Sharon's Ride, and this week's schedule

Mahalo to Michael Lau for these pics from Sharon's Ride.

Sunday was the annual Sharon's Ride for Epilepsy, which I did in place of my schedule tempo ride. I chose to ride it hard, which had the unfortunate side effect of my not stopping for the usual pictures. Lucky for me Michael Lau took a bunch.

I found out Saturday at packet pickup that the course had been cut to 50K but as it turned out the intense, unpredictable wind made up for it. Here are some of my stats:

Duration: 1:57
Distance: 26.1 mi
Avg Speed 13.4 Max: 41.2
Elevation gain: 1312
Normalized Power: 136 watts
Avg Power: 136 Max: 402
TSS: 125.7
IF 0.81
Avg Cadence: 76 Max: 123
VI: 1.0
EF: 1.01

The thing that jumps out at me is the Normalized Power vs. Average Power, and the corresponding Variability Index of 1.0. Naturally power goes up and down like a yo-yo, but these numbers suggest that I rode at a relatively steady effort. If I had pushed had a bit, then cruised a bit, my average power could be the same as here but my NP would be lower, something like 130 watts. Along with that my VI would have been non-zero. I am still not totally clear how to interpret Efficiency Factor, but 1.0 seems to be ideal and this was pretty close.

The original plan for the day, before it was an organized ride, was a 2:30 ride with 2 x 20 min intervals in zone 3. This was not a day to do precisely timed intervals, but I tried to ride in zone three a lot, limited by road conditions and fatigue. Here are my time in zone results:

Power
1Z - 13%
2Z - 31%
3Z - 22%
4aZ - 10%
4Z - 10%
5Z - 12%
6Z - 1%

Heart Rate
1Z - 4%
2Z - 10%
3Z - 21%
4Z - 58%
5AZ - 6%
5BZ - 1%
5CZ - 1%

The striking thing to me is that, just like last Monday's tempo ride, my heart rate zone seems high compared to my power zone and my RPE. The situation where they all agree is climbing, such as Tantalus. If we round off the duration to two hours and take percentages, I spent 26 minutes in zone 3, which was my goal. Going by heart rate, I spent 25 minutes in zone 3 and about 70 minutes in zone 4. This feels like something to be concerned about, but I am not sure that, given my age and riding history, this is to be expected. Again, I did not feel like I was anywhere near threshold, which is how zone 4 should feel. Time will tell.

Last week

Focus was bike

ATP: 590 TSS
Planned:578.7
Actual: 534.6

Week of 1/30 - Base 1 Week 4 (week 3 is skipped due to old guy periodization plan)
Focus: R&R

ATP:450
Planned:446.9

Mon
AM Off
PM Strength with Dorian

Tue
AM Run, recovery, 1.5 mi.
PM Swim OW

Wed
AM Swim, pool
PM Bike, spin class

Thu
AM Strength with Dorian
PM Yoga with Elaine

Fri
AM Swim, pool
PM Off

Sat
AM Run, base, 9 mi.

Sun
AM Bike, 1:30 tempo for 30 min, 135 watts (chk WKO4 for zone update, course TBD.)

Schedule week of Jan 23

During my Honu training I started sharing my weekly schedule with Pattie by mail, then added Sonya and Dorian and anyone else affected by my training. I just started doing this again for the 2017 when I realized that it would be better as a blog post. So here it is, the third one in the new season.

The week began great but ended in disruption due to wind, rain, and a broken water main. The good news is that what was billed as a Friday morning team building walk for the office gang turned into an all out trail run/walk that pushed me hard. During most of it I kept reminding myself I was scheduled to do my first tempo run interval set of the season on Saturday. Funny how it is that when you are in a group you want to keep up even when they are on average 30 younger. Later that day I realized I should count the morning hill run as my hard run effort, even though I did not get to establish a tempo baseline. That freed up Saturday morning for the annual Chinatown new year's visit, which I had planned to miss, so that was good.

Saturday afternoon was a total loss. Stuck in traffic due to a broken water main. Left gamelan rehearsal at 4:00PM and got as far as Kahala Mall (2 miles?) by 7:00PM. Had dinner there with Mike, then finally made it home. Howling winds and driving rain. I actually was sitting in Kahala at 5:00PM with the car heater on! Frigid 67F outside!

Sunday was supposed to start with a tempo bike ride up along the northeast coast, Waihee Road past Hygienic Store up past Kualoa Beach Park, an hour and a half with the middle 30 min at tempo. I am alternating my effort week by week and this was a run week, so the Saturday interval run had priority. This was "do the best you can." Between the 50 m.p.h. wind gusts and the driving rain, the best I could do was stay home and clean the kitchen. That was good. For those of you tracking the bathroom renovation, I did not get to that because to start I would have to go shopping, and with the traffic from the still messed up road I would have spent the rest of the day getting back home.

The other glaring oddity for the week was zero data for spin class. That is because Dorian noticed that my position on my road bike was not as good as my tri bike. So we spent Wednesday's spin class swapping out stems and adjusting things. Friday afternoon was supposed to be an easy test ride but the rain nixed that, and I already mentioned what happened to today's planned ride. So I actually spent zero time on the bike. Weird.

I am just getting started with WKO4, the advanced workout analysis and modeling software from the same guys that do TrainingPeaks. In my last report -- pre blog -- I reported the upper right block displaying 

5 sec 486 watts
1 min 264 watts
5 min 193 watts
20 min 181 watts
60 min 132 watts

That has not changed, probably because I did not do anything "better." What did change was 60 min Normalized Power (average power adjusted for variations), was 144 watts, now 140. As a rule, less is not good. Not sure what else to track here.

This year I am tracking workouts by TSS instead of duration. I covered this is a previous blog.

ATP means Annual Training Plan, as created using TrainingPeaks. Every week has a recommended TSS target. It is up to me to distribute that between various activities and the details of the training.

Last week

Focus was run

ATP: 530 TSS
Planned: 371.1
Actual: 308 run: 209.1 bike: 0

Week of 1/23 - Base 1 Week 2
Focus on bike

ATP: 590
Planned: 578.7

Note here, to go from 308 to 578 is a rather steep ramp rate. I may need an adjustment latter in the week, might drop Friday's hill work.

Mon
AM Bike, make up Sunday's Tempo ride. Ford Island
PM Strength with Dorian

Tue
AM Run, base building, 3 mi.
PM Swim OW

Wed
AM Swim, pool
PM Bike, spin class

Thu
AM Strength with Dorian
PM Yoga with Elaine

Fri
AM Swim, pool
PM Bike, moderate hills

Sat
AM Run, tempo intervals 4x0.5 mi. 8 mi total

PM HBL annual dinner

Sun
AM Bike, Sharon's Ride. Do 30 min at Tempo, 135 watts

New power zones for WKO4

It has been a little more than a year since I started using a power meter, the Garmin Vector pedals, and right from the start I was confused about setting power zones on Training Peaks. I just sort of made do with zone numbers, that is until two things hit simultaneously earlier this month. In my previous blog I introduced the new Training Peaks workout builder and noted that it uses zone names and not zone numbers, so zone names became a thing. In that blog I equated "Steady State" with "SweetSport" thinking they were the same thing. Thankfully a reader who knows a lot more about WKO4 than I do pointed out that these two were not at all the same, and that got me to do a deep dive into the whole power zone thing.I think I have it straight now.

To get started using power I followed the advice in Joe Friel's excellent book, "The Power Meter Handbook: A User's Guide for Cyclists and Triathletes." Friel recommends seven zones:

Friel
Zone	Description	% FTP
1	Recovery	<56
2	Aerobic Endurance	56-75
3	Tempo	76-90
4	Threshold	91-105
5	VO2Max	106-120
6	Anerobic capacity	121-150
7	Sprint Power	>150

I created a spreadsheet with formulas to convert a measured FTP into these seven zones. Then I went into Training Peaks to enter these zones, then edited the zone data on my Edge 800 and Fenix 2. Training Peaks has Friel zone settings for running, but not cycling. Odd. The power zone options are

Andy Coggan (6)
CTS (7)
Durata Training (8)

I went with CTS because it had seven zones, same as Friel, but honestly I never did figure out how to use the automatic setting feature. When I entered my tested threshold value I got nothing like Friel's values. I ended up doing it manually with my spreadsheet, and never bothered with the descriptions because they never appeared anywhere. Until now. Here is my last version of those numbers. Note that the percentage of FTP is the same as Friel's because that is what I used. Pay close attention to the descriptions.

Training Peaks
Zone	Description	% FTP
1	Recovery	<56
2	Foundation	56-75
3	Endurance	76-90
4	Tempo	91-105
5	Steady State	106-120
6	Climbing Repeats	121-149
7	Power Intervals	>150

As I looked ahead to my 2017 season and its focus on cycling I decided it was time to take another look at WKO4. I installed the demo and began working through the excellent videos by Tim Cusick and Dr. Andrew Coggan. It was not very long before I was a convert and I shelled out the dough for a full license.

There is too much to WKO4 to say what matters most to me, but if I had to pick a few features, one that would rise to the top would be iLevels. The software looks at your history and derives a set of power zones based on your individual abilities, not just a straight percentage of FTP. Actually, I think the lower levels do follow a traditional % FTP rule, it is the higher zones that are more individually tailored. Here is what I know to be WKO4 iLevel power zones:

WKO4
Zone	Description	% FTP
1	Recovery	<56
2	Endurance	56-75
3	Tempo	76-87
4a	Sweetspot	88-94
4	FTP	95-104
5	FRC/FTP	*
6	FRC	*
7a	Pmax/FRC	*
7	Pmax	*

WKO4 includes a chart that fills in zones 5-7 with watts and recommended duration for intervals.

I want to point out two things. Friel and WKO4 agree on where Tempo zone 3 begins, and are virtually in agreement on where it ends. Training Peaks is significantly different. So, as I was designing some Tempo interval drills with the Training Peaks workout builder I ended up with some really high efforts. It just felt wrong, and now I now why. The workout builder displays zone names, not zone numbers, so I was adjusting %FTP to get "Tempo" when in fact this was way up at threshold. To be clear, I have yet to ride these intervals, I only got as far as creating the workouts. Now I have to go back and fix them, fortunately before I try them out!

The other thing I want to point out, and apologize for, is where Sweetspot comes. WKO4 puts Sweetspot just below threshold (a.k.a. FTP). Training Peaks has Steady State well above threshold. Like I said before, I cannot see how anything above threshold could be considered steady state, as by definition you cannot maintain anything above threshold for very long.

This Sunday will be my first Tempo interval ride. Look for a report next week. Except that the weather report calls for extremely high winds and heavy rain, so this may have to wait a week.

Estimating TSS made easy

My last blog entry described the new way to plan a season with Training Peaks. The Annual Training Plan now offers a choice between traditional duration-based planning and TSS-based planning. When you consider that TSS is Duration x Intensity you can see how it is not so much different as more inclusive.

One major obstacle to using TSS is that it is a number we are unfamiliar with. Supposed you had never ridden in a car or train. The fastest you have every traveled is on a bicycle, one without a speedometer. If I told you my car can go 60 miles per hour you probably would not have any sense of what that was like, even though you know how long a mile and an hour are. You will just have to trust me that after planning and reviewing workouts in terms of TSS for awhile you will develop a feel for it, same as you "know" what 60 m.p.h. feels like.

TSS is Duration x Intensity, with a little scaling to make the results easier to digest. We know what duration is, elapsed time expressed in hours, minutes, seconds, and tenths. To simplify the calculation TSS uses minutes. Where do we find intensity, and how do we express it? Good question. There is no easy answer.

If we are using a power meter we can use something called threshold power, more commonly called Functional Threshold Power (FTP). Lacking power data, if we are using a heart rate monitor we can use threshold heart rate. But what is the threshold? Sports physiologists can debate that question the way football fans can argue over which team has the best offense (an offensive argument if ever there was one!). The simple but very useful answer is the effort that can be sustained continuously for a prolonged period of time. How long? More than fifteen minutes, as long as an hour, maybe even longer under race conditions. This level of activity is set by the body's ability to clear lactic acid; any harder and the lactic acid level in the blood will rise and output will drop. When using heart rate to represent this value we use Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR). So FTP equals LTHR. More or less.

The beauty of this approach is that it simplifies mapping personal data to functional performance levels. My LTHR is 141. Yours might be 155, but we both feel the same thing at our respective LTHR.My FTP is 169 watts, and yours might be 225 watts. When we map out heart rate and power into zones we ought to feel the same degree of difficulty in the same zone, regardless how many watts our legs are producing or how fast our heart is beating.

Training Peaks offer several ways to divide power output into zones. I happen to use the method labeled "CTS," which I think stands for Carmichael Training Systems. I might switch to a different system, but for now that is the one I have the most experience with. The CTS system uses seven power zones and assigns each a descriptive term. Here are mine:

	My FTP:	169
		Range Start
Zone	Description	(watts)	% FTP
1	Recovery	35	21
2	Foundation	95	56
3	Endurance	128	76
4	Tempo	154	91
5	Steady State*	179	106
6	Climbing Repeats	204	121
7	Power Intervals	254	150
	*- Sweet Spot

Intensity Factor is a handy way to express how hard we were working compared to a threshold effort. If we were to ride our bike at FTP for one hour, that workout would get an IF score of 1.00 and a TSS of 100. If we could manage the same effort for two hours -- highly unlikely -- we would still be at IF 1.0 but would get a TSS of 200. Normally we expect to see IF values in the range of .50  to .90. As a rule, the longer the workout the lower the IF.

What is missing from the Training Peaks personal data is percent of FTP. I have a spreadsheet to compute that. You can see the results in the last column. It is simple, just the Range Start value divided by FTP expressed as a percent. This is helpful for what comes next, using the Workout Builder, but it has other uses as well.

Care to learn more about IF and TSS from the guy who created it? Here you go.

Let Workout Builder do the math

Let's assume you want to plan a bike workout with these criteria:

Duration: about 2 hours
TSS: about 120
Main set: Tempo intervals, 5 x 12 minutes with 3 minute recoveries.

In Training Peaks all you have to do is add a new bike workout to your calendar, click on the Workout Builder link (see below, click to enlarge). To build the workout you drag interval icons representing warm-up, work, recovery, and cool-down from the top of the window to the timeline and edit a few details such as duration and intensity. Remember what I said about knowing the %FTP for your power zones? You need that because the Workout Builder uses %FTP to specify intensity. It does display the descriptive text, but not the zone.

In this case I made the work interval intensity 95% of FTP, which puts it mid-way through my Tempo rage of 154 to 178 watts. Remember, that is my Tempo range; yours will be different. Notice that the text does not mention power zone 4. It does say 161 watts, and "Tempo." My Garmin will not display "Tempo" but it will display power (and heart rate) zones down to a tenth of a zone, so I should expect to see something around 4.5.

A thirty minute warm up and a fifteen minute cool down bring the total duration to two hours. Training Peaks estimates the overall intensity factor for this workout at 0.81, another way of saying 81% FTP, and estimates a TSS of 130.9.

There are just two ways to increase the TSS for a given workout. Increase the duration, or increase the intensity. If you are short of your weekly TSS goal you can increase the TSS of a workout, or add another workout. Obviously you must do so cautiously, as you only have so much time and your body can only absorb so much work.

If you had to come up with IF and TSS for every planned workout by hand you would probably give up after one month of planning. The workout builder takes the pain out of the math and makes planning by TSS as easy as planning by duration.

A new year and a new approach to training

It was not until I started run training to prepare for my first marathon that I began to follow a training plan. At first the plan was simple. Go out and walk/run for thirty minutes every day, fifteen minutes out, then back. Start with one minute run intervals, then gradually make the run interval longer and the walk interval shorter. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I got to where I could run without walking.

My first "real"training plan came from an excellent book on nutrition for runners by Matt Fitzgerald. His half and full marathon training plans specify short, weekday runs by time, but he prefers to specify the long run by distance.

As time went on and I gained experience with training I learned that all training plans are designed by one or the other -- time or distance. But what about intensity? Intensity is not an important factor for beginners, but as strength and endurance develop intensity needs to be taken into account. The better training plans I have used relied on simple descriptive words like "easy" or "hard" along with heart rate zones to specify intensity. Helpful, but not very useful in evaluating the cumulative effect of training.

Training Peaks gives us a better tool for evaluating the effect of a workout. If we combine duration and intensity we get a number called Training Stress Score. When a power meter is used the intensity value is very precise. Currently power meters are just becoming affordable for bikes. Running power meters are starting to appear, but are still a bit experimental. For runners, and cyclists without a power meter, a heart rate monitor provides slightly less accurate but still valuable data. For swimming the technology is less well developed, but time and distance values can be used to compute a reasonable estimate of swim TSS. Triathletes rarely have the time to swim enough that managing swim TSS becomes an issue.

Training Peaks provides a wealth of charts for analyzing data. The chart of all charts is the Performance Management Chart, which plots three lines computed from the TSS values of individual workouts. I am not going to explain the PMC here; if you want to learn more about it you can find a number of blog posts and YouTube videos that explain how it works. (Here's another good introduction.)

Here is my PMC covering all activities from November 2016 through the end of March 2017 (click to enlarge). You can see the peak produced by the marathon (spike in purple line), and the sag in training just before that caused by my ankle injury and tooth infection, and the very nice rest period I have been enjoying since the marathon.

Last October Training Peaks introduced a radical new way to create an Annual Training Plan using TSS in place of duration. The old method, explained in great detail in Joe Friel's book "The Triathlete's Training Bible," assigned a target number of hours week by week. Being an old guy my plan includes one R&R week in every three. Younger athletes usually do one in four. The number of hours available is set by the athlete and is based on available time and recovery time requirements derived from past experience. The new method starts with a TSS value for the year, which should be derived from prior years data. From that the system will compute TSS targets week by week, or an experienced coach or athlete can go manual and assign whatever numbers they choose.

Here is the start of my 2016 ATP compared to this year's (click to enlarge). Of course this year's ATP has no "Actual" data yet. You can also see how the year starts of with dashed lines that represent results going up and down, then falling off. This is because I have not completed daily plans after March.

I still am not sure how to read the shaded lines vs. the dashed lines. My confusion should clear up by the end of January, when I have uploaded a few weeks worth of data. In any case I think this will prove to be a significantly more accurate planning tool.

Marathon race report 2016

To sum up this year's Honolulu Marathon result: The first half went as planned, the second half, not so much.  This was one of those days when Plan A fell apart and left me searching for a way to salvage the day. In that regard I feel I did rather well.

Back in August I wrote about muscle fatigue, how this was the one thing more than any other factor that limits my success. This race confirms what I said then. To be positive I will say that I see some improvement.

Let's put up some hard numbers. Later I will dive into the fuzzy stuff.

	Plan	Actual	1st half	2nd half
Duration	7:38	8:20	3:40	4:32
Avg Pace	17:28	18:25	17:29	19:18
Avg HR	130	128	140	117
Avg HR Zone	2.8	2.1	3.9	1.4
Intensity Factor	0.75	0.74	0.78	0.71

The number everyone looks at first is overall duration, and here I totally missed my goal. However, if we look closer at these numbers some interesting things are revealed.

To help in understanding the raw numbers I have included some data charts from Training Peaks, beginning with all Garmin data over time (click chart to enlarge). The horizontal scale is time but I added a vertical line at 13.1 miles, and a horizontal line at heart rate 130BPM. I also marked three places; more below.

Key
Red - Heart Rate
Yellow - Cadence
Green - Pace
Blue - Temperature
Gray - Elevation

My planned average pace was 17:28 min/mi. but I hoped to do a little better than that. To hit that pace I would have to do the flat portions a bit faster to compensate for the hills. I arrived at this pace by studying my runs from the last couple of months, working around the times I was injured. My typical long run pace was down around 18:00 with a goal of keeping my heart rate below 130. Typically my heart rate would slowly climb to around 135 as I warmed up, then after about twenty minutes my technique would smooth out and I could bring my heart rate down to 125-128. My goal for these runs was to spend several hours running without being a basket case for the rest of the week, and I achieved that. My race plan was to run faster than those long runs, to be that basket case at the finish line, so I targeted an average heart rate of 130 but would allow it to go a little higher in order to make my pace.

One of the many good things about this race was that my legs felt great right from the start. Chalk that up to a good taper and the mile walk to the start. Five minutes from the start I was at the pace and heart rate I targeted, and felt fantastic. People all around me were flying past, as if this was a 10K, but I held to my plan. I did have to dodge a lot of people who started in front of me but were already going slow. It takes a few miles to begin to sort out.

After five minutes I saw something all too familiar. I was running at a pace and effort that should produce a heart rate of 130, but I was at 140. I knew I had to hold back a little, but I expected that number to ease back down by mile 2. You can see several drops in pace (green) and cadence (yellow) where I walked the aide stations. I purposely walked up Nuuanu to save energy and get a picture of Santa in front of Murphy's Bar and Grill. I happened see run into some old friends there, too.  But there are a couple of spikes in the data -- one has me running at 6:40 min/mi pace! -- which I attribute to GPS errors caused by the highrise buildings downtown.

What I want to do now is step back and point out the general flow of the first half. I followed my plan, walking the steep hills, running comfortably hard, all the while feeling great. My average pace was spot-on, just 1/100th second per mile slower than plan, and that included the long walk up Diamond Head and again on the north side up to 18th Ave.

This is where I had my first big disappointment. No Batman. Every year there has been a guy on Kilauea Ave. in a fantastic Batman costume in a cheerleader/photo-op role. I even stopped to ask some neighbors. They missed him, too. Hope he is OK. Another thing I missed was the lady playing Christmas songs on accordion, around mile 18. She was there, with a sign that said her accordion was broken.

I was not watching cadence, letting that go to whatever felt comfortable. I did work on increasing my cadence a lot this year, and it paid off. I used to be comfortable around 68, and 75 felt impossible to sustain. Here I am cruising at a very steady 75, nice and smooth and relaxed. Those Chi Running drills worked!

The one thing that was not going as planned was heart rate. It remained stubbornly above 130, a fairly steady 140 with peaks to 147 on the two climbs front and back of Diamond Head. Yes, I planned to burn a match on those, so no surprise there. It was the sustained 140 that stands out. At the time I thought it was just what needed to be done to hit my goal.

I was beginning to feel some real fatigue as I looked for the 13.1 mile flag. I never saw one but I stopped just after my Garmin Fenix 2 registered 13.1, in order to text my split to Pattie. It was here that my legs decided they had had enough. At the points numbered one, two, and three you can see me struggling to keep running, giving myself first a short walk then at two a longer recovery walk. It did not help. Even running at an 18:30 pace drove my heart rate too high and my legs just would not keep going.

At the time I did not feel like heat was a factor, but looking at the blue temperature line on the chart I see where that might of been a factor. There are points in the second half where the on-course temperature hit 97F!

I know there are people who cut the course. It seems easy, the returning runners are right there. But that never occurred to me. My options were to abandon the race and walk back, or walk instead of run. I decided to keep going, and am glad I did.

I never practice speed walking but I did learn from Chi Running that the form is almost the same. Arms up same as running, some hip swing, easy relaxed recovery and foot plant. After a mile or two I was averaging a 19:30 pace. I whipped out my race calculator app and calculated a finish time three hours from then. I wanted to let Pattie know to hang out and not expect me anywhere near my planned finish time.

As the mikes passed I noticed several things. I was getting faster, often making 18:00 min/mi, the same speed had I slowed down my run. I was passing a lot of people. By that point in the day everyone around me was walking. But I was feeling good, going hard, and passing runners who looked like the walking dead, not to mention hundreds lining the side of the road, shoes off. Finally, by mile twenty, my legs had that exhausted feeling they always do around then. There were times when I thought I might never make it to the finish, but I kept going and my body, complaining as it was, kept working.

So much about my preparation went well. I ran out of Perpetuem as planned just past the Aloha station (mile 23) and finished on just water and one serving of Gatorade. I took a Hammer Endurolyte tablet at every aid station. Not even a hint of cramping, in spite of the extreme fatigue in my legs. No blisters, no sore toenails. Only a slightly sore lower back -- I used to run with my head hanging down which resulted in severe back ache after long runs. I have much better posture now.

There will always be races where things do not go according to plan. I think I did a good job of salvaging this race, making the best out of it I could. In the coming year I will focus even harder on increasing muscular endurance, to bring my pace up and maintain it to the finish line.

After race Pattie and I treated ourselves to a caffeine break at Starbucks -- I had a Mocha Frappuccino -- and later an early dinner at Eggs n'Things. Banana macadamia pancakes with a mountain of whipped cream. No upset stomach this year.

Marathon race plan 2016

The 2016 Honolulu Marathon is upon us, time to make a race plan. This year my training plan was very straight-forward. I did a 16 week plan starting in August just after Tinman. I had to double up to get in some bike miles in preparation for the Honolulu Century Ride in September, but after that it was all about running.

During the year I got a bit deeper into Chi Running. I even bought and read the book. Happily I had already adopted most of the form elements through the Newton style running. What I got from Chi Running was more attention to balance, less effort, and more relaxation. The result was, at least in how I felt, a faster cadence and pace at a lower effort.

Another thing I did that helped was to join Jason Fitzgerald's Strength Running team. At this level there is still no one-on-one coaching, but there is a great on-line discussion group and monthly webinar coach's meetings where we can ask questions. I got a lot out of it; glad I joined.

I have been very fortunate in avoiding training injuries. Or being sick, for that matter. I can't recall the last time I crashed on my bike. I recall a few mishaps running barefoot on the sand, but nothing that held be back. This fall my luck ran out. I did something that upset my right ankle, enough to severely curtail my run mileage mid-way through the training plan. It has improved, but there are days when I still feel a lingering pain. Like a noisy neighbor, you learn to live with it.

Just as the ankle came back I had another setback. Not really a training injury. A dead tooth. But, I offer the argument that a heavy training load compromises the immune system, and what kills a tooth is a bacterial infection. It turned out that the tooth was cracked, which provided a pathway for bacteria and nutrients to get down into the roots, and I cannot blame the crack on training. Whatever the cause, I was at first incapable of running, but even after the infection went down I decided hard training was a bad idea because my body needed to fight the infection. The result was that I had to drop back on my long run distance and ramp up again, so I never made it to 20 miles. The good news is that the long distances I could do finally felt good.

Last year I did a 5/1 run/walk. It worked, but this year I decided to go straight run. Which really means walk the steeper hills, walk the aid stations, and try to keep running as much as possible. Given my bumpy training all I can say is, we'll see.

I have the nutrition thing down pretty well. I carry a two flask Fuelbelt, with both flasks carrying concentrated Hammer Perpetuem. Given my planned duration I should have four scoops per flask, but I find that concentration hard to take in, and since I am comfortable with a three scoop flask I will go with that. Since I am not carrying water I can only take on fuel at the aid stations. I did all my short runs without any fuel, just a bit of water at the parks, and did fine.

Just to be clear, a normal concentration would be 1 scoop per 16 oz. bottle. I will be putting 3 scoops in 6 oz. of water, times two flasks. This is approaching the concentration of a gel. I take in about  1 oz. every 30 minutes, along with four to eight oz. of water from the aid station. Perpetuem is not high in electrolytes, so I usually take 1 or 2 Endurolyte tabs per hour.

On all of my recent long runs I was comfortable at a 17:30 pace. Still slow, but different from previous years in that I am holding that pace at a much lower effort, at the lower end of heart rate zone 2. I know I can run faster. 16:30 is doable. Even 15:30, which gets me just into zone 3, good for half marathon but too high for a marathon, for me anyway. The big unknown is how well I can sustain that 16:30. So, my plan is to hold back until we come down off the Diamond Head hills, past the Aloha gas station and the gradual uphill after that. Where the course starts a long gradual downhill around Aina Koa is where I will test my form by let my legs rev up a bit. I have to remind myself that on the way back that same long climb up to the Aloha gas station is a leg breaker. Go too fast early and end up walking all the way from Waialae Iki park past Kalani High School.

If I can maintain a 17:30 overall I should finish in 7:40. Last year I did 7:37, so of course I will try to beat that! My PR is 17:25:41 back in 2014. To beat that I need to get under 17:00. I did last year, until that climb up to the Aloha station where I fell apart.

One thing I keep telling myself is that those 17:30 pace long runs were done slow on purpose, so that I could continue training during the week. Sunday is race day. Nothing to do in the afternoon, nothing to do for many days. Don't hold back. A little pain and suffering is to be expected. At the same time, do not run so hard that my calves cramp up solid. Start easy, then go hard in the second half with whatever is left in the tank. Back off a little around Wailpe to rest the legs for the climb up to the Aloha station, expect to suffer there, then go as fast as possible down Kealaolu and Kahala Ave. Hang on going up Diamond Head, then run it out to the finish.