When signing up for a marathon your ultimate goal is to finish feeling strong and steady, but the first question most “runner’s” ask is, “What pace or time do you hope to hold?”

11 weeks ago Jennie started her marathon training program after having a baby just 8 weeks prior, and we had to set a pace goal that would work for her.

She didn’t know what pace she could run for the marathon, she just wanted to complete one.  There is less than a week left in her 12 week marathon program and now Jennie knows what she’s capable of. She hopes to hold a 9:30 race pace and pass more people then Armani Toomer did last year (he finished in 4:13:45, passing 25,817 people). You can win a trip to next year’s NYC Marathon by guessing how many people Jennie will pass: Click here to enter.

How do you know what pace you can hold in a race?  Below is a list of strategies that Jennie incorporated that should help you hit your target pace.

1. Measure and record your training results daily by using a heart rate and GPS watch like Jennie’s Timex Ironman Run Trainer.
2. Train according to a periodized program, gradually building your mileage and intensity toward a goal or race event. (a coach helps!)
3. Incorporate training bricks.  If your body is new to this higher volume of weekly run mileage stack a cross training workout like a spin class or 50 minute elliptical workout in front of your 40 minute run.  This way the body get’s the aerobic benefit of an hour and a half workout and physically your building stamina using more muscles groups with less pounding on your joints. This is what Jennie did throughout her training program.
4. Use cross training, such as biking/spin class to balance muscle groups with running.  Know, however, that your Heart Rate will be about 10 beats lower in a non weight bearing activity.
5. Test yourself in a specific workout to gauge your progress. As you can see from Jennie’s workouts on 10/3 & 10/17, Jennie’s average pace went from a 10:49 mile pace to a 9:57 average mile pace for her 15 and 17 mile long easy aerobic runs). This is a 52 second per mile IMPROVEMENT!
6. Incorporate one longer aerobic run each week, keeping the pace easy and your heart rate low.
7. Focus on technique:  Incorporate running drills such as butt kicks, high knees, bounding and striders weekly.  This helps your form and improves your mechanics to keep a fast and efficient leg turnover enabling you to hold that pace!
8. Add in weekly strength work: run hill repeats, push a bigger gear in your spin class with lower leg turnover (cadence) for the main set of your intervals  and/or complete a specific weight/core routine.
9. Do at least one speed or tempo run each week incorporating and practicing paces from your 5K, 10K and half marathon race pace efforts in the run session.
10. Review your training daily,weekly and monthly with a coach so you can see the improvements and growth from your training plan.  I like to use Training Peaks for this (which comes FREE with your Timex GPS watch).  It’s easy for Jennie (athlete) and me (your coach) to add comments, change workouts and store important heart rate and pace data from you watch for the entire year!

Use these tips to help you become a fine tuned athlete and help you achieve that dream pace for your next race!  Please join me in wishing Jennie the best of luck in this week’s race, and let’s all cheer her on!

www.tricoachdavis.com

Seeing that I’ve been racing almost every weekend since the cyclocross season has started and now I’m sidelined once again by the evil Epstein Barr Virus, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the Orbea’s newest carbon Cyclocross ride! As you can tell right of the bat, this is one gorgeous bicycle! From the colors to it’s sharp lines, this is without a doubt, a serious eye turner. Not only is the frame a beautiful looking product, the engineering and construction of it is also spectacular. Created with Silver carbon, the bike is extremely light and perfectly rigid for the ultimate race blooded rider. The ATT Ergonomy System technology took all things cyclocross into consideration and gave the bike an asymmetric horizontal frame design suited for ease of carrying it on your shoulder. All cross racers know how difficult it is to properly lift your bike up and place it correctly on your shoulder while your heart rate is near 200 BPM, but with the Terra, you have no worries. The frame design makes it much more comfortable and makes running up those stairs is that much easier :)

Along with the brilliant frame shape, the designers also routed all of the external cables to the right side of the top tube for yet another ergonomic feature when shouldering the bike! Lastly, along with all of the new Orbea’s, the Terra incorporates the new GORE cable housing throughout the bike. This housing is perfect for the CX racer because we all race in a variety of conditions and it allows the cables to remain smooth and debris free no matter what the weather is like. There’s nothing like getting a gunked up cable and not being able to shift during a super muddy race and the GORE housing will completely prevent that from happening.

We all know that Shimano has the most reliable products on the market so I went with an Ultegra 10speed shifting setup with an 11-25T cassette. Since Shimano’s CX components will not be released until 2012, I’m running an FSA SL-K crankset with 46/36T chainrings and feel as though the gearing combination is perfect. A lot of people choose to race on a single front ring set up to avoid dropping their chain but I find having the gear options is much more advantageous. I prefer to use the same Shimano XTR pedals that I use for mountain biking for reliability and ease of getting in and out of no matter what the conditions.

Until all cross bikes convert to the disc brake system, in my opinion there will never be the perfect cantilever brake. These brakes are extremely finicky to setup and never seem to work worth a damn in any other condition except when it’s dry with zero dust :) Can you tell I have beef with CX brakes?!? Coming from a mountain bike background, I’ve been spoiled with unbelievably great working hydraulic disc brakes so it’s difficult to switch to the polar opposite and I find myself forgetting how different they are when racing! However, like everyone else, I cope and have found the Avid Shorty Ultimates with Swiss Stop yellow pads to be the best working combo for both carbon and aluminum rimed wheels.

Wheel and tire setup might possibly be the most important part to a successful cyclocross race. Most competitive racers want to run the lowest tire pressure possible to maximize traction while braking and cornering. Each second you save in a corner is multiplied by the hundreds of corners on the course. The preferred setup with most racers is a stiff, lightweight carbon wheel in conjunction with a tubular tire filled with sealant. On the plus side, without the use of a tube inside the tire, you don’t have to risk any pinch-flats. However, unless you have multiple sets of tubular wheels, you have to choose a suitable tire that you won’t have to change throughout the season as gluing and ungluing tubular tires is NOT fun! For my personal race wheels, I’ve chosen to the Vittoria Cross XG Pro tire that is multi-directional (at least for the front wheel) for a choice of tread pattern. Colorado doesn’t have too many mud races so it’s overall the best option for my specific race terrain.

My training/pit wheel setup, however, has multiple options. The Shimano Dura-Ace C24 wheels have a tubeless ready rim (similar to mountain bike rims) so you not only have the option of easily changing the tire for various conditions, you also have the option to run the setup without a tube. Although the tubular setup allows you to get away with a slightly lower tire pressure, the tubeless setup is a great alternative and may even be a bit lighter!

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with my 2011 cyclocross rig and have nothing but great things to say about how Orbea has gone about constructing this phenomenal bike. If the Luna Chix are winning World Cup and USGP races on it and I can manage a podium here and there in the Colorado series, I don’t think anybody would disagree :)

This morning, I told Erin that I felt like my jogging outfit for the day matched almost “too well.” She died laughing…maybe I didn’t match. I don’t see very many colors, except for pink. Which is probably why I love pink so much, I can see it. When I was 9 my family moved from Grand Island to Lincoln for the second time (don’t ask), and my mother gave my father and I the job of going to Lincoln and buying a new house. At some point during that road trip, my dad handed the job over to me. You can only imagine my delight when we walked into a house that donned pink carpet! The living room carpet was an especially cute shade of Pepto Bismal! Loved it!!! (I was 9…remember? I told you that at the beginning of this blog) and so we bought the house. My mom walked in and threatened to die on the spot. We ended up moving down the street pretty soon thereafter.
So anyway, I was wearing a jogging outfit this morning, because I was going jogging, which is a pretty exciting turn of events. I have been sick with mono for a while now, which isn’t quite as fun as it sounds. I get asked at least once a day how I got mono…from kissing too many boys, duh- every one knows thats how a person gets mono! No, just kidding, that’s not how I got it. I learned a pretty valuable lesson over the summer about energy expenditure. All energy is drawn from the same well. When it comes to the energy that our body provides, there is no differentiation between work stress, training stress, I drank too much last night stress, relationship stress, getting ready to run a marathon stress, travel stress, etc. Simply put, I got too tired. And then I got mono. And then I rested. And now I am wearing a jogging outfit that may or may not match. Things are looking up….

Last weekend I drove to Athens, GA for the Athens Half Marathon.  Since the Timex Ford Edge had yet to make a stop in this stereotypical southern college town, I realized that had to change.  The only problem?  The Edge was up in Nashville (well, technically Brentwood), TN at Bruce Gennari‘s residence.  Nashville isnt on the way to Athens, so how the heck was I supposed to get the Edge down to Huntsville?

The first option would have been to drive my trusty 2001 Honda Accord up to Bruce’s place, but the neighborhood he lives in is way too nice for his house to have a random old Honda sitting out front.  I also could’ve gotten a ride up there but a 2h drive, and therefore 4h round trip, is kind of a lot to ask from someone.  The solution?  Ride there!

Not wanting to go solo, I recruited my riding buddy, Dave V, for the trek north.  Thankfully the Sunday before last featured marvelous weather for this time of year.  It was a bit brisk at the 7AM roll-out, but warmed up nicely throughout the day.

Having never ridden this route before, we were both a little hesitant about the road conditions and traffic.  Thankfully though, we went large stretches without seeing any vehicles and when there was some traffic, there were bike lanes/shoulders to provide some extra room.  Of course the early start likely helped as well.

So after spending the first 30min or so warming up, we were rolling along pretty well after the first hour.  We both missed the sign alerting us of our departure from Alabama into Tennessee, but by the time we realized it we were definitely too far to backtrack.  Moving through downtown Fayetteville, we discussed starting an “Occupy Fayetteville” movement, but decided to just keep riding our bikes.  Right around 60mi we stopped to refill water bottles and split a Coke, and soon enough we were back on the road.  Apparently the Coke was just what Dave needed because at this point he started CRUSHING it, which made me wonder if I was riding with DV or DZ….

Finally, after ~90mi, I knew we were getting ready to turn off the main road and head towards Bruce’s neighborhood when… FAIL.  Guess who forgot the last few directions?  Somehow though, with a huge assist from modern technology, we made it.  98 miles and 4h41min (not including stops).

All in all, a pretty easy trip north.  The saddle time was well worth the reward of taking the Edge to Athens.

The details, courtesy of the Timex Global Trainer:

The Boulder crew of the Timex Multisport Team committed to adopting a 2 mile stretch of road for the next 2 years. As adopters, we are required to do multiple clean ups a year so today we did our first round! Although half of the ground was covered in snow, we were all amazed to see how much trash there was and how much more efficient we could be with several more people.

We managed to fill up twice as many bags as we thought and had a blast working together to give back to our amazing community. We plan on inviting more than just Timex team members next time so we can clean up double or triple the amount we did today! Great job team, it’s so great to be apart of such a fantastic group of people :)