Mission Beach Long Run

Time: 96:50
Distance: 14.16 miles
Pace: 6:50
Map

Meagan and I were out the door relatively early and off to find a parking spot at Mission Beach. I figured we would beat the beach crowd and take a run straight north along the bike path. I took a peak at Google Maps and found a general route that seemed to be good for a long run. Once the boardwalk, Meagan and I found ourselves in some pretty sweet neighborhoods with some legit houses. The houses right on the water were nice, but mostly rentals. These were on hills overlooking the water and much more classy.

My training schedule called for some pickups over the last half. I needed to do 5 x 90 sec hard with 5 min recovery. My coach Jeff recently wrote a pretty good article explaining the benefits of pickups/surges during a long run. I was impressed with the article for a couple of reasons. First, Jeff's writing style is much better than it's been in the past. I'm not knocking his prose of former blog posts or articles (you'd have to ask Prof. Raaflaub about that), but this post just stuck out.

Second, and more importantly, I found the article to actually add something different to one's training routine. Magazine training/running articles are on a 36 month (re)cycle which gets old when you've been in the sport for longer than 3 years. It's also my belief that coaches have run out of ways to create new stimuli. Essentially, new training philosophies are becoming less frequent. Training philosophies are becoming exhausted and I suppose one could argue that after Jack Daniels, there is little a coach can add to the breadth of knowledge. All of a sudden it becomes more of how well a coach can manage his athletes individually rather than coming up with new ways to train the body's systems. I'm trying to point out that Jeff might be finding his differentiating training principle. I just made that term up, but I think it applies to what coaches are most well known for. Scott Simmons - hammer intervals; Jack Daniels - vDot and threshold training; Alberto Salazar - being secretive; Terrance Mahon - getting the best athletes available; Jeff Gaudette - long run surges?

I don't know if Jeff would agree with me and I realize he still borrows ideas from many of the coaches I've just mentioned. Further, one coach that also incorporates surges into long run is Renato Canova who is known for training elite Kenyan athletes who are predominantly marathoners (his athletes just did extremely well at the Kenyan Championships). It also comes back to putting trust in whoever is designing your training and knowing that it's individually tailored to making you the best possible runner. Point being, read the post.

Splits:
7:50, 7:20, 7:17, 6:59, 7:02, 6:55, 6:56, 2:42 for .39 miles
92 sec @ 4:58 pace (5:00 @ 7:11)
92 sec @ 4:50 pace (5:00 @ 7:12)
92 sec @ 4:22 pace (5:00 @ 7:18)
91 sec @ 4:40 pace (5:00 @ 7:02)
92 sec @ 4:31 pace (5:00 @ 7:12)
6:49, 2:02 for .33 miles

My surges were hard. Luckily, it just so happened that the 90 seconds started on or near a downhill section. Today my focus wasn't to tax the cardio system. Instead I wanted to train the legs to wake up in the middle of a long effort with a touch of speed. I pushed hard because I knew it was only 90 seconds of speed and 5:00 of rest. The 4:22 pace split occurred on a section that flew down a hill and I was trying to catch a pair of cyclists. No such luck. I was pretty thrashed afterward, but maintained on the final two.

The final 10 minutes of the run was rough. Meagan wasn't feeling great either, but we managed. It was a good way to start the end of the weekend.