Part Two: Progress!

So I would be remiss if I did not include a post to capture all the actual running progress since the Rainbow light bulb went off in my head.

When last we left our hero, running-wise, I was injured from the race, hobbling on a bad ankle and battling plantar fasciitis.  After those 8 excruciating miles and pain with every step, I took a day off completely, cross-trained the next day, and ran easy 4 of the next 5, with another rest day in between.  A week later, I was feeling good enough to attempt my first set of Yasso 800s.  Bart Yasso, running guru extraordinaire and chief running officer for Runner's World magazine, suggests running 800m repeats in the time you hope to run your marathon.  According to the theory, if I can run up to 10 x 800m in 4:00 (minutes) each, I can run a marathon in 4:00 (hours).  I started with a set of 4 and nailed the workout!  As an added bonus, Bart himself congratulated me in a tweet!  :)

Two weeks after Wounded Warrior, I wanted another shot at the race.  I drove out to Las Colinas so I could run the same course.  Hopped out my car in time to catch this...

I wasn't necessarily trying to break the 2-hour mark this time (though thought it was theoretically possible if things went well).  Although it wasn't raining, I had a lot of extra hurdles to overcome compared to race day: no taper, no race day adrenaline, and no water stations (which meant carrying a fuel belt with three 10 oz. bottles).  Still, I approached it optimistically...

And still failed to hit my mark.  :(

BUT, I ran smarter, faster, and happier than I had 2 weeks earlier.  I still crashed after about an hour, but I did a better job of listening to my body and didn't blow up nearly as badly.  I actually finished feeling human and could still hear out of both ears.  I ran the whole thing this time, except for one stop to refill my water bottles, which were nearly dry with a couple miles still to go.  Progress, not perfection.  I'll take it.

The way I crashed an hour into my run (again) sparked something from my reading.  Lactate threshold (LT) is sometimes characterized as the pace one could hold for about 30-60 minutes.  So apparently, that's what I've been hitting trying these half marathons.  From what I understand, it's not necessarily that my heart rate is out of control (I was in averaging in the 180s for about 8 miles this time), but that is an indicator that I'm bumping up against LT, and at some point, it's like being on a sinking ship, taking on water faster than you can bail.  If your muscles accumulate lactate faster than they can clear it, you drown, so to speak.  So now, I'm trusting my training plan to raise my LT so that I can hold my marathon goal pace for 4 hours instead of just one.  :)

I was excited about this discovery and the overall improvement but still disappointed that I didn't seem to be on track with my training, based on the earlier "shave a minute/week off the predicted marathon time" approach using McRun. 

Thank God for Thursday.  For my speed session, I decided to run a 5K, which I hadn't done for time since January.  Five months ago, I'd run it in 29:37 (9:31 pace), and that was only my second time running 5K in under 30 minutes.  Then, this happened:

I've taken more than a minute per mile off my time since January!  The most exciting part of this for me is seeing that 17 weeks before MCM, it's predicting a 4:13 marathon.  Yes, 5K predictions are probably less reliable than 13.1, but this shows what I am capable of if I'm not at LT for an hour.  

Go back to the 2-second rule with weight loss.  I am on pace to lose another 15-20 pounds, which alone would get me to my 4-hour goal...

...Or let's say I don't lose another pound, but it's 60 degrees outside instead of 80.  They say for every 10 degrees above 50F, performance declines by 3%.  Over the past 10 years, average temperature for MCM has been in the mid-50s, so 60 seems conservative.  That still means a 6% improvement over the numbers I'm putting up under current conditions.  Factor that in, and predicted time drops to 3:58+.  

If either of those things alone gets me to my goal, imagine what both of them together with an extra 4 months of training, a taper, and some race day adrenaline could do!  I'm pumped!

As if Thursday wasn't already great enough, I also got a retweet from the hallowed Hal Higdon (so starstruck on Twitter right now!), and came home to these:

All told, a banner running day!  Couldn't wait to try these out on my 20-miler this weekend....