Chasing perfection

When you boil it down, sports training and competition is all about trying to have a perfect performance that demonstrates all that you’re capable of. It’s where everything is focused into a fine point that leads to the highest pinnacle you can reach. The satisfaction and accomplishment is (almost) better than anything, and reward for all the preparation you put in.

Once you taste perfection, you want more and you want it now. But perfection is just a fleeting moment, and trying to repeat it – let alone improve it – is hard, which leads to an endless cycle of trying, and trying some more, driven by the dream of feeling perfect again.

In my sports career I can only count a handful of races where I’ve felt close to my perfection. A few of those were triathlons, and a few have been running races…one of which was the 2006 Gold Coast marathon where I ran my PB of 2:32:10hr. I’ve looked back on that many, many times and wondered how I managed to perform at that level, and dreamed of getting close to it again.

This post is about my current project to improve on the relative perfection I experienced that day in this year’s 2012 GC marathon…six years (and so much more) years later. It’s a tough goal at age 42.5 years old…

In trying to improve on that run in 2006, I started by understanding what it was that made it so good, and came up with the following:

• I came off a huge IM fitness base built up over summer 05/06, culminating in a (disappointing at the time) 9:31hr IM at Port Macquarie in early April 06.
• I had flawless training over the 10 or so weeks of training between IM and marathon, hitting almost every session and progressing well week on week.
• I had a really good run at the Great Ocean Rd marathon 6 weeks pre-mara, coming 2nd and clocking 2:38:45hr at the 42.2km timing mat (which I now know to be a bit short). It was the way I ran the race that was really encouraging, progressively building the pace from just before half way.
• About 4 weeks out I ran 33:45min at the AthsVic 10km, which actually didn’t suggest anything like the marathon I was about to run, but a benchmark nonetheless.
• In the marathon itself I ran alone from 3km onwards, increasing my pace from 20km, dying a bit in the last 5-6km, but holding it together for 75:36 / 76:34min splits.

The key points amongst those things were:

• The great fitness base,
• The consistently good training leading up to race day,
• Race execution (…although in hindsight I should have saved my surge until 30km+).

Right now I’m focused on the first two points – training. In a race build-up the best you can hope is for training to go to plan, which means good consistency and good progress, and when they do, they often lead to a great performance.

I have some tiered goals for the marathon:

• A goal – to run a PB of sub-2:32
• B goal – to run sub-2:35
• C goal – to run sub-2:40

I might also mention that my A+++ goal is sub-2:30…a dream time!!

 

Based on that, my aim is to be able to run 3:34 min/km for the 42.195km, which will be a time of 2:30:30hr. I’ve figured this pace is a fine line between aggressive and conservative, will set me up for a shot at sub-2:30 if I am having a great, great day, but also should not blow me out too much early on if it’s just an OK day. Running a marathon is like a game of risk and reward; chance and courage…take a chance and have some courage you can pull it off. The trick is how big the chance should be without blowing yourself to pieces.

 

With my goals being purely time based rather than placing, the training strategy was straight forward…train so that I can maintain the target pace for the whole distance. My fitness would need to be specific for this goal, not towards running a fast 5km, 10km or even ½ marathon. I needed to be comfortable running at 3:34 min/km, which would come about through plentiful training at or around this pace.

 

Much like in 2006, I came into this marathon specific phase with a great fitness base from the 6ft Track training over Nov-Mar, with the race cancellation meaning there was no recovery required, allowing me to maximise the period of Apr-Jun (inclusive) for marathon training.

 

As good as the 6ft Track training base was, it was all pretty slow running and it took weeks to get some spring back into my stride. While I needed to get some marathon speed back, I didn’t want to lose the strength endurance from the long 6ft Track training runs, so kept up the 40km+ training runs, regularly clocking 42-45km each Saturday, at a fairly steady / comfortable pace (~3hr marathon pace).

 

The mid-week sessions were where I tried to make progress towards my target marathon speed, with key runs on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday was an extended fartlek session of 1-3min surges, while Thursday was more focused on speed over 30-60sec. The hardest part was slotting these sessions in during April where I also raced three times, with each race requiring some days of down-time for recovery. So every second week was compromised from a training point of view, but with each race providing a good fitness boost itself.

 

Those races were:

• 1-Apr: Run for the Kids (14.38km) - 49:30min, 31st place
• 15-Apr: Geelong 1/2 marathon (21.1km) - 1:14:31min, 4th place
• 29-Apr: Marysville to Melbourne team (19.6km trail run + 12.7km run) - 1:20hr + 47min

 

Late-April and into May is where I started making most progress. The Tuesday session morphed into a long interval run, Thursday’s session became shorter and had less emphasis, and Saturday started becoming a long tempo run. Tuesday’s target was to run all intervals at sub-3:30 min/km, and Saturday, with longer tempo segments, was targeted at about marathon pace, although I did make some allowance for running on tired legs in training shoes!!

 

Some Tuesday sessions progressed like this (targeting sub-3:30 min/km):

• 2 x 3km w/ 3min rest + 6 x 1km w/ 1min rest
• 2 x 4km w/ 3min rest + 6 x 1km w/ 1min rest
• 2 x 6km w/ 3min rest + 4 x 1km w/ 1min rest

 

From mid-May the Saturday long run became a little shorter (i.e. less than 40km!!) but started including tempo sections, typically something like this:

 

5.8km warm-up

9km at increasing tempo, avg 3:45-50 min/km

500m easy – incl gel / drink stop

8.2 km (2 x 3-bridges course) at 3:34-38 min/km

500m easy – incl gel / drink stop

9km at 3:35-38 min/km

5.8km easy

 

This added up to 39km in about 2:33-34hr at overall avg pace of about 3:55 min/km, but it was the tempo sections that counted most. These long runs gave me confidence in being able to hold the pace for a long time…the unknown was just how long…

 

Also, throughout May my mileage consistently maxed out (when I wasn’t recovering from a race!!) at 155-160km per week. A basic week looked like this:

 

Mon: AM – 16km easy ~ 1:11-12hr / PM – 7km easy ~32min + 8-10 x 80m strides

Tue: AM – 24-26km long intervals

Wed: AM – 13km easy ~ 59-60min / PM – 13km easy ~ 59-60min + 10 x hill sprints

Thur: AM – 13km easy ~59-60min / PM – 12-13km incl speed intervals

Fri: Rest day!!! Ride to/from work + core strength

Sat: AM – 38-39km tempo

Sun: AM – 17-18km easy ~ 1:15-20hr + 10 x hill sprints

 

Two recent events have also helped to give me some confidence in where my fitness is currently at – the Great Ocean Rd marathon, where although I ran it as a strategically paced race, assured me that my fitness is where I was hoping it would be.

 

The second, bigger confidence booster was the Athletics Victoria 15km road race at Ballarat, where I beat what I thought was an ambitious goal time (51min) by almost 30sec in 50:32min, despite dropping off the pace in the last 2.5km. For much of the race I ran way faster than I have been both training for, and that I thought I could run at. The finish time predicts a 2:32:xxhr marathon on the McMillan running calculator web-site, which I have a history of out performing the longer the race goes…so makes me feel far more confident about my goals.

 

In looking back on training and picking out what I think are/were the most important / beneficial things I’ve done, it is these:

• Running more.
• Doing short hill sprints x 1-2 per week.
• Furthering my strength – tempo running – rather than trying to develop my weakness – speed.
• Pre-run loosen up routine…especially important for my morning running (5:30-6am starts).
• Running more.
• Not running on Fridays.
• Self-massage.
• Taking a new supplement from early-May called Extreme Endurance, which coincided with a noticeable improvement in my recovery. I think it might work!!
• Running more.

 

Some things I would (like to) have done a bit differently:

• Get more sleep!!! I needed about 25-30min from waking up to starting running in early morning, which meant alarm times of 5-5:30am…ugh!!!
• More massage and muscle maintenance / loosening up work.
• Perhaps fewer races to allow more than 3 weeks in a row of solid training…but I did use races to conclude a training build-up block, and for recovery afterwards.
• Perhaps 2-3 more Tuesday long interval sessions and 1-2 more Saturday long tempo runs…although races did substitute for some of these sessions.
• A little more work on my speed, mainly for the biomechanical efficiency, smoothness and rhythm it provides than the actual speed benefit.

 

But so much for training, as it is on race day that the real test comes, when I need to “do the do” and execute the race I’ve trained for. I’ll write a separate post about that a little closer to the race…I need to think through my strategy a little more.