Marathons #12 and #13: BQ or bust

TL;DR I ran a couple marathons. My "BQ or bust" plan resolved to "bust".

Training: the California effect

I guess the BAA has a different opinion on that one.

I'll write a separate post trying to narrow down "the California effect" (with data, because science), but it is very real for me -- every time I spend the summer in California, my paces drop, I recover much more slowly from workouts, and generally have a hard time following training schedules that feel easy in Boston.

This summer was no exception. I spent most of June recovering from a hip hiatus. My best guess of what caused it is pushing too hard during my May race. But, as I learned, hips are some of the least fun body parts to not have working as expected. It was like driving a tiny city car -- I would push quite hard, huff and puff, and then see no effect. Ugh.

Because things weren't exactly going according to plan, I didn't run Eugene in late July, as I was hoping to. At that time, I was just beginning to feel somewhat comfortable going back to May paces, so there was no reason to disrupt that with another race. That didn't leave me too many options if I wanted to make the window for Boston 2015 (closing mid-September). A few months ago, before it sold out, I had signed up for a race in Erie, PA, which happened to be on literally the last possible weekend for the Boston 2015 window. Sooo, it was time for 3:05 or bust. No biggie.

Except the California effect was still in swing. It was especially bad on long and mid-long runs. Looking back at my logs, I  only pushed through one complete 21 km tempo during the whole summer. I normally do that weekly in Boston, among other hard workouts. Shorter runs were fine though, and I got in the habit of doing twoadays a little more frequently to make up for the worse long-run mileage. My comfortable recovery pace was getting down to about 4:30 min / km, and I even tried a full week in August with recovery at 4:20 (what I needed to hit for a 3:05 marathon), but that still left me tired, so I'll get there when I grow up. All in all, I wasn't training at the paces and intensities I was hoping for at the start of the summer, but there was still some progress. Not to mention, I met some seriously fast runners at Google, which was a good source of inspiration. And that brings us to summer race #1...

#12: Santa Rosa, CA, Aug 24th

Finishing Santa Rosa strong.

This was supposed to be a tune-up race in the place of a regular Sunday long run three weeks before Erie. I had no particular target pace in mind, just whatever felt comfortable, such that I can be in control during the whole distance. The other reason I signed up for it was that the race co-director sounded like an awesome guy, and I simply wanted to support the event. After all, I'd much rather there are more races like this one -- smaller, with character and organized by runners -- than, say, Rock'n'Roll-s. 

There was a minor hiccup the morning of the race, when I was supposed to wake up at 3:25 am to drive myself to Santa Rosa. Instead, I woke up at 3:20 by things shaking up a little, exactly in the area I was about to head to. Thankfully, there were no secondary tremors, and I didn't see major damage in the area.

The race itself was rather drama-free and controlled as planned. I was keeping the pace comfortably between 4:30-4:40 min / km, made the half at 1:38, and decided I should push a little more during the second half for a small negative split. I finished at 3:15:00 on the spot, with still some energy left in the tank. I was glad that being just one minute slower than in Vermont in May felt significantly easier -- summer training had been useful after all.

#13:Erie, PA, Sep 14th

I moved back to Boston the weekend before Erie and, lo and behold, I ran a 21 km tempo comfortably just on my second day there. It wasn't the two back-to-back 21-s that I typically do on the weekend before a marathon, but still better than anything I had done in California. Anyway, no fitness to gain in just a few days, so I did take the week leading up to Erie easy.

When I was flying out to PA, I was still undecided whether I should shoot for a BQ time. The 4:20 pace that I needed wasn't effort-free over long distances, so the chance of crash and burn was quite high. But then, April 2016 sounded so far away, especially for someone who barely plans a week ahead. Oh well, nothing to lose in trying...

It was still quite dark at the 7am start. Which meant we could watch the sunrise colors from the peninsula over the first few miles. Quite cool. I had made the point of religiously sticking to 4:20-4:21, which was taking some effort, but not a major one at this point. Time to get cautiously optimistic...

I often buy a race photo or two (unless I look really bad).
But I feel that the photographers in the Erie marathon deserve a
lesson on supply and demand. So, instead of me running, here's a
bunny with a pancake on its head.

I hit the half in 1:31:37. Still on track. There was a larger crowd gathered near the half line and I heard someone compliment me on my form -- pretty cool, I took that as a sign that things were still fresh. Until km 30 I managed to extend the cushion from a 3:05 finish to 2:30 minutes. And then, as in any crash and burn race, the burn part happened...

Km 30 was at 4:26 -- a few seconds slower than the 4:20 pace I needed. No big deal, that's pretty normal when I run at a pace that requires some effort, I'll just push a little more on the next one to catch up. So, I pushed, and got another 4:26. And then pushed even more and the next one was ... 4:26 again. Yup, the wheels were starting to fall off. For the next one, I was working really really hard and that only got me 4:36. And that was it -- I could barely keep that effort for another 1 km, let alone the remaining 9, and even that would have still put me around 3:06. So, no Boston in 2015, better luck next time.

At that point I thought of DNF-ing, but finding my way back to the finish line would have been too much of a hassle. So, I just glacially jogged the remaining 9 km, somewhere above 5:00. I finished in 3:11:12, which happens to be a PR of 2-3 minutes, but I'm by far not excited by that, having shot for 3:03.

So, what next?

Short-term, I'm signed up for Wineglass in Corning, NY, just a couple of weeks from now. I'll run it easily with whatever fitness I have left from summer training, maybe a comfortable 3:10. Before the end of the year, I'll run Route 66 in Tulsa in late November (who doesn't like a trip to Tulsa in the winter). As any gambler will tell you, time to raise the stakes there and go for 3 hours after another 3-month block of training. It would have been fun to train for and run Boston after Tulsa, but oh well... I'm sure I'll find another race or five for the spring. At least I'll probably be comfortably below the cutoff for the 2016 qualification window. Time to hit the roads now...