These past 6 weeks have been quite challenging for me in terms of running. As you could see from my prior post, I've been sidelined with a ridiculous array of problems, and my running has definitely taking a big hit in the process. The most recent one was the flu that I got hit with last week. Actually, everybody around here got hit with that flu - 90% of my radiology co-residents were wiped out at one point in the past 4 weeks, as well as most of the faculty and staff. Fortunately, it seems to have ridden out from here. I believe that this year's flu shot was relatively ineffective at countering this flu according to the CDC, covering less than 10% of the most prevalent flu strains out there (though I do have to check my reference on this.)
As for me, I was socked out for 3 days flat-on-my-back with high fever, chills, and horrendous muscle aches. I was on call as well during that time, so that didn't help things either. After getting over that stretch, I've been suffering the after-effects of the viral damage to my respiratory epithelium. In other words, the lining of my airways has been damaged, and a lot of it sloughed off in the recovery period. I haven't been able to run at more than a "long run" pace this week because of incessant coughing fits. I think people on the track thought I was a nut-job yesterday, as I passed some of 'em and then had to clear my lungs out for a good 10-20 seconds. Yuk.
So I'm crawling back to form yet AGAIN. I've definitely fallen out of shape. My legs have been really struggling at paces which were normally very routine for me. Perhaps the most telling is my 12-mile pace. Granted, I couldn't run it at true tempo speed due to my lungs, but regardless, my legs could barely maintain a 7:40/mi for the distance. In contrast, I was pulling 6:55/mi in November. I do think my form will come back very quickly though - for being "out of shape" and recovering from illness, I am managing to put up moments of good running in one out of every 7-8 miles, which make me optimistic.
Now is actually a good time to analyze my Houston performance and make the necessary changes to avoid such a repeat disaster. I really had been hoping that it was "just the clams", but this prolonged recovery period clearly indicates that other things were remiss as well, and it is very well possible that despite being in theoretically excellent shape for 3:10 in late November, that I lost a lot of ability in my poor taper. Still, I do think that the GI distress was responsible for 80+% of the bad result, and I'm definitely not going to do that again!
As for those godforsaken clams which people seem to be amazed that I dared to eat pre-race, there actually is a story of behind them. Since I'm lactose intolerant, I have a hard time with various pasta sauces; marinara seems to always demand Parmesan from me, so that's suboptimal in large quantities. As a result, over the past 5+ years, I've had a tradition of eating linguini with white clam sauce (neutral-type oil base) as my go-to pre-race meal. It has served me well up to now, and I've never had any GI distress of any sort despite eating this dish hundreds of times. Every single one of my PRs, from 5k to marathon, have been achieved with this dish fueling them beforehand. I'll have to play it more carefully from here on out, but as for Houston, I really was just doing what worked for me in the past, even if it was more superstition than anything else.
As I mentioned, I had a really, really suboptimal taper. It wasn't due to laziness or bad planning on my part - I was using a Pfitz taper schedule which had worked brilliantly well for me for the SF Marathon in July 07, so I was once again sticking to what worked for me before. Unfortunately, between the holiday travel and sprained ankle, I lost nearly 10 days of solid training. I suspect I may have also over-did the final 22-mile run (averaged 7:10 for 22 miles on a hilly course!), and that effort may have compromised my subsequent marathon performance, or at the least, my taper. I have seen estimates that 8 days off from running will cost about 5% of performance, and 14 days off will cost about 10-20%. I'll bet that even if I had been in true 3:05-3:10 shape in mid-December, I lost at least 5% of my ability, and likely more during the taper. That 5% translates to 10 minutes of race time for me! With a realistic target of 3:05, it makes it very likely that a 3:10 was just out of reach given my poor taper, even without the clams.
So did I shoot too high for my target? Actually, I definitely do NOT think so. Given my 3:19 at hilly San Francisco in July, and 6 months of super-solid training with high mileage, increase tempo runs, and great diagnostic leadup races, I'll bet that 3:10 was really a soft target if I had had a decent final taper. Actually, I'll bet that even in my SF marathon condition in July 07, I would have had a legitimate shot at 3:10 on a flat course such as Houston, even without the training of the last 6 months. (My 10k time back then estimated a 3:07 flat-course marathon.) So I definitely think that my 3:10 target was more than achievable.
In terms of what adjustments I will make for the upcoming season, there definitely are a few. First, I plan on training for 18 weeks max. The 24 week training period was WAY too long for me. I think that with my big miles logged and emphasis on running in my blog, people forget that I am a radiology resident at UCLA. This is a VERY demanding job with very long and very hectic hours, and constant evaluations of your performance. Running is very important to me, but it's a distant third in terms of priorities to me (first being GF/family, 2nd being radiology.) I work quite hard at being the best radiology resident that I can be, and this is a very, very mentally and physically demanding task. I lost literally every other one of my full weekends over the past year, covering 1, if not both days for 12 or 24 hour shifts. Training at 80-100 mpw with this kind of schedule really was extraordinarily difficult, and an ordeal that I'm not willing to go through again. I plan on running around 60-70 miles per week in general, and peaking at 80-90 for a few weeks only this time around, mostly for logistical reasons given my constraints of work.
Next, I plan on substituting a day of cycling for running for most of the training cycle, with the exception of 4 weeks during peak cycle. This is not for improved performance, but more for variety in my training, and to build toward a future interest in triathlons. I am fairly certain that I'd run faster if I eliminated the cycling and just stuck to running, but I think at this point in my fitness, it's a good move given my future interests.
As for my choice of next marathon, I'm going to stick with what has worked for me and not shy away from the hilly marathons such as Palos Verdes and San Francisco. My training course is decently hilly (-300 then +300 elevation over 8 miles), and I think I may be relatively stronger at courses with this sort of elevation change versus dead-flat courses, which give me no advantage. I'm noticing this on my recent runs, where I struggle a little bit on the downhills and flatlands for the first 5 miles, but then feel remarkably good on the uphill final 5 miles, often outrunning my downhill/flat pace! Part of this may be because I train with a heavy Camelbak as well, and thus my legs are better at strength-grinds versus rapid turnover. I think that come now, I should be in strong enough shape to run a 3:10 even on a challenging course such as SF, and it is a very likely target. The other likely target (though it's flat as a pancake) is the San Diego Rock N Roll marathon in June 1, mostly because it doesn't sell out. If conditions are right, and I'm feeling good, that will be a "last-minute" option for me.
Lastly, I have been making some important observations about my diet during this taper. I normally care little for dietary plans, and just keep in mind that variety is good, and that I need to emphasize carbs due to all the mileage. In practice over the past year, this has translated into eating tremendous quantities of pasta as my choice food, basically using a perpetual carbo-load approach on a daily basis. However, in analyzing my general food choices during my taper for Houston, I definitely cut back on pasta since I was running much fewer miles. I likely ate more rice during that period in favor of pasta. I do think in retrospect, that this wasn't a wise move, and probably also cost me performance on race day. For me, pasta loading works much, much better than rice loading. I'm not sure why, but I definitely experience a much more sustained carbo load with pasta versus rice. This has become dramatically obvious in the past month, during which I've run very little, and thus didn't feel the need to "pasta carbo-load" on a daily basis because of my low mileage. I've basically crashed on every run over 12 miles as a result, and the one good run where I cranked out 17 miles 2 weeks ago, I carbo loaded with pasta quite aggressively for. I don't think I'm overanalyzing this - the results are too consistent to be otherwise. Today, I did a 12-miler, and didn't have a chance to eat pasta yesterday or during the day due to being on call until 10PM every day this week (again) and being at work. Once again, I really suffered in the first 2miles and it was looking like I was going to crash out early again, but I fortunately had anticipated this, and scarfed down an entire CLIF bar that I had brought along, which dramatically helped my performance within minutes. I literally went from feeling like the gas tank was totally empty to revving up to speed, all within 5-7 minutes. I think that switching back to this heavy-pasta daily carbo load diet is actually REQUIRED for for me to train at the volumes and speeds which I was accomplishing 2-3 months ago - I just had to learn it the hard way.
Wow this was a long post. I just had a lot of analysis that I thought I'd get down in concrete form before training in earnest starts again. Whew!
ADDENDUM Sat 2-16-08: I carbo-loaded with pasta starting Thu (normal amount of pasta), and ate a lot of pasta yesterday. It really did make a huge difference out there today on my long run. I was planning on 15 miles, but ended up running 20, and maintained a decent pace the entire way with only minimal slowdown at the end, and even tackling a uber-hilly course in the final 4 miles. I've also reviewed my logs, and I'm pretty sure that my training paces started dropping off around December, when for whatever reason, I started to shift away from pasta carb-loading and ate more rice. I'm definitely switching back. I don't think this is all just in my head - I've crashed on too many mid-distance runs lately, including an attempted 15 miler earlier this week that I had to cut short at 11 miles since I ran out of gas. We'll see how this pasta-heavy diet affects my training in the upcoming weeks. Also, I'm really enjoying the HRM of my Garmin 305. Today I just aimed for 145-150bpm for the first 8 miles, and then 150-160 for the second half, and it worked quite well. I think I've been overdoing the hills previously, and with this more even effort, my pace was more steady, with little dropoff in the end. I was pleased that even for being out of shape, on flat-land, 145-150bpm equals about a 7:10-7:15/mile pace, which is pretty much exactly what I need to BQ. This is definitely better than where I was 4 months ago, where a similar effort equaled about 7:35-7:40/mile.
It's coming back. And it feels SCARY good!
