- Laura Berry was the 1st woman in the 10K, and Jennifer Curtin was 1st master's (3rd woman). Matt also finished his first 10K ever! (10k results)
- The half marathon was a sea of orange... literally. James ran a huge PR (top 10 AG), Cody also finished in the top 10 of this age group (glad he's tapering for a 50-miler), Anthony was 1st in his age group, and Roger Wood finished 4th in his (or 1st depending upon if they take out the top 5 overall). On the master's side, Sean, Mike C., and Charlie went 2-3-8 in their age group, Mark Newton (first half marathon), David Oyler, and Walt went 5-6-10 in their age group in their age group, and Roger Wood finished 2nd in his age group. On the women's side, Jennifer Hannen was 4th overall with a new PR! I was 5th in my age group (or 3rd if they take out the top 5 overall) Rita was 3rd in hers (or 2nd if they take out top 5 overall), Heather Davis and our friend Amelia were 1-4 in theirs, and Donna and Jacci turned in great performances on a difficult course. Dave Meyer helped pace the 1:45 group and Kim Bowler helped with the 2:00 group. I know I saw more orange singlets than that, but I'm honestly not sure of everyone's names! (half marathon results)
- In the marathon, Kimberlie Fowler and Kelcie Carlson went 1-2 on the women's side. Tim Surface was 2nd overall, and David Meeker finished in the top 10 with a new PR! Brad and his brother also helped with pace groups. (marathon results)
- Brian F., Win, Keith, and Tim G. were the 2nd relay team! (relay results)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
City of Oaks Report
Total RRO / FASTcoaching domination at City of Oaks... lots of PR's and lots of podium spots:
11/6-7 Race Report
City of Oaks went AWESOME today for Team RRO / FASTcoaching!!! Despite not being a PR course, many PR's were set (James L., Jennifer H., Mark N., Mike C., Walt F., and I'm sure others in the half... and David Meeker in the full). I'm not sure of the official results yet (does anyone have a link?) but Brian-Win-Keith-Tim were the 2nd relay team and Kimberlie F. and Kelcie C. went 1-2 in the full marathon! The finish line was a virtual sea of orange too... it was GREAT to see so many teammates out there! Thanks to everyone who came out and volunteered + cheered... and thanks Jim and Raleigh Running Outfitters for putting on a FANTASTIC race!
... I'll post detailed results when I see them, just wanted to get something up so y'all knew "unofficially" how it went :-)
... I'll post detailed results when I see them, just wanted to get something up so y'all knew "unofficially" how it went :-)
Friday, November 4, 2011
Weekend Outlook
CITY OF OAKS is the weekend! I think we have teammates in every race: 10K, half marathon, full marathon, and marathon relay. I believe Brad said he was pacing a pacer too... always good to be redundant. Don't forget to set your clocks back! And, in the spirit of marathons and waking up:
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Long Runs
In order to not have anything left after you cross the finish line, it would be ideal to make it there in the first place. I mean, one way to "leave it all out on the course" is to run yourself into the ground early on... but SK said that the elites ran a fairly consistent pace throughout, not they went out hard and died (the ones who win at least). Inherent to this is the ability to learn how best to use the energy reserves that your body has available.
The purpose of long runs is to teach your body to burn fat versus glycogen during endurance events. Basically, fat results is a more stable, longer-lasting energy source. By relying on it, you reduce the amount of carbohydrates you use, and save your glycogen stores to the end of the race when you just need to power through the last mile. Coach said that relying on glycogen stores alone will get you an hour. Obviously, taking in fuel like GU and Gatorade will stretch this out a bit, but you can't replace what you're losing fast enough to get you to the end of 26.2-miles. When you run low on carbohydrates, you begin to feel fatigued, and eventually hit the wall.
From a physiological perspective, the body preferentially burns carbohydrates during high effort levels (aka fast races / interval workouts). However, as it is more difficult to break down fat, the body will also burn carbohydrates during longer efforts if it gets stressed. If you always run your long workouts at a fast pace, your body remembers this stressed state, defaulting to it and burning through your glycogen stores. Conversely, if you teach your body to rely on fat stores, it will preferentially burn these. And, being that you can only break down fat in the presence oxygen, this means staying aerobic throughout the run.
During base training, consistency is the key to helping this process along by increasing mitochondrial production (mitochondria are responsible for generating energy). Greater gains are achieved with higher mileage runs (i.e., one 90-min run is better than two 45-min runs), but diminishing returns are seen in terms of the time needed to recover once you hit 3+ hours. For more information, this article is pretty comprehensive (I'll probably come back to some of the later sections in another post, but this is one is already getting pretty long).
I have always been kind of nervous about running my long runs "too slow". I mean, this isn't the first time coach has commented on our inability to run easy. I thought about what he said throughout the run (which we actually did a good job of running at a reasonable pace... I will never call Turkey Creek easy). Finally, with about a mile to go, a lightbulb went off in my head (aka the Espresso Love GU kicked in). I've never been able to accept the fact that I should run slower than my marathon pace for a long run because, if I can't do it for shorter distances, how am I going to do it for 26.2? Then I realized that when I train for 5K's, 10K's, half marathons, really anything else but a marathon, I don't feel the need to run at those paces for 3, 6, or 13 miles (or really at any time other than track workouts and tempo runs). In fact, I spend the majority of my time running much slower than that, trusting that my training will get me to where I need to be on race day. Why, then, do I treat marathons differently? I couldn't come up with a good answer to this question (and if I do I'll let y'all know). And, being that (1) coach knows more than me, (2) the science backs coach up, and (3) I didn't feel like crap after the long run that day... I think I'll try keeping my long runs easy and aerobic until I can break 1hr for a marathon :-).
The purpose of long runs is to teach your body to burn fat versus glycogen during endurance events. Basically, fat results is a more stable, longer-lasting energy source. By relying on it, you reduce the amount of carbohydrates you use, and save your glycogen stores to the end of the race when you just need to power through the last mile. Coach said that relying on glycogen stores alone will get you an hour. Obviously, taking in fuel like GU and Gatorade will stretch this out a bit, but you can't replace what you're losing fast enough to get you to the end of 26.2-miles. When you run low on carbohydrates, you begin to feel fatigued, and eventually hit the wall.
From a physiological perspective, the body preferentially burns carbohydrates during high effort levels (aka fast races / interval workouts). However, as it is more difficult to break down fat, the body will also burn carbohydrates during longer efforts if it gets stressed. If you always run your long workouts at a fast pace, your body remembers this stressed state, defaulting to it and burning through your glycogen stores. Conversely, if you teach your body to rely on fat stores, it will preferentially burn these. And, being that you can only break down fat in the presence oxygen, this means staying aerobic throughout the run.
During base training, consistency is the key to helping this process along by increasing mitochondrial production (mitochondria are responsible for generating energy). Greater gains are achieved with higher mileage runs (i.e., one 90-min run is better than two 45-min runs), but diminishing returns are seen in terms of the time needed to recover once you hit 3+ hours. For more information, this article is pretty comprehensive (I'll probably come back to some of the later sections in another post, but this is one is already getting pretty long).
I have always been kind of nervous about running my long runs "too slow". I mean, this isn't the first time coach has commented on our inability to run easy. I thought about what he said throughout the run (which we actually did a good job of running at a reasonable pace... I will never call Turkey Creek easy). Finally, with about a mile to go, a lightbulb went off in my head (aka the Espresso Love GU kicked in). I've never been able to accept the fact that I should run slower than my marathon pace for a long run because, if I can't do it for shorter distances, how am I going to do it for 26.2? Then I realized that when I train for 5K's, 10K's, half marathons, really anything else but a marathon, I don't feel the need to run at those paces for 3, 6, or 13 miles (or really at any time other than track workouts and tempo runs). In fact, I spend the majority of my time running much slower than that, trusting that my training will get me to where I need to be on race day. Why, then, do I treat marathons differently? I couldn't come up with a good answer to this question (and if I do I'll let y'all know). And, being that (1) coach knows more than me, (2) the science backs coach up, and (3) I didn't feel like crap after the long run that day... I think I'll try keeping my long runs easy and aerobic until I can break 1hr for a marathon :-).
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
What Separates the Elites
Coach asked us what we thought the answer was one Saturday morning before our run. After many "wrong" answers, he finally told us. What separates the elite athletes from everyone else is to not have anything left after they cross the finish line. Elite athletes don't "save" anything. That's not to say that they don't pick it up at the end, but they don't sandbag the beginning to save their energy for a finishing kick. Instead, they run the race at a consistently hard effort, knowing just how hard they can run early on so that they can collapse two feet beyond the finish.
I have thought about this a lot. While I never feel great at the end of a race, and seldom have enough left in me to muster even a half decent kick, I have never collapsed across the finish. In fact, if I were to be perfectly honest, I could keep going. Obviously, I couldn't keep this up forever, but if the finish line were to be pushed a half mile further back at the end of a marathon, I would probably not even notice (mile markers aside of course). I stop because the finish line tells me to, not because my legs are no longer holding me up. While I'm not advocating collapsing at the end of every race, it's just something to think about.
I have thought about this a lot. While I never feel great at the end of a race, and seldom have enough left in me to muster even a half decent kick, I have never collapsed across the finish. In fact, if I were to be perfectly honest, I could keep going. Obviously, I couldn't keep this up forever, but if the finish line were to be pushed a half mile further back at the end of a marathon, I would probably not even notice (mile markers aside of course). I stop because the finish line tells me to, not because my legs are no longer holding me up. While I'm not advocating collapsing at the end of every race, it's just something to think about.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Slower = Faster
Riddle me this Batman. In the last 5K we all ran together, both my gun-time and chip-time are faster than Alfred's, but the results show that he beat me. Batman, of course, responds with the obvious... age-graded results.
This post is somewhat relevant being that the NYC Marathon is this weekend, and the qualifying times for the 2013 race just got a whole lot tighter, and they used age-graded tables to arrive at the new standards. Age-grading essentially assigns a handicap to "older" runners (over 34) to allow for a more direct comparison of "performance impressiveness". These handicaps are the results of years of research conducted by the World Master's Association, and differ based upon the distance of the race. Want to figure out how you stack up? Here's a calculator... not sure if this also takes into account sex-grading. In addition to figuring out who's really faster, you can also use it to compare PR's set in high school to current PR's to see where you're at (assuming you've actually been out of high school long enough).
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