In March, a day after my failed attempt at 16 miles at sub-2:45 pace, Brother asked why I was wallowing over the workout. He laughed, “Marathon pace workouts?! Those things are so freaking tough; no one hits those dead on.”
I snapped back, “But I did! Before CIM! That’s how I knew I could run the Trials standard.”
And so I kept wallowing. I wasn’t sure I could run 2:45 pace in a race if I didn’t in practice. So I attempted the workout again. And failed again. And yet… on race day I did run sub-2:45. Because marathon pace workouts are so freaking tough, and it’s rare to hit them dead on.
I feel like I’ve done you all a bit of a disservice. Here on the blog and in interviews I rattle on an on about the one workout that helped me get to the Olympic Trials the first time, to the point that people have reached out to me to ask more about it. (Which is awesome! I always love hearing from you guys!) The gist of the workout: a long run of 18-22 miles with 12-16 miles in the middle at goal race pace. (I peak at 16 pace miles after building up to it over the years and over the course of each season.) I’ve always said that if you nail this workout, you are ready to nail the marathon. It’s a hard grind that you’ll likely do alone, in the middle of a high mileage week. If you can nail it then, you’ll be ready on race day when you’re tapered and high on adrenaline.
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| Just because I didn't run well on this one day... |
But what happens if you don’t nail the workout? Is the inverse true? Does failing at this one workout mean you’ll fail at the marathon?
No, because it’s only one workout. Every season is an accumulation of workouts, long slogs, hard tempos, intervals, easy days, strides, core, strength, eating right, sleeping enough. No build up is perfect. It’s too long, life is too messy, the weather is too uncontrollable. Every season has its share of bad days. The trick is to focus on the things that go well and forget the rest. (“Remember the compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.”)
Before Pittsburgh, those failed attempts weighed on me. How could I be confident enough to go for a Trials qualifier when I didn’t run my tried-and-true confidence booster? But I was giving that workout too much power; just because I made it to the Trials by one route before, didn’t mean I had to take exactly the same route this time. I looked back over the rest of my workouts and everything else—tempo runs, track workouts, tune-up races—was on par with that magical CIM season. I was in similar shape overall. All that work didn’t disappear because of a couple of bad days. So I put my faith in the total, in the accumulation of miles, rather than in one or two big workouts.
And honestly, I wasn’t wildly off. I’ve had some seasons where I’ve tried to force things when I didn’t have too much evidence to go off, with disastrous consequences. (If there are more bad days and than good days, it’s probably time to reevaluate your goals or give your body a break before it breaks.) But I did run pretty close to my goal (four seconds per mile slow the first time, six seconds the second time), even if it took some convincing for me to see that. I whined and moaned at the time that it wasn’t close enough; it wasn’t perfect. But I wasn’t that far off. I looked back at my past marathons (other than CIM) and realized I often ran about five seconds per mile faster on race day than in a workout. Hoping to run a little faster on race day wasn’t being totally unrealistic.
(I still think marathon pace workouts are the most important workouts of marathon training; they are the most similar to the marathon physiologically and psychologically. They deserve to be given top priority and hard effort. But if the effort is there and the pace is a few seconds slow, it’s not the end of the world. They aren’t the only workout.)
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| ... it doesn't mean I can't run well on this one. |
The thing about nailing the most important workout is it’s an easy confidence boost; if you run a long effort at race pace, you’re ready. It’s harder to see that you might still be ready, even if you don’t quite hit it exactly. It takes confidence and knowing your body and the kind of shape you’re in, based on the total season. That can be tough. Experience and looking back on old training logs can help, as can coaches and outside perspectives.
Of course, you need to have an accumulation of something; you can’t run well on optimism and hopes alone. I know I also blab on about dreaming big and believing in yourself, but obviously you have to do the work too. Dreaming big gets you out of bed in the morning to do the work (and maybe also into bed early to get that crucial sleep!) Believing keeps you in the game when doing the work/running the race gets really freaking hard. But behind it all is a base of hard work. Of grinding, of sweat in your eyes, sun beating down, muscles aching to quit, stomach urging to rebel, of hard freaking work. Dreaming and believing won’t get you anywhere without those really tough workouts.
But that doesn’t mean they all have to go perfectly.
Dream big,
Teal
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