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A few days ago, I was heading across the parking lot to my car after a routine visit to the chiropractor, and I noticed a couple of well worn pennies on the ground next to my car. In the past, I would have let them lay, especially if they were face down. What can two cents buy these days, anyway? This time, however, I picked them up as a symbolic reminder that there is a big change going on in my life right now, and I my goal is to “keep the change.” I’ve been picking up stray change I find on the ground ever since. And now, please allow me to share my two cents with you. As you’ve read in recent columns, earlier this year, I commenced on a new way of training which, so far, has suited me quite well. It has allowed me to safely increase my mileage while building strength and endurance as I prepare for The Twin Cities Marathon on October 3rd. I am banking on this new way of training as a way of one day hitting the kind of pay dirt that will lead me to the starting line in Hopkinton by April, 2006. This new training technique is called effort-based training, and I promised to document my progress along the way, including the good, the bad, and, if applicable, the ugly. So far, I’m happy to report, there has been no ugly. Here’s a little background, and my June progress report. Around the beginning of March this year, I approached a local coach with one request. Train me to qualify for Boston and have me be ready on my 50th birthday. I’ve always been one with a flair for the dramatic, so I just thought it would be cool to make my 50th birthday one to remember in a special way. Of course, I’m lucky that my 50th birthday happens to fall on a Sunday; October 2, 2005 to be exact, and a good qualifying marathon happens to be taking place that day; Twin Cities. Before embarking in setting up a plan for me, the coach asked to review my year in training up to that point, and upon looking it over, he came back with two major observations. I raced too much, and my mileage was very inconsistent from one week to the next. So he started me out with a “Base Stabilization” period, designed to simply break me of my old habits and to run more consistently while slowly increasing mileage for a couple of months. This phase went from mid-March to early May. During this period, he had me doing almost all my running at 65-70% of my maximum heart rate, which to me was almost painfully slow. There were weeks that I never ran a mile in under 10 minutes, and once in a while I’d cheat by running harder than I was supposed to, just to be sure I could still run a sub 10-minute mile. After a gentle reprimand, I settled in, but it was frustrating to be running so slow, and in the early days, I wasn’t sold 100% on this method of training. By the end of this phase, I was averaging a pretty consistent 40 miles a week, which was a change for the better. Starting in the second week of May, I entered the next phase of my training, a phase including endurance and strengthening, and my weekly mileage started creeping up through the low and mid 40’s. I made other changes in my life as well. I stopped drinking beer, figuring it probably wasn’t doing me any good from a training standpoint, and I started making better choices in what I was eating. I figured that since I was heading down a more challenging road, I might as well switch from regular fuel to high-octane, and have my engine serviced. It seems to be working, so I plan to keep the change. But my pace per mile was still not breaking 10 minutes most days. In fact, through the end of May, I only had four workouts averaging less than 10 minutes per mile, and those runs usually included some strides. When I did my 65% recovery runs, the average was often over 11 minutes per mile. Some of that could be attributed to the Atlanta heat and humidity making its presence felt, but I still was hoping to see more progress than that. My coach kept reassuring me that at this point in my training, pace per mile does not matter, a difficult thing for a runner to accept. But I committed to keep the change. In early June, I started to see a nice change for the better in my running. The 65% runs were starting to average under 11 minutes a mile, and the 70% runs were starting to consistently go under 10 minutes per mile. I also started to have a day or two a week where my schedule had me doing mile and two mile repeats at higher intensity. I looked forward to those days, so I could feel like a real athlete. I also ran a couple of paced races, breaking them down into three segments, starting off at 75%, increasing to 85%, and finishing up trying to hit 95% of my maximum heart rate. These races, though not really fast, felt good, and in the last mile of both races, I passed many people like they were standing still. Now THAT was fun! At this point, I am exactly half-way through my endurance and strength building phase, and I’m up to about 50 miles a week, and I feel like I can still handle a lot more. My 65% effort runs are down to about 10:30 per mile, and my 70% runs are now averaging about 9:30 per mile. Without any additional perceived effort, I’m already averaging over a minute quicker per mile than I was even two months ago, and improvement is continuing. My mile repeats at 85% are usually under 8 minutes per mile, and I ran the last uphill mile of my recent 4-mile race in 7:20. None of this is blinding speed, I know, but I haven’t even come close to my next stage of the training, which is the sharpening phase, when the real speed will finally come. The change has come slowly, but hopefully I’ve piqued and compounded your interest. I am not exactly turning on a dime, but you can bet your bottom dollar that change is taking place. Literally, I’m up to 29 cents since I’ve decided to keep the change, and I have the coins put aside in a special place. It’s a constant reminder that change is good, and I plan to keep the change. After all, it only makes cents! Now that I’ve shared my two cents, a penny for your thoughts! Michael |
Sunday, January 07, 2007 01:56 PM