Yesterday, I ran Rancho San Antonio and did my painful hill repeats.
The turkeys were out in force. Ten hens with one big male, tail feathers all spread out like he was somethin’ else. Peacockin’ ain’t just for pickup artists! But it was fun flying past them and seeing a whole bunch of wild turkeys struttin’ about while I was doing my intervals.
4 loops this time. I was going to do 5, but on the 4th I’m going up the hill and I come up behind another dude. He was running ok but I managed to pass him. I keep going at steady pace, but then I hear steps and his heavy breathing right behind me. I pick it up a bit just to keep ahead, but I hear him breathing and know he is only a few steps behind me. I get a bit more competitive. I pick it up more and he is still just behind me and I’m running hard now but not so hard that I’m flaming out.
He on the other hand is taking heavy breaths. I know his flame out is near and wonder if he will pass me. I pick it up a bit more and then…as I pull up to the top of the hill, I hear Mr. Heavy Breather drop off and know he just flamed out. I soar up and over and proceed fast down the other side.
Turkeys and a bit of pick me up all in one day. Nice.

Today I ran a complete workout without having my feet swell up or get major blisters. Ever since Asics changed their design, I’ve been going nuts trying to find running shoes that fit me good enough to run in. Everything was either too tight or my foot would flop around inside, causing lots of problems like swelling and blistering.
But today, thank God for Velocy. These cool shoes that help you get into Pose method running also have a shape that fits my feet perfectly without causing them to swell and also blister.
The downside is that Velocy isn’t a mainstream shoe. They could go out of business and I’d be back to ground zero on running shoes. Time to go out there and stock up before they disappear!!!!

Yesterday morning, I ran for the first time on my Velocy shoes. If you recall, Velocy running shoes are supposed to be designed such that they help you run on the balls of your feet. How interesting a feel these shoes presented!
It was early morning and I decided to run on the treadmill with a form run, which is a jogging warmup, some drills, and then some quick, short speedwork.
I put on my Velocy shoes and I remembered the first time I put them on at the NYC Marathon expo. They are stiffer than usual and not as much cushion as you would expect from a running shoe. The sole is curved slightly to encourage your foot to roll forward on each stride and thus get you into a forefoot running style. I was not sure I believed that the structure of the shoe could make this happen, but I had to try them to be sure.
Note that I already run with the Pose Method, which is basically a forefoot running style. So I wondered what difference these shoes would make on my running style…? I do admit that when I get tired, my form gets messy. I also acknowledge that my left leg runs slightly different than my right. It’s something I’ve been trying to even out over the last 2 years of running Pose.
Upon hopping on the treadmill, I could immediately sense a difference in running. The arc in the sole definitely put me more forward onto the balls of my feet while running. With each step, I could feel the foot rolling through the arc of the sole. I think for the most part, their claim is true that it does help get into that form. But I also wonder that since I am already running Pose, that the change is not that dramatic. I would love to have someone who runs midfoot or even heel strike to try these shoes and see what happens.
I also wonder if these shoes are acting as a crutch for running a form which I should train my body to naturally do, which is what I’ve been doing up to now. If I ran on these shoes more often, would I feel worse going back to normal running shoes? Or would I be better at forefoot, aka Pose, running because of them?
Hopefully before the season starts, I can run more on these shoes and be able to compare them to running with normal running shoes.

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!

Today I traded emails with a buddy of mine who is a sub-3 hour marathoner.
If you do the calculation, to run a 3 hour marathon, you’d have to maintain a pace of 6:52/mile the whole way, and that’s not counting dealing with the terrain and environment (ie. if it’s hilly or hot/humid day).
That’s pretty freakin’ fast.
So I asked my friend about how fast your track paces would have to be in order to have a chance of running a 3 hour marathon. My sub-3 hour friends are running 400s at about 65-75 seconds and 800s at about 2:30-2:45, and able to maintain that over as many as ten repeats.
In fact, some guy named Bart Yasso, the race services manager at Runner’s World magazine, came up with this workout of 10×800 on the track, and if you can run this workout at fairly even pace, you can get a prediction on your marathon time. Another writer named this the “Yasso 800” workout. So basically, if you can maintain a pace of minutes:seconds for each of ten 800s, then your predicted marathon pace would be about (minutes->hours):(seconds->minutes). My friends on the track who are sub-3 hour marathoners typically can run 10×800 at about 2:30-2:45 per 800, so that would mean a predicted marathon finish time of 2 hours and 30 minutes to 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Ugh. Currently I could probably sustain a 400 of about 1:32 and 800 of about 3:35-3:40! Good prediction of a 3:40-ish marathon finish time so not bad. But a far cry from 3 hours!
This morning I did 10×400 and was redlining towards the end of the last few 400s to make a ~1:32 finish!
At least now I have a rough measuring stick on how to improve. To get from 1:32 on a 400 to 65 seconds, I merely need to run that twice as fast. To get from 3:35 800s to 2:30 800s, I just have to run about a third faster. Easy.
…(sigh)….