Positive Derivative

Wouldn't it be nice
    if running was predictable?
        If all the work you put in
              determined exactly what
                                you got out.
                                    If, for example,
                                        a great workout
                                           always meant
                                           you were ready
                                                    to run fast
                                       in the near future.
                                   Or if taking
                     some down time
          always made you
    actually feel better.
     In short, if running
                 was logical...
                             If In
                               exactly equaled Out.
                                    But it doesn't all the time.
                                     Call it what you want -
                             a coefficient of chaos
                       or a white noise term.
                          It's a deviation
                             from expectation.
                                Sometimes you'll be
                                          above average,
                                       often below,
                                   and occasionally
                                you'll run about how
                          you thought you could.
                       I think that's why
                   people compare
          running to life.
             Because no matter
                 how hard you try
                          to control it,
                                a certain piece
                                        will always be
                                                unpredictable.
                                                     Celebrate the favorable
                                                                           outliers.
                                                                  But don't dwell
                                                              on the individual
                                                            shitty ones.  
                                                                 The goal should be
                                                                         to minimize the
                                                                               fluctuation and
                                                                                                  keep
                                                                                                    your
                                                                                                      average
                                                                                                       performance
                                                                                                                sloping
                                                                                                                  upwards.

Check out the lap (400m) splits from my most recent 5000 in Palo Alto, California.  You don't have be good at math or know the first thing about running to see what happened:
64   64   64   64   63   64   65   65   65   65   71   72 

I died.  Payed the pied piper.  Bonked.  Blew Up.  Contracted a case of Rigamortus Rex.  I had been on pace for 13:25 and ended with 13:44, far off the US "A" standard of 13:32.

In the hurt locker during the final kilometer of the 5000 at the Payton Jordan Invite

Looking more closely, however, I draw some positives.  Up until 4k in, the pacing was impeccable (thanks Donn)  Instead of tailing off the pace with a few 67s and a 69, the guillotine came down, taking me straight from 65 to 71, and that's fairly unusual.  Apparently I lost my head and forgot that there was another kilometer left.  More likely, I was so dialed in against the pain that it took a tidal wave of fatigue to knock me over, and when it did crest over and fall it really pitted me.  The upshot is that I made it 80% of the way to a great run.  That last fifth can be fixed.

When I look at my trajectory's derivative (can't help but be a nerd), where I'm going, I'm very much encouraged.  Two weeks before this race I ran 14:11 at Mt. Sac.  Right now I'm fluctuating widely in my performance, but the average is definitely rising.  By the end of the season I'd like to run more predictably by tuning out the white noise.  I have a concrete plan for doing so.

We got to work this week with a ten mile progression run out on beautiful Todd Road, one of the few truly flat places to run that distance in the Blowing Rock / Boone, NC area.  At a mild altitude of 3850 feet, Todd follows the New River basin and curves through forest and farmland.  I ended up averaging 5:18 / mile with a few slower miles to start.  The last couple miles were both 5:01 but weren't easy, confirming my need for this type of run.  We'll keep strength sessions like these in our routine well into the year.  I think a lot of people make the mistake of removing them prematurely in the racing season, and lose the backbone of the strength they need to finish well.

With no races until the Music City Mile in Nashville on June 7th, I've deemed this month "Momentum May" because the next few weeks are about stoking the fires of aerobic fitness before returning to racing in June and July.  That means a few weeks of solid volume in the 90-100 range, some longer long runs, and a few good hilly efforts in addition to the event specific interval sessions we do on the track and grass.  It also means getting in the habit of attacking the secondary but very important supplemental activities from now until the end of track season.

Zap Fitness at Half Moon Bay on the Pacific.  Pictured are George Alex, Tyler Pennel, Joe Stilin, and Chris Moen.

As I've become more and more settled into a life at Zap dedicated to running, the days have gone by surprisingly fast.  I'm not spending any more time actually on my feet running than I ever did while I additionally had commitments to school or work.  Yet the days get filled with the little things that support that running.  A big conversation at Zap this year has been about nutrition and hydration.  It's one thing to understand the top level view of what and when to eat and drink, but it's another to know how to use that information in your individual diet.  What to bring to the end of a run.  What to eat when you wake up; what not to eat when taking iron.  How much to eat, when, and in what carb/protein amounts to maximize recovery.  If I can eek out an extra 0.5% from a workout because I had food and hydration ready to go, awesome.  It's something I never did a good job of before this.

Coming out of Momentum May the racing starts and doesn't stop until August for me.  The next two races will be a mile in Nashville followed by a 5k at Portland Track Festival.  Then there's the US Outdoor Championships in Sacramento after which I'll head to Europe again for some overseas racing.  Here's to keeping things moving upwards!

Caesar's Head

I listen to the submarine bubbling noise my snorkel makes as I stand, upside-down, on the bottom of the sailboat in Lake Michigan.  It's a smaller spartan barque - a J/24 - and that means racing.  When I was twelve my dad bought the 1979 hulk in lackluster condition from a retired sailor in Racine, Wisconsin, going straight to work on it with the same can of elbow grease he used on our house and cars as I grew up.  This boat is a classic, he says.  It'll be the envy of the sail yard one day, if we can keep the water out of the hull.

We're anchored in sixteen feet of water a quarter mile off Atwater beach in Milwaukee last summer above the wreck of the Appomattox, a steamer that stranded here during a storm in 1905.  The crew gave up on her after two weeks of wallowing on the rocks.  I push off our own hull,  diving straight down until my ears pop and the water is chilly.  I can make out one side of the 319 foot steamer looming through the blue-green, slightly opaque water, imagining what it looked like in 1905.

View of Caesar's Head climb from Zap
Fitness' private jet

The Appomattox floats into my head because my ears are popping again during a hard run up to Caesar's Head State Park in upstate South Carolina on Friday.  I've flown dozens of times in the past few years without pain in my ears, yet climbing 2100 vertical feet up 7.4 miles on highway 276 is making them ring, probably because I don't have the luxury of yawning at this breathing and heart rate.  I'm too busy maintaining the tightly spinning feedback loop in my mind that I've set up to stay focused: "this hurts." "shut up." "it hurts." "feet under you." "f*** this is hard." ""shut up... knee drive."  The focus is incredibly easy to break out of as we grind up switchback after switchback through deciduous forest interrupted occasionally by Walhalla Sheet rock outcroppings to the top.  I try to keep Kevin's blue shirt within sight up ahead.

A staple in Zap Fitness' repertoire, the long sustained hill climb is a very aerobic, strength based session done at low speed that erases the pounding of a similar effort on flat ground.  My time of 47:59 on Caesar's head comes out to 6:29 minutes/mile.  On flat ground, I'd need to run almost two minutes per mile faster to achieve the same aerobic effect, but would be hurting much more the next day.  Our other reason for climbing big hills is form improvement.  Pete tells me it will help reduce extraneous lateral motion in my stride and keep everything moving forward.  Even so, we don't want to end the day with the memory of just 6:30 pace in our legs.  At the top we run 8 x 200 meter strides, getting faster on each as a group.  The first few felt sluggish coming off the climb, but we were rolling well by the end.

Being a rookie on the team, Friday's Caesar Head is only my second climb and I'm still getting the hang of them.  At the top I'll admit I threw a bit of a temper tantrum, partly because I got my ass handed to me by Kevin and Cole.  Thinking about it though, this is why I joined Zap Fitness.  My future improvement depends on the continued development of my strength and efficiency.  Sure, I could go out and rip intervals on the track all season long and maybe retire a 13:20's-low guy in few years.  But real, deep-down improvement begins with things like a little pride check from super strong half marathoners and 10k guys during a session a little outside my comfort zone on Friday.  Besides, I can always get back at them on fast stuff like the 200s.  It's a nice dynamic.

The crew at the top of the Caesar's Head climb.  This is purportedly the last known photograph of Chris' beard before he shaved it.  Left to right Kevin Schwab, Cameron Bean, Chri$ Moen, Joe Stilin, Cole Atkins


* * * * *

We have another two weeks of training camp down here in Greenville before many of us open up at the Raleigh Relays (pronounced rolly, not ra-lay, apparantly) and we return home to Zap in North Carolina.  Besides training I've been filling my time with several side projects.  I'm working with a friend on an entry to a worldwide sustainable engineering competition.  We're designing a wind energy system that uses a kite to generate power in disaster relief areas, places not accessible by large trucks, ocean buoys, and mountainsides.  In the interest of eventually being able to label myself as a halfway decent writer, I have three short stories in the works.  Two of them are collaborations with team mates Cole and George.  We each write about a paragraph and switch off.  The other is based in Austin, Texas.  And of course, I've been reading a lot.

You might be waiting for the tie-back to the Appomattox.  Well... aren't we all searching for something in a world that's slightly opaque at times, might feel chilly, and for which we may have to feel some pain in our ears to find?