These last few weeks have been really interesting from a training perspective. I have experienced true “redlining” of my abilities in many of my workouts.
This has really shown up in my track workouts at trying to maintain a super high pace for a given distance, whether it’s 800 meters or distance tempo workouts of up to 4000m in length. It also showed up last weekend for the Long Beach Half Marathon where I could feel and, later, see my effort and heart rate rise to super high levels for the entire race.
It’s a weird experience being in a redlined state for a long time. At points during my track intervals, I have gotten to the point of almost feeling dizzy and passing out, and then backing off a tad to maintain as high a pace as possible. In the longer distance tempo workouts, I have focused on leg turnover and, in maintaining a certain leg turnover rate, my HR jumps to a really high level.
It’s good practice. Pushing my tolerance to higher thresholds allows me to keep performance high for longer periods of time and maxes my output.
It’s potentially bad in that one of these days I may push over some physical limit and pass out during a race. That would definitely NOT be good.
Afterwards, I find that my body is a bit slower in recovering after these workouts. I have maintained my effort so close to my lactate threshold for so long that I feel it in my lungs and body for days afterwards.
I don’t know of any other way of training to push my performance higher; I need to continually push my body to the edge to eke out that last bit of speed. As long as I don’t push over the edge, it seems that my body recovers and learns so that next time I improve and it’s not so bad.
I look forward to seeing what happens at NYC in two weeks when I will maintain this level of output at marathon distance.

Yesterday, I ran my favorite hill loop, the Coyote Trail, in Rancho San Antonio. Well, favorite is a controversial term. I ran the loop seven times logging in 17 miles, legs burning out on the last two loops as I up my intensity, and feet getting totally abused on the steeper downhill coming down off Coyote Trail back to the starting area. Total time, 2 hours and 42 minutes.
Although it hurts (got blisters on both feet from the downhill action), I can’t think of a better way to prepare myself for the five bridges in the NYC course – my nemesis on the last three NYC marathons.
The NYC course, sans the bridges, is relatively flat to rolling with long, gradual uphills at times. Some smaller steep hills exist as you cross into Central Park, but that’s about it. What makes this course hard is the fact that there are five bridges in the course which cross back and forth from borough to borough. These annoying bridges are relatively steep hill climbs and interrupt your normal tempo rhythm through the city streets. Last year, it was the 59th Street bridge which literally sucked the energy out of my sails, and initiated the longest “wall” I’ve encountered to date – about 9 miles worth!
My hope is that doing those hill repeats, I can get strong enough to tackle the hills at speed and have enough left over to finish the race. I am optimistic now that I’ve done 7 relatively strong hill repeats which are all steeper than the bridges by far.
Yesterday, I weighed in at 150 lbs with clothes on. Wow. Dropping fast. That means I am about 148-149 lbs without clothes on. Last year at the beginning of the NYC Marathon, I was 147 lbs the morning of. I wonder if I’ll be less this year with a month left to go, and the most intense endurance training coming up.
The less I weigh, the less I carry around with me, and I waste less energy because I’m not carrying around useless weight.
Onwards to more speedwork during the week, crossing over into long tempo sessions. Then, long endurance fartlek intervals on the weekends to round out the training.

I live in this apartment building. When I emerge from the elevator with my kid, she takes off running down the hallway because she wants to hide and then scare the heck out of me when I turn the corner.
Just recently, I can’t help but study her running.
Her torso is very still and relaxed. It does not sway from side to side. Her arms pump easily as she takes off down the hallway. They move backwards and forwards and do not waste in side to side motion. She runs a natural Pose Method, completely on the balls of her feet and I watch her legs kick in perfect form backward, and no wasted side motion at all, on each stride.
This is the way kids run. They have an instinctive way of moving and it is very economical and efficient. Somehow, they just know how to do this. There is no learning, just doing. It is the way that we, as adults, apparently are trying to learn again, and we call this the Pose Method, or any one of many names we can call the perfect running form.
I marvel at what we’ve lost as we grow to be adults. Ever watch other people run? You see people’s torsos bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You see arms sway back and forth across their bodies, like they’re doing the watusi. Their legs churn, but yet they heel strike or have some weird foot flopping as the leg kicks backward on each stride. Watch other people run and see. Then do something really radical like videotaping yourself and…shudder….
As we grow older, we’ve lost that instinctive way of running in the most efficient and effective way. We learn new habits like sitting on couches and watching TV and doing that REALLY WELL. We forget what it’s like to be a kid anymore, in more ways than one. Whether it’s running or being creative, or being silly, or just laughing your heart out, we’ve lost the kids in ourselves.
People always say we have a lot to learn from our kids, and athletics is no exception.

For years I’ve been running in Asics Gel Nimbus running shoes. They are neutral (no motion control) and supposedly have the most cushioning of any running shoe. And they worked great for 3 years. Until now.
This year, they decided to make the toe box narrower and the tongue has padding in it. This combination meant that all of a sudden, my foot was bound by the shoe more tighter than before. After about half an hour of running, my foot started to swell and then caused bruising against the edge of my hard orthotics. Bruising the ball of your foot is no fun. You can’t really run hard until it goes away and it’s pretty painful to walk on.
This went on for about 3 weeks with me trying to figure out what was wrong. After 3 weeks of trying new tying methods, taping the orthotics down, new padding, etc. it boiled down to the change in the basic design of the shoe.
ARG!
I had 3 weeks of painful running because Asics chose to change the design of their shoe! The old design was fine. Why did they mess with it?
So I tried out the new Adidas A3 Microride which is extremely cushy in the forefoot, due to its cushioning cylinders which run along the bottom of the shoe. And they don’t bind my foot and make it swell.
Sorry Asics. I made the switch. You and other manufacturers should learn that you shouldn’t have keep messing with a working formula.

OK so after I found out about Yasso 800s, I told my coach about it and he gave me a workout progression based on 800s. I started running 800s and now I’m doing that at about 3:05-3:19 per 800.
My new (CRAZY) goal: run a marathon in 3 hours. YIKES. But given my 800 times, it looks like I can get close…?
I’m psyched and going for it!