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Keep It Simple Stupid

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9/9/11
3 miles easy / 28:04 / 9:21 avg pace
*And with that, training cycle #9 is complete!

My college chemistry professor always used to say K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple Stupid.  When answering a test question, he told us the answer (or the way to go about solving it) is usually simple but we often make it more difficult than it needs to be.  The first time he said this in class, I thought he was speaking directly to me since I have a tendency to make things harder than they need to be.

So how does K.I.S.S. apply to my marathon?  It actually applies to my strategy and goal for the race.

Strategy
Keep my average pace between 8:30 and 8:35.  This is exactly what I did during my 22-miler and it worked out well.  Keeping a more consistent effort throughout is the way to go.  That also means no speeding up and doing 8:20s during the middle miles!  I’ll have a pace band, a usual, but will only use it to compare my total time against a 3:45 marathon time.

Goal
I have no A, B, or C goals.  My goal is run a 3:45 and qualify for Boston.   Plain and simple.

Mother Nature is being a bitch again and is bring historic (weather.com’s words) flooding to Philly and also the Lehigh Valley area.  To say that I’ve been freaking out about maintaining MP on 12 miles of flooded towpath is an understatement.  The LVM has been great about updating us on course changes.  The latest and greatest:

The LVHN Marathon is scheduled to go as planned.  Due to Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, our region has received more than 10 inches of rain in the last 10 days.
*The first five miles of the marathon and relay course have been redesigned to place runners on hard surface roads….
*The race surface will be damp, wet and possibly muddy in some areas.

My guess is about half the marathon runners are attempting to qualify for Boston.  At least I’ll be in good company.

So that’s it my friends.  I’ll post a quick update on Sunday (you can also follow me on Twitter).  Thank you for all the well wishes this week.  I will recall many of them during the race for motivation!

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Lehigh Valley Marathon: Week 14 Recap

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9/5/11 (Monday)
5 miles tempo
*2 miles at marathon pace:  8:13 and 8:10.  Way too fast…I blame it on the taper crazies!  

Labor Day weekend was wonderful.  I rested, got some stuff knocked off the ol’ to-do list, BBQ’d, and slept.  I slept like a champ…9+ hours each night.  More time spent sleeping = less time for the taper crazies to strike.

And the taper crazies made me order this for Hawk’s Halloween costume.  Sorry, buddy.

MON:  rest
TUE:  6 miles speed (my last speed work of this training cycle!)
WED:  5 miles easy
THU:  6 miles easy
FRI:  10 miles long
SAT:  rest
SUN:  6 miles tempo (4 miles at MP)

A total of 33 miles for the week and 229 miles for the month of August!  That’s a new mileage PR for me!  Damn, I should have ran an extra mile to make it an even 230.

So what’s left?  Two more easy runs…probably 4 miles on Thursday and 3 miles on Friday and lots of marathon prep.  You know…lists, weather checking, and repeating of positive mantras!

Please keep voting for RTLR for CBS Philly’s Most Valuable Blogger (click here to vote).  Voting ends on Friday, September 9th!  Please vote every day this week! 

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

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9/1/11
6 miles easy / no Garmin

Happy September 1st!  September is my favorite month of the year (with October being a close second).  I love Fall and the whole back-to-school season.  I’m obviously not a teacher…or a parent 😉  I never dreaded going back to school either when I was younger.  Nerd.

If you sense a list coming, you know me too well!  Here’s why I love Fall…

  • perfect running weather (this is almost too obvious to even list)
  • running in shorts and a long-sleeve DRI-fit shirt
  • sweaters (and my beloved Uggs – I don’t care if they are no longer in style)
  • enjoying my coffee without sweating to death (dislike iced coffee)
  • on that same note, hot chocolate
  • pumpkins and mums
  • Halloween candy
  • dressing up Hawk in a ridiculous costume for Halloween
Officer Hawk
  • Fall races (I have lots of them planned)
  • keeping the windows open and allowing fresh air to come in
  • perfect sleeping weather
AND…I have a marathon in 10 days!  A perfect way to ring in Fall!  I got an email from the race yesterday saying “it is on as scheduled”. Apparently there were questions about whether the race would go on due to Irene.  The thought of it NOT happening never crossed my mind but it does explain all the “lehigh marathon and hurricane irene” blog searches.

What’s your favorite season?  Why?  

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Lehigh Valley Marathon: Week 13 Recap

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8/31/11
5 miles easy / 47:25 / 9:29 avg pace
*Done at the crack of dawn (5:15AM), thankfully with my neighbor.  If I were alone, I would have waited for some sunlight (no worries Mom and Dad).

Week 13 can be dubbed the “lazy” week.  I began my taper with respect to overall mileage but I still had a 22-miler to do.  I only planned to run 44 miles with 22 of them being a long run.  So I only ran 4 days and took almost as many rest days.  But it’s taper time, right?

MON:  rest
TUE:  7 speed
WED:  7 easy
THU:  rest
FRI:  22 awesome miles!
SAT:  8 tempo easy (had to fit this in pre-Irene and my legs were in no shape for tempo miles)
SUN:  rest (although I had fully intended to go to yoga but the studio was closed for the hurricane)

I have an unrelated question that I’d love feedback on:  when you read blogs, do you prefer quality over quantity?  Say a blogger were to only post 3 days per week but they were more high quality posts…would you prefer that over more “simple” posts every day?  Do you like when bloggers are on a schedule (i.e., post every Mon/Wed/Fri) or it doesn’t matter?  

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what we want vs. what we have

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8/30/11
6 miles speed
*6 x 800m at 10K pace.  It was freezing this morning!  OK, that’s a slight exaggeration but it felt amazing out.  I cannot wait for Fall running weather.   

Don’t we always want what we don’t have?  Aren’t we supposed to be grateful for what we have and make the most of it?  Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream or make a list.  Here are some of my current “wants”.

Want:  bangs
What I Have:  curly hair
Yeah, there’s no mixing the two.  Kinda like oil and water.   I would also like to run my fingers through my hair on occasion but they would get stuck.  Actually, I love my curly hair (I never straighten it) because it’s different and, most of the time, pretty low maintenance.

Want:  long, lean legs
What I Have:  short, muscular legs
So my legs will never look like Kara Goucher’s.  But they power me through marathons and totally came through on last week’s 22-miler.  This might be the worst picture ever, by the way.

Want:  a career involving running (talking, writing, blogging, and most of all, coaching)
What I Have: a job
I’m fortunate enough to even have a job but that doesn’t mean I can’t complain!  I’ll get to the running career someday…baby steps.  At least I’m lucky enough to spend a good deal of time outside my job coaching.  That’s where my passion lies and that’s what I will do someday…for a job and career.

Want:  a pair of TOMS wedges
What I Have:  not a pair of TOMS wedges
This isn’t the best “I want vs. I have” but I’ve been eyeing these shoes up for awhile.  And then Holly had a pair on at the HLS and raved about how comfortable they are.

(via)

Want:  to run the Boston Marathon in 2012
What I Have:  a slim-to-none and crappy chance of even registering
So this is my biggest want, obviously.  If When I qualify on 9/11/11, it won’t be by more than 5 minutes (i.e., 3:40 or sub-3:40), which is the rumored time you might need in order to get priority registration.  I could worry about that now or I could put that energy into qualifying and leave the stuff that is out of my hands to fate.

Now it’s your turn.  Give me a current “want” vs. “have”…or two!

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22 Miles, Take 5 (aka Dress Rehearsal)

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8/26/11
22 miles / 3:07 / 8:30 avg pace
*Since I like to be exact and precise, I need to point out that my average pace is 4 seconds below goal marathon pace!  4 seconds isn’t much but I’ll take it! 

And with that I’m DONE!  It’s taper time!

every time i say taper time, i think of MC hammer

Since I’m on an endorphin-high and thoughts are still going through my head a mile a minute, let’s stick with bullet points for today.

  • My goal was to keep my splits even from the get-go.  Instead of taking a few miles to warm-up and then picking it up during the middle of the run to make up time, I aimed for 8:30 splits.  This helped tremendously.  My energy level was consistent throughout the entire run.  In fact, from mile 15 on all my splits were 8:30 or under, with the exception of my last mile (8:45 – huge hill).
  • It was humid.  Not crazy humid but 93% at the start.
  • I ignored my (negative) thoughts during this run.  Let me explain.  I know at a certain point my brain is going to say “you cannot maintain this pace, you are nuts, you need to slow down, you are tired”.  And most of the time I listen and obey when I still have gas in the tank.  Today I only listened to my body and my Garmin and I was fine.  I didn’t slow down and I wasn’t tired.  I definitely had gas left for 4 more miles.  Don’t get me wrong, BQing is going to be hard but I think I can do it.
  • I passed a guy wearing a CamelBak on a hill.  Even though it was a guy and I passed him on a hill, I didn’t feel very bad ass AT ALL.  To me, the CamelBak wearers are ultramarathoners and he probably thinks my 22 miler is a walk in the park.  Us marathoners only carry handheld water bottles 😉
  • A guy on a bike asked me what time it was.  I’m sure he saw the Garmin on my wrist a mile away and he stupidly thought that the watch could tell time.  It displays 4 things at a time but time isn’t one of them.  I told him my watch “doesn’t do time” and he probably thought I was nuts…or extremely lazy (sidenote:  I do know where the time is on my Garmin but that would involve slowing down and switching screens which I didn’t have time for today).
Almost forgot…here are some post-LR pics!
22, obviously
too tired to hold my head up straight
Have a great weekend everyone!
Question:  Is Hurricane Irene ruining your long run or race plans this weekend?  I was supposed to do a tempo run on Sunday but may have to switch it to Saturday or brave the TM on Sunday (oh the horror)!

Please keep voting throughout the weekend for RTLR for CBS Philly’s Most Valuable Blogger(click here to vote)!