Newport Marathon Week (Oct 6 through Oct 12)

50 miles (XT adjusted) vs 46 planned miles.
Links to Key Runs: Yasso (7x800) avg 3:04  and Newport Marathon 3:41


Goals for Newport:

1. Run negative mile splits for as much of the race as possible, beginning with a VERY conservative opening 5-6 miles 9:30 down to 8:30 min/miles.  Increase the pace over the next 10 miles to a comfortable pace between 7:45 and 8:15.  Finish with a strong final 10 miles, dropping down under 7:30 min/miles, if the legs feel up to it.  Mentally, a strong finish feels important to me 6 weeks out from Philly.
2. Don't do anything that might injure yourself.
3. Take the opportunity to work on race day hydration and nutrition.  This includes pre and post race.
4. Enjoy this one!  No pressure to race fast.  Enjoy the views.  Stop and say hi to the kids.  It's awesome that Cait is running the half in the same race I'm running the full...how cool is that for the kids to see?!
5. In my training log, I entered in target 1/2 splits of 1:55 for the front and 1:45 for the back, and the night before the race I told Caitlin my goal was to break 3:40.

Everything went according to plan the week of the race.  I was recovered enough by Wednesday to do my Yassos at the Harvard Track, and at a fairly strong pace.  I skipped the week's tempo session (as planned) but focused on stretches spent Thur-Sat tapering and carb-loading.  After reading about Steve Way's process of Carb depletion prior to carb loading, that was somewhat in my mind early in the week, but considering it wasn't a true taper, I wasn't sure how that would affect it, so I didn't really shy away from carbs early in the week.

Friday I got a great night of sleep, and then nana picked the kids up Saturday afternoon to take them to the cape. Saturday was a cold-ish rainy day, so I spend most of the day watching the Kona Ironman.  My interests where to see how FHR leader Owen would fair as well as NB athlete Sebastian Kienle, and they both had an awesome day, with Kienle winning.  Went out for an Italian mean early Saturday evening (before 5pm, without kids!) and then watched a movie (Wolf of Wall Street) Sat evening.  I'm not sure why, but I missed an opportunity to stretch for most of the movie because I just sat on the couch.  Also, I'm not sure I drank enough water the day before the race, and was generally not as disciplined with water, food, rest, stretching as I would have liked to have been the day before the race.

With the race starting at 7:30, and being an hour and a half away, I was up at 4:45 to walk H before having breakfast (coffee, water, smoothie, banana, oatmeal w/ brown sugar), and hitting the (night) road with Caitlin.  While it was a great day for running (clear day without much wind and race time temps around 50 degrees) it was pretty chilly in the AM before the race started, with temps in the low to mid 40's.  Here was the view as we pulled into the beach parking lot where we would catch a shuttle to the race.

Sunrise in Newport

Everything went according to schedule, which was huge because I really didn't want to be running around in a panic prior to the race.  The race actually started 15 minutes late, which resulted in a lot of grumpy and cold runners.  The first few miles, I stuck to my plan of running well above 9 minute miles, but in mile three I stopped (and waited 20 seconds for a free one) to use a porta-potty, and then when I resumed running, I felt comfortable running mid 8's and stuck to that for most of the first half of the marathon.

Through 6 miles, I was averaging 8:59 minute miles. 

My official half marathon time was 1:56, but my watch tracked me as having 2 minutes of non-running time that I will deem "avoidable." I'll also say that the landscape of the initial half marathon is stunning...mansions and beautiful sea views nearly the entire 13 miles.  As a half marathon, I really really enjoyed the course, and would love to go back and run the 1/2 again in the future.
 

 Miles 7 through 13, I averaged 8:24 minute miles, 

bringing my average down to 8:41

The other minute was a stop just before the 1/2 marathon pt to say Hi to C and R (who was playing on the beach and didn't even want to come over right away to give me a high five!)  At the Boston marathon in April, I ran by the family so fast that C wasn't able to pick me out of the crowd, and it was actually pretty upsetting for him.  Every time I ran a race after that he would get upset and say "you're not even going to stop to say hi!"  So, when I pulled over a few hundred yards before the 1/2 marathon finish line to say hi, I was a little surprised that he wasn't actually all that excited to see me...at the time he was per-occupied with getting the beach sand off his feet.   So, after a (literal) minute there, including a photo taken with the kids and Nana on a very un-digital camera, I resumed the run to try and drop the pace a bit.

Mile 14-20, I averaged 8:12 minute miles, 

bringing the total average down to 8:31.

The strategy of starting off very slow and then accelerating through the rest of the race lead to the natural result of passing people...a LOT of people.  When the results were posted, I looked at my standing after the 6 mile time check, the 1/2 marathon time check, and at the finish.  I passed 80 people between mile 6 and 13.1, and then another 210 people in the second half.  The runner with the second most passes over that stretch had 200.  There are some obvious positives to passing that many people, but the downside is not having runners moving with you at your desired pace.  I realized that benefit of that at Nahant.  (My hope is to run Philly in fairly even splits, hopefully at around 1:40 for each, and I hope I can fall in with other runners who are moving at the same pace.)

Aside from the first and last mile of the half marathon, I would definitely qualify the first half of the marathon as "rolling hills," but the back half of the marathon was challenging.  The out-and-back nature was mentally challenging...just running up hills that I knew I would have to ascend again from the other direction (2-5 miles later, of course) made it hard to really power up the hills, and the entire run carried roughly the same elevation gain as the punishing Nahant 30k, and substantially more than the Boston Marathon.  Considering the elevation, and that I was running a training run, I'm very happy with the way I finished out the race.

Miles 21-26 I averaged 7:43 minute miles, 

bringing the total for the marathon down to 8:26.

I was lucky to have one young guy pass me coming down the hill at mile 23 or so got my competitive juices going.  I stuck with him along the beach and then coming back up the last steep incline (approaching mile 25) I passed him back and then kept him behind me through the finish, and I moved pretty fast through the final mile of the race, which I'm pleased with.  As for fuel, I held on to a pack of Jelly Belly sport beans (50 mg of caffeine in the bag) and chewed a couple with each water stop through about mile 15.  I took down a 50mg caf power gel at mile 7, a 25 mg caf power gel at mile 14, and 50 mg caf power gel at mile 19...all with water.  I tried to mix in gatorade as well as water at as many of the stops as I could, and also scored the top half of a banana at around mile 12.

Cait took 10 minutes off her 1/2 marathon PR and I didn't end up in the ER this time!!

Post race, I was a little out of it for a maybe an hour or two...I was actually struggling to stand during the above photo.  Getting a ton of liquids into my body (water, gatorade, coco water AND chocolate milk) made a huge difference, and when we stopped for lunch an hour after the race's finish, I stayed away from any fried or greasy food and stuck with a club sandwich (wrap) and rice.  The rice hit the spot.  The final stop on the way home was at CVS to get three bags of ice for an ice bath, which was misery! But, I followed that up with a hot bath (which I read later is not recommended for 48 hours after a marathon, but that was the same article that suggested waiting 26 days until your next hard workout....) and then an afternoon in compression calf sleeves and a ton of water, and by that night I was actually moving around really well!

So, all in all, a totally successful marathon training run!  I am a little daunted by the fact that my goal for Philly is to run 20 minutes (a HUGE drop) faster than Newport, but I still have 3 huge weeks of training/long runs left to go, and I'll have the benefit of a taper before Philly.  I like my bridge marathon approach, and I was able to check Rhode Island off my list of states!  Wins for the Neal-Murphy family all around!

Miles run in the past 12 months: 1,554
Miles run in 2014: 1,371
Philly plan through 10 weeks: 406 miles run vs planned 370.
Philly plan vs Boston plan through 10 weeks: 406 miles vs 378.

That concludes the "Race" portion of my training schedule, which included 6 races in the last 5 weeks: 22 miles at the RTB relay; 5k; 30k; 5k; Mile; Marathon.  Next week is a bit of a recovery week at 33 miles, with no speed work planned.  I do hope to get in a late week tempo run as well as a 15 mile long run next weekend.  This recovery week leads into 3 monster weeks averaging 44 miles a week, with Yasso 8-10x800s, longer tempo runs, and long runs of 16-22 miles with significant portions at marathon pace.  Should be fun!