This past weekend was the VB Half Marathon (The Sham) and yours truly absolutely crushed my past record AND set a new all time personal best. And we're not talking seconds either.
Let's put this in perspective. In 2016 I ran this race, in admittedly bad weather. My time, per Nike+ was just over 1:45. That next month I ran a half in NJ And ran a 1:40. That was an exceptionally flat course with high winds. Half head half tail.
I returned to the Sham in 2018 and "ran" 1:42:04. I say "ran" because I did the total opposite of the training plan. I went out too fast, and burnt out about 2 miles to the finish. As in walked a bit.
2019 I skipped because of personal reasons I won't get into here. However in the fall of that year I decided to make a number of changes to my training. First, I realized from the 2018 training block that I was going waaaay too hard and there was no way I would be able to do that again. Besides, it didn't seem to do all that much to increase my performance. So this time I decided to do MAF training. MAF training is an aerobic training method. I did not realize it but I was very very much out of shape aerobically. Like many other people I thought that since i could "run fast" I must have being in good cardio-vascular health.
No. Not at all. Well better than most but not where I should have been.
So I got a heart rate monitor and had it beep at me whenever I went 5 BPM over my predetermined rate taking into account the MAF formula (180 BPM - Age). I added 10 to that because I wasn't injured. Well at that rate, Mr. Tunji was walking. Yes. Walking. If I did a 9.5 min mile I was going fast, I won't go into the details as you, the reader, can do a search for "Road to the Sham" and read about it.
Due to COVID, well no, due to the government response to COVID, Sham 2020 was cancelled. I continued with the MAF training up to the 2021 Sham. Didn't do much different training wise but I did decide that I would change my diet. Enter intermittent fasting. I had been annoyed that for all the running I did, I had this little "pooch". I saw a documentary about Kipchoge and saw how much he ate so I knew it wasn't how much was eating. Well in a few months, I went from around 188 to 175. I have been there since. I eat the same things and I don't eat the same things but what intermittent fasting did for me was stop my night snacking. Heck my evening snacking. You would be surprised at how many calories you consume *after* dinner. On top of that I booted a lot of sugar out of my diet. These modifications helped to force my body to consume fat for energy rather than depending on the sugar in the blood which you only have but so much. So the 2021 Sham came
The difference that year was that the course was changed. A. LOT. There were a lot of turns which slows you down and street crossings. Street crossings with traffic. Yeah, like the training runs. Oh did I mention the high winds?
None the less I did that course in 1:40:55 which was a huge improvement and possibly could have gone faster but I knew at mile 3 that I was "in trouble" because I heard a 8:30 mile tick by. That's a lot of time to make up. And yes, it was at the part that was very twisty and had a street crossing. Considering that environment, the time I posted was quite impressive. But I knew I wanted the 'real" course.
So after the 2021 Sham and after a little break I decided to add to my training. More miles. Over the summer I instituted a one hour run a day rule. All my runs would be for one hour. I covered whatever distance I would cover in that time. I took my ego out of my runs and some days I ran 8:30 to 9:50 min miles. I did a lot of that. Building the aerobic base and making my body burn fat.
More weight fell off.
The next thing I did, was correct my breathing. I had always run while mouth breathing. COVID made me very aware of how bad that was immunologically but now I was looking at it in terms of oxygenation. The research showed that nose breathing was superior to mouth breathing in terms of oxygen exchange. By September of 2021 I was able to do all my runs without opening my mouth for anything other than nutrition. This was a total game changer. With this development I could tell when I was pushing too hard. If I felt the urge to gasp for breath that meant I was going to fast and needed to back off.
The down side to this was I am always running with a runny nose. Now I know why those elite runners are always blowing their noses.
When I got into my training good and hard around Dec. I instituted the next big change. No more gradually going up to 12 mile long runs. Every long run was 12 miles. Some slow, some slow then fast. Some fast. But I wanted my body used to 12 miles. I wanted 12 miles to feel like just another run.
Mission accomplished.
So 2022 Sham result? 1:38:13 (1:37:09 according to Nike+)
7 minutes faster than 2016
4 minutes faster than 2018.
1.5 minutes faster than my PR in NJ.
Oh and negative split the course.
I'm running faster now (at 50) than I was at 44.
Now that wasn't just the training. There was a race day plan:
1) Biggest problem I had was starting out way too fast and then slowing down too much. So I set my phone to tell me my pace every half mile. I didn't want to be surprised that I ran a whole mile to slow or too fast. I would also occasionally check my watch to see if I was on pace. I maintained my pace to within 2 seconds for the entire race.
2) No ego racing. Somebody passed me? Good luck see you later. I've been the kind of person that if I see someone ahead of me that I didn't see before, I gotta go catch him. If someone passed me, then I must be going too slow so speed up. Only to crash about 2 miles out and slow to a crawl. Now the question is, am I running my designated pace? No? too slow? speed up. Too fast, slow down. Check watch. Check breathing.
There was a guy who blew by me at around 1.5 miles in. Disappeared. I passed him at mile 12. He was walking.
We ALL feel great at the beginning of the race. It's how you feel at mile 10 and 11 that counts most.
3) Proper nutrition pre and during race: I thought I could carry water and be good. No. Just no.
I thought I could not eat. I mean it's early and I don't like food in my stomach. Yeah, no.
Get up early enough to put in enough calories to run on but not enough to fill your stomach. If you train and run properly you're not going to be burning any of that for a while, You need minerals and vitamins. You sweat those out and that's going to cause problems later as your blood electrolyte balance goes off .
Train to know how much you need to carry or have held for you. I've seen people end races with stuff left over. That means you either didn't follow your plan or you didn't have a plan and brought to much. Now you have extra weight carrying around. Either situation is not ideal.
So my advice to you if you want to improve:
MAF training. It's going to take a while if you are not aerobically fit.
Nose breath if you aren't already. I passed a guy and I could tell he was on limit due to his mouth breathing.
Get as many miles in per week as possible without injuring yourself. Most of it slow as hell.
Intermittent fasting. You are likely carrying around weight you don't know you can lose. It's worth it. Also it helps with the MAF training as it helps to move your body off sugar dependency.
And that's all folks. Thanks for reading.
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