1L Takes Manhattan

Good Luck in the Big Apple this weekend, Michelle!

Have a great weekend and a great race Michele!

All signs point to a great race.  Go, Mom, go!

Have a great race, you've got this!

Stay focused and give it all you got Michele!  Have a great race!

Do what you do, Michele, so well, Michele.  Do what you do so well.

Keep at you are doing great!

Thanks all.  It was very windy, but I ran as best as I could given the conditions.  Once I knew I had the 2016 BQ, I kind of dialed in the last mile.  The wind sucked.  More later.

Congrats Michele!
Tough wind out there today!

I had to go back a ways in here to find your goal time for this race, and I was extremely impressed to see just well you nailed it. To have done it with all the wind? Even better. Congratulations! Well done.

Great job, Michele!

Great run Michele!!!

Yay Mom!

Gratz, Michele!  Mark buys the first round of drinks. 

Thanks all.  With the wind and cold, I actually adjusted my outside goal of 3:45ish back to 3:48 as I really, really wanted to break 3:50 and get that BQ for 2016.  I had not run under 3:50 as a 50+ yr old, but I really would have been thrilled with anything under 4 hrs.  As it went, I gave it all I had and then some and I kept things as steady as I could given the winds, the course, the bridges, and the final hills.  I'm more than happy and I feel great prooving that the right training (and I felt like I didn't have quite enough hills) pays off when you trust it.  It really does.

Michele, you made a lot of good decisions and ran a really smart race.

Pretty impressive performance Michele! And yes, it sounds like the right training and a lot of determination did pay off!!

Just some easy recovery miles until last night when I actually did speedwork and it felt fine.  One of our little Tuesday night group still has her marathon race (Philly) to run, so the rest of us joined her on the track (and in the rain since it always rains on Tuesday nights when we go to the track).  We did our pretty standard 2K, 1mile, 1K with 90 sec rest and I was very surprised how good the legs actually felt especially since NYC was only 10 days ago.  I have already been back in the gym and done my core class in the early mornings, so I'm pleased with my recovery.  Hope to actually get out later today, but if not, I went to core class this morning and I am enjoying a bit of rest/recovery for these two weeks.

Well-earned / well-deserved rest / recovery time! Congrats again on NYC!

Finished my 2nd and last week of recovery with 27 miles as I decided to take Wednesday off.  Temps are the beginning of the week were in the 60s and this morning it was 29 for our run.  It actually didn't feel too cold as I guess I'm getting used to it.  We goat about 4" of snow along the lake which is way more than they predicted, but there was only about an 1" just 12 miles south where we ran yesterday, but it was very icy on he bike path.  Interesting as they got about 6-8" east in the snow belt, but nothing west about 1 hr from here in Oberlin.  Very strange storm.  We are expecting another bit of snow tonight into tomorrow and frigid temps on Tuesday, but then it is expected to get warmer and back to a high of 50 by Sunday.

I'm hoping to run Chris to a sub 1:54 half next Sunday morning as that is what she needs to get an automatic qualifying time for the NYC half in march.  We decided it would be run to run the half which is wholly in Manhattan and runs from the park to the South Street Seaport.  I have to run a 1:49 or faster which I did in all of my halves this year - so I am good to go.  We also decided that since we both ran NYC Marathon qualifiers in a NY race that we couldn't let MP go by herself next year - so yup, we will be going back to NYC once again.  I just hope to maintain my fitness through Boston, the summer and then on to NYC.  My plan is to take some downtime after Boston and then re-build into the fall like I did last year using the hills of western NY for a great training ground.

Until then, I have an 8K XC Club National Race in early December and then the New Orleans Half Marathon in late January before races in March and then April.  If we get into the NYC Half, that will be my Spring half race and I will still head down to Atlanta for the half a week later, but may plan for that race will be to run like I did in Columbus with 9-10 miles at MP and then faster last 3 miles.  It will be much harder to do on the Atlanta course because of the hills, and I only once ran that race with a solid finish - 2012 when I was in great shape after a January half.  That year I ran 17 miles on Thursday before the Sunday race, and my plan is to follow a similar course of action this year.

So I ended up with an impromptu race this morning.  As I mentioned last week, I was set to pace my friend to a sub 1:54 half this morning at a local half marathon.  Weather was iffy this week until yesterday when it rained and then warmed up significantly melting almost all the snow and definitely all the ice.  However, last week, Chris had strained her calf running on the snow/ice, so she wasn't too sure about this morning.  She arrived early to have the calf taped by a chiro who was at the race and we figured that we would give it a go.  We started off at a pace that seemed easy (around 8:20 ish) but just after mile 3, she basically said ouch and announced that she was dropping. I asked if she needed my help getting back to the start and she was like - nope, go ahead and race.  So I dropped the hammer and finished the race in 1:45:20 good for 98th overall (out of 456), 27th woman overall, 3rd Master, 1st AG, and 1st GrandMaster (when did I get so old!).  Got a really cute mug and a $25 check to use at the local running store (the one that I run out of).  I was  very pleased to see that my last three miles were all below 7:40 and that the others were all within 3-5 s of each other.  I did feel NYC in the last mile, but after being passed by only one person from the 4th mile on, I dug in and just tried to hold on to the finish.  Here is a picture from the 2nd turn around at mile 3.  The guy in green passed me at mile 12 after I did all the work and he drafted off me for two miles.  I was laughing at Glen as he captured me here as he told me to "race the last 5k!".  Yeah, right!



Now for another little rant - I really hate when people brag about their results, times, etc.  So I hope that just capturing things in my blog is ok.  After having the chiro work on her calf, Chris went to the finish area to wait for me and another friend who was running and helped give out the awards.  Our other friend got 3rd in her AG - so she was ecstatic.  A local woman who is also a runner was working the table too and proceeded to tell Chris and I just how fast she was and how she just got her first injury ever and that she could certainly run a sub 1:40 half and was on track at Columbus until she got hurt in training.  Blah, blah, blah.  So I came home and had to look her up in Athlinks and most of her times were in the 1:50s over the last few years with one half in 1:43 run in September.  Me wonders - that's all.

Michele,
I have to say, I'm blown away at how you can run / race so many events so close together with such amazing results.  Damn impressive.

Tim C wrote:Michele,
I have to say, I'm blown away at how you can run / race so many events so close together with such amazing results.  Damn impressive.

Thanks, Tim.  Unlike others on the boards here, my philosophy is quality vs. quantity as over the years, I have found that it works for me.  I have tried the high mileage thing and got hurt, but I find if I run less miles combined with quality workouts and races and lots more cross training in the gym, I have better results.  But remember, we are all an experiment of one!

I forgot to mention about my experience with the underwater treadmill on Thursday night.  The local Cleveland Clinic facility has three underwater treadmills that they use for rehab currently.  The guy in charge of the area is a PT and a runner and he has been looking into making the treadmills available to the public for recovery runs, training, etc.  He contacted our local group and several of us got to run on them last week.  What a trip.  Kind of like deep water running, but your feet are actually on a treadmill and you can set the speed (up to 7.5 mph) and the resistance with water jets (like a hot tub) that force water at you.  I could comfortably run at 5 mph, but there is no way that I could have run at a faster pace due to bouyancy and the fact that I am almost "too short" since the water level is 4'6".  (The Cavaliers have some at their training facility where you can actually adjust the water level from 3' to 6').  He also showed us different functional exercises that you can do on the mill such as running sideways and backwards to work on your hips, glutes, hammies, etc.  It was fun and I could definitely see how I could incorporate using them in my training especially over the winter.