Week in Review: 1-7 May, and Frederick Half-Marathon and 5K Report

On paper, this is probably going to sound like a pretty dull week, but I'll do my best to shine it up. (Also, for the sake of dramatic effect, if there is any to achieve, I'm going to relegate my KDM recap to the land of lost posts, to re-surface at some random time in the future. There's nothing wrong with it; just seems like too much stuff to post now, at sort of an awkward time.)

Anyway . . .

1 May - 9 miles (60 minutes) through a park and the backside of some random neighborhoods surrounding the park-and-ride off of I-70, exit 28 (our meeting place for the drive out to KDM), in light rain.

2 May - 2 miles (15 minutes) around Patterson Park, barefoot.

3 May - 10 miles, as a result of the following medley: 2 miles (16 minutes) warmup on Gilman Trail, 36 minutes including "interval on, half off," starting at 6 minutes, and working down to 1 minute, in 1 minute intervals, 2 miles warmdown (16 minutes), 1 mile barefoot (8 minutes). 76 minutes total. "On" intervals at 5:45-5:50 mile pace.

4 May - 2 miles around Patterson Park, not barefoot (15 minutes).

5 May - 5 miles (35 minutes) on and around Pot Spring Road, or, an impromptu hill workout.

6 May - 15 miles (105 minutes) at Gunpowder State Park, Essex version, that featured a long section along a power line cut, various suburban streets, a whole lot of mud, and rotting fish heads on the trail. Followed up with 2 miles of run/hike with Sara at Loch Raven (30 minutes).

7 May - Pace Frederick Half-Marathon in 1:40, with about a mile of warmup and a mile of warmdown on either end. Rest for a couple of hours, then a mile of warmup, the Frederick 5K in a disappointing 19:45, a mile of warmdown, then another 4 miles just because. Back in Baltimore, about 5 miles of run/hike with Sara at Loch Raven. Total 29 miles, and about 240 minutes.

Total Time: 576 minutes
Total Distance: 74 miles

Definitely high marks for variety, although not for mileage. Then again, going back and running the numbers from 28 April to 4 May, I ran 90 miles in that 7-day stretch, so, although not the magical 100-mile mark, more in the ballpark than this actual week would suggest. Given that I'm this close to MMT, and most of the hay is in the barn, this peak-and-rest trend is probably for the best (not to mention the variety in times/distances/terrain).

Now, Frederick, in as few words as I can manage:

I've run at least one race at the Frederick Running Festival since the 2007 edition, and I've always found the experience to be at least slightly uncomfortable. In 2007, it was the first year I had done the National, Boston, and Frederick marathons in the same spring, and I really didn't have the base to sustain it, so Frederick didn't go so well. 2008 went somewhat better, but Frederick was still my slowest of the three. 2009 was a 3:50 pace effort, which would have felt easy, except for the rain. 2010 was a crash-and-burn pace effort at 3:20, due to heat and cramping (but at least I finished, in spite of calf cramps so crippling that I nearly tripped and fell several times in the last mile).

This year, there was no marathon, so instead, I paced 1:40 for the half-marathon with Brian Benda, and then decided at some point in the past couple of months that running the 5K at noon would be a good idea. As it turned out, this was partially true.

The half was, as Frederick tends to be, pretty uneventful. We went out a little bit fast, slowed down on the hills in the middle and the end, and came in right on time. The weird thing about pacing 1:40 is that, unlike 3:20, not that many people want to run 1:40, because it's not really a qualifier for anything. The women's auto-qualify for New York is 1:37, which is a little too fast to stay with the 1:40 group for very long if you want to hit that mark, but otherwise, 1:40 is sort of an arbitrary time to run. A lot of people came and went, and in the end, we weren't really pushing anybody to the finish. I know that we helped people reach their goals, but it didn't feel like it as much this time.

When the half was over, I found relief for my upset stomach (which had made running the half a bit unpleasant, in addition to the fact that that pace for a half marathon is just a bit uncomfortable for me at this point - not slow enough to be completely easy, but not fast enough to feel fluid), then trudged back to the car, which was parked uncomfortably far away, in uncomfortably tall grass, to change clothes for the 5K. I napped for about half an hour in the car, because it was uncomfortably just a little bit chilly outside, and it was a little bit less uncomfortably chilly in the car. I woke up about 45 minutes before the race, and embarked upon the uncomfortable trudge back to the half-marathon finish/5K start.

I'm not really sure how to explain the 5K. In my warmup, I felt okay, maybe even fast. And my workout on Tuesday was faster than I had expected for that set of intervals (sub-6-minute-mile-pace). Maybe it was the crowded start, or the sandy loop around the track at the beginning of the race, or the hills and headwind on the way back, or maybe it's just not possible to bust out a fast 5K as the 32nd, 33rd, and 34th miles in a 24-hour period (although probably not the latter if you're trained for it). In any case, my 19:45 finish was evidence that my training has been too slow overall for me to run a fast 5K (and I think this is the salient point here). While this is a slow time, another way to look at it is that at 6:23/mile pace, it's in the ballpark of my current marathon pace, and, aside from general sluggishness, it didn't feel harder than a marathon effort. Developing a stride and a comfort level over the 5K distance is definitely something I want to work on in the next few weeks, so that hopefully the Bel Air Town Run will go a bit better.

And now that all of that (uncomfortable) water is under the bridge, it's onward to the MMT 100 this coming weekend. Stay tuned for that recap, which is bound to be more epic and inspiring than this one.