My London Marathon cycle exposed a few issues to address before taking on another big race:
- I was burnt out from marathon training
- I wasn’t running enough at or faster than marathon pace
To a certain extent, I think these two issues were related as my burnout led to me skip, shorten, or settle in many of my workouts. I allowed myself to rationalize these adjustments as risk mitigation and injury prevention, but spending the London cycle at what felt like 80% of my capacity was disappointing.
To address these issues, I decided not to run a marathon in the fall and instead focus on the half marathon. At the time, my half marathon PR was 1:15:02 which was also more or less my PR marathon pace. Barring major disaster, even a small PR was nearly guaranteed. I hoped the prospect of a PR would help bolster my waning motivation levels. Running a half marathon at a pace (much) faster than 2:30 marathon pace would also build a new layer of confidence and fitness to dip into the 2:20s again. I also bolstered my motivation levels committing in my mind (this was before registration opened) to taking a crack at Top 100 at Boston 2020, which on a decent weather year would require about a 2:29 performance. After achieving Top 100 in NYC in 2017 and making exactly 200th place in my last Boston Marathon (2015), Top 100 at Boston was something I had dancing in the back of my mind for some time.
The next task at hand was deciding on a goal half marathon. The beauty of racing under the marathon distance is that it’s much easier to successfully race more than once at your goal distance in a cycle. I decided to give myself two attempts a cracking my PR. First, in September, I would race Copenhagen Half with my friend Matan. I’d sandwich this race in the middle of a five week stretch of working in Germany. Second, in November, I’d race Indy Monumental Half, the same race many of my DWRunning teammates had chosen as their goal event in the fall.
I had hurt something in my lower left leg prior to London and my right quad still wasn’t 100% after straining it in the fall of 2018. It took until mid-July following April’s London Marathon and a visit to Keelan over at Chicago Recovery Room to get my issues sorted. I was able to resolve a lot of the issues by rolling the areas consistently and performing more targeted glute med exercises. This left me nine weeks to get into shape for Copenhagen. Given this relatively tight timeline, I told myself that Indy would be my goal race and Copenhagen would be a nice bonus. Declan, a fellow DWRunning Coach and teammate, and I agreed the fastest way to building fitness was to focus on my strength which is running around marathon pace. We sprinkled in a few intermediate races into the mix as well. Intermediate races are fun and a way to get the body and mind to push beyond the bounds of a typical workout.
Two weeks into the cycle, I raced the Burgers and Beer 5k with a big group of my DWRunning teammates. I ran my typical semi-out-of-shape 5k time of 16:50 (5:25/mi) good for seventh behind my teammates Tim, Loren, and Brian. I had some work to do. Based on my marathon PR, I should be capable of something around 1:12, a full three minutes faster than my then PR and just 4 seconds per mile slower than what I’d just run for 5k for over four times the distance.
The DWRunning Crew at the 2019 Burgers and Beers 5k
I jumped into training, sharing a lot of Wednesday workout and Saturday long run miles with my DWRunning teammates. On weeks where I was unable to join on Wednesdays, I was able to get in workouts with a group of friends training for Chicago Marathon that included former Fleet Feet colleagues, Mark and Greg.
Five weeks prior to Copenhagen, I raced the BTN Big10k in 34:28 (5:33/mi). While I hoped I’d be able to run a bit faster, I felt good about how comfortable the pace had felt. I couldn’t run any faster, but I also didn’t feel like I was dying trying to hold onto that pace. We steered the remaining workouts towards working on half marathon pace and faster. They day I left for Germany, I did 10 x ¾ mile just over 5:30/mi with a ¼ mile recovery at about 6:30/mi. I took a lot of confidence from how I felt during this workout. The faster ¾ mile segments felt better than the slower recovery portions and I ran the last repetition at about 5:20/mi pace.
My first two weeks in Germany brought a lot of adjustments as well as a big bike ride around Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), but I was able to nail a final session of 10km alternating pace every 400m between 5:30/mi and 6:15/mi. I was cautiously optimistic that I might be able to hold something like 5:35/mi given how the last few workouts had gone. I got another boost in confidence when my teammates Chris and Matt ran 1:11 and 1:13 at Hidden Gem Half a week before Copenhagen.
Matan and I met up in Copenhagen the Friday before the Sunday race. On Saturday, we shook out the legs on the walls of the star-shaped Kastellet fort and took photos in front of the Little Mermaid before doing 3 x 20s strides and jogging back to our Airbnb. We spent the day exploring on foot and electric scooter including a stop for our bibs. Looking for something familiar and quick, we opted for a pasta dinner from Ciao in the Boltens Food Court upon the recommendation our friend and Copenhagen local, Aisha. After a full day of walking and considering that our race didn’t start until 11:15am the following day, Matan and I picked up some squash soup and fresh bread which we enjoyed at the Airbnb. Our appetites satisfied, we filled the rest of the evening by watching some of the INEOS 1:59 YouTube content. Bodies and minds fueled, we turned in for some rest.
A quick sketch!
On a working schedule, I woke up before 7:00am – I had more than four hours to race start. At first, I was a bit peeved that I’d have to carefully monitor my eating and drinking well into the day, but soon enough I was enjoying the luxury of leaving behind the familiar slumber-dazed stagger out of bed and to the startline. I ate/drank a Clif bar (nearly 4 USD a the expo, but worth it), water, one and a half stroopwaffles, a cup of instant coffee, a small apple, and another small cup of instant coffee. Looking back, I probably should have eaten more or taken a gel as I was getting pretty light headed at the end of the race and ended up not feeling very well later in the day.
Finally, at 9:50am, we rolled out the door for the mile and a half jog to the start. Once there, we did a few strides, checked our bags and hung out near the front of our corral. We were a bit worried that it would be really chaotic at the start since the top corral contained a very wide range of abilities. As the corral began to fill, a swirl of runners began to form. Most of them were jogging very slowly, but you’d occasionally see one or two people take five or six fast steps. I joined them. We were like a school of fish. Even though I had never seen anything like this in a race corral before, I felt at home. These were my people. They knew to run their best, they had to be warm when the gun went off.
Copenhagen Half is one of the most competitive races in the world, in fact, it was well known that Geofrey Kamworor was going make an attempt at the world record that morning. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the field and I were out hot. I rolled through my first 5k averaging in the mid 5:20s, quite a bit faster than anticipated. My first race in the much-hyped Nike Vaporfly Next%, the shoes isolated me from the normal impact you receive when running that pace. After 5k, I felt my rhythm slow and was somewhat relieved since I had done relatively minimal training under 5:30/mi pace. I tried to push the anxiety that I’d gone out too fast into the back of my mind. I locked into running low 5:30/mi (high 3:20s/k). Kilometer after kilometer passed. I battled back the out-too-fast anxiety telling myself that the numbers I was seeing on my watch were just numbers and that the reality was that I was holding the pace at what seemed to be the right effort. I didn’t want my watch feedback to hold me back.
I rolled through 10k over twenty seconds faster than BTN Big10k. The pace wasn’t easy, but I wasn’t slowing down, so I rolled with it and tried to stay as relaxed as possible. The conditions were good for running, overcast and in the 50s. It was a little windy so large, 10-20 person pace lines would form. It was like running on the track at times. I felt uncomfortable in these groups and would try my best to run in the back if possible.
I maintained low 5:30 pace through 15k, but started to have to fight for the pace with a couple miles to go. Each step felt like my feet and legs were becoming part of the ground beneath me. I slowed a bit giving me more time with the out-too-fast anxiety. Thankfully, some of my toughest marathons in Boston and Chicago had taught me that slowing often feels worse than it is and to keep a positive outlook, framing those moments as a rough patch. With 3k to go, I fought the urge to cruise complacently knowing that I had a massive PR in the bag. With 1k to go, someone read my name off by bib, jolting me from a moment of dissociation and back into the long, lonely stretch to the finish. I stood up tall, pumped my arms and relaxed my face. The clock was rolling unmercifully towards 1:13. I crossed the finish, just under 1:13 on the clocks – chip adjusted, I had run 1:12:43, a two minute and nineteen second PR! I averaged the same pace that I had run 10km just a few weeks earlier. I was a little surprised, but mostly just lightheaded. Shortly after I finished, Matan rolled in with a big 1:18 PR. Ecstatic we gingerly jogged back to our Airbnb, getting lost/stuck while trying to avoid the race crowds on our way.
I have four takeaways from Copenhagen:
- After many half marathons where I averaged around marathon pace, I was able to prove to myself that I could race the distance at a significantly faster pace.
- We found continuous runs that alternated between half marathon pace and brisk recoveries at just slower than marathon pace allowed me to accumulate work at or below half marathon pace.
- I need a better fueling plan for half marathons.
- I no longer felt very motivated to continue training hard for Indy Monumental eight weeks later.
Thanks so much for reading! Since I’m posting this after Indy Monumental, you can read the season finale now!
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