out of the deal.  Official deets:

Overall Place: 74/4150
AG Place: 22/340
Males: 61/1870
10K Split: 39:50 (6:25/mile)
Final Time: 1:24:44 (6:28/mile)

(It says start, but really it’s the finish)

Overall I’m OK with the finish.  It wasn’t ideal, but I have no doubts in my mind that if the race was three weeks ago (pre-Spain, pre-long work weeks and pre-getting sick) that I’d of hit my goals.  And that’s fine.  I’ve got the first tri of the season coming up in three weeks, and I’m really looking forward to getting a good tune-up race in the bag.

Afterwards, I hung around the finish for a few hours and watched a ton of friends finish and rock the place. 

Fellow Pacer Runner Ali qualified for Boston!  Lindsey won her AG, and nearly broke Top-10 females (despite a late start), and Jeanne took a 10+ minute PR.  Adam and Rob both shattered their PR’s.  And numerous other friends also did very well (these were just the ones I saw finish).

While bumbling around the finish line, I did go check out the “Active Release Therapy” tent with Jeanne.  Basically a form of sports massage.  I’ve never actually had any sort of massage before, and have never visited these little tents.  But Jeanne convinced me to give it a shot.  I will admit - it did help the legs quite a bit, I might even do that more often!

The good news here is that spring has sprung.  Well, at least for the little cherry tree on the side of my townhouse.  The official Cherry Blossom festival is still two weeks away, so you’ll get a combined preview shot and finishers medal shot in one today.  I do like the medals this year though, they’re nice!

(Yes, it’s quite plausible – and likely even possible – this isn’t a cherry tree.  It’s just a tree with little flower things that looks like a cherry tree, 6 feet from my doorstep.  And given this it the only type of tree that I can name – and the only tree next to my house, it’s what I’m calling it.  Everything with a flower becomes a cherry tree in March/April when you live in DC.)

After getting home and knocking out a 30 minute easy spin, I did the only logical thing I could think of.  I made cupcakes.

When you bake these, the strawberry filling sinks into them, and then it bakes up around it – effectively sealing it inside.  It’s really fun to watch in the oven.

 

 

The frosting came out awesome.  Incredibly light and fluffy.  Plus, the insides had a strawberry filling with chunks of strawberries.  Mmmm…have a good remainder of the weekend!

Packing your nuts

Tonight I handled a lot of peoples nuts.  Thousands of them…and it was spectacular!

Tonight Rob and I pitched in and helped with the National Marathon and Half Marathon setup.  This is the same race we’re both running on Saturday (the half).  We had signed up a few weeks ago as volunteers.  One thing I really liked about their system is this super elaborate page where you can signup for exactly what you want to do and the precise hours you can do it.  So we both picked tonight, from 6-8PM and then from 8-10PM.

(note, they still need volunteers for Saturday, so check out the link above!)

Anyway, our job tonight was packing goodie bags.  And in particular, I was stationed directly in front of my nuts.  Well, a large box of nuts that were effectively mine.  We’re talking thousands of nuts.  To my run was a gazillion energy beans.  And my left I had hand wipes, deodorant and AA batteries.

But first, some poor sucker had to fill the bag with a bunch of paper stuffs.  Thankfully, we were not that sucker.  They were the table next door….and we occasionally taunted them.  Because.we.could.

 

Once the paper-pushers they got their ‘stuff’ together, they’d dump the bags on our table, and I’d get to handle your nuts.

Shortly thereafter they’d get batteries, hand wipes and deodorant – plus some other random little stuffs.

But again – the best part was the nuts.

Once we packed the bags (and the nuts were safely in your bag), then we tossed them into the trash.

See that below?  That’s me processing the LAST BAG.  Yes, after 2.5 hours of bagging, we finally got to the last bag.  I think that was like 8,000 bags.  Many many nuts worth.

At one point Rob decided to try out the sports beans.  Here’s his thoughts on it:

 

So after we bagged all the nuts, we unpacked all the shirts.  Turns out 8,000 tech t-shirts is a lot shirts.  Like, many many pallets worth.

Oh, and they came from Egypt!

Oddly, these were the cleanest products I’ve seen from Egypt – thus proving it is possible for them to clean up their act at the Pyramids.  Zing. ;)

Afterwards, we had a huge stack of shirts.

And then…we were basically done.  So Rob and I left around 9:30PM.  Oh, and we got these totally kickass sunshine yellow volunteer shirts:

I never again will have to fear not having a bright yellow article of clothing in my wardrobe – for those special occasions.

Oh..and here’s a secret.  In someone’s bag I left a special present.  TWO NUTS PACKETS!  That’s right.  Someone out there is getting double nuts.  You should be feelin’ the love!

Anyway…

If you’re racing Saturday – good luck!  Especially if it’s your first Marathon or Half-Marathon.  I’ll be wandering around the finish after finishing…or lying alongside the course somewhere if the whole finishing thing doesn’t work out.