race report: gridiron classic 4M

Charlie Pendejo said:

Splits 2-4: 6:31, 6:37, 6:15. That sums to 26:17, a :54 PR. Woo-hoo!

Nice report Charlie. I'd like to think that I could give you a run for your
money if we were to ever cross paths. My 5K pace is round the 6:20 mark
but I've never run a 4 miler and I know I suck mightily as the distance
increases. (Kinda ironic when my favourite race is the trail ultra). ;-)

Nice to read something on rec.running that *isn't* from one of the regular
trolls.

Tim

Charlie Pendejo said:

summary
-------
Sometimes it's hard to guess what kind of time you're gonna run, prior
to the race. But it's pretty rare that you finish in literally half
the time you anticipated.

[full story went here]

very nice, and especially given the kind of training you've had to put up
with since November. What kind of shoes did you wear?

On a side note: is it hard to get used to, these short races with 5000
runners? Sounds like living hell to me - I have a hard time lining up for
a 5K with more than about 300 people - but maybe you get used to it after
a while. Then again, maybe the crowded start kept you from going out too
fast and allowed for that nice kick at the end.

Karen

--
live! vicariously!

Charlie Pendejo said:

summary
-------
Sometimes it's hard to guess what kind of time you're gonna run, prior
to the race. But it's pretty rare that you finish in literally half
the time you anticipated.

....

..

Quoted message said:

Finished feeling seriously spent, a couple notches shy of puking up my
pre-race banana and accelerade but close enough that it crossed my
mind.

Splits 2-4: 6:31, 6:37, 6:15. That sums to 26:17, a :54 PR. Woo-hoo!

Nice race, Charlie. See what you can do without speedwork 😉 Even a
finishing kick.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Anyhow, I'm very pleased especially considering this is my first race
of the year.

Sounds like good things ahead! Congrats!

Dot

--
Just wing it, it's an adventure; don't think about strategy.
~Julie Udchachon, in reference to the upcoming Susitna 2006

"Charlie Pendejo" <[email hidden]> wrote

Nice report. But I'm wondering why you left out the parts about sliding
down the cliff, crawling back in to the fray with bloody fingers, fighting
the brutal Afgan Winter, faking out the charging bear with a brilliant
stutter-step, passing the leader at the tape, and getting both Oxygen and
IV's at the end, while comely masseuses worked you over with magic fingers,
an an attractive TV reporter interviewed you for the 6 o'clock news.

Quoted message said:

66.8% WAVA, my new high water mark. Previous was 65.9. Not that close
to 70 just yet but it is in my sights.

Excellent. 70 is gonna go down like a [insert salacious reference here].
With your patented 200+ turnover (observed first hand on rocky trail
downhills), you're gonna hit 75 if you keep at it...

Quoted message said:

200 people finished ahead of me. None ran under 5:08/mile, so I guess
it wasn't super-competitive, but good enough for slow ol' me. A 57
year old dude beat me by over 3:00

That's something like 84% wava, equivalent to a 31 minute 10k...

Quoted message said:

and I also failed to catch a small
assortment of rug rats aged 15 and under.

15 is ok, but if any 6 year olds beat you, you'd be best advised not to
mention it...

-- Dan

"Dot" <dot.h@#duh?att.net> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Nice race, Charlie. See what you can do without speedwork 😉 Even a
finishing kick.

That is to be expected, actually.

Lydiard said that if your kick is *too* strong, that is a sign that you
aren't doing enough speedwork. His logic was that speedwork enables you to
train the fast twitch muscles to behave aerobically, and those trained fast
twitch fibres help you hit a higher average pace. This detracts from the
blistering finishing kick, but is better overall.

Dan Stumpus said:

"Dot" <dot.h@#duh?att.net> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Nice race, Charlie. See what you can do without speedwork 😉 Even a
finishing kick.

That is to be expected, actually.

Lydiard said that if your kick is *too* strong, that is a sign that you
aren't doing enough speedwork. His logic was that speedwork enables you to
train the fast twitch muscles to behave aerobically, and those trained fast
twitch fibres help you hit a higher average pace. This detracts from the
blistering finishing kick, but is better overall.

Thanks. (that's a sincere thanks, not a sarcastic thanks)
Now there goes my excuse (no speedwork) for being so slow.😉

Actually, I think I read recently also that going over 2 hrs or so
(fatigueing slow twitch) may recruit fast twitch also. But I'm not sure
if that's training dependent - ie someone who runs 5-hr long runs may
find they're just getting warmed up at 2 hrs.

Dot

--
Just wing it, it's an adventure; don't think about strategy.
~Julie Udchachon, in reference to the upcoming Susitna 2006

"Charlie Pendejo" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

...
Splits 2-4: 6:31, 6:37, 6:15. That sums to 26:17, a :54 PR. Woo-hoo!

66.8% WAVA, my new high water mark. Previous was 65.9. Not that close
to 70 just yet but it is in my sights.

200 people finished ahead of me. None ran under 5:08/mile, so I guess
it wasn't super-competitive, but good enough for slow ol' me. A 57
year old dude beat me by over 3:00, and I also failed to catch a small
assortment of rug rats aged 15 and under.

Anyhow, I'm very pleased especially considering this is my first race
of the year. Another 4 miler in 3 weeks, same course I think. Maybe
I'll get under 26:00 if all goes well and the weather is again
conducive.

Hey nice race Charlie! All that work last year didn't go to waste, and this
your first effort of the season. Without speed training right? Good luck in
3 weeks.

-Tony

Dan Stumpus said:

"Dot" <dot.h@#duh?att.net> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Nice race, Charlie. See what you can do without speedwork 😉 Even a
finishing kick.

That is to be expected, actually.

Lydiard said that if your kick is *too* strong, that is a sign that you
aren't doing enough speedwork.

Another perspective on this from the point of view of trying to run fast
times: if your finishing kick is too strong, you didn't run the rest of the
race hard enough.

Recently, I closed out my mile in 33 and the last 400 of my 3k in 73 compared
to an average of resp 35/lap and 77/400m -- not bad, but a true finishing
kick would be more like 31-32 and sub 70.

Of course we don't have splits on Charlie's kick, so we'll never no exactly
how fast it really was.

In his famous sub 4 mile, Bannister closed in 59 (he was a kicker who could
close much faster). And Bannister opened a whole new era of using rabbits to
set a fast pace which meant that people would run records by running their
legs off in the start and middle of the run, which pretty much destroys ones
finishing kick but produces a fast time.

Quoted message said:

His logic was that speedwork enables you to
train the fast twitch muscles to behave aerobically, and those trained fast
twitch fibres help you hit a higher average pace. This detracts from the
blistering finishing kick, but is better overall.

I'd really like to see some hard evidence to support this. Lydiard was a great
coach, but he was also very hit and miss. What made him succesful is that he
was right on the stuff that really mattered -- peaking, and the effectiveness
of high training volume (high compared to what others were doing back then)

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/

Quoted message said:

summary
-------
Sometimes it's hard to guess what kind of time you're gonna run, prior
to the race. But it's pretty rare that you finish in literally half
the time you anticipated.

What?! Did you cut the course?

Quoted message said:

Turned out she couldn't race today. Her knee had been giving her
problems and was worse this morning than yesterday - visible swollen,
and somewhat painful if she moved the wrong way. Hopefully she's able
to troubleshoot and fix this in short order; in the meantime I was
freed up to race.

Oh. I get it now.

Quoted message said:

Splits 2-4: 6:31, 6:37, 6:15. That sums to 26:17, a :54 PR. Woo-hoo!

66.8% WAVA, my new high water mark. Previous was 65.9. Not that close
to 70 just yet but it is in my sights.

I came very close to 70 a few times. My secret is to just become old
without slowing down too much. Of course with this ultra training, I'm
sure my speed is non-existant.

Nice job Mr. Pendejo! Thanks for the report.

--
Phil M.

Tim said:

I'd like to think that I could give you a run for your money if we
were to ever cross paths. My 5K pace is round the 6:20 mark

Sounds to me, and McMillan agrees (http://tinyurl.com/34haz), that
you're a bit faster. I'd like to think I am catching up though.

Quoted message said:

I suck mightily as the distance increases. (Kinda ironic when
my favourite race is the trail ultra). ;-)

Yeah, I really don't enjoy, per se, races of about 10 km and less, and
see myself as a candidate for "early retirement" to the world of trail
ultras in a few years; but my WAVA scores seem to imply I may be
slightly less bad at the shorter stuff. Maybe some day I'll join you
not in a painful 4 mile or 5 km, but on that crazy 950 miler or
whatever it is on the West Highland Way. Now *that* sounds like a
race!

Quoted message said:

Nice to read something on rec.running that *isn't* from one of the
regular trolls.

I make sure to get lots of fiber and fruit, Tim, which keeps me regular
as rain. Not sure why you'd characterize me otherwise. ;-)

- - - - - - - -

joe positive said:

very nice, and especially given the kind of training you've had to put up
with since November. What kind of shoes did you wear?

Thanks Karen. Just to clarify, most of these last three months I
haven't had to put up with a lot of factors outside of my control, nor
especially horrible weather and unrunnable roads and trails or
anything. My low mileage has had more to do with, initially, some
mystery flu and maybe some muscle repair, but then just some winter
blahs, shorter colder days which make it less appealing to get out the
door after work (I've lately been getting up earlier instead), and
generally lower motivation to run which I've chosen to interpret as my
body's demand for some seasonal down time before making my 2006 push -
hey, it sounds better than "I couldn't get my lazy ass out the door".

I wore very light Nike flats, naturally. :-)

The dumbly-named Air Streak Vengeance IV. Around 7 oz. I'm not nearly
as fond of them as their predecessor (in my collection, not in Nike's
line) the Air Streak Ekidens; but the Vengeance are much newer and
don't yet have any holes where they ain't supposedta.

Quoted message said:

On a side note: is it hard to get used to, these short races with 5000
runners? Sounds like living hell to me

"Living hell" is a little strong - I mean, it's better than spending
ten hours in an office taking ridiculous orders from some jackass. But
it's not ideal, no. It's been a slow process for me to accept that
many hundreds of people are simply going to start as close to the front
as they can, regardless of their abilities; and to realize that
allowing myself to get very angry at the plodders I've got to weave
through only hurts my own race.

- - - - - - - -

Dot said:

Sounds like good things ahead! Congrats!

Thanks Dot. Yeah, I'm hoping its a harbinger of a decent racing
season. 2005 was a great year for me for running, but pretty
disappointing when it came to racing, at least on American soil.

- - - - - - - -

Dan said:

But I'm wondering why you left out the parts about sliding down
the cliff, crawling back in to the fray with bloody fingers, fighting
the brutal Afgan Winter, faking out the charging bear [...]

Well I _did_ throw a mean glare at the cranky septuagenarian who
insisted on walking her toy poodle directly across the stream of racers
in the first mile, and I mouthed some naughty words at a few cyclists
who just looked kinda potentially jerky.

Quoted message said:

A 57 year old dude beat me by over 3:00

That's something like 84% wava, equivalent to a 31 minute 10k...

87.9, sez the nyrrc website. Maybe a new vs. old WAVA charts artifact?
Anyhow, darn impressive.

- - - - - - - -

Tony said:

All that work last year didn't go to waste

Yeah, it's nice to get some kind of confirmation. If it weren't for
the pace of some of my training runs, I'd have thought I had detrained
a lot more over the winter. I'm really hoping to build on 2005's
successes - mostly meaning just learning to run decent mileage and
consequently developing a reasonable aerobic base - with some real
training this year and see what that adds up to.

- - - - - - - -

Phil suggested:

Quoted message said:

My secret is to just become old without slowing down too much.

Hey thanks Phil. That's kinda what I had been thinking too, except I'm
hoping to stack a couple years of getting, well, less slow in there
somewhere first, if only to give a little bigger margin for the
downslide.

Quoted message said:

Yeah, I really don't enjoy, per se, races of about 10 km and less, and
see myself as a candidate for "early retirement" to the world of trail
ultras in a few years;

My best WAVA scores are in the 10K. They may even be better in the 5K,
but I haven't run a 5K since 1997. The intense pain required for these
"sprints" is not even remotely fun. I'd rather spread that pain out over
several hours.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Nice to read something on rec.running that *isn't* from one of the
regular trolls.

I make sure to get lots of fiber and fruit, Tim, which keeps me
regular as rain. Not sure why you'd characterize me otherwise. ;-)

Kinda funny, but when I first saw your name (Spanish for [censored],
right?), I pegged you as a troll and had you immediately in my killfile
before I even read any of what you had to say.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

On a side note: is it hard to get used to, these short races with
5000 runners? Sounds like living hell to me

"Living hell" is a little strong - I mean, it's better than spending
ten hours in an office taking ridiculous orders from some jackass.

lol. Hopefully you're not posting from work. ;-)

Quoted message said:

and to realize that allowing myself to get very angry at the plodders
I've got to weave through only hurts my own race.

Specificity of training...find a track where the moms like pushing their
strollers in lane 1 while you're in the middle of your VO2 max intervals.

--
Phil M.

Wow, good job Charlie!!! That's a BIG PR. Keep working at that
WAVA, I'm doing the same thing! I'm in the hi 60's, have one 70,
but trying for 70 as much as possible this year. Bet you'll be
caught up to me and passing soon....Good Luck!! :-)

Teresa in AZ

Charlie Pendejo said:

summary
-------
Sometimes it's hard to guess what kind of time you're gonna run, prior
to the race. But it's pretty rare that you finish in literally half
the time you anticipated.

Splits 2-4: 6:31, 6:37, 6:15. That sums to 26:17, a :54 PR. Woo-hoo!

66.8% WAVA, my new high water mark. Previous was 65.9. Not that close
to 70 just yet but it is in my sights.

nice job pendejo and actually much better running on that course than
what i do. i usually hit the 2 mi. mark at 12:00-12:06 and then
proceed to seriously crash and burn in mile 3 & 4 (the hills & my
weight). i see you only lost 6 seconds in mile 3, relative to 2, and
that's pretty damn good...and you blazed 6:15 in the end? very
impressive.

for some reason...i run the 5 mile & 10k courses relatively
even....never the 4 mile course. i train on those roads running
clockwise, which is counter to most everyone. i do this because the
bigger races run clockwise on that course (starting at Tavern o't'
Green).

I think i've trained myself to run better/faster clockwise on that
course. ever consider your training/racing with direction in
mind?...or is it a non-factor for you?

also, did you cut this time with extra weight? i'm still trying to
lose about 12-14 ,lbs.....

lance said:

nice job pendejo

Thanks lance!

Quoted message said:

ever consider your training/racing with direction in
mind?...or is it a non-factor for you?

Well, I almost never train where most of my races are, Central Park, so
that part's a non-issue.

Where I do run several loops each week, Prospect Park, I try to split
the direction equally. On a long run with 4 loops, I'll do 2 and 2.
Or on consecutive days I will reverse the direction.

But I do this mostly to even out the stress on my legs. Much of the
paved loop is banked more than I'd like. And sufficiently rainy or
snowy weather, or darkness, will force me onto that paved loop;
otherwise I'll run the dirt trail just inside it for 90% of the lap. I
believe some of my right upper leg (hip flexors, hamstring, piriformis,
whatever) woes my first year running were from consistently running
this loop counterclockwise, on the pavement.

Quoted message said:

also, did you cut this time with extra weight? i'm still trying to
lose about 12-14 ,lbs.....

Depends how you count. I'm at 148, down from 150 a couple weeks ago.
Previous PR must've been at about the same weight. OTOH I was 140 for
NYCM and I'm aiming to get back near that. Maybe even a few pounds
under at some point, just so I can claim to have hit that "two pounds
per inch" mark. :-)

I'm fairly small framed, so at 140 I'm not emaciated (though some couch
potato friends and family may beg to differ) - it's more like the point
where my gut has finally more or less flattened out.

Got a plan? Will returning to running mostly take care of it?

My current plan is pretty much:
- eat mostly home-cooked, minimize restaurant meals
- run 50+ MPW
- and mostly, be mindful about not "double-counting" my daily mileage:
that 9 miles can't both burn off a quarter pound of fat *and* allow me
to eat of pint of ice cream without being penalized

I'm fairly motivated to make that plan work, not only for racing (and
clothes fitting flatteringly) goals, but to avoid the need for repeated
food poisonings to take off a couple pounds with each bout.

"Donovan Rebbechi" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Another perspective on this from the point of view of trying to run fast
times: if your finishing kick is too strong, you didn't run the rest of
the
race hard enough.

I will agree with you, depending on your definition of kick -- if you're
talking about a mile, then I'm with you. Anytime I can pick up the pace at
the end of a race for a mile or more, I know I was sandbagging.

If you're talking 200 yards, then I differ. I have been utterly spent on a
50 mile race at the finish, struggling at 10 min/mile with every step a
symphony of pain, at the end of a race, and been able to fly at a sprint for
the last 200 yards. (this is with training with not much speedwork) The
reason is that it's a completely different energy system -- who cares if
there's no glycogen left when you're burning adrenalin, pflogiston, ATP, or
whatever...

Quoted message said:

Recently, I closed out my mile in 33 and the last 400 of my 3k in 73
compared
to an average of resp 35/lap and 77/400m -- not bad, but a true finishing
kick would be more like 31-32 and sub 70.

To me that shows that your training was balanced -- the right ratio of
speedwork to endurance work.

Quoted message said:

In his famous sub 4 mile, Bannister closed in 59 (he was a kicker who
could
close much faster). And Bannister opened a whole new era of using rabbits
to
set a fast pace which meant that people would run records by running their
legs off in the start and middle of the run, which pretty much destroys
ones
finishing kick but produces a fast time.

Well, to me, the mile is one long sprint, and you are tapping into the
anerobic systems from lap 2 on, so it makes sense that the anerobic enzymes
are gone by the finish...

Quoted message said:

I'd really like to see some hard evidence to support this. Lydiard was a
great
coach, but he was also very hit and miss.

He was a brilliant intuitive. But I do think he's right on this, from my
experience. When I was a serious 95 mpw runner with 3 hard days/week, that
last mile in a marathon was all out, and no faster than my average. Same
for my faster 10k's -- in fact, the last mile in my best 10k's was slower
than my average pace, just hanging on for dear life. No kick left, just
trying to hold off the puking until after the finish line...

In my somewhat fat and less trained middle age (20 years older, 12 lbs
heavier, and 25 mpw less training), I ran a much slower marathon, but was
able to run the last 10k 45 seconds/mile faster than the previous 4 miles.
And I did absolutely no speedwork (a wild experiment with Hadd, but in
retrospect a mistake). This was a mixture of too slow a pace (first
marathon in 19 years, forgot how they felt), and no speedwork.

Quoted message said:

What made him succesful is that he
was right on the stuff that really mattered -- peaking, and the
effectiveness
of high training volume (high compared to what others were doing back
then)

When you look at his results with his neighborhood kids from NZ (Snell,
etc), no one comes close, imo.

"Charlie Pendejo" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

"Living hell" is a little strong - I mean, it's better than spending
ten hours in an office taking ridiculous orders from some jackass. But
it's not ideal, no. It's been a slow process for me to accept that
many hundreds of people are simply going to start as close to the front
as they can, regardless of their abilities; and to realize that
allowing myself to get very angry at the plodders I've got to weave
through only hurts my own race.

I try to get some Opposition Research in from the web page, and if I'm gonna
finish at about 200th in a big race, I put myself behind about that many
folks. But I stay ahead of the strollers, no matter what...

-- Dan

Dan Stumpus said:

if I'm gonna finish at about 200th in a big race

That's a mighty big race indeed, if a couple hundred folks are beating
you!

Quoted message said:

I put myself behind about that many folks.

Right. I'll do that if I've arrived in time to fully warm up, hit the
john, and choose my place in line - and with 5000 racers, you better
stake out your place well before the gun. Not a morning or
hyper-punctual person to begin with, the trains are hit and miss on
weekends, blah blah whine whine.

Dan Stumpus said:

"Donovan Rebbechi" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Another perspective on this from the point of view of trying to run fast
times: if your finishing kick is too strong, you didn't run the rest of
the
race hard enough.

I will agree with you, depending on your definition of kick -- if you're
talking about a mile, then I'm with you. Anytime I can pick up the pace at
the end of a race for a mile or more, I know I was sandbagging.

If you're talking 200 yards, then I differ. I have been utterly spent on a
50 mile race at the finish, struggling at 10 min/mile with every step a
symphony of pain, at the end of a race, and been able to fly at a sprint for
the last 200 yards.
(this is with training with not much speedwork) The
reason is that it's a completely different energy system -- who cares if
there's no glycogen left when you're burning adrenalin, pflogiston, ATP, or
whatever...

Well yes, but it doesn't take a whole lot of left over energy to produce an
extremely short "kick". I mean, anyone can fly in the last 10 yards of a 5k
race too. You can always cash in whatever safety margin you had left in the
last 0.2% of a race. Without a lot of experience at the distance in question,
you *will* have a reasonable safety margin (or not -- at your peril ... ).
In any case, I think it's almost impossible to run a trail 50 miler the way
Radcliffe runs road marathons.

Quoted message said:

He was a brilliant intuitive. But I do think he's right on this, from my
experience. When I was a serious 95 mpw runner with 3 hard days/week, that
last mile in a marathon was all out, and no faster than my average. Same
for my faster 10k's -- in fact, the last mile in my best 10k's was slower
than my average pace, just hanging on for dear life. No kick left, just
trying to hold off the puking until after the finish line...

In my somewhat fat and less trained middle age (20 years older, 12 lbs
heavier, and 25 mpw less training), I ran a much slower marathon, but was
able to run the last 10k 45 seconds/mile faster than the previous 4 miles.
And I did absolutely no speedwork (a wild experiment with Hadd, but in
retrospect a mistake). This was a mixture of too slow a pace (first
marathon in 19 years, forgot how they felt), and no speedwork.

My opinion is that it has much more to do with the former -- but also there's
the fact that when you were fit, you could run a marathon at very close to
your anaerobic threshold. When you're sitting just under LT for the first
20 miles, you're not in a position to accelerate very much in the 6.2 miles
that follow -- I mean, accelerate to what ? You're already going pretty fast.

I'm not sure where being able to race a marathon at a high intensity comes
from. I suspect it's a mixture of mileage, talent, and getting in long runs.
I think the primary effect of speed work is that it increases your pace at a
given intensity (e.g. your LT pace becomes faster).

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/

Dan Stumpus said:

In my somewhat fat and less trained middle age

And for anyone trying to picture Dan, here's a start: he's fat like a
greyhound.