The Razor's Edge

A well-executed threshold run is a beautiful thing. For me, it starts a little slower than goal pace and then gradually works up and locks in at the right pace. The effort is comfortable, the kilometre splits cut like butter, breathing is easy and open, and while there is some fatigue, there is no struggle – the run is always strong. I know I’ve hit it when I still feel like I’ve got an extra gear over the last few k, but I don’t use it.

My threshold run on Wednesday was absolutely nothing like that.

Nope. I started out on a significant uphill and went out like an idiot – 3:36 for the first k and breathing hard. Then I tried to relax and ease off, but failed completely – 3:37. Once I’ve established a rhythm, it’s hard for me to change it, even though I know I’m going to crash if I don’t. It was freezing cold, and I had many layers on, so I was looking for something like 3:45. You’d think 8 or 9 seconds per k wouldn’t matter that much, but it does. That’s the thing with a threshold run, you’re supposed to run right at that optimal aerobic zone and not spill over into the anaerobic zone (it’s not that simple, but it kind of feels that way). If you go over the razor’s edge – well, it doesn’t go well.

I had planned 10k of threshold, and I’d blown it in the first two. Instead of backing right off and being content with, say, 3:48, I kept grinding at low 3:40s for another 5k before I stopped cold in front of a steep hill. I recovered for a couple of minutes and then decided to try the last 3k. But once you’re done, you’re done. I had to struggle to get a 3:48. It’s funny how that works – the other day, when Alex and I were doing 9k at race pace, we were hitting 3:48s quite easily. But with acidy legs, easy becomes difficult.

The whole thing was a bit demoralizing, and it freaked me out – the marathon isn’t all that far away, and I’m struggling to do the same kind of threshold pace I was doing last summer. It’s like all this training hasn’t done a damn thing. But I’m trying not to dwell on it too much (as you can see!!) – I can’t judge my fitness on a poorly executed workout, especially since I had a great workout the week before. It’s just a further reminder that starting conservatively is critical to a good performance.

So chin up, carry on.

Oh My, Dubai!

Not too long ago I was singing the praises of the American Olympic marathon trials for having 4 guys dip under 2:10. Amazing, I thought. And I was so proud when we had two Canadian guys go under 2:11:30 at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

And then the Dubai Marathon happened this past weekend.

To crack the top 10 in that one, you had to run under 2:07. There were four guys under 2:05 – many of whom came out of nowhere. In fact, the guy who won it hadn’t even done the distance before.

This is getting ridiculous. If the Olympics were about lining up the top 50 guys on the planet regardless of country, I’m not sure you’d see a North American in there. It’s starting to feel like you could just take any Ethiopian or Kenyan kid and turn him into 2:05 guy. As if 2:05 were run-of-the-mill.

Of course, this is not the case. I imagine there are plenty of Ethiopians and Kenyans who are broken in the quest for marathon greatness. But there must be so many guys trying. And it’s all driven by bucks: appearance fees, prize money, sponsorships. I don’t have any research on this, but I bet it wouldn’t be that hard to set up a kind of running factory in east Africa. If you were an agent, you could put up the bucks to create a training group. It wouldn’t take much to entice a slew of promising runners – you wouldn’t even have to have a great training facility – to a guy looking to drag his way out of poverty, three meals a day is probably a no-lose situation.

And then you run them 3 times a day, keeping them fed and watered. All you’d need is one or two guys to come out of the group. With the kind of money American, European, Middle Eastern, and Asian Marathons are paying out – bam – you take your cut, some of it goes back to feeding the other horses, and the guys who make it build big houses and dig wells for their villages. Everybody wins!

Except for the majority of guys who break themselves along the way.

Now, I’m just making this scenario up – but I wonder if this kind of thing is what keeps feeding the system with 2:05 guys. And, hey, why not? It’s an opportunity for them (and enterprising agents) – and we get to sit up in the stands and watch these guys redefine what we thought human running potential was.

But let’s not fool ourselves: it’s not love that drives a guy to 2:05.

Winter Toughness

Not Dartmouth -- but might as well be!

The sidewalks are covered in ice. The trails are covered in ice. There are still some running folks braving the bitter cold and poor footing. Not me. I’ve brought my running show inside to the treadmill. After falling on ice during a  run and breaking a rib a few years ago, I’m less inclined to hit the roads after Friction has packed its bags and moved to a timeshare down in Florida for a few months.

I do, however, feel a little guilty when I see those brave souls wrapped in five layers, shuffling along gingerly – it’s a uniquely northern ability to run on ice, and I’ve turned my back on it.  Perhaps I’ve become a bit of a wimp.

But my running has never been part of some “tough guy” self-narrative. I am far from being tough. Well, maybe that’s not true, depending on how you define tough – you could argue that my last week’s workouts (6x1k fast, with 3 of those ks under 3:20; 7 miles at 6:00/mile pace on the treadmill; and 21k on the treadmill, with 8k at marathon race pace) called upon a kind of toughness. I pushed myself into different levels of discomfort in all of them. I did the hard thing instead of the easy thing. Maybe there’s some toughness in that – in all running, in fact.

I guess it’s just that I don’t value the kind of toughness that measures itself against the (in)abilities of others. I used to. I used to be out on the bitter and icy streets, thinking how much tougher I was than those runners who wimped out on the treadmill or, even worse, dumped their run altogether because of the conditions. But I’ve mellowed. I now measure my toughness against my goals – am I doing what it takes to reach them? I don’t worry too much about what I think other people might think. Well. Most of the time I don’t.

I salute those runners still out there braving the cold. Some are there because there’s no easy alternative – not all folks are as lucky as I am to have easy and cheap access to a treadmill. Some are out there to prove something to themselves or to others. And some just don’t think about it one way or another – they just run. I respect all of them – even if I don’t share the same motivation.