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Got back last night, I hope to write some semi-amusing posts about what went down while I was away. The highlight was a fairly long training run that included a good old falling flat on the face after stubbing my toe on a rock on the course. You know, the type of wonderful midair ‘oh shit’ feeling you get right before you land on sharp gravel, followed by ‘I hope no one saw that’, even though there’s already more blood than at a Vlad the Impaler Tupperware party. Such a blast.

Than some stomach virus hit Sunday night, and all those historical statistics make sense, especially in the bathroom, such as: more people died in the flu epidemic of 1918 than did in all of World War I. I’m not that bad off, but it makes running (as in, with running shoes, outside) impossible. I’ve got a sweet little 18-mile race this Sunday, better be ready for that silliness, pronto.

So I survived another long stint away from the blogga-whirl. Now that fall has begun, how about we all throw a Ducathalon and raise money for our hapless investment banks? You know, the Fed’s Run On the Banks… Um, not a good name, maybe Run For The Banks is slightly better…

Ten Days Away from NYC

Love the city, but it gets tiresome, so I’ll be away it all for a week or so. I’ll have stories when I get back, though. Leaning toward the ING Hotford on 10/11, by the way.

Y’all have a good week…

R

P.S. Airplane/artwork at The Pompidou Center, Paris, above. Made out of scissors confiscated by airport security guards. Very funny.

Race Report: fitness® Mind, Body, Spirit Games (4M)

Held last Saturday morning, this little race was a real delight. Yes, sarcasm already.

Well, there’s not much to say, but I’ll say it anyway. Your typical Central Park 4-miler, the men’s race was at 8:30AM, the women’s an hour later. I believe Fitness magazine is geared to women, so they decided to segregate the ladies so they didn’t have to deal with all the skinny white boys throwing rock star attitude at the start line. That’s my own opinion, of course, but even I get tired of getting elbowed by all those SWBs as they push their way to the front. Apparently, ‘Excuse me’ is too complex a sentence structure for these guys. At least they’re all easy to find in the race results, you just need to search in the names under ‘Dude’. I heard ‘Dude!’ about three dozen times while standing in the corral before the start.

And here’s the best part: the humidity felt about the same as it does in the shower right after you turn the water off. Tropical storm Hanna was making its way to the northeast, and right before its arrival we were treated to some really, really Jurassic weather. The temperature was OK, about 70 degrees, but the humidity felt like 150%. It was just unbelievable. The race director warned us to watch our pace, and I thought to myself, ‘yeah, yeah, we got it’, and then I realized sweat was already dripping down my back while I'm standing there.

The gun went off and out we went, and up the first hill, and I’m holding back my pace. My first mile was a bit fast, but not insanely so, and by the time I got to mile three I knew that no PR was ‘a-happenin’ today. Life goes on. Meanwhile, I notice runners passing me and it starts to piss me off a little, but I know that hurling breakfast would really piss me off, so I re-check my pace. Not bad, but slowing. And pretty soon everybody is slowing down a little, including two friends who stuck with my pace right behind me. They finished behind me too, but thanks to the chip system, finished a few seconds ahead.

I finished the race very happy to be done, with an uncharacteristic mini-sprint. Not a bad effort, but I realized long ago that a humid day adds 10-15 seconds per mile to my pace, so that’s life, and anyway, I figured that I’d actually done better than my last 4-miler in July. Once I got home I looked up my finish time for both races and discovered I’d done both races in the exact same time, 26:18. Weird. A lot of good all that speedwork training has done, I thought. Then again, at least I didn’t run slower, and the weather was a bit worse during this last race.

I will say that everybody thought the weather was just abominable, and wanted to crawl off and die once it was over. I was not alone. I hate it when there’s lousy race weather and other runners make cheery comments on how ‘great the weather was’ just to prove how tough they are. Yeah, you’re tough alright, especially for a goddamned idiot. Folks, if you finish a race and feel fine, don’t approach other runners and tell them how great you feel. Just shut up and go get them some water or something.

And I kind of did that, I went back out to the course and cheered on the unlucky guys still left out on the course. After a while, I saw coming through my Tuesday morning/Thursday evening running coach, formerly known as swimming coach. He had hit a wall at mile 2 and struggled all the way to the end. After he crossed the finish line, I got him some water and we traded comments about the stupid weather and crap non-runners look bored listening to. And I headed back out on the course to watch and clap for the ladies struggling through their own 4-miles of ungodly sweating and chafing. Fun.

So it looks like that’s it for short races for the time being. Got an 18-mile race in a few weeks, and then marathon mania begins. Oh, and despite the sweaty race on Saturday, I managed to get a nice long run in on Sunday, running around Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Over three hours of clomp, clomp, clomping asphalt. By then the humidity had left, thank you Jesus.

iPod Friday 33: Ladies with an Attitude

Annie - I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me

Madonna - She's Not Me (DJ Dvir Halevi Remix)

The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name

Lily Allen - Guess Who Batman (warning: f-bombs)

Infernal - I Won't Be Crying (Extended Mix)

Onetwo - Home (Tonight)

Lady GaGa – Just Dance

Shakespeare For Runners, Part 1

If you weren’t an English major, you probably just groaned at the title above. But stick with me, if only because it’s another of my hair-brained ideas out for all to see.

Every year I get a running log either from Runner’s World magazine or at the bookstore. And every time I open it up I read those inspirational quotes and sayings thrown into the calendar that are supposed to motivate you to achieve your goals and dreams and other crap. Funny thing is, those quotations never make it any easier for me to get out the door for a tough training run nor do they help me cross the finish line. I’m thinking other thoughts then, like ‘this hurts’ and ‘who came up with this stupid course’ and my favorite of all, ‘thank God that’s over’. But never something so dumb and puerile as ‘the first step is the most important on the road of life’ and other Hallmark card sentiments they throw at you, quoting some track coach who never ran a day in his life.

I decided I had to find my own quotations. And from less-obvious personalities than marathoners of the 1970s. So off I went in search of quotes from poets and writers and real people who weren’t afraid to say or write things along the lines of ‘this hurts’. I quickly realized I could spend years cataloguing identical missives in modern Russian literature, just for starters.

And back to the basics I went, only to settle on the greatest playwright in the English language, and possibly in any language. Shakespeare had it all, even if he’s not your cup of tea, so to speak. His dialogue may not always be easy for modern ears to follow, and it takes some getting used to, but he sure knew how to create a character or two. And scene, and situation, and everything else.

Well, I don’t have the time nor the expertise to go into why we should all at least know something about Shakespeare and his work, so I’ll get into the quotation that I found that I, and hopefully you, may relate to.

Richard II was one of his early historical dramas, and like many of them, does not have what we’d call a happy ending. Richard II (1367-1400) was not well-liked, he suffered continual bouts of assholism, and really, really enjoyed being in charge of everyone else. Historically, his enemies tried to overthrow him twice and finally succeeded; they hated him so much that when they threw him into prison they just let him rot there, as if he wasn’t worth the trouble of execution. Shakespeare makes him out to be a bit indecisive, and kind of, well, a downer. And a bit of a prissy miss thang, letting a ‘snap’ fly when making a point now and then. Oh, yes, she did!

So today’s quote is from Richard II, Act 3, Scene II. The Que-, uh, King, realizes that everything is over, he’s lost the battle against Bolingbroke over his crown, and it’s a bad day all around. It’s no pep talk; he tells his friends that it’s too late to even save themselves and they might as well just give up and go to Denny’s. ‘Cause that bitch Tyra ain’t never gonna let them walk the runway.

(Here’s the excerpt, you may skim like many a freshman lit class student has done before you:)

KING RICHARD II: 

No matter where; of comfort no man speak: 

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; 

Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes 

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, 

Let's choose executors and talk of wills: 

And yet not so, for what can we bequeath 

Save our deposed bodies to the ground? 

Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's, 

And nothing can we call our own but death 

And that small model of the barren earth 

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 

And tell sad stories of the death of kings; 

How some have been deposed; some slain in war, 

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; 

Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd; 

All murder'd: for within the hollow crown 

That rounds the mortal temples of a king 

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, 

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, 

Allowing him a breath, a little scene, 

To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks, 

Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 

As if this flesh which walls about our life, 

Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus 

Comes at the last and with a little pin 

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! 

Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood 

With solemn reverence: throw away respect, 

Tradition, form and ceremonious duty, 

For you have but mistook me all this while: 

I live with bread like you, feel want, 

Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, 

How can you say to me, I am a king?


Now wasn’t that delightful? Who wouldn’t invite this guy to happy hour? OK, OK, you got it, he’s not being particularly uplifting (for good reason, he wasn’t around for much longer), but sometimes life is not so uplifting, either.

And here’s what I think we can take away from this little, albeit beautifully written tirade. Obviously, at some point in our lives we feel like this and can relate on some level. Of course, we may not relate to this situation, but to the emotion in the text (which is one reason why Shakespeare is a genius). Here, all is lost, but Richard, after all, is a human being, and he at least understands that and admits it (finally) at the very end, right when it’s too late to find out. And besides, being king is so ten minutes ago.

When do I feel (sort of) like this? For starters, when I’m hating the world and everyone who ever lived, at mile marker 20 and beyond. No, I don’t get this dramatic, but in my own mind it’s not a happy place. I definitely ‘kill with looks’ and ‘write sorrow on the bosom of the earth’. See? I’m quoting Shakespeare already, and you can, too.

And my favorite line of all, the one you can quote all you want because after all it’s Shakespeare, give it up:

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 

And tell sad stories of the death of kings; 


That is the famous quote here anyway, but my favorite part:

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

So if you made it this far today, that’s the famous line you can at least throw down during your final marathon death march. Amaze and amuse your friends (that is, if you have any left) with this little gem and others and be sure to mention Richard II Act 3, Scene II. Now, isn’t that better than:

‘A wish is a dream your heart makes.’ – A. Funicello


P.S. For the sake of full disclosure, I am not entirely impartial about Richard II. You see, last year I researched my own genealogy and discovered that I’m a descendant of King Edward III (1312-1377), he’s a great-(add seventeen more ‘great-’s) grandfather. And Richard II is a grandson of his. Which means this Richard has a cousin Richard, too. Funny enough, I’m also descended from an Ann Shakespeare; not sure if she’s related to you-know-who, but I’ll have to find out more on that.

Training to Get Faster

Some might call me a fast runner, I don’t. I’m moderately fast. To me, fast is running under a 6:30 minute/mile, moderately fast is between that and an 8 minute/mile. A moderate pace is between 8 and 9:30, and any pace that takes longer than a 9:30 minute/mile is slow. Those are just my benchmarks, yours may be different, that’s perfectly fine. Speed is relative. And not everyone wants to get faster.

The key to much of my training is based on these different paces. Speedwork can be anywhere from 6-7 minute miles, tempo runs between 7 and 8, and long, easy runs clock in at an 8-8:30 pace. My recovery runs can be even slower, and that’s fine with me.

So my training, usually for marathons, involves two speed or tempo workouts per week, one long run on the weekend, and easy runs or cross-training during the week. I am not reinventing the wheel, as you probably can tell, almost all marathon training plans are similar to this.

This summer I’ve been meeting with two different coaches/running-triathlon teams for workouts and on Sunday mornings running long, 15-20 miles. I haven’t had a schedule per se, but since the workouts kick my ass I figure something must be going right.

Anyway, one point I’d like to make is that knowing what your fast, moderate and slow paces are is useful when training. I run with too many folks who take off like bats out of hell on easy runs, only to poop out on the first hill. You need to know your paces and know how they feel so you can keep them on any given run. You need to know the difference between 85% effort and 70% effort if you want to get faster. If it makes it easier, find out how fast 90-95% effort (ready to throw up) is for you and work down. Go to a track or measured course and time yourself on it at various speeds and efforts. On the other end of the scale, use your training log or past times to find out what ‘easy’ is for you.

Over the last few years I’ve used coach Jack Daniels’ (as apposed to Jack Daniel’s, that’s helpful a bit later) running charts to help me know which paces I should be using in training to get faster. Using previous race times and a VDOT (a coefficient that correlates to maximum training intensity) chart that gives you training paces depending on distance, you can come up with a general idea of what each particular pace should be, and use that information when setting up a training plan.

For instance, say you’ve run a recent 10K at a 7:30 minute/mile, or 46:30. At that intensity, Daniels says you are running at a training intensity (VDOT) of 43 (this value gets higher at faster speeds).  And using Daniels’ table on ‘Training Intensities Based on Current VDOT’:

Easy pace: 9:37 minute/mile
Marathon pace: 8:15 minute/mile
Tempo pace: 7:42 minute/mile
Speedwork: 4:26 minute/1000 meters (because you can’t and shouldn’t be doing ‘miles’ of real speedwork)
Sprints: 49 seconds/200 meters

Here’s an easy Daniels training calculator, by the way.

I’ve used these tables to determine training intensity before, and I got faster. Over the winter I used the treadmill at my gym to keep correct pace, and I thought I’d kill myself on occasion, but it’s not a bad idea to at least try out a pace on a treadmill to get the feel of it. However, I do not run a speedwork pace on treadmills, it’s too fast for me, running all out on a treadmill is not something I recommend. Go to a track or measured course for real speedwork, or all-out run-til-you-puke pace.

However, I don’t enslave myself to any particular training intensity. In this example, if I wanted to do a long easy run I might end up running 9:30 minute/miles instead of 9:37. However, the point is to slow down on those long runs, and keep that general pace. And if I finish a 200 meter speedwork course in 47 seconds (instead of 49), then I’m not losing sleep over that, either. Sometimes it’s like weight training, if you’ve got one more rep in you on a heavy day then go for it.

One caveat, though, the longer the course, the more your pace can change. I’ve trained for marathons that I should’ve finished in 3:15 but finished in 3:30, and it’s the luck of the draw on race day. You know anything can happen, you can start walking and just add extra time to your total even though you kept your pace when running. Or just feel lousy and slow down starting at mile 20, which happens to everybody in some races. So I take these predicted marathon times with some reservation, the point I’m making is I train at a certain intensity to train myself to keep that marathon pace, and whatever else that happens that day is going to happen.

Also, those of you who swim two miles followed by a 100+ mile bike ride, and then run, well, you’ve got to adjust your expectations. My training does not assume hours of other exercise before a run, so, for example, if you want to go from a 7:30 minute/mile to a 6:30 minute/mile marathon (which is a tall order for any race event), then good luck. The faster you get, the harder you’re going to be able to whittle away at that race pace ceiling, we all plateau at some point. Face it: we’re not going to be passing Kenyans in the last mile. And the longer you’re out there running, the more that can go wrong (or right, I’ll try to be positive for once).

All that said, I still recommend determining a set of challenging paces that are comparable or a little faster than your paces now, and then devising a plan of action. And one other thing, in that sample pace list above is a marathon training pace, that’s good to know. At the very least, you should know that so you can try it out on a moderately long run once a week or every couple of weeks. It’s faster than a long, easy run pace, but slow enough that you can run that for a few hours (somewhat) comfortably.

Sorry if I didn’t go into the science of all this, and didn’t get too detailed, but after reading several books and articles on the subject, I’ve discovered that most training programs give the same general advice: two training-specific runs a week, a long run on the weekend, recovery/easy runs in-between. You’re weekly mileage is yours alone, it should be a function of when that marathon is and how much you plan to run long in the months leading up to it.

Anyway, here’s the book I use: Daniels’ Running Formula (Second Edition), it gives you concrete workouts based on these paces... I’m not going to say you have to use this method because other methods are similar. I’ve used it in the past simply because I like using tables and numbers that tell me exactly what I should be doing and it helps to not think about it when you’re stuck on a treadmill during the dead of winter.

And my training paces, in case you’re wondering: Easy: 8:32; Marathon: 7:17; Tempo: 6:51; Speedwork: 3:55/1000 meters; Sprints: 43 seconds/200 meters. All based on my recent 41-minute 10K time and 1:31 half marathon time. And yes, some of these paces are too fast for me on particular days, but I do the best I can. I cut myself some slack on some days, and other days I’m faster. But I stay in the neighborhood, it all works out, and my experience has been that I got faster. And that slow pace? Learn it, you need to know how to take it easy, I see so many runners who just have to ‘run-fast-all-the-time’ who wouldn’t know a recovery run pace if it bit them on the glutes. Save the competitive spirit for race day and your own goals. Be smart.  Teach yourself how to run really, really fast on certain days and learn how to recover from it.

Upcoming Races

While I mentally write a script treatment for my latest long run/crazy idea, the first living dead/marathon running movie, 26 Miles Later, I decided to mention my race schedule. More on training soon. In the meantime, mirth and mayhem, dead ahead.

9/6 fitness® Mind, Body, Spirit Games (4M) – Central Park
10/4 Norwegian Festival Half Marathon – Central Park
10/12 Staten Island Half Marathon (tentative)
10/? Marathon TBD (suggestions?)
11/2 New York City Marathon
11/15 Knickerbocker 60K – Central Park
12/7 Joe Kleinerman 10K – Central Park
1/11 Walt Disney World Marathon (which will be frickin’ magical, of course)