Project Phoenix Week#4

Last one of Mesocycle 1

My marathon training is divided into 5 mesocycles (smaller periods often known as Training blocks). For this 12 week build, the 5 mesocycles are as follows:
1. Mesocycle 1: Endurance Phase (4 weeks)
2. Mesocycle 2: Endurance + LT Phase (3 weeks)
3. Mesocycle 3: Race preparation (3 weeks)
4. Mesocycle 4: Taper and Race (2 weeks)

Then there is Mesocycle 5, which is 5 weeks of recovery.

When I do 18 weeks, all these weeks expand (except recovery, which is a standard 5 weeks). In 18 weeks, the taper is 3 weeks, race preparation is 4 weeks, Endurance + LT is 5 weeks and Endurance is 6 weeks.

Endurance phase is kind of easy to get through, training is just starting and you are still motivated, despite the long runs getting longer and mid-week runs becoming harder. Marathon pace doesn’t quite feel as easy yet and that doubt makes you work harder. Endurance + LT is a brutal phase, because that’s when the mileage peaks and some really hard runs comes into play. The mileage and intensity become so much harder, that a 10 mile run in 65 minute feels like an easy day. Under normal circumstance, 10 miles in 65 minutes would be a good workout. But in the words of Steven Wilson : “What’s normal anyhow? By race phase, you are in the throes of marathon training. The big miles weeks are rolling in and you begin to introduce speed to your legs. You are often surprised by the simultaneous presence and absence of speed. If you haven’t been doing speed work, if you haven’t been doing strides and going for long runs at Zone 2 pace, then all mileage will do is make holding a certain pace easier. You will not be able to accelerate, slowly transitioning into a fixed-gear bicycle. That’s why my training weeks have 1 lactate threshold session, 1 run with strides + uphill sprints and my long runs have atleast some sort of pace change. I am saying all of this from experience. The book from which I am training doesn’t offer all of this. I learnt this from experience and took parts from every book. Taper is the phase of anxiety, when your body is shocked by the sudden lack of mileage. But it is during taper that you should do some quality speedwork, to keep the legs sharp and trust your mileage.

Marathon training is such an immense project. Running your best marathon takes a lot of self convincing. You need to be able to see the bigger picture, learn to invest(instead of using sacrifice) your time well and make tough choices. Nobody goes through marathon training unscarred. During the builds of 2018 and 2019, there were some really low points and what I learnt was that 18 weeks was a long time to be work towards a singular goal. But there are some amazing moments too. In the words of Desiree Linden:

I mentioned how 10 miles in 65 minutes feels like an easy run. Getting that fit just feels special. You do things you didn’t think were possible. The marathon distance is still the 42.2 kilometers, but the way you finish and how strong you feel at the end comes from how well you committed yourself not just to training, but recovery, nutrition and hydration.

This week will be the 4th and last week of Mesocycle 1. So while I am feeling good about finishing this week and having done 30% of this training block. But, this is just the start and I need to continue the good work. I have a healthy respect for the marathon, I will never claim the marathon is an easy distance. It takes a lot to just finish the marathon, let alone racing it well and finishing strong. I’m under no illusions and I have no expectations from this race other than running a PB. I will do everything in my power to run a PB.

Also, frankly I am getting a bit fed up of talking about the marathon. It is ok on the blog, where I am posting daily updates but all my journals are filled entries on marathon running and how I feel. So I want to talk about something else other than marathon training. This week, I will talk about my musical tastes. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, I am a metalhead. When I was young, I used to listen to Indian bollywood music on the radio with my mother. And it was nice, it developed my interest in music. I started learning classical music when I was 6 and played the keyboard and harmonium. I sang for my school choir and played the harmonium for them during inter-school competitions. Then during my teens, I was watching MTV and Bollywood music was basically crap remixes of old songs, which didn’t sound good. I found myself feeling disgusted. MTV still played music back then and at 4 pm, there was a 1 hour show with Nikhil Chinappa where he played Western music. I learnt about Darius and Blue. I liked that. And then one day, he played “In the End” by Linkin Park and I was so moved. When Chester Bennington sang “I put my trust in you, pushed as far as I can go, for all this there’s only thing you should know” all of my teenage angst came out. I felt heard. I felt he was talking to me. (Teenagers are incredibly melodramatic). I was still listening to boy bands but then one day, a friend gave me the cassette for Metallica’s Reload(yup, I am so old, I used a walkman). And then when I was 14, I got a computer (but no internet). Luckily my friends did have internet and they knew how to use torrents, and very soon we were pirating all sorts of music. I got introduced to Megadeth, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Guns & Roses, Kalmah and Children of Bodom. Many metalcore bands came to my knowledge too like Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet for my Valentine, Slipknot and Lamb of God. In college, this grew further to include August burns Red and As I lay dying. And then my friend came to me with this phenomenon called Djent. I was introduced to bands like Animals as Leaders, Tesseract, Chimp Spanner and my personal hero, Cloudkicker. Eventually I came across the musical stylings of Foo Fighters, Parkway Drive, Royal Blood, Papa Roach, In Flames, Rise Against and Corey Taylor’s clean vocals band: Stone Sour.

Currently, if you asked me about my 3 favourite bands of all time I would say: Cloudkicker, Metallica and Judas Priest. Top 5 will extend to Foo Fighters and Lamb of God. Drop your favourite music in the comments section! I try to listen to 1 new song a day of any genre. So your recommendations are welcome!

Monday (28/08/2023)

Double recovery run day. Morning was 6 miles in 1 hour because literally I couldn’t be bothered to go any faster. It was rainy and I love to run slow under the rain, just enjoying myself. In the afternoon, I went to a park 1.5k from my house and then lapped it a couple of times before returning to get 4 miles in 34 minutes. So a total of 10 miles in over 1 hour 30 minutes, which is just about brilliant.

Did some stretching and foam rolling, my calves is pretty stiff from Sunday’s effort. I will do some strength work tomorrow.

Tuesday (29/08/2023)

According to the plan, today was supposed to be 13 miles and Sunday was supposed to be 17 miles. However, what I have noticed from the training plan, the long runs are just not long enough. Maybe it is because I am doing a lower mileage plan but a 17 mile long run is just not sufficient. (I disagree with the Hanson brothers and which is why I am not using their book). I use Pfitzinger and Douglas, and I used to follow the 85+ miles a week plan where the long runs would go to 24 miles, which I found great. I read through the plan again and the maximum long run in the plan is 22 miles, which in my opinion is too short. 22 miles means you are still left with 4.2 miles and it is the last miles which expose weaknesses. Plus, I haven’t run longer than 20 miles since 21st February 2021. (Actually, if you add the warmup of Sierre-Zinal, I did run 20 miles 4 weeks ago. But it is not the same.)

As this week, the long run was set at 17 and frankly, I am not gaining anything by running 13 miles other than endurance(which I already have a good base of), I decided to run 3 miles less today and add the 3 miles into Sunday’s run. I ran the 10 miles in the 20–10 MP cutdown format and was happy to see my heart not even breaking 160 bpm at 4:05/km. That’s good progress but other things need improvement. Did an uphill cooldown and deliberated whether or not to go up this street on my route which has a school on it. Now that the schools are open and because way too many people fail to wear protection while procreating(somehow considering their DNA to be a gift to this world), the streets are full kids whose attention are consumed by their cellphones provided the same callous parents. (Btw I believe no kid under 18 should have a phone or social media. This is very dangerous and I will argue with anyone about it.)

PS: I did end up going up the street and playing dodge. It wasn’t fun. If I am passing through at the same time again, I will just avoid taking this street.

Death by Plank and some lower calf strengthening in the evening. Followed by some stretching.

Wednesday (30/08/2023)

One feature of the Pfitzinger and Douglas training plan is the midweek medium-long run. Especially the 15 milers on Wednesday. These are hard. You are never fully recovered and if like me, you do them in the morning, you’re often still rubbing sleep out of eyes when you start them.

The run was good actually, better than what I was expecting. I was very sleepy, though less tired physically. But mentally, I had a lot of emotions and I was listening to Parkway Drive and Winston McCall’s vocals just get to me. When I was injured, I was listening to this song from Dave Grohl’s side project Sound City, with Corey Taylor as the vocalist called “From Can to Can’t”.

And well, the lyrics are just golden. Especially the part :
I know what’s wrong
God, you complicated everything
I know you’re wrong
God, you took it all away from me
I know you’re gone, gone, gone
This is where I will cross my line
(Corey Taylor is one of the greatest vocalists of all time)

The injury was shit and it was hell to be in that position. And now that I am getting better, I just found this:

In time, all will return to me
In time, all find an end
You answer to me

I was listening to this while running today and I don’t know if you’re like me, but I growl the lyrics and I cry. Marathon training is hard man, you’re tired and emotional. This just makes it easier to get through it and become better. Ended up running a bit more because I was confused with the kilometers, so went over 15 miles but the heart rate was solid all through.

Kettlebell workout with lower calf strength in the afternoon.

Thursday (31/08/2023)

Took one hour to cover 10k. Felt great though running that slow, I don’t think I am biomechanically in a good form. I just read the stats and other than the cadence which was 174 spm (ideally should be 180, which is the case for all other runs other than recovery), all other stats seem good. The stride length is of course shorter. I just feel I am holding on to a bit of stress, I feel am clenching my wrists or holding my shoulders tight. Being mindful of this allows improve it during the run.

Power Yoga core with Bene in the evening, which was a lot of fun. And then some foam rolling while watching Kajelcha walk away with the 5000m title in Weltkasse Zurich (Zurich DL), Mondo attempting the world record, Barshim trying to break 2.40 and another Shericka Jackson onslaught (which fizzled) at FloJo’s 200m world record.

Friday (01/09/2023)

I don’t usually have company on morning runs. Doubly so when they are fast. Back in 2020, Thibault used to come along for faster morning runs when he was up and he remarked how good it felt to have done a workout and be ready for work before 8 AM, while others are still rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Today, he was up and ready to go for the tempo which was the first point of brilliance. Then the weather today was exceptional, the lake is shimmering blue as I write this.

After the warmup and strides, we jogged to the start of the Vidy 5k clockwise loop for a 5 mile tempo. We decided to start conservatively, the first kilometer in a tepid 3:27 and then picked it up to 3:22 in the next. The first kilometers are always harder to deal with, by the next one which also came in 3:22 we were cruising. We were talking in kilometer 1 but then we shut up and all that I heard was the rhythmic tap of our footsteps. The loop is not particularly “hilly”. To be fair, after the mountain running season I cannot even call my run back home hilly. Once you climb long pitches of 40% and climb 1400 meters in 9k, that’s your definition of hilly. But the loop does vary a bit with a couple of short pitches, which makes it more fun. Plus it allows me to show my new found climbing legs. Maybe I will do better in XC now. Anyways, the next two kilometers were in 3:23 and 3:24. We arrived at the end of the 5k loop and then ran towards the track, covering the next kilometer in 3:20. Once on the track, life is easy. The next 2k were in 3:17 and 3:18, closing out 5 miles in 27:07 (3:22/km). Then we did a lovely cooldown to close out the day with 10 miles of total work before heading to our day jobs.

Core + Stretching at the end of the day.

Saturday (02/09/2023)

French Classes resume today. Actually, they did last week but I was in France, so let’s just say that was an immersive french lesson. What it means is that I need to be ready to leave the house at 8:50 AM for the classes. And more often than not, it means getting a run in before the class. Today luckily was just a recovery 10k, so that’s what I did. It was fun to jog around slowly, soaking the lakeside which is ever so slightly sinking towards autumn.

The run was good, nice and slow. Then I spent my morning learning how and when to use Malgré, En Revanche, Même si, Bien que and Alors que. Afternoon was sneaker, shoe and clothes shopping for me and Béné for an upcoming wedding of a friend. Well, the sneaker more because I like Larry David’s sneaker style. It was a lovely afternoon. Came back home and foam rolled while watching Season 2 of “The Bear”. Btw, worth watching if you haven’t watched.

Sunday (03/09/2023)

On 28th June 2020, I said “It just isn’t a long run until it’s atleast 20 miles” Apparently I also ran 96.4 miles in singles that week. (Singles meaning 1 run per day, which comes out to 13.8 miles(22k) a day, which was easy enough to do as I was also single. *ba dum tss*)

By that logic, today was a long run. When I headed out the door for my run, I wasn’t expecting to have any company. And for 52 minutes, I didn’t. But then I ran into Loris, who was out and about for his long run. Afterwards on Strava I saw that he had left just 10 minutes before me and I could have started my run with him. But anyways, we tagged along for a lovely run. It was just so good to have some company and we talked about a variety of stuff. Loris is one of the guys whose training I admire, it is always smart and restrained. He pushes the envelope without red-lining, something I started to do since last year. And both of us had a wonderful half marathon last year in Lausanne, running together for most of the race. Plus, he is also a former swimmer(though he still swims MUCH better than me). He is running his 1st ever marathon in Lausanne and given how he ran last year in the half and what I saw today he is going to be in the 2:34 to 2:36 range. We basically picked up the pace in the last 8k, to bring it close to 3:50/km and finished off with some strides. I got in my 20 miles in 2 hours 14 minutes and some change.

Then Loris went off to swim in the pool and I spent 20 minutes in the lake, swimming and trying to loosen up, followed by some stretching on the track before heading home to indulge in some gluttony.

This was a really solid week of training, end of Mesocycle 1 and I am feeling good! Onwards and upwards!