Indoor Mile

On January 28th some of the best milers in the world will converge on New York City to race the Wannamaker Mile at the Millrose Games in Madison Square Garden.  2 weeks before that I’ll be running in a much less prestigious indoor 1 mile race, but to me the lack of prestige makes it no less important.  I’m hoping to repeat my outdoor performance of 4:34 last spring, and prove to myself it wasn’t just a fluke.  I know running indoors is slower, but I am fairly certain I am in much better shape now than I was last June.

This time I’ll have to race without having Mike to chase down in the last 400 meters as he will sit out to rest his achilles.  Hopefully I can talk some more RKR members into racing with me.

Taking what winter gives you.

This is my 3rd winter in Rochester.  The first winter I did most of my running on roads or at the gym, and if it was too cold, or snow I wouldn’t bother at all.  Last winter I went out in much colder weather, but if it was snowy I normally ended up either on the treadmill or at Cobbs Hill running around in circles on the well cleared roads.

This winter I haven’t run on a treadmill once despite it being the snowiest December in at least 100 years.  I’ve also ventured out on some of the trails in the packed snow.  I’ve let myself run a bit slower and enjoy the peace of empty stretches of trails through the snow.  I don’t know why I was so hesitant to get off the roads in the winter, but I’ve really come to enjoy it this year.

Holiday Classic Indoor Meet, 5000 meters

Today I competed in the Holiday Classic indoor track meet at RIT, running the 5000 meters. As I am writing this entry, I completed the race just over 3 hours ago, so hopefully I’ll be able to report many of the most interesting details. I was really happy to have Karyn and Josh come to the meet as spectators to cheer me on, take some great photos, and call out my 400 meter splits.

Although my volume hasn’t been quite where I’d like it over the past couple of months, Josh and I have thrown down some great workouts recently at the UR indoor track, and our huge 3000m PRs two weeks ago confirmed that we are running very well right now. I had a lot of confidence that I could demolish my 5K PR from last February (16:28, indoors at Cornell), but I wanted to see how far I could take it. For today, I set a lofty goal of breaking 16 minutes.

The race start was well organized, although they did not line us up by seed time, as you can see in the picture above (granted, the 80 lb. kid to my left ran 5:00 to come through the first mile ahead of me by 6 seconds–I went on to beat him by a good margin, a huge relief of my ego). I got a bit boxed in at the start, and the first 200 meters were slower than I wanted. I reminded myself that with 4800 meters to go, this was no big deal. I made a move to the outside and ran the next lap in Lane Two to come through the first quarter in 76 seconds (my goal was to keep the pace even at 76’s for the duration). After a half mile, the lead pack had pulled away and I was relegated to join a few chasers who where drawn out 20 to 30 meters behind the leaders. I hit 75, 75, and 77 low to come through the first mile right on pace (5:06).

I felt fairly good at this point, as I strove to keep an even pace at 76 seconds per quarter mile. With the leaders pulling away and no one from their pack coming back yet, I was caught in competitive limbo. Each quarter mile, I marginally increased the effort level but Josh’s booming proclamations of “SEVENTY SEVEN MIKE!!!” confirmed that I was only doing enough to not slow down, running four consecutive 77s. Mile number two ticked away in 5:13. Those damn tenths of a second make a difference!

Despite being a bit off pace, the 16 minute mark was still within reach. Coming into the last mile, I heard Josh encouraging me to work hard to catch a few runners who were falling back to me. Around the 12 minute mark, he also yelled “Only four minutes left!” — an eternity at the end of a 5K. I worked hard to catch and pass a few competitors, but I just could not sustain my goal pace, splitting the next three quarters in 79, 77, and 79.

At this point, the pain had really set in. As I approached the finish line clock with 800 meters to go, fatigue had destroyed my capacity for simple mental arithmetic. Fortunately, Josh shouted something like “YOU GOTTA RUN 2:30 MIKE!” I tried in vain to convince myself that our nasty 6x800m workout averaging 2:28 had prepared me for this, but running that fast was almost unfathomable at this point. Coming into the last 400 meters, I caught and passed a guy in dark green who then out-kicked me in the last 150 (see picture below). I gave it everything I had, but my legs just couldn’t find the turnover to match his pace down the stretch.

I finished in 16:07, a PR by over 20 seconds. Although it would have been incredibly satisfying to break 16, I feel like I left everything on the track today, especially given how the race shook out competitively. I hope to be able to convince Josh to run the 5000m at an indoor meet in February. I believe that with a little more training, we’ll be able to work together to reach that mark. My life will be pretty hectic over the next couple of months with job interviews and (hopefully) fly-outs, but some hard winter training should be possible, not to mention helpful for my sanity.

I’ll post a link to the official results when they are available.

Variables

The late great golf instructor Harvey Penick once said “When I ask you to take an aspirin, please don’t take the whole bottle.”  While I may not have taken a whole bottle of aspirin, when it comes to my running lately I have taken the equivalent of: aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and naxopren.  Now I don’t know which one or ones worked.

 Starting 2 months ago I started taking Pulmicort 180 mcg for my asthma.  I also started taking 1200 mg of fish oil with vitamin D 1000IU and 65 mg of iron (ferrous fumarate) every other day.  I’ve always had low hemoglobin (about 11 gm/dl) so I started taking iron every other day too see if that does anything for me, and fish oil is suppose to help with inflammation and possibly asthma so I figured it couldn’t hurt.  We don’t get any sun in Rochester, so I got the fish oil with vitamin D for good measure.

 To complicate matters my training has changed in the last few months.  Most weeks I only get in 5 days a week of running instead of the 6 or 7 days a week I had been doing the past year.  I’ve cut out all the longer tempo work and am doing all my speed work at 800m-5k race pace.

 The result so far of all those changes has been I’m running better than I ever have before.  The problem is I don’t know which changes are causing the improvements or if it is all of them working together.  Another possibility is that some of them are helping a lot and some are hurting a little for a net gain, but I could be doing better if I changed or discontinued one of them.

 I think the biggest improvements have come from my asthma meds, and doing more speed work.  I think if I could keep doing the same type of speed work but build up more miles I would be doing even better.  I’ll have to wait until my spring checkup to see if the iron is making any difference in my hemoglobin count.  If it isn’t I’ll drop that because it is the one change that has side effects that are a bit troublesome.  In the meantime I’ll keep plugging away and hopefully rack up some more PR’s.