When it all comes together

Since I’ve taken over coach’s blog, I guess it’s only fair that I get to post a brief post-race report.

As a marathoner/triathlete for four years now, I’ve had my share of good and not-so-good races. This time, I managed to finally get it right. I went into the Albany Marathon a little short on training (having done only 3 long runs of 18 or more in the three months leading up to it) and I had a bit of a cold the week before the race, but otherwise, I was feeling good. The shorter training block probably helped me from feeling too fatigued actually and the cold helped me taper – as I usually have a really hard time sitting still the week before a big race.

The training plan coach wrote for me was AWESOME! Honestly, I had my doubts when she first described it. I had enjoyed my last plan so much and had a good result that I didn’t want to change. But she was her usual persuasive self and wrote it out for me anyway. It was a tough one. Man, did I look forward to the easy days because the hard days were killers.

In the end, it sure paid off. I lined up in Albany feeling fresher than I have ever felt at the start of a marathon. I felt like the miles flew by the entire race. And at mile 23, when I’m usually starting to pray for the finish line and figuring out how much I can slow down and still make my goal time, I actually held strong. I even picked it up the last mile 15 seconds faster than the steady 7:57 pace I had held the rest of the race.

Not only did I finish strong, pick up a 3rd place AG award and re-qualify for Boston, but I felt better than I’ve ever felt after a marathon. I was walking around and talking to everyone as opposed to laying on the grass and then limping back to my hotel room after.

All of this is to basically say that coach is a genius. 

Happy trails!

High Mileage

Doing the least amount to get the maximum result is a good plan when it comes to running and racing. HOWEVER, the popular phrase: practice makes perfect also applies to running.
This past year, I’ve started to experiment with running more. In the past, this has led to injury and burnout – which led me to believe that I needed to keep the mileage low. Better to do less and stay injury free than run too much and end up sitting on the sideline come race day.
Coach convinced me otherwise this year… she said the difference is in how I run those extra miles.
I used to think all miles were the same. This was before I met my coach, but I still didn’t really get it until this past year. Suddenly, running on soft surface trails and running a SLOW pace – and by that, I mean really. really slow, have made a huge difference.

The soft surface was an instance relief. Coach has been a fan for years, but I’ve been slow to adopt it. After months of her urging me to give it a shot, I realized you can tell the minute you hit the trails that you legs feel better. Plus, you get an extra core workout at the same time trying to get traction against the sand. It’s a lot harder than running on pavement, that’s for sure. It’s been great since a local neighborhood just unveiled a huge new system of dirt trails this past fall. I’m also lucky enough to live out in the boonies with some great dirt roads that are not far from my home.
But the biggest difference I’ve seen, and the one that has come as the biggest surprise, is the slower paced runs. Running an entire minute slower than my marathon pace feels like a crawl. I used to run everything at only 30 seconds slower. It’s still all too easy for me to fall back into that pace – old habits are hard to break and I think my body is used to it as the default setting after so many years.
However, if you can slow yourself down a full minute, it makes an enormous difference in how you feel for the next day’s workout. It’s worth giving it a try for a week or two.

All of which has led me to hit a weekly mileage total of close of 50 miles this week. I’ve been holding myself back to 30-40 for so long this seems crazy, but here I am and (fingers crossed) my legs are still holding strong. It’s only the second week of a higher volume, but I’m hoping this holds out and I can keep up the slow pace.
Happy Running!

Running after a break

Whether you’ve been celebrating a bit too much over the holiday season or your nephews gave you a tummy bug along with a new sweater for Christmas, it’s tough to get back out there after taking a break.

My athletes always seem to fall into two groups: they either want to jump back in full steam and make up for lost workouts OR they write off the season and take it easy having realized how nice it is to stay warm in bed.

While it certainly depends on your goals and the reasons for your break, the best bet is to cut yourself some slack, but still lace up those shoes. I had several athletes take breaks – some voluntary and others sick in bed – this week. I gave most of them the same advice: keep the first days back easy. Keep the miles between 4-6 and the pace conversational. Pay extra attention to stretching and form. It’s easy for muscles to tighten up after just a week off.

Getting everyone back running is easy, the hard part is re-tailoring their workouts. For my athletes with races weeks away, I didn’t have much to worry about. Missing a few workouts isn’t going to make much difference, even if they were key workouts. But if the race is less than a month, I always sit down or call my athletes to see how they really feel.

Thankfully, everyone still feels up to the challenge of the next round of races – only two weeks away for several of them! It’s going to be an eventful start to 2015.

Want to get faster? Try taking it easier

It sounds counterintuitive, but this year I’ve had not one but three athletes make HUGE gains in their personal best times simply by going easy on their easy days and resting on those all important rest days.

Although exercise science has been trumpeting this news for a while, it’s a difficult concept to get your head around. When you feel good, why not push harder and faster? You want to get better, right? And it stands to reason that running more and running faster (or cycling or swimming for that matter) would lead to being a better, faster athlete. But this year, I’ve seen several athletes achieve some amazing running goals — and they all shared one major trait: they ran easy on their easy days and took one day completely off each week. This trait was shared by all three even though they all came from different running backgrounds, had different time and distance goals and were different ages and genders.

I used to allow that maybe this theory I like to call “make the easy days easy and the hard days hard” is true for most but not all athletes. I figured that some of my athletes possibly could push the envelop a bit and do well. But just as I saw three of my athletes do well this year, I saw a few fall short. And the ones that fell short were all equally diverse and all shared one common trait as well – they pushed the envelop of this “easy/hard” rule.

Now the biggest question that athletes ask me as soon as give them this talk, is “what is easy?” It’s a good question. I prescribe an easy pace/intensity level to each athlete tailored to their current exercise goals and weekly workout duration. A good rule of thumb is the “talk test.” If you can have a nice conversation with a friend while exercising, you are probably at your easy pace. Your breathing should also recover almost immediately if you stop to stretch during the run. If it takes you a minute or more, you are pushing the pace.

Don’t be afraid to slow it down even more! My strongest athletes took the easy pace I gave them and dropped it by ten seconds a mile on average. For all you Type A athletes out there, that means they made the easy days even easier than suggested!

30A Personal Trainer / Triathlon Coach Karen Meadows

Coach Karen Meadows is dedicated to working individually with athletes to improve their performance and reach their personal goals.
With a lifetime of experience racing marathons, two Ironman competitions, and numerous triathlons,
Coach Karen knows what it takes mentally and physically to succeed.

Creating a custom plan for each athlete, Karen helps her athletes build their fitness, set an objective, and realize they too can achieve their highest dreams.

Located on 30A with the beautiful beaches of South Walton in Rosemary Beach, please contact her at: kmeadows@embarqmail.com