Filed under: 2008 NYC Marathon Training | Tags: Cross Training, Heart Rate, Miles, New York Marathon
Today’s long run can be summed up in one word, ‘bonk’. My right knee started acting up an hour into the run and proceeded to nag me for the next hour until I called it quits. It was especially bad on the downhills. Again, my buddy Jeff hooked it up with a great route through the South Side & East End of Pittsburgh, but I ended up completing only 14 miles of 20. Not a great run, but the simple fact that I was up at 7 on a Sunday and pushed myself for 2 hours is a good sign.
I’ve been reading that for the long runs, you shouldn’t exceed 80% of the race day goal, which was definitely not the case on Sunday. I was out of the gate maintaining an 8 minute mile pace and then continued to push it with Jeff. In retrospect, here’s what went wrong last week; I missed a short run (3 miles, but important nonetheless), I took 3 days off before attempting the long run (never again!), I only did limited stretching (no yoga either) and partied a bit much on Friday night. Finally, I’m simply not keeping up with the core training. Lessons learned… Also, the battery went dead on my heart rate monitor so there was some lost data there (not a big deal though).
On a positive note, I ran almost 30 miles so the week wasn’t a total wash. Also, Wendy and I caught a sweet 13 mile bike ride on Saturday so I was able to get some cross training completed.
I had a chance to review the course for NYC’s Marathon and it gave me some ideas about how I should approach the training strategically. The Marathon starts on the Verrazano Bridge with about a 1 mile climb up 150 feet. Training in Pittsburgh definitely has it’s benefits in this sense as the hills are plentiful and typically higher and steeper than what Verrazano will throw at me. Also, there are some hills at the end of the race in Central Park, so I need to focus on crushing it for the last 2-4 miles of every long run. Really want to finish this race strong and recover quickly.
Filed under: 2008 NYC Marathon Training | Tags: Heart Rate, Miles, Pittsburgh
Finished up another week with a solid long run last Sunday, 18 milesalongside the rivers of Pittsburgh with my good friend Jeff Babich. I met up with Jeff right about mile 4 on the South Side and we completed the run together (he was only looking to do about 14). It was slow going at first, legs felt like jelly, but half-way through I got a second wind and was able to muscle through it. Thanks for mapping out the run and making it happen Jeff!
So I finished up with 37.5 miles for the week (a mile and a half over the goal of 36) and had a great 15 mile bike ride with my lovely lady friend Wendy that filled my cross-training quota for the week. I was also able to catch 3 baseball games at PNC Park in the New York Mets vs. Pittsburgh Pirates series. This is not a Mets baseball blog, so I won’t go off on too much of a tangent, but suffice to say the Met’s looked great in 3 of 4 games. Once again it was the wobbly bull pen that gave up a 2 run lead late in the fourth game on Monday and that led to the only loss, but after a 6 game winning streak, I can’t complain.
One of my new favorite aspects of PNC Park this year is the Water Taxi. For 6 bucks you get a round trip ticket from my apartment building right to the game. Here’s a pic of the inside with some fellow Mets fans…
For this week it’s 40 miles with a long run of 20 on Sunday. I feel as if I’m not being challenged enough though and may push it further. In the past I may have over-trained so I want to avoid that, but so far, I’ve run further than I had planned for 2 weeks in a row…
I’ve been tracking my heart rate with all of my runs and my recovery times have been improving. I’ll typically end my runs with a HR of 180 or so, and within 2 minutes it will drop about 40 bpm (beats per minute). When I started building a base back in March, the recovery would be roughly 20-25 bpm. In general I’m maintaining an average heart rate of about 170. Still researching what my target heart rate should be for race day, so more to come on this topic.
