Saginaw 5k Race Report, and future direction

Well, I see I'm already behind on my commitment to have something new up at least once a week!  There's a good reason for that, as the piece I'm currently working on is likely going to wind up being quite long, and is also very, very important to me - so I don't want to rush it just to meet an arbitrary deadline.  The point of my system is make sure I'm working on the writing, and I am.  Hopefully I'll be able to start putting it up (I'm sure it will span multiple entries like the last one) next weekend.

In the meantime, I'll fascinate you with some lighter writing, the story of my race last Saturday.  I ran the Saginaw 5k along with Eli (my good friend and "coach") and my former college and post-college roommate Jeff.  We gathered at my place first thing Saturday morning and headed down to Saginaw, a small town along the Susquehanna River, northeast of York.  We got there in plenty of time, got our race numbers (despite a moment or two where it looked like they hadn't received or properly handled my registration), warmed up (at least to the extent that was possible on a balmy 25 degree morning) and reported to the starting line.

Our previous "scouting" of the course, which was basically limited to looking at the elevation profile for the route on MapMyRun.com and seeing the posted results from the last running of the race, indicated that it was a mostly flat, relatively fast course.  This proved accurate, as there was only one noteworthy hill on the course, which you went up right away after the start, and then quickly back down.  Since it was an out and back course, we would reverse the process right before the finish. 

As I've previously mentioned, my biggest downfall in my prior race was going out way too fast.  Part of this was prompted by the fact that I started right on the line, with all the fastest runners, whom I did NOT belong with, and the temptation to try and hang with them for a time was too great.  I did not want to repeat that this time.  Having scouted prior times, I expected that I would probably be towards the middle of the pack in this race, and so that is where I went.  Having the hill staring me right in the face probably also made it easier to keep my early pace in check.  Whatever caused it, I did not go out too fast this time.

In fact, I was initially convinced I had gone out too slow, which is why I was not pleased with how quickly discomfort had set in.  This mental struggle was exasperated by the fact that I was expecting the course to have mile markers, when it fact, it did not.  When 7:30, 8:00, etc came and went on my watch and I still hadn't seen a mile marker, despite definitely feeling like I was pushing myself, I started to be convinced that this wasn't going to be my day.  I eventually saw a sign coming up as my watch got near to 8:45, and I was thinking that was a mile marker - "Are you kidding me?"  Fortunately, it wasn't a mile marker, and shortly after that, the race leaders came by me going the other way.  Knowing the times I was expecting them to run, I knew that I had to be much further along than a mile, and that I really shouldn't be that far from the turnaround. 

As it so happened, I got to the turnaround in under 12 minutes.  I wasn't on pace with the kind of performance I was hoping to have, but I still had plenty of room to set my PR.  That left me in a much better mood as I came back.  The only real mistake I made on the way back was due to, once again, not being quite sure where I was at due no mile markers - I started to put on a finishing kick with probably 3/4 of a mile to go, and I really didn't have more than a 1/2 mile in me at that pace, especially with the big hill coming right before the finish. As such, I ended up slowing again before charing up the final hill.  As I crested the final hill and saw the finish clock, it was just under 24 minutes, meaning I had plenty of time to get in under my PR.  I thought the clock said 24:02 when I crossed, my official time was 24:05.  Because I had started deep in the pack, I'm pretty sure that I crossed the start line a good 5-10 seconds after the official start of the race, so it's more likely that I actually came in just under 24 minutes.  But by any measure, I bested my PR by at least 22 seconds.

My goals coming in had been as such:  I absolutely wanted to set a PR.  I was convinced I had a legitimate shot at taking at least a minute off my PR, and an outside shot at breaking 23 minutes.  So, I had only broken my base goal, but I had done it fairly handily.  That being said, my old PR came on what, in my opinion was a tougher course.  The course in Harrisburg last May had 2 hills (ramps coming up from along the water front) that were longer and probably steeper than the hill at the start/finish of this race, and we ran into a stiff 15-20 MPH headwind for a mile or so.  So, in terms of performance, I consider the Harrisburg one to be equivalent to the Saginaw effort.  When you factor in that I ran a terrible race back in May, the results suggest that I might not yet be back to the level of fitness I had for that race.

Regardless, it's clear that I can't expect to get better at racing without... racing.  It had been 7 months since I ran any kind of race, and 8 since I ran a race with intent of setting a time.  In the meantime, I hadn't gone more than 2.25 miles at anything faster than long run pace, and you really just can't learn how your body works in a race without the experience.

So, I've made sure to map out a race plan to get me through to the summer.  At this point, I am targeting my next race to be on March 6, most likely the "Shiver by the River" in Reading.  After that, I plan to do the 5k run at the Race, Run, Ride & Ramble in Shippensburg on April 17th.  On May 1, I'm doing the Broad Street 10 mile run in Philly, along with Eli and some other friends from church.  I'm not really planning to "race" that one for a real time, just doing it more for the experience - my only "goal" will be to go under 90 minutes, and by that time, I should be running my long training runs at that pace anyhow.  I will do another 5k in May.  Ideally, I'd like to do the Armed Forces 5k again, so I can see exactly how I've progressed in a year, but I may have a conflict with that date, if they even have it - I can't find any info on it yet.  Regardless, there will be plenty of options for a mid-May 5k.  If the real summer heat holds off for a bit, I'll run another in mid-June before taking July and August as my offseason.

In addition to plotting a race plan to make sure I get plenty of experience, I'm also making some modifications to my training schedule.  My mile times and the times I've been running in my 400 intervals suggest that I already have the speed to go much faster - which means my problem is stamina.  So, I'm replacing the mile time trial workouts (in the middle of longer, easy runs) I was doing every other Monday with longer tempo runs, to go along with the shorter "race rehearsals" I was doing on the other Mondays.  I'm also changing my interval workouts from 400s to mostly 1200s and 800s - at slower speeds, but still under planned race pace.  Putting in these longer workouts at faster speeds should prepare me better, both mentally and physically, for racing.

So, I've got a plan - we'll just see how well I can execute it over the next 4 months or so...

Pacing, pacing, pacing!

As I previously mentioned, my first race was not as successful as I hoped due to rookie mistakes. The biggest of those mistakes was a failure in pacing. I was hoping to run a time that would have required a 7:10-7:15 per mile pace, but between the initial surge of adrenaline and starting up near the front with some of the faster runners, I wound up going out in about 6:40 for the first mile, and my race was pretty much done from there. So, I learned right away how important pacing was in a race. Lately, however, I’ve discovered how important pacing is in pretty much every aspect of training.


The most significant example of this was in my interval training. When I’m doing intervals, I run a quarter mile at a pace notably faster than my planned race pace, then walk an eighth of a mile, and then repeat the process for however many I’m supposed to do. The idea is to keep a relatively consistent pace throughout the workout, with everything below or at a particular goal. Going into the training plan, the most I had ever done was 7 or 8 intervals, and I always felt like death at the end of those. The training plan called for me to start my weekly speed workouts at 7-8 intervals and step up to 15-16 over 5 weeks by adding 2 every week. I was really skeptical that I was going to be able to do this.

My pattern had been that my first couple intervals were always several seconds faster than my intended steady pace, while the freshness wore off my legs, and then I would start to see the times fall off towards the end. So, I decided to try a new tactic and hold back a little bit early on. It felt kind of awkward at first, and the end result was that my early intervals would be right at, or just over, goal pace. I immediately noticed a couple changes in how these workouts went. First of all, I found myself feeling much stronger (though still plenty tired) at the end. And secondly, I was now running my fastest times in the last several intervals, rather than seeing a drop off. And so, each week as I had to add 2 more intervals, I found it to be very doable – to the point where by the end of the build-up, I was doing a set of 16 intervals that were consistently faster than the sets of 7 or 8 I had been doing at the start.

Something else that I noticed was that when I focused on holding a bit back, my times didn’t really fall off, with the exception of the initial intervals that I had been running too quickly. Instead, I was running similar times and feeling stronger at the finish of each interval. What became apparent from this was that previously, I had been starting out at a pace I couldn’t sustain and falling dramatically off at the end of the interval. When I held something back early, I set a pace I could maintain throughout, and so I ran a similar time without the extra initial strain of going way too fast.

It’s somewhat counterintuitive to think you can run the exact same distance in the exact same time and yet come away with different levels of fatigue, but it’s quite possible. I saw this play out over a longer distance in my longest race rehearsal. My previous race rehearsal had been 2 miles long. I ran it in 14:45, with almost identical mile splits, and I ended it feeling pretty good, though tired. The next rehearsal, almost 3 weeks later, was 2.25 miles. I went out way too fast in the first ¼ mile, wound up running the first mile in 7 flat, and was in trouble. I wound hitting the 2 mile mark in 14:45 again, but this time I felt like I was dying – and I was in better shape and several pounds lighter than I had been in the previous run.

So, given all that, probably the only thought that will be prominent in my head at the start of Saturday’s race is “DON’T GO OUT TOO FAST!” I’ve put in the work and gotten myself back in shape, so I’m pretty sure that the only thing that can keep me from a good race (short of some sort of disastrous weather conditions) will be making that same mistake again.

Two are better than one

As I mentioned before, one of the steps I took in overcoming training inertia was to find a friend to hold me accountable to my training. The natural person for this job was my good friend Eli, who ran track/cross-country through college, and who I had been casually talking about running with already anyhow. In Eli, I wound up getting more than just an accountability partner – I got something of a coach as well. Up until November, most of the information I had on running/training had just come from what I had found on the internet or other sources I had read. My first training plan I found online, and the one I’m currently using came from a book. There’s nothing wrong with any of these resources, but there’s no substitute for having someone who’s got lots of experience as a runner available to actually talk to, ask questions of, and get feedback from.

I’ve been sending Eli my training plans and my workout results throughout this training cycle, and he responds with encouragement, suggestions, critiques, etc. The thing about a training plan that comes from a book or the internet is that it’s basically going to be basically “one-size fits all.” In my case, Eli is able to look at how things are progressing and suggest modifications that might help me get more out of a particular workout. For instance, my training plan calls for me to do my long runs very slowly, for the purpose of being able to recover from them more quickly. After the first week, Eli noticed my pace in the long run and suggested that I could probably speed those runs up without too much difficulty, due to how the schedule was laid out. So I tried it the next week, and he was right. I sped up by a full minute per mile, still ended the run feeling very strong, and saw no issues with recovery as I got into the next week.

Beyond the practical benefits to the actual training, it’s been very enjoyable to have someone to share the training experience with. Running can be a lonely business. Ideally, I’d like to have a training partner to go along with me, but the reality is that finding someone at the same fitness level, with similar goals who could work the same schedule as me is probably not going to happen. The next best thing is having someone I can talk to about it, who’s got some level of investment in how I’m doing and who wants to see me succeed.

Training "inertia" is a powerful thing

I've learned a few lessons over the winding road of my running career over the past few months, and so with these next few posts, I will chronicle a few of them, starting with my experience with what I have come to call training "inertia."

The principle of inertia is that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, unless they are acted upon by an outside force. More simply put – it’s easier to keep an moving object moving than it is to get it moving in the first place! My experience of the late summer and early fall has made it quite clear to me how much a similar principle applies to training.
The biggest mistake I made in all of this was to allow myself to get completely out of any kind of running routine back at the end of the summer. I wanted to pull back some because of the heat, and I don’t think that was a flawed plan in and of itself. However, in hindsight, I really needed to have had a clear plan for continuing to train in some fashion, and then I needed to stick with it. Once I was out of the rhythm of training, it was far too easy for me to come up with excuses not to work out on a particular day. I mean, really, what was I giving up? This was especially powerful because for a good part of this time, I was still trying to run in the morning, which meant getting up at 5 am. The urge to stay in bed for an extra hour was, unsurprisingly, quite strong. The fact that I wasn’t really even “breaking training” to do so made the impulse that much harder to overcome, and there were many mornings when I reset the alarm for 6 and crawled back into bed.

There is at least one key difference between real inertia and training inertia. In most cases, an object doesn’t become more difficult to move based on how long it’s been sitting still. That big rock in the middle of your yard is going to take as much effort to get rolling today as it would 3 weeks from now, unless special circumstances intervene. This is not true of training inertia. The longer you’re stopped, the harder it is to get started again, because your training being at rest, by its very nature, causes a number of outside forces resisting your motion to get stronger over time. You lose fitness, which means you know when you do go out again, it’s going to be more difficult. And because it’s been so long since you have run, it’s easier to build the mental case for how bad it’s going to be. On top of that, I was also letting my eating habits slide, so I was also putting weight back on. This only magnified the effects of the loss of fitness, because it obviously takes more effort to run the heavier you are. And of course, you find other things to do with the time that you had blocked out to train, so you have the extra effort of clearing the schedule back out to get started again.

So, one thing I must absolutely do going forward is to make sure I always have a clear training plan, and that I’m sticking to it. I still plan to treat summers as my offseason for running, but I need to replace whatever running I take out of my schedule with some form of training, to ward off both the physical and mental aspects of training inertia.

A running reboot

So, when last we left my adventures in running, I had admitted to having gone through a rather poor period in my training.  I had planned on cutting back to 2-3 workouts per week over the summer in concession to the heat.  Instead, I ended up going through a stretch where I only ran 4 times in about 5 weeks.  My plan at that time was to get myself back into a running groove over the end of August, and then start really training again, with the intent to run a race in mid-October.  Suffice to say, that didn’t happen.  The plan started off well.  I had couple good weeks to close August, and then got a solid start in the first week of my training program during the first week of September.   Unfortunately things went dramatically downhill from there.

The following week I went to California with my Mom and Dad, to visit extended family.  The large portion of my trip was going to spent fishing with my Dad and uncle above 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  I took my running gear along, but being honest with myself, I knew that I was probably wasn’t going to be completely faithful to my training schedule.   I ended up not running at all.  About the same time, I realized that I had a case of plantar fasciitis in my left foot, and it was becoming more acute.  Under different circumstances, I might have just run through it.  Plantar actually works itself out and becomes less painful while running, so it’s not necessarily a major hindrance to training – it can just make walking and standing the rest of the time rather painful.   However, since I wasn’t in a particularly good place with  my training to begin with, I decided to take some time off to let it heal, as opposed to having to deal with it for months while continuing to train.  That led to another 2 ½ week gap in my training.  Once I got started again, I never got myself back into a training groove.  By mid-October, I had only run 5 times in about a four week span.  I had held off on registering for the October race, so I just let it go, and I was in no shape to run it anyhow.

At this point, I realized I was at a defining moment in my running career.  I either needed to get my act together and get serious about training again, or just forget about racing altogether for a while.  If I didn’t get going soon, I was going to have very limited time for racing before getting back into the summer.   For a variety of reasons, some of which I may share at a later time, I came to the conclusion that the latter was not an option.  So, with that decision made, I re-adjusted my plans again.  I got a friend to hold me accountable to a training plan.   I made plans to run a race in December just for the experience (in other words, I wasn’t going to train for a goal time), in order to give me something that I would need to get in shape for.   At that point, my tentative plan was to follow that up with a race in January that I would fully train for, and then continue with several more races through the spring.

So, come the beginning of November, I was finally back at it.  I began running regularly again, using workouts that were based on the first week of Jeff Galloway training program I was planning to use when I started “officially” training.  At the outset, I backed the workouts down a bit in terms of length and intensity.  I was really out of shape relative to where I had been, and I didn’t want to push too hard, too fast and potentially sustain another injury.  I got through November running 3 times every week, except for one week when I only ran twice due to a significant intervention by life.   As I got toward the end of November, I began thinking that the December race I was planning on wasn’t the best idea.  For one thing, the website for it was really sketchy in terms of information on the course, past results, etc.  Secondly, I was looking at a couple of mid-January options for my next race.  In order to fully train for a mid-January race, I was going to have to start before the December race, meaning I’d have to disrupt my schedule to do it.  So, in consultation with my accountability partner, who was also planning to run it, I made the decision to save my money, skip the race, and focus on training for a mid-January race.

Besides, having the plan of the December race had served its purpose anyhow: I was back in a good training rhythm and ready to go further.   The Monday after Thanksgiving I started on my full training plan.  I had been kicking around a couple of different January races, and eventually settled on running the Saginaw 5k in the York area on January 15^th with a couple of friends.  Training for the race went quite well.   I only missed one workout, and I pretty much was able to make that up on the elliptical that night.   My resolve to stick with the plan was quickly tested.  Those who live in this area know December was unseasonably cold, which meant it was “real” winter running weather well ahead of schedule, but I persevered, with the help of plenty of warm running gear.  I’ve found I actually enjoy running in cold weather, and that it’s much better than running when it’s really warm!   Now, when it’s cold and really windy… that’s another story, but I managed to fight through those couple of nights as well.  Luckily, despite the cold, there hasn’t been much snow yet.  I’ve only run while it was snowing once, and there hasn’t yet been enough snow to make road conditions an issue for any length of time.

So, as things stand today, I have finished up the hard part of the training and am now tapering for the race on Saturday.  The end result of all this is that I feel like I’m going into this race at a level of fitness similar to what I had for my race back in May, perhaps slightly better.  My primary goal is simply to best my PR from that race – 24:27.  However, I ran a terrible race that day due to some key rookie mistakes, so I’m very hopeful that I can take a big chunk off of that time.  My more optimistic goal is to challenge the 23 minute barrier.  Regardless of any of that, I’m very happy to be finally getting back into a race and getting more of that experience under my belt.

I'm back!

Well, I’m back! Admit it, you missed me – all 3 of you that read this space whenever I happen to write something in it. It’s hard to believe it’s been since the middle of August since I posted anything, but that’s how it goes I suppose.


The funny thing about this prolonged absence is that it’s not like I haven’t been writing. On the contrary, I’ve probably written as much over the last 4+ months as I have in several years, it just hasn’t gone onto the blog. Much of it has been rather personal, of a nature that I didn’t just want to dump unfiltered out onto the internet – although I will likely wind up sharing a good bit of it in other forms as I resume “publishing” my work.

Ah yes, about that – I have a plan! I have been clearing space in my schedule to re-dedicate myself to writing, with the stated goal of producing at least one formal writing that is designed for “public consumption” every week. These works will be crafted, revised, edited, etc. For the time being, this blog will be the medium in which I will publish that work. However, in the not too distant future, I plan to launch a second site which will be reserved for those works, a more “professional” space, if you will. That will leave this space as more of a personal blog for informal updates and quips, things that I write on the spur of the moment without much crafting or filtering, basically the things you’d expect to find on a blog. I expect these will become more frequent again as I put more time into writing in general.

So, ready or not, here I come again!