"Off-Seasoning"

With my last big race of the year behind me and a fairly long gap before my first significant race of 2016 I’ve entered what I consider to be one of the most important times of the year, the so-called “offseason”.  This is the period of time which separates the dedicated runner from the casual one and when the snow melts it is always clear who has hit it hard and who has fallen off during the winter months.  Like many others I can certainly fall into the trap of slacking off during the winter, justifying my rest as “recovery” and blaming the weather for missing a speed session or two... and believe me once that snowball starts rolling it can be hard to stop.   To keep myself on track I’ve put a clear plan in place to cover these winter months and prep me for spring training which is only 8 weeks away. 

The running portion of my training will be covered by a variant on the 5K plan below… I put in optional cross training for the Monday and Wednesday recovery runs.  Going with a 5-K plan I’m able to drop my mileage significantly while keeping up with my speed work.  This will give my legs some much needed recovery while allowing me to dedicate more of my training time to swimming, biking and strength training.

For swimming I’m less specific, I scheduled workouts for Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and each workout consists of mainly slower build swims, pulls and kicks… once I get my base built up in the coming weeks I’ll start adding in more speed work.  So far the swimming has been going great although since I’ll have to send my Garmin 920XT in for repairs this week I will be back to manually counting my laps for a couple weeks and that is going to suck!  I’ll have a post shortly reviewing some of the new gear I picked up for this year in case anyone is looking to upgrade or replace their current swim equipment.

As you may know biking is by far my least favorite activity in my winter triathlon training.  Don’t get me wrong, going for a nice bike ride in the country is a lot of fun however sitting on a trainer or spin bike at the Y is rough!  I’ve been doing a lot of my cycling during my lunches at the Y; I can get 30-40 minute ride at normally a pretty high intensity and that can really relieve some stress from the work day.   I’d like to get in the habit of getting to the 5:30 spin class at the Y but mornings have been hit or miss for me lately.  Right now I’m just trying to stay consistent and slowly build my time on the bike so when the spring hits I’m prepared to hit the roads hard.

The last piece of my program is the strength training, I’m primarily working on core strength and stabilizing my midsection, especially with my back problems this is a pretty big focus for the winter months.  I do strength training 2-3 days a week either on my lunch break or before work at the Y though I’ll mention I’ve been a little hit or miss here lately, I’m really got to nail down my days going into the new year, again planning and consistency are so important to keep the training on track. 

So that is my game plan for the next several weeks so that when my marathon training picks up in February I’m ready to rock it!!   Hope all your training is going well too, let me know if I can help in any way or feel free to give me suggestions! 

Happy Running!! - Cory

Marathon Redemption, Served up Southern Style!

2015 St. Jude’s Memphis Marathon (3:04:48)

I just got back from Memphis, Tennessee where I completed my last race of 2015, the St. Jude’s Memphis Marathon!  As you may know this was not a planned race in my schedule, rather I made the decision a few weeks ago to sign up and roll the dice after a somewhat disappointing finish at the Chicago Marathon in October.   As it turned out the decision was a good one and even though I went into this race fairly unprepared, it resulted in my second fastest marathon to date and another great learning experience but let’s start at the beginning…

The St. Jude’s Memphis Marathon was held on Saturday, December 5^th in downtown Memphis.   I hit the road on Friday morning around 6am with Jamie, the kids and the new puppy for the 12 hour drive to the Cook Convention center where I had to pick up my packet by expo closing time of 8pm.   It was a fairly uneventful trip down and we were able to get to Memphis around 6pm; after picking up my packet we drove about an hour outside of Memphis where we stayed the night at my in-laws house in Oakland.   By the time we got to my in-laws I only had time for a quick meal and hit the sack.  It’s worth mentioning my entire diet the day before the marathon consisted of fast food which is in no way ideal and I definitely paid for it a bit the next day.

Marathon morning I slept in and missed my standard pre-race meal I eat around 3:30am, also forgot to eat breakfast so I hit a gas station for a quick banana on the way into town.  At this point I was starting to get nervous.  My lack of good pre-race nutrition and meal planning already had my stomach in a knot and the feeling was compounded by the thought that I really had put in one good week of training in the weeks following the Chicago Marathon.   I sunk into the backseat of the car feeling the impending doom of the inevitable “Chicago 2.0” I feared was ahead.   Right then I received a message from my buddy Shannon wishing me luck and added the phrase “Run it for those that may never get to run again”... boy I can’t tell you how much I needed that to really put things in perspective, Shannon has a great way of snapping me back to reality when I’m feeling sorry for myself hahaha.  Here I am worrying about everything that could go horribly wrong in this race when I should be focusing on the simple fact I get to run for over 3 hours for a great cause and man I love to run!

Once at the race my luck streak continued as minutes before race start I finally got through the 20 minute wait for the Porta-Potty only to find there was no T.P. left… I’ll spare you the details but after some quick witted improvising I managed to finished up and got into my corral just in time for the race announcements.  The Memphis mayor gave a nice speech and they announced the total amount donated to the St. Jude’s hospital from marathon proceeds topped 8.2 million dollars this year!  They flashed some videos on the big screen of some of the patients and it was another eye opening moment where my “race day struggles” just didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things… before I knew it the gun went off and I was on my way!

“Remember Chicago!” I screamed at myself as I once again jumped out the gate like Thomas chasing a sub sandwich.  Pacing and smart racing was going to be key if I wanted to finish this race, let alone get a decent time.  I forced myself to take the first mile out about 40 seconds slower than my first mile at Chicago and it still didn’t feel great, it’s hard to describe other than I just didn’t feel like racing for some reason.  I tried to push the negative thoughts from my mind but the first 6 miles went by horribly slow;  luckily on mile 7 we ran through the St. Jude’s campus and I got to high five some patients that were cheering on the race and that really lifted my spirits.  The next couple miles went pretty well until I started getting a bad stomach ache about mile 10.  I have no doubt the McDonalds, Wendy’s combination I ate the night before the race was reminding me how important of a role nutrition plays in marathon racing.   A few minutes late I had nearly convinced myself to drop down to the half marathon before the split at mile 11.  However I then reflected on what Shannon said that morning about  those that may never run again and I thought of all the kids I ran by on the hospital campus who’s problems were way bigger than a self-induced garbage food stomach ache…  I kept on at the split with the full marathon group and told myself if I was going to continue I was going to do it right and enjoy the race...

Now considering how rough the first part of the race was, when I made that decision to keep on going at mile 11 a switch flipped in my head and it’s like someone finally turned on the lights!  My stomach ache faded out of mind along with the burden I had felt of the many miles ahead.  I was now running in the moment, enjoying each step and feeling a powerful surge of energy pushing me ahead.  I turned my watch to heart rate and would not look at my pace or time again for the remaining 15 miles of the race, time really didn’t matter anymore as I was just having a good time doing what I loved most.  Miles now started FLYING by, before I knew it I was past the 25K mark, then mile 16 and 17.  At this point I overheard a runner ahead of me state the next two miles were the hardest of the course gaining about 250 feet over a short span... I smiled to myself as I almost made a comment about being from Dubuque but I figured they would have never heard of our crazy hilly Iowa town so I just surged past in silence while the guy commented, “better pace yourself”… I again cracked a smile as ironically, for maybe the first time, I was!! J

I kept on trucking and as the race closed in on the final mile I turned the corner and had to do a double take as I spotted the 3:05 pacer only a couple hundred feet ahead.  Up to this point I was thinking I was on track to hit somewhere around a 3:08 which I was perfectly fine with but I forgot to take into account the start delay for the elite corral… a very pleasant surprise to say the least!  Luckily since I had been pacing myself well I had plenty of gas in the tank so the last half mile I turned up the heat and caught the pacers to finish just under my BQ time!  

The finish was inside the downtown baseball stadium and it was pretty cool running onto the field to finish around 2^nd base, although climbing the steps to leave proved to be a bit of a challenge.  I got a finish photo quick with one of the many Elvis impersonators and headed on my jolly way with a big smile on my face and a great feeling of accomplishment I hadn’t had in a while!  It was a roller coaster of a race which is reminiscent of my 2015 in general but it really was the perfect last chapter to this year’s story.  It really has been a heck of a year and I'm grateful for all the races both good and bad that continue to make me a stronger and happier runner.... and as this year comes to a close I am just itching to start writing the first chapter of what is sure to be an exciting 2016!!

Happy Running!! - Cory