Autumn Marathon

What is your “rest plan”?

After finishing two half-marathons within one week, following an extended period of regular CrossFit and endurance training, I took four days off.  To be honest, it felt kind of strange.  I was on a business trip and without the usual workouts, my evenings were completely empty.  It’s not that I don’t take days off during the typical training weeks: usually I work out five days out of seven; occasionally, I’ll do a double workouts (eg. endurance and strength on the same day).   Point is I’m really not a workout fanatic.

One of my CrossFit trainers recommends taking a block of days off every three or four months to allow the body to recover.  While I have not polled my other CF or running coaches/mentors, this seems to be a common enough practice.  

Another aspect of rest is refreshing your body and mind through adequate sleep.  I do even less well in this area.  My sole New Years resolution for 2011 was to get 7.5-8 hours sleep per night, but nearly halfway into the year I am averaging my usual 6.5-7 hours.  It’s not that the difference in energy, concentration and productivity are imperceptible.  Editing the post, for instance, would have been much easier had I not slept only six hours last night.

I am curious to know what athletes at all levels do in the way of taking regular or extended time off.   How do you work rest into your exercise routine?

Brooklyn Half Race Report

Completed the second half of my spring Half Marathon “double” in Brooklyn last Saturday.

The time was not quite as good as my race in Binghamton 6 days earlier - 1:52:27 (8:25 pace) for 13.1 miles vs. 1:48:09.  Overall, though, the result was just as satisfying:

• allowing for the warmer temperature and higher humidity which tend to slow you down!
• the current Brooklyn course is a tough one both physically (two big hill in the first 5 miles) and psychologically (Ocean Parkway is a looooong, grueling straightaway).
• I got to run with and to duel with Ami, a friend and PPTC teammate.  We started and finished the race in lockstep; in between, she dropped me three times on the hills, then I passed her on the straightaway before she caught me in the final hundred yards.  She’s a much better, more experienced runner than I, so it was a thrill to tie with her.  Following is a picture of us taken right after we finished.

Two half-marathons in six days was kind of a scheduling error, but I decided to stick with it partially because I had strong personal reasons to run each race and partially because I decided that it would be good mental preparation for running NYC in November.  Running a half marathon hard is a grind - 13 one mile runs followed by a sprint.  Repeating that 2x in one week was difficult, but satisfying.  It also was my test of the CrossFit Endurance training approach which emphasizes running form, functional fitness and low-volume, but high-intensity running. It went well enough that I am willing to scale the approach to prepare for 26.2m in the fall.

Binghamton Race Report

Ran a half-marathon PR last Sunday in the Binghamton “Bridge Run” Half Marathon - 1:48:09.  It’s actually my “middle-aged PR” (I ran much faster race as a 20 year-old) and only by a few seconds.  Nevertheless, it is an accomplishment because it was the best race I have run since becoming a CrossFitter one year ago.  My running training has consisted almost entirely of sprints, intervals and medium-length tempo runs (or races).  In addition, I have been doing CrossFit gym workouts 3-5 times per week.

The race took place in a warm (60-degree), steady rain through the streets and over the bridges of downtown Binghamton.  There were about 1200 participants which made the streets seem almost empty by my usual standard of NYRR mega-fields.  Downtown Binghamton is run-down, though some of buildings have an early 20th century elegance.  The natural setting, in a valley formed by the joining of two rivers, is beautiful, particularly  clad in early spring green.  The Binghamton Chamber of Commerce did a fantastic job - there were plenty of volunteers, water stops, and a surprising number of spectators for 730am on a Sunday.  

I was shooting for 8:30/mile average pace and took it out a little hard, figuring I could hang on at the end.  Somewhere around mile 3, I found my rhythm with a group of strong local women who were using the race as a workout.  They ran an 8:15 pace and I was able to keep up for a while.  The race’s highlight came for me on the biggest hill of the race in mile 9 right after I had been dropped by the fast ladies.  Cresting the hill, another young woman who had caught up to me offered me a “way to go” and a high-five.  That completely reenergized me and I ran better to keep up with her.  We fell into a conversation and ran together for the remaining 4+ miles; in the process, passing many other runners including the original group of “fast ladies.”  My finishing pace was 8:15/mile.

As one of my Brooklyn running friends said recently, “I was reminded again that one of the pleasures of running is the wonderful friends you meet along the way.”  And occasionally, those wonderful people are runners you meet in passing and share only a few minutes of hard running and a brief chat.  Thank you!

Now - on to the Brooklyn Half tomorrow which is the final event in my spring racing campaign!

One year of CrossFit “Practice”

Last Wednesday marked one year since the day I walked into NEPA CrossFit for my introductory WOD. I wrote down what we did -

• 10 squats, 10 pushups, 10 situps, 10 supermen x 8 rounds

It actually doesn’t sound like much, but I remember being very sore the next day. CrossFit has definitely made its mark on my life: have lost weight, gotten stronger, disrupted my running training, changed my eating and sleeping habits. At one level, it is just an exercise program, but at another it is a practice just as exacting as Yoga or a martial art.  If you’re doing it right, and for 99% of us that means at a gym with professional trainers, doing it well is all about exercising the movements correctly and to maximum effect.  ”The name of the game,” one coach said to a group as we prepared to do the simple deadlift, “is precision.”