A few weeks ago, I received my official “commiserations” letter from the London Marathon announcing I had not won a place in the 2020 race via their lottery. By my math, I had a 7.4% chance of getting in (it’s all random chance) so I had not been banking on it. I also had been thinking about what to do with my running if I received commiserations.
The conventional approach for many runners as they get older is to also move up in distance. This makes sense. Most people don’t get faster as they go up in years and it may not be exciting to run slower than your personal bests, even if you adjust your time expectations to new realities. Also, especially for experienced runners, you’ve developed a maturity and mileage base that suits longer training runs and longer racing distances. Because of this, I had considered a local marathon next spring, at roughly the same time as London.
It therefore makes very little sense on the surface that my approach is to focus more on the mile in the next several months. Why would I do this? Several reasons.
It’s a little shift in training and focus. While I don’t have any trouble loving running, mixing up training plans and racing distances helps ensure that the love for it doesn’t fade. From a fitness standpoint, doing different types of activity can be beneficial for your body and the mile is a distance that requires more speed work than my current training plan. It’s also appealing to think of race strategy in a more detailed way, breaking down 1,609 meters into 200 to 400 meter segments. And, I’d like to see what happens with this kind of approach, especially since I haven’t done a pure speed race in over twenty years. I’ll still be able to do 5Ks and 10Ks, which will be helpful for race preparation, I’ll just be going in with more speed work.
I probably won’t get faster than my personal best (4:49). Right now, though it means I’ve gone out too fast, I can open a 5K in the 5:50s. My guess is that I could currently go in the low 5:40s in an all-out mile and with training, move down. Though I’m unlikely to get a personal best, there is appeal in seeing where I am (going to a track and doing an all-out mile soon) and working from there. At the very least I’ve given something highly unusual a shot, and there is value in learning from that. For now, it’s time to be untamed and see what happens.
Running food review of the week: (note–gels, bars, chews, and other items affect everyone differently. Try them on a short run before using them for a key training run or race): Gu (Roctane Line) Cold Brew Coffee. I first had cold brew coffee by being impatient. While staying at a hotel, I wanted coffee about an hour or so before running but didn’t want to go 15 floors downstairs to a carafe that was often empty. To solve this, one night I bought a bottle of cold brew coffee to keep in my room refrigerator for the next morning. This Gu tastes just like it and it works well.
Running anecdotes, running food reviews, some race coverage, and more