Quadzilla - More Training Notes

Week three training notes.  I am following the Quadzilla pattern of road / trail / paved trail / road for my runs this week.  Yesterday I ran from the Everett Community Transit Transfer Station around to the Navy base, marina and back.  Today I headed out to the Jap Gulch.  I had a great run there.  I managed 1270 vertical feet in 9.25 miles in 1:53 minutes.  It felt like a good pace.  I decided that the trail run will be a slow one.  It's the most likely I get hurt on trails than road.  I don't want to push too hard as such.  My focus will be to run the best Seattle Marathon I can.  So applying the pace I ran today, and I think the actual trail marathon is gonna be pretty flat, 12 min/mile, I can plan to run a 5 hr15 Wishbone run.

Tomorrow seems a great day to follow up with elliptical to rest my body with the low impact machine.  On Gate week, or if I feel like it I will run the mileage but from a schedule point of view scheduling elliptical machine following a generally tough trail run with low impact workout makes sense.  Also the Ghost of Seattle marathon is around Seward park, so flat paved trail, "easy" run for which I feel I just need to be able the distance really, for which cross-training will do just fine.

That would mean that Wednesday I should focus on a paved trail or a road run representative of the Seattle Marathon.  There is that big hill that everyone talk about at about mile 20.  I will investigate further when I run the half marathon course in the coming weeks but till then I'll just run hills to keep my climbing ability top notch.  So ... Either a nice hilly course like St Andrews or hill repeats should do.  Since I did repeats last week I will probably run St Andrews Wednesday.  My original plan was to run the Cascade Pass trail because I have to head to Winthrop Wednesday afternoon (it's on the way) nut now my daughter is going to join me for the ride so we will figure out something to do together.

Well ... I am going to update the training schedule a little then get some rest.  Happy running everyone!

Baseline Week – Update, with a zombie twist.

So, after last Wednesday tumble and some recovery on Thursday I
completed the last run of baseline week Friday early morning, an 11.4
mile run at 8:34 min/mile average. Great distance, great pace. All
in all I’d say I performed real well but also my body was definitely
stressed by the four days of consecutive running at the mileage level.

Add to the mix the Zombie run Saturday. I’d expected it’d be an easy
proposition but it was very brutal. I signed up with SGF and her mom
to be volunteer zombies. She was a stumbler and I was a runner. We
spent the night in Olympia then drove there early for professional
make-up. We were routed to a small wooded area, a stretch of not even
quarter mile trail. That was good since the temperatures reach 100
degrees that day, we stayed cool in the trees’ shadows. The obstacle
we were stationed at was that hill. Si I ended up doing short sprint
bursts up that hill all morning long. It was a lot of fun, but I got
wiped out three times by overzealous runners, one of which hit my left
knee real hard. I also hit my head against the knee of another fellow
zombie and have bruises on my left fore arm the size of my hand …
Definitely a rough day in the neighborhood.



With the beat from the day before I rested Sunday, did Yoga. I hit
the pavement bright and early Monday. I ran doubles Monday, then a
single road run Tuesday. Wednesday I hit the elliptical for a low
impact high intensity leg workout. I was up in the 160’s BPM. Did
the Cross training program SGF showed me, half hour at 70% max
resistance (that’s the highest I had used so far) then increased to
75% resistance. It was pretty intense!

Finally Thursday I did hill repeats. I wanted to run the St Andrews
route but didn’t get to it in the morning so at lunch I headed out to
a hill near work. It was 2 miles warm up run, 4 repeats then 2 miles
back to the gym. The repeats got hard at 3 and 4, then the run back
to the gym I was tired. Total mileage was 9.1, elevation gain 653 ft
so very similar to St Andrews route except the slope wasn’t as bad. I
don’t know that St Andrews would had felt as tough though. I think
the repeats stressed my legs differently. That was my first hill
repeat workout … Although the run like St Andrews train you good for
long strenuous hills; I can feel the repeats develop a different kind
of area, powerful strides and such.

Physically, the last couple of weeks have taken a toll. My calves
were real tight yesterday, stretching helped little. My right glute
is bothering me to the point I was limping yesterday. It felt odd,
like my right leg is longer than my left. I did more Yoga yesterday
night and with some rolling from SGF it feels all much better today.
There is a trail race in the Gulch tomorrow morning, I would love
doing it, but I think some rest is in order. Weight training will
likely do me more good than running the Gulch tomorrow  I don’t know
if it’s the high intensity elliptical, the hill repeats, the mileage
or combination that has caused the tightness and soreness. Even if on
single runs or consecutive runs I can muster easily 10-12 miles, when
it comes to back to back to back to back runs I may have overestimated
my safe limit. Not by much. But as evidenced with my leg troubles I
might had been served better starting with 6 miles back to back
instead of 8-11 miles. So …

Quadzilla rule of thumb: For consecutive training days: start train at
60% comfortable distance under race pace. That bench marks my
training at 6 miles per day not including my long run. The elliptical
can be used to reduce impact on at least one of the days, but I guess
the question becomes at what intensity? I still believe my approach
(mixing different terrain and keeping hills in the mix) is good.
Adding the elliptical (or other low impact machine) will lessens the
impact on my body. This approach I hope will train the body to be
responsive to a variety of stresses while dealing with the consecutive
runs. Double runs in a day are fun but since I already four days in a
row one could question the usefulness of it in this context, but what
can I say … it’s fun!

I started putting a specific training plan together. I would consider
the last 2 weeks hard training. Next week is easy week, so I will
apply the 6 miles per day rule for the first easy week then go up in
mileage from there. I am incorporating the last 15-20 weeks of a
50/100 miler training schedule for Quadzilla. 50 miles has the right
long run mileage while 100 miles is probably a better comparison for
weekly mileage. Last in the mist of that is the Air Force marathon on
9/15 which becomes “just another” training run.

Pace wise, the second marathon is a trail run so I will make that one
extra slow, while the first marathon I do not know where it will yet
however I think I will target a finish time of over 4:30. Ideally I
would hit 4:30 or less for Seattle marathon. It’s hard to predict a
good pace. When I do my 13.1 gate and my 20 gate I will get a much
better idea. What’s a “gate” you ask? Well, I figure I would have
milestones in my training where I run the 13.1 miles distance 4 days
in a row, then later the 20 miles distance 4 days in a row. Same idea
as training a marathon but expended to four days. On gate week there
will be no low impact crosstraining … Just hardcore running!

In my next article I will flesh together the schedule. Stay tuned and
happy running everyone!

Quadzilla Baseline and a twist

I am starting to think seriously about the training approach for Quadzilla 2012 in November.  For that purpose I decided to baseline my running to get an idea what 4 days in a row of high intensity running does to my body.  Monday I hit 8.35 miles at 8.5 min/miles on city roads.  Tuesday I hit 7.21 miles at 8.5 min/miles at lunch, city roads.  Yesterday I hesitated between squizzing a run in the Mulkiteo Gulch after work (trail) or an easy run during Michelle practice.  Turns out that would ned to be a very faithful decision …

As far as yesterday I felt some acute soreness in the upper inside of my right quad when I apply pressure there so my guess is I have a knot.  Also I can feel some overall soreness in the inside of my calves now.  I guess that’s part what I do this “baseline” as the other side of the Quadzilla will be to come up with a race strategy that works.  The last race of the four is the Seattle marathon which I would like to run “hard” (relatively speaking) … Which suggest probably I should run a slower ghost of Seattle the day before … So yesterday would had been the equivalent of that.

Either way, It’s common knowledge that research has demonstrated that the strain of muscle work triggers adaptive responses that make muscle fibers stronger and more durable so I think my approach will work for Quadzilla as long as the strain is incremental.  I plan to incorporate more “Gate week” (gate as opposed to this week which is the baseline.  The gated process will stress my body thru a more intense distance.   Of the bat, 13.1 comes to sense, that is I would run the 4 half marathons course in the next Gate.  A key to marathon training is of course the 20 miles long run.  So that would be the next gate week.  However I worry at this point in time that 20 miles 4 days in a row might be over training for the event.  Yeah I know, me, worrying about over training lol … Maybe I’ll make it 18-20 mile gate week instead to allow for a little bit of play depending how I feel at that time.

The other item of order is the Air Force Marathon of course.  I was thinking of the AFM as a separate “fun” marathon that I would run easy.  But that isn’t the best approach to it necessarily.  I asked coach Jenny on FB her recommendation on training for Quadzilla, and even in her article, she talks how you have to look at these races as a package not single races.  That is, the end goal dictating marathon 1 thru 3 should be how I want to run the Seattle Marathon.  And I should consider AFB within my training for Quadzilla NOT as a single race.  

So with that in mind, I was looking at the 6 weeks between marathon training schedule form Hal Higdon to guide my long runs between 8/5 and 9/15 but now I am going back to the 50 miler training schedule I have also been using, week 9 thru 20.  The other aspect that Coach Jenny mentioned is that my training need to be structured around 4 consecutive running days … Although, and I like her suggestion, some of these days could be low impact cross-training on the elliptical.  Makes sense.  The gated weeks would see 4 consecutive running days while the weeks in between I would time the elliptical to be equivalent to a run …

Here comes the twist !!

warning --- Graphic Pictures! --- you have been warned!

Hit the Jap Gulch trail at lunch for an easy loop was the final decision for baseline run #3.  I sure felt the drain of not having ran trails for a while and the excitement as well of zooming down the trail ...  Were my strides a little too long?  Did my attention shift a split second away from the trail?  Whatever the reason, I tripped.  Wipe out ... My first major wipe out !  I caught myself with my water bottle in one hand and the other just ripped (exaggerated ...)  I felt my body crumbling into a fetal position as I continued sliding on the tip of my right shoulder.  Everything really happened in slow motion and I was past my first though “oh this is going to hurt” as I felt my feel leaving the ground to “oh that’s not so bad right now” to I felt a sharp penetrating pain in the back right side then came abruptly to an end.  I had skidded off to the side of the trail and caught a short tree stub covered by foliage.  As the pain penetrated my body I though I hit a rock.  Scratched and bruised I stood up and got back into the run.  I had searing pain on my back side but was able to keep running, a sign I might have bruised the back muscle but that nothing is broken or tear.  Oh and nice scratches and scrapes, even a little blood drawn make this an epic wipe out that I can brag about now ...

seriously speaking though this little episode reminds me that running trail is a totally different animal. I have lost some agility on the trail.  Considering that the second marathon for the Quadzilla is a trail marathon I can’t lose sight of that in my training , as yesterday demonstrated.  So I should make the second consecutive run a trail run on a regular basis.  I can run the Gulch or continue looking for local trails.  Either way,  good lesson learned today.

I wasn’t going to achieve any training from forcing a run tomorrow.  My legs although I have some soreness are able to output of good amount of power in day 3 which I do not think would be any less on day four, for the given distance, so I will probably retire from running for a couple of days and let my body rest and healed.  I need to draw my training schedule anyway.  I did resistance training instead with a 20 min cardio at the end.  I think tomorrow morning I’ll be out for an early morning run.

Saturday I am accompanying SGF to the Zombie Obstacle run ... Fun fun fun !