My journey as a marathoner...

Photo by Julian Saboisky Sunday, Oct 24, I took part in my second ever B.A.A. Mayors Cup cross country race at Franklin Park (Boston,MA), which happens to be my main training grounds for the past 10 years. My history on this course include: 2005 -26:19, 54th at New England college champs (ran 15:19 in 5k 6 months later) 2006 -24:51, 5th at New England college champs (ran 14:39 in 5k 6 months later) 2008 -24:36, 2nd at New England college champs (ran 14:05 in 5k 3 months later) 2009 -24:23, 7th at Mayors Cup (ran 13:56 in5k 3 months later) 2010 -24:06, 5th at Mayors Cup *** 2007 was left out because of extreme weather ***course was made longer after 2008 I can't really recall this race in play by play format, but I 'll try to describe what happened in the front. This race reminded me a lot of the 10k championship race I ran at D2 NCAA's last spring. The leader for the most part (a runner from Westchester TC) kept doing fartleks, sprints, float, sprints for mot of the race, w...

Monday Oct 18 AM 6 miles, 42min PM 12 miles, 1:26min, drills (139miles in last 7 days) Tuesday Oct 19 AM 5 miles, 35min, drills PM 14 miles++, 1:34min warm up: 21min, drills and strides. 1x200 in 30.73 workout goal: 5x1k in w/ 500 slow jog. actual workout: Ended up doing 6 reps: 2:45.74 2:49.68 2:48.09 2:46.96 2:48.35 2:47.00 Cool down: 45min Wednesday Oct 20 AM 8 miles, 56min noon massage PM 10 miles, 70min Thursday Oct 21 AM 8 miles, 51min PM 10 miles+, 1:13min warm up: 34min, lights drills workout: 25x100 meter strides on the minute on grass at FP. took 25min total cool down: 14min Friday Oct 22 AM 8 miles, 57min PM 10 miles, 69min, drills Saturday Oct 23 AM 8 miles, 56min, drills PM 5 miles, 36min, drills Sunday Oct 24 AM Mayors Cup Race, 14 miles, 1:30min shakeout: 8min warm up: 17min, strides and drills race: 8km at Franklin Park, 5th place, 24:06 (17 sec PR) cool down: 41min PM off, too much homework 118 miles This week, one of my primary goals was to get in some speed endurance...

Results Story Two years ago, Tim Ritchie (Boston College) and I battled at the New England Championships, with Tim winning 24:35 to 24:36. Today we are both on the same team, BAA. - Photo by Scott Mason

I had posted this before in one of my past blogs, but wanted to repost it for those who didn't have a chance to read.. An athlete could be in the best shape of his or her life and still not be able to perform up to the standards. How is that possible? THE KILLER I'S : Injury and Illness. It's been said many times that being able to win championships or set huge pr's is not necessarily about how fit one is, but how LONG one can stay fit, meaning no illness or injury. You can't win a race if you can't make it to the starting line. You can't race when you can't train, you can't win when you can't race. One of my friends once told me, "There's a fine line between injury and fitness". Believe it or not, the fitter you are, the more likely you are to get hurt. This is because of the nature of our sport: we can be very stubborn at times. When we feel in great shape, we are most likely to try reaching new heights. We try to do harder workou...

Monday Oct 11 AM 6 miles, 41min, drills PM Off (hiking 5 hours) Tuesday Oct 12 AM 8 miles, 56min, drills PM 13 miles++, 1:23min workout: 6xmile repeats at Mines Falls (Nashu,NH, 2130m loop) warm up: 18min, light drills and strides 4:59.13(2:18.50)4:57.69(2:13.87) 4:57.63(2:15.19)4:58.32(2:17.81) 4:56.70(2:14.36)4:58.50(2:08)....12780m in 43:16.56 (5:26 pace) This might not look good on paper, but it was a good workout. Most of these mile repeats were uphill. The loop we used is 2130m, so we ran a full mile and the about 530m recovery. It was my first time in a long time doing workout on trail. Coach estimates these are about 10secs faster on the track. The fastest I've gone on track so far this fall for mile reps has been 4:54. cool down 22min Wednesday Oct 13 AM 8 miles, 56min, drills noon massage PM 12 miles, 1:21min with on/off strides Thursday Oct 14 AM 8 miles, 56min PM 11miles+, 1:12min, workout warm up: 15min, light strides and drills, 1x200 in 29.37 workout goal: 10x400w/10...

Again I want to invoke the thought of putting a v-12 engine with a nitrious boost in my rusted out 1997 ranger pick up. It is this problem that we are trying to solve and so we talk now about increase the maximum explosive capacity of our bodies. Our basic pure sprint speed. This training is not specific to our racing needs as distance runners, but increases in it have benefits across the board for us, greater efficiency at slower speeds, reduced injury risk, and the ability to use improvements in basic speed to increase our endurance at speed so that we can go faster in the events that we focus on. What is this training? Well really it is anything we do to build our strength, the amount of force we can produce or our strength endurance, the amount of force we can produce again and again often viewed as a percentage of our max force. I’m not too interested in getting super technical or spending a lot of time breaking down exactly what systems are being stressed in what way. I bel...

Monday Oct 4 AM 6 miles, 41min, on treadmill PM 13 miles, 1:28min, on treadmill, drills Tuesday Oct 5 AM 6 miles, 42min PM 14 miles, 1:21min weather: cold, windy and raining warm up: 15 min, light drills and strides workout goal: 8xmile @ 5:00 w/ 400 rest actual workout: 4:58.82(1:33.56)4:57.13(1:30.94) 4:59.81(1:33.12)4:57.19(1:30.31) 4:59.25(1:34.13)4:59.25(1:35.62) 4:59.70(1:33.05)4:58.29 total: 50:40.17 for 15600m (5:13.61 per mile)incl. recovery cool down:16 min Wednesday Oct 6 AM 12 miles, 1:23min PM 6 miles, 42 min with on/off strides Thursday Oct 7 AM 7 miles, 49min, drills PM 14 miles+, 1:42 warm up: 36min, light drills and strides weather: very windy workout 30x100 on the minute: 15.37(44.73)15.43(43.63)15.06(47.88)14.56(46.06)15.13(44.12) 14.25(45.00)14.75(38.94)14.75(41.81)14.94(41.63)14.75(40.50) 14.87(40.13)15.12(41.93)15.31(40.69)15.06(39.00)15.06(39.69) 14.88(37.87)14.94(42.19)14.43(39.44)14.75(41.38)14.37(41.56) 14.69(38.13)14.62(48.69)15.06(43.88)14.87(44.06)14.88(39....

This short illustration is taken from Nate Jenkins' blog on RunningTimes.com. It goes over one of the major workouts I do: the 10x400 with 100m rest. "I am not in anyway a fan of 10x400m with 1min recovery. Standing rest mean the workout improvements will not translate into race improvements. I do like using 10x400m at 10k pace with 100m run in 20 to 25 seconds for rest as a bit of a tempo workout to work on improving efficiency at 10k goal pace and to work on overall aerobic fitness- including threshold.Running workouts with too much rest and with standing rests is the one thing that is most responsible for holding back the performance of competitive runners. Particularly HS and college runners. A quick story to illustrate this point. When I was in HS I routinely did 8x400m in 65 or faster, including once averaging 60(which was huge given my 400m best was 58.8). The vast majority of say sub 10:30 HS males can and do this sort of session all the time. yet they don’t run 8:40 f...

If you took a v-12 engine with 600 horse power and found a way to stuff it in my rusted 1997 ford ranger pick up, and you then put a giant gas tank in the bed of the truck and filled it with gas would I be able to go race neck and neck with a formula 1 race car? No as soon as I cracked 100 miles an hour the truck would start to tear itself apart. It would most likely suffer some sort of complete failure long before even cresting 150 miles an hour even though the engine would barely be warmed up and the gas tank would still be full to the brim. . Not only that but if my p.o.s. pick up did some how hold together I would still get left in the dust as my transmission would waste huge amounts of the engine’s power, my wheels, shocks and struts would fail to grip the road in an effective way wasting yet more horse power and the back end of the would truck fly violently left and right wasting large amounts of my massive engines force on sideways motion that the race cars were using to go f...

Monday Sep 27 AM 5 miles, 34min (was running late for work) PM 10 miles,64min warm up: 15min, strides and drills work out goal: 10x400 w/ 100 rest at 24 for 5000m of work sub 15:30 actual work out: 67.30(23.00)68.56(23.56)69.25(22.25) 70.13(22.62)70.00(24.06)70.88(23.00) 69.75(22.50)70.69(22.87)70.47(23.47) 69.81(16.10)--15:20.27 for 5000m (cold and rainy weather) cool down: 34min Tuesday Sep 28 AM 7 miles, 48min, on/off strides PM 12 miles, 1:22min on treadmill Wednesday Sep 29 AM 8 miles, 57min, drills noon massage PM 12+ miles, 1:13min warm up: 18min, light drills and strides workout goal: 8x1k @ 3:05 w/ 400 jog rest @ 1:30 actual workout: 3:00.47(1:29.25)3:00.32(1:27.43)2:59.75(1:28.00) 2:59.88(1:27.75)3:00.13(1:26.88)3:01.18(1:28.25) 3:00.75(1:27.87)2:55.44 34:13 for 10800m of work at 5:05.92 pace inc. rec. cool down: 21min Thursday Sep 30 AM 6 miles, 2min, on/off strides PM 12 miles, 1:23min, pool after Friday Oct 1 AM Off, worst headache I've ever had in my life-probably a m...