4/20-4/26

April 20, 2020

3.33 miles w/ Tanner on CR 210

April 21

4 x 100, 1 x 200, max sprint on full rest on CR 140; Quick jog, plyos and 4-minute tempo for warmup. Took a few reps to get into the sprints. First two were slow, and then got into the low 14s on the last two. Last 200 was 29 high with a crosswind. Definitely max intensity for me. Changed shoes and finished with a 3-mile light tempo @ 7:15 pace toward Saddle Ridge. 6 miles total.

I think Safer at Home means I can run on the track next week?

April 22

3 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 250

April 23

Slow day at work so I thought I might venture up a little higher today. Went out to CR 224, 219, and even explored the Colorado Trail for the first time in 2020.

This was the wrong choice. 8 ft. snow drifts on the Colorado trail and CR 224 and 219 were muddy and uneven. 8.36 miles in 77:38 w/ 2500 ft. of gain/loss between 8700 and 10500 ft in poor conditions. Felt pretty drained by the end.

April 24

3.32 easy w/ Tanner on CR 210.

April 25

5 x 200 on CR 250 on full rest, slightly downhill and no wind this time. 32, 31, 30, 29, 28. Good workout. Not sure how much the downhill helped, but that’s definitely the quickest 200s workout I’ve done since college. 30-minute cooldown for 5.3 total.

April 26

7.55 miles HR sub 150 on CR 220 with some surges. 59:06. Some dingbat started a ditch fire that got out of control and kind of derailed my run and polluted my lungs. Fire crew came quickly and put it out.

Training 4/6-4/19

April 6
3 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 210

April 7
3 x (5 x 200) on CR 140 @ goal mile pace, one-minute rest in between. Range of 35-39 on the 200s. Average was right at 37. 4.94 miles total.

April 8
Am: Saddle Ridge loop counterclockwise in 39 minutes; 5 miles.

Pm: 2.67 with Tanner on CR 250

April 9
7.58 miles steady in 61 minutes on CR 220 and 221. About 1000 ft. elevation gain.

April 10
3.44 easy w/ Tanner on CR 210

April 11
4 x 15-second max hill sprints; 35 minutes aerobic around Shavano’s horse.
4.3 miles total

April 12
9.77 miles steady in 79:22 from Mears Junction to Marshall Pass. About 1500 elevation gain.

April 13
3.32 miles w/ Tanner on CR 210

April 14
Am: Failed 400s workout; tired and felt a slight strain in the quad. Did the first 5 averaging 80 on 60 seconds rest and then called it quits. 4.1 miles total.
Pm: Saddle Ridge Loop; 5 miles in 38:30. Windy AF.

April 15
3 miles easy on CR 250 w/ Tanner

April 16
5.5 miles on CR 220 in 42:30 w/ 6 30-second surges. Very windy again.

Skipped the afternoon run. Not much sleep. Nagging quad niggle. No races the next 4.5 months. When in doubt, do less.

April 17
3.45 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 250

April 18
No track available in Salida, so I’m improvising with speed workouts on the roads. Today decided to do 5 x 1 minute at goal mile pace (sub 5) w/ two minutes rest. Did this on the downhill road section of CR 250. Intermittently strong headwind, so barely managed to hit the splits, and the last one hurt like hell. Started off w/ plyos, a 3-minute tempo interval, and strides. Finished with a 4-mile cooldown on 250 (21 up, 15:30 down). 6.9 total.

April 19
7.9 miles on CR 220 in 60:06. Felt strong. 33:30 out and 26:36 back.

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I think I’m going to abandon doubles for the time being. My body prefers two 40-minute runs compared to one 80-minute run, but between work, baby, and life, just not enough time in the day to get out twice right now.

50,000 Lifetime Miles

On March 22nd, according to my logs, I hit 50,000 lifetime miles.

That number’s not exact. I didn’t have GPS when I was a kid, and I didn’t even log my miles from 1997-2009. But, based on the back-of-the-napkin good-faith estimates I’ve been using, I've now run 50k lifetime miles.

I started running on a regular basis when I was 12, so that’s about 4.5 miles a day for 30 years. Certainly not a huge number, but that’s a long time to have been a runner on a consistent basis. I’ve never consistently done more than 55-60 miles a week (with the exception of a couple of big blocks before my two 100s), but I’m almost always at least doing 15-20 miles a week.

I’ve known a lot of runners who kicked my butt for a few years and then quit. Here I am, still at it. As the blog title says, "a lifelong runner who makes up for in consistency what he lacks in talent."

I wonder if I’ll someday make it to 100k lifetime miles. Barring injuries or early death, you know, I hope I just might. I mean, if I’ve been running consistently for 30 years, why would I stop now (or in five or ten years)?

Just crazy to think that if I continue at this rate, I’ll be 72 by the time I get there.

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In case anyone’s interested, here’s a data dump of my training over the past couple of months:

Feb 17

Short speed endurance workout on the Cherry Creek trail. 1.2 mile warmup then plyos then 4 x 15 seconds, 1 x 20 seconds, 1 x 30 seconds. All on full rest. All averaged around 4-minute/mile pace, plus or minus a few seconds. 3.92 miles.

Feb 18

5.5 miles easy in 42:40 along Cherry Creek path. Max HR 135. Decent weather today, but it’s supposed to get sloppy again tomorrow.

Feb 19

2 x (5 x 30 seconds @ mile pace w/ 45 seconds jog rest) along Cherry Creek path. Four minutes rest between sets. Averaged 4:56/mile pace for the “on” sections. 

This is a classic Mihaly Igloi workout. Since I have very little time for training right now, this is the kind of workout that I’m emphasizing right now. Short, fast bursts with relatively short recovery. The mix of intensity and rest makes it mostly an aerobic workout. From the first interval to the second-to-last interval, my heart rate was mostly between 140 and 170, which for me is pure aerobic running to tempo range. It’s a blend of intensity, aerobic stimulus, and speed that I find invigorating rather than exhausting. 5 miles total.

Feb 20

7.21-mile prog run along Cherry Creek path in 49:45. Felt great the first half while keeping the heart rate down and then struggled to get the pace and the heart rate up as much as I wanted the last three miles. Route wasn’t conducive to an aggressive finish, with lots of intersections to cross in rush hour traffic.

Feb 21

6.07 miles easy, HR max 140. From the Cherry Creek trail and around Wash Park. Felt sluggish.

Feb 22

6 x 3 minutes at goal 10k pace; 2 minutes rest in between. I’m signed up for the Bolder Boulder in a few months, so it’s probably a good idea to do some 10k-type work. Starting the workout, it was clear I wasn’t fully recovered from Wednesday/Thursday, so I felt less than ideal for the get-go. Averaged 5:54 pace for the group, but they felt harder than they should have. 6.7 miles total. Probably just a little too much intensity this week. 

Feb 23

Had a 5:20 am wake up call for an early-morning run with an old high school friend. He was once a sub-15 5k guy but is coming off a sprained ankle. Jogged 4.3 miles in 38 minutes around Wash Park. Don’t think my heart rate ever got about 120. Felt good, actually.

Feb 24

Was thinking I’d try to run a sub-5 minute mile before the baby was born, sometime in the next 17 days. So today was a test of my fitness to see if I was in good enough shape to give in a shot. I failed the test. Wanted to do 2 x 800 @ sub-5 pace, but barely got halfway through the first one. Just didn’t have it. After 90 seconds at 5-minute pace, I ended up quitting that interval and doing 5 x 1 minute at 5:10 pace. Felt like garbage the whole time.

It was windy, so that might have been a factor, but I think the real problem was a combination of not being on a track and just not quite being there fitness-wise. 4.1 miles total. 

Feb 25

Back to the hospital. No run.

Feb 26

7.62 miles in 54:57 around Wash Park. HR < 150, fairly windy. Good run.

Feb 27 

Zero runs. Zero miles. One new baby.

Eoin Michael McCarthy (Eoin is the Irish spelling of Owen and pronounced the same) was born at 6:17 am. 5 lbs, 11 oz., 19.5 inches. He was a little more than five weeks premature, and so he’s going to spend the first few weeks of his life in the NICU. 

Feb 28

2.45 miles in 19:28 w/ a few pickups in the middle at 5 am. 

Feb 29

2.8 miles around the perimeter of the hospital in 20:20.

March 1

Had to move out of the place we were staying in Cherry Creek. Went and got one last run on the Cherry Creek path. Did the middle 30 minutes at subtempo pace. Ran 4.54 @ 6:37 pace. 6.16 total

March 2

Wife discharged from the hospital. Busy day getting her situated. Zero.

March 3

4.96 miles in 36:13 around “trails” near Stapleton. Got an Airbnb out there near the hospital.

March 4

8 x 2-minute pickups with 1-minute rest in between on trails near Stapleton; averaged about 5:48 for the pickups on a rolling trail. Adequate workout, all things considered. 4.89 total.

March 5

5.4 miles in 42:20, Max HR 135. 

March 6

5.3 in 40:50 on Stapleton trails. Max HR 145. Warm.

March 7

6 miles of alternating 400 @ 10k pace and 1200 @ steady state. Average pace on 10k sections was 5:52. Average pace on steady state 7:07. 7.8 miles total.

March 8

4.8 miles easy, 36:40, Max HR 145, Stapleton Trails

March 9

8 x 30 second rhythm repeats at about mile pace, rest by feel. 3.35 miles total

March 10

5.1 miles in 39:50, max HR sub 140 around Stapleton

March 11

4 x (4 x 400, 200) with a 200 jog in between each interval around Stapleton. This felt way harder than I feel like it should have. Intervals were between 5:46 pace and 5:10 pace.

4.37 miles total

March 12

No running

March 13

7.88 miles in 59:45 w/ HR 150

March 14

Eoin comes home to Salida; no running 

March 15

3.1 miles easy on CR 250 w/ Tanner

5.8 miles on CR 220 w/ 36 minute subtempo. Averaged 7:07 on subtempo. 

March 16

2.84 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 210

March 17

3.13 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 250

March 18

3.45 easy w/ Tanner on CR 210

March 19

5 miles HR sub 150 on Saddle Ridge loop, clockwise. 37:42. The great Tom Sobal was staying at our house and watching our dogs when we were away, and he clued me in to this loop from our house. Can’t believe I hadn’t discovered it before. It’s a perfect little near-exact five-mile loop with rolling hills and million-dollar views (running by some million-dollar homes—and a trailer park!)

March 20

3.13 miles along CR 250 w/ Tanner

March 21

3 x 10 minutes subtempo on CR 220 with 2 1-minute pickups at mile pace. One minute rest in between each. Subtempo reps at 7:31 uphill, 7:19 rolling, and 6:15 down. Pickups in 5:10 and 5:15.

6.05 miles total

March 22

Am: 3.4 miles on CR 210 w/ Tanner in the morning

Pm: 5 miles in 37:47 on Saddle Ridge loop counter-clockwise, HR sub 150. Man, the views on this loop are simply gorgeous. Or maybe I was just away from the mountains for too long. 

March 23

1.43 miles easy with Tanner. Had planned to run farther but I didn’t get out until dusk and a fierce, brief snowstorm blew in at the exact same moment we went out for a run. 

March 24

Am: Short speed day at the track. Some plyos and flying 30s, followed by 5 x 200 @ goal 800 pace. 2:30 rest in between each. All 5 between 32.8 and 33.2. Solid if not spectacular. 2 miles total.

First time at the track since Feb 3rd. Maybe I’m unusual in this way, but I really do enjoy quick, intense, but not super draining track sessions. Doing 33-second 200s, even when I have no races anywhere on the horizon, feels good to me. I just enjoy it, not as a means to some end, but as an end in-and-of-itself. 

Don’t have much time to spare with little man back at the house, so minimal warmup and cooldown. 

Pm:

3.26 easy w/ Tanner

March 25

Am: 5 miles easy by feel on Saddle Ridge Loop. 39:11. Windy AF.

March 26

am: 6.2 miles in 48:05 near Mears Junction

pm: 3.4 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 210 31:21

March 27

4.06 easy w/ Tanner around CR 250 and nearby campgrounds in 37:10; snowstorm blew in half-way through. Cold. 

March 28

5 x 5 minute tempo w/ 1:30 rest in between on CR 220; Paces ranges from 7:50 to 5:57 depending on whether I was running uphill, downhill, or with or against the wind. 

March 29 

6.12 from Mears Junction up Marshall pass and down, 48 minutes, HR < 150

March 30

3.2 easy w/ Tanner on CR 250

March 31

Went to the track to do a workout but it was locked down. I’m generally supportive of lockdown measures, but I’ve probably never been on the Salida track (except for when I was coaching kids) when there were more than 2 people on the entire track. Not sure this lockdown measure was strictly necessary.

Back on CR 140: 2-mile warmup, 10 x 1 minute @ 3k pace, 1 minute off. Averaged 5:13 on the on sections in Hoka Cliftons. This was mostly downhill, so I wouldn’t have been this fast on something flat (although I probably could do that pace on a track in spikes). 

4.72 miles total

April 1, 2020

Am: 4.95 easy on Saddle Ridge loop, counter-clockwise; 39 minutes, max HR 145

Pm: 2.5 easy w/ Tanner

April 2

7.6-mile prog run on CR 220 in 58 minutes; 33 minutes out, 25 minutes back. First half uphill and into a 20-40 mph headwind, opposite on the return. Finished with segments of 6:49, 6:43, 6:20, and 6:11.

April 3 

3.5 miles easy w/ Tanner on CR 210, 29:21. Tanner did a little better on this one. Actually felt like a real run.

April 4

Am: Plyos, 6 x 15-second max hill repeats on full rest, near 250 dirt road entrance. 29 minutes on Shavano’s horse. 4.25 miles total.

Pm: 3.1 miles easy with my very stubborn dog. 

April 5

4 x 10 minutes subtempo near Mears Junction between 8500 ft.-9100 ft. 7:32, 7:28, 6:27, 6:14 on the reps. Rolling up on the first two. Rolling down on the second two. 1 minute rest in between. Good effort.

6.9 total

About that Big-City Marathon You're Planning to Run this Fall...

After things got bad with COVID-19 in early March, lots or big races, from the Boston Marathon to the Bolder Boulder, and even lots of little races, such as my hometown marathon, the Run Through Time in Salida, decided to reschedule for fall. Because it clearly wasn’t safe to move ahead with these races in spring, and, well, surely all this will have blown over by fall. Right?

As we progress further into this pandemic, that last point is starting to look murkier. The reality is that no one really knows what the end game is for COVID-19 in the United States, apart from a vaccine or similarly effective treatment to stop it. And we know that those types of measures invariably take at least 12 to 18 months to implement.

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Which raises the question for runners, what happens to racing after all these shelter in place orders are lifted? What happens this summer and this fall?

This fall, in the United States, we probably (hopefully?) won’t all be on full lock down like we are now, with government orders canceling school and arresting preachers for having services (and rightly so).

But will things be back to normal?

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Most of the smart policy research that’s being done right now is suggesting that it’s probable that we’re in for an extended period with a middle phase of this crisis, where you’re able to get a haircut and grab a hot dog in a restaurant, but where big gatherings and large public events are still not allowed. The paper I linked to above, which was produced by a think-tank with close ties to the current administration, suggests that the limit for public gatherings during this intermediate period should be no more than 50 people.

According to this paper:

Once a robust surveillance sentinel system is in place, coupled with widespread point-of-care testing and a robust ability to implement tracing, isolation, and quarantines—and this is supported by the availability of therapeutics that can help mitigate the risk of spread or reduce serious outcomes in those with infections—or alternatively a vaccine has been developed and tested for safety and efficacy, we can enter Phase III.

According to this paper, Phase I is the lockdown, where most of the country is now. Phase II is the intermediate phase where restaurants and schools open but large gatherings are still prohibited. Phase III is when we can have large public gatherings again.

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As of yesterday, 12 states still didn’t have shelter-in-place orders. For those states, Phase I has not yet even begun. Some well-populated states, such as Arizona and Florida, just started in the last few days. That means that the clock hasn’t even started ticking in much of the country where we can reasonably expect progress toward recovery.

If Phase I hasn’t begun, we can’t begin to move toward Phase II (which is expected to start about 40 days on average after effective implementation of Phase I). And if we can’t begin to move toward Phase II, it’s hard to envision a realistic time frame for a progression to Phase III.

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This paper says that for the US to fully re-open for business, we either need a functional vaccine, or we need an effective system of track and trace, where every person who has the virus can be identified and separated from the rest of the population. But the kind of aggressive track-and-trace measures it proposes, the ones that have proven very effective in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, haven’t even begun to happen in the US (or in Europe)—and now that the crisis is so widespread, it’s hard to imagine how they can happen now.

To give one example of what this might look like, in Taiwan, starting in January, all persons traveling from abroad were isolated and quarantined for 14 days. Those persons were tracked by GPS to ensure that those orders were followed. And if you were caught breaking the rules of those quarantines, as was the case with one Taiwanese man who decided to go clubbing while under quarantine, the penalties were severe—the equivalent of a $30,000 fine for a single offense.

That may seem draconian, but it was also very effective. Taiwan got its first case long before the US did. But Taiwan, a densely populated country immediately adjacent to China, where it all started, now has 339 confirmed cases. Taiwan’s bars and restaurants are open. If you haven’t tested positive of COVID-19 or traveled abroad recently, life is normal there.

The United States, on the other side of the world, now has well over 250,000 confirmed cases (which probably understates the real number of cases by 5x). That number is double from what it was five days ago. It’ll probably double again in another six days. And again in another week. We’ll be in the millions of confirmed cases in April, almost certainly. The only question at this point is how many millions of Americans are going to get COVID-19.

Now, with the sheer number of cases nationwide, a national track-and-trace system along the lines of what worked in Singapore, Taiwan, or South Korea—what’s necessary to move to Phase III of the crisis, to allow us to have public gatherings—may not be feasible.

All that’s to say, unless there is the strongest of strong seasonality to this virus, this isn’t going away any time soon. You don’t go from millions of cases of a virus to zero overnight. It’s going to take months, if not years, to take that number back down to the low numbers of thousands.

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And the problem with that is, even if and when we do manage to get this thing down to the low numbers of thousands, rather than the millions, unless we have a bulletproof track-and-trace system, large public gatherings are still going to be a very bad idea.

Here is a chart with a model of how large public gatherings lead to the spread of the disease.

Reading this chart, it is readily apparent why, even in a situation where there are only a few thousand cases of this virus nationwide, large public gatherings won’t be possible. If there are only 20,000 people with the virus nation-wide and you hold a race with a mere 2,000 people, there’s about a 10% chance that someone will catch the virus at your race. In a situation where 200,000 people nationwide have the virus and you hold a race with 25,000 people, spreading the virus at your race is essentially a mathematical certainty—and there’s a chance that a single race could lead to a new nationwide outbreak. That’s also true of any concert, any stadium event, or any other major gathering.

So yeah, all that’s to say that the odds of your big-city marathon happening this year are becoming vanishingly remote.

The only way these races will happen is if: 1) seasonality eradicates the virus over the summer, and the fall season doesn’t lead to a re-occurrence or 2) if our government develops a totally effective track-and-trace system that is capable of completely removing from the general public all instances of the virus—even those cases that are asymptomatic.

Option 1 isn’t likely, because seasonality in viruses—even if it is a thing for COVID-19—is almost never that strong; Option 2 doesn’t seem likely, because, well, nothing about this government (or the British government, or the French government, or the Spanish government) has shown that it has the vision and administrative capacity to handle such a task (which, at this point, given the sheer breadth and scope of the pandemic, would be a challenge for any administration).

Which means I wouldn’t sweat your training too much for the Fall Boston Marathon. Or Chicago. Or London. They’re probably not going to happen. At least not in the traditional sense with tens of thousands of humans lining up next to each other for a real, in-person race.

In fact, there’s a decent chance that even my hometown Salida’s Run Through Time Marathon, with its mere 350 participants, won’t happen on October 11^th. With more than a million people likely to be infected with COVID-19 in this country in a matter of weeks, even that small of a race might prove too ambitious in scope, even five months down the road.