Praying and Running

Training Details 18 Weeks Total 8 weeks with more than 80 running miles 2 week in a row at 100 running miles 10 runs of 20 miles or more 2 runs of full marathon distance Race Details Finish Time 2:49:46 62nd/3725 52nd/2163 5th/354 Age Group (40-45 male) Negative Split (My first in a marathon) 1st half 1:25:15 2nd half 1:24:31 The best short description of this race would have to be the perfect end to the perfect training cycle. The long description follows. My goal for this race was simple. Crush my PR by running under 2:50 and show the marathon who's boss. Based on my training and tune up races everything looked to be set. All I had to do was go out and execute. Then the weather forecast stared coming in. Cold and windy. In fact the forecasted winds were 15 to 20 MPH and the wind chill a cold 18* for the start and it wasn't going to warm up much. At first I was a bit disheartened but then I decided I had worked way too hard to sacrifice my goal and the fir...

I am about 6 weeks out from the  Indianapolis Monumental Marathon . I haven't blogged to much about my training to date but I am currently on week 12 of an 18 week cycle that peaks at around 90 miles per week. As usual I have been running a lot of 20 and 20+ mile runs. More than prescribed because it works well for me. I have also been pushing the pace because my primary goal is to drop about 3 minutes and 30 seconds from my marathon PR which is currently 2:53:28. While that might not sound like I knew when I set it that it would require a lot of work...hard work. With that in mind, this morning I ran a tough workout that was not on my schedule. The workout was a total of 22 miles and required me to run at goal pace and faster for about 8 miles after I was already 12 miles into the run with my legs good and tired. In this workout each 6 and a half minute segment begins at 10k pace, pretty hard but sustainable, for a minute and a half and then finishes with 5 minutes at goal mar...

OK, let's get it out of the way to begin with. The race was the definition of suffer-fest. It took me nearly a month to recover mentally. If this is the first post of mine you have read, I spent the last 8 weeks of the cycle literally limping by with a strained groin muscle so when I toed the line on 4/21, muscle still pulled, I was as under-trained as I have ever been heading into a race.. All of that aside, before the injury I was in the best shape of my life and by a whole lot at that. I had a very aggressive goal of 2:49:59 and the week or so before I got hurt I was thinking that I would be in shape to make 2:49:59 look like child's play. I had 8 or 9 weeks left and I could have run a 2:49:59 at  that point. In fact on 2/22/2014 I ran a very tough workout. It was supposed to be 16 miles with 12 at marathon pace. I felt so good I tacked another 4 on the end for a cool down. I just remember how satisfied I was with that run. You can read about it yourself here. This ...

Running; for me it is not an individual effort. I have said it many time and many ways and I'm going to say it one more time. I couldn't run like I do with out a whole lot of help and this year the Boston Marathon and the training cycle that proceeded it just magnified that fact. If you haven't already read the race report you can find it here . As you might imagine I had support and encouragement from everywhere, social media, work, church, the gym I belong to. It was the Boston Marathon after all. Even people who have no interest in running know about and respect this historic road race. But when I got hurt 8 weeks out there were 3 people who really stepped it up and helped me limp through the last 8 weeks and without them I wouldn't have been able to run Boston at all and I'd like to take a minute to thank them. First of all, to deal with my injury I went to St. Vincent Sports Performance in Carmel which is about 45 minutes from my house. The doctor set me up w...

It took a long time to get to Boston. This is true both of the training and the actual trip. I have been preparing for this race for 2 and a half years and on Friday the 18th we left home and began the journey to Boston. Because there are no direct flights from Indianapolis to Boston we drove to my parents who live about 45 minutes from the Detroit airport and stayed the night. At 3:00 AM we we "outta bed, clothes on and out the door" and headed the airport to catch a 6:30 AM flight. We arrived in Boston around 8:00 AM and got a cab to our hotel. Checked into the hotel but of course that early there were no rooms available. My wife and I changed into running clothes in the bathroom, stowed our luggage and headed out for an easy run. We ran up and around Boston Commons where I would need to load up on the bus on race morning to head to the start line. First hour in Boston and I already had an easy 4 in the books. The remaining time between our Saturday arrival and the Mond...

For the last 2 and a half years I have had a singular focus; to run the Boston Marathon. Why? Because it is the super bowl of running. Because it is a legendary and challenging course and because it is the most iconic marathon finish line in the history of the sport. Merely qualifying for the marathon is a badge of honor among runners and is something that they aspire to and once they have completed it, it is a cherished moment for the rest of their lives. It was a lofty goal by most accounts and one a lot of people didn't think I could achieve given my background and fitness level. In order to accomplish my goal, I ran. A lot. I ran 2700 miles in 2012 and 3000 miles in 2013 and about 900 in the first 3 and a half months of 2014. I trained in the early morning hours well before the sun was up and in whatever Mother Nature threw at me. I wore out countless pairs of running shoes and although they never complained I’m sure I wore out my wife and daughters’ patience. But on Monday A...

Training Stats Number of week -- 18 (7/1/2013 - 11/2/2013) Total miles -- 1199 Average daily miles -- 8.5 Longest run -- 26.2 (Fox Valley Marathon) Peak weekly mileage -- 88 Average pace -- 7:30 Number of 20 + mile runs -- 8 Race Stats Goal -- 2:54:59 Actual Time -- 2:53:28 (PR) Avg HR -- 165 (92% of Maximum Heart Rate MHR) Peak HR -- 175 (97% of MHR) Avg pace -- 6:36 Finished 62/3494 Overall 51/1994 Men 5/334 40-44 Age Group First half 1:26:16 Second half 1:27:11 I ran a strong race as shown by continually moving up in ranking through the race 101st @ 10k 88th in the first half 79th @ 30k 59th in the last half The Monumental starts and finishes in downtown Indianapolis so to avoid the stress of travel on race day we stayed in a hotel just a couple of blocks from the start line. We checked in early afternoon on Friday hit the expo, did packet pickup and then headed over to the Spaghetti Factory for some serious carb loading. After dinner we drove the course ...

Is it just me or does this not sound like a way to have a really fun week? This Sunday 9/22/2013 I will be running a "Marathon as a Training Run." I am currently in training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon which I will race on 11/2/2013. During my last training cycle I incorporated a few training runs over the standard 20 - 24 mile "longest run in a training program" runs. Most programs cap the long run here because it is thought firstly that a run longer provides very little more in the way of preparation and increases the chance of injury past an acceptable point and secondly because the runner could loose valuable days to the additional recovery needed from such an effort. My last time around though I found that I could do some longer runs pushing my body to be better adapted to the specific distance of the marathon and I could do them in a way that minimized injury risk and recovery time. I blogged about it back then here . My plan was to do the sam...

17 weeks. 1142 Mile. 146 hours of running. 95,135 calories. One 30 mile run and 9 runs of 20 miles or more. Average pace 7:41. 25 hours of strength training. This sums up the work I put in for the 26.2 miles I ran at the 2013 Carmel Marathon on April 20th. Friday on my lunch hour I drove to the Monon Center in Carmel IN for packet pickup. Not much to say about this except that trying to squeeze it into a long lunch resulted in undue stress. Also this didn't allow me  time to stick around and explore. But in the end I guess that's OK. Friday evening we headed out for some serious carb loading. With the taper and my efforts to load up on carbs over a 3 day period, I wasn't really hungry but I ate that pasta like a trooper anyway knowing that I would need it in about 12 hours. Sleep Friday night was spare. A sick dog and a wife finishing up her last semester for a Bachelors degree kept the house hopping until about 11:30. No problem, if you follow my training on dailymile  y...

I have known for sometime that in order for me to race my best I need to have training runs longer than the race I am preparing for and this is not unique to me. Most people who want to compete in a race from the 5k to the half-marathon are aware of this and train like this. When I stepped into the world of marathoning however, I found that conventional wisdom and nearly all training plans have long runs capped anywhere from 16 to 22 miles with 20 being the common longest long run. I was uncomfortable with this during my first training cycle for the 2012 Indianapolis Monumental Marathon but "they" all said that going longer than that wouldn't produce any benefit that would out way the negatives. "They" all said a run any longer would carry with it great risk of injury and would require too much recovery time. I am a big believer in knowing your body and understanding what it is capable of rather than letting conventional wisdom dictate your limits. For that re...

This was my first marathon and it was a great personal success. I put in nearly 1200 miles at an average pace of 7:47 MPM in training over the course of 19 weeks with the highest mileage week coming in at 80 miles. In the 19 weeks of training 6 days a week I missed only 2 runs. The first was a medium-long run at the end of a the first "step-back" week. I was absolutely exhausted. The other was a 4 mile recovery run on a day with 2 recovery runs scheduled, you know, a double and life just didn't cooperate. I had several goals for the race with my "In your wildest dreams" goal of 2:54:59, a stretch goal of 2:59:59, a "probably can do" goal of 3:04:59 and a "least acceptable" of 3:14:59. All but the "stretch" goal were based on Boston qualification standards. 2:54:59 would allow me to register on day 1 nearly guaranteeing a spot in the 2014 running of the Boston Marathon. 3:04:59 would allow me to register in the second phase and st...

I would just like to take a minute and a few words to recognize those who's support was critical in the successful completion of my first marathon. If you have never known someone training to race a marathon then you might not understand just what a huge commitment it is and how it becomes a part of every aspect of that person's life. I wasn't training to "finish" a marathon. I was preparing to race a marathon and while there is nothing wrong with "finishing" as you can imagine racing that distance demands much more in the way of daily training. During my training cycle I ran an average of 10 miles a day and near the peak of my training it wasn't unusual to run 14 on Monday, 18 - 20 on Wednesday, and 12 or 13 on Friday while still running 6-8 on the other days. This demanding schedule left me fatigued and hungry. Two things that make me a "bear" to be around. So I would like to thank people who put up with me on a daily basis; my family, ...

For my 40th birthday my wife got me, among other things, a Garmin Forerunner 610. I have never done a product review before and decided to do this one because after using the watch a single time I could see how much potential it has as a training tool. What can I say, when something positively impacts my life I want to share it so that someone else may benefit too. Instead of a single post however, there is so much that this watch does that the review will actually be a multi-part post of at least two and maybe more. It's hard to say because I find this watch more useful every time I run. A few key features that I want to hit in this post are the user interface, the GPS, and the lap/split functionality. First off, the user interface is very well done. The 610 is a touchscreen device and initially I thought that the touch interface was going to be problematic because it didn't seem responsive enough until I read the manual and followed the manufacturers reco...

The other day I got all caught up in setting running goals for myself for the rest of the year. After the goals were set, I found myself starting to worry about how I was going to reach them. Wondering if there would be time to sufficiently prepare for them all. My goals were to run a 5k in under 20 minutes, to run a half marathon in 1:25 minutes and qualify for and run in the Boston marathon in 2014. At first, I thought that setting and meeting these goals would make me a more serious runner. In fact, I thought that to be the "serious" runner I want to be that I needed these goals. However, while I was running the other morning I realized that first of all, I was thinking about how to shift my training to meet my 5k goal. Then I began thinking about the right approach to a 1:25 half while training to qualify for Boston in a full marathon a month later. That is when I realized that the ancillary goals were starting to consume my focus and quite possibly i...