Please chart that training course for me.

When my running buddy at work Leah killed her half marathon a year ago with a 1:50, a PR of over 25 minutes, she immediately started thinking 3:59 for the 2015 Marine Corps Marathon.  After all, there was plenty of time to train, over a year.

Never mind that her marathon PR was 4:51, she now had a substantial base and a plan.  She asked me to coach her, which was very flattering since she had just beaten me by almost four minutes in the half.

I thought she could do it, with the proper training.  Ah, there's the rub!

We ran the year round, but there were certainly no 15-milers, or even any 10-milers in there, and her base reverted to the 6-mile base we both normally have which is the maximum distance we can run at noontime and get back to work without being too delayed.  She hyper-flexed her knee in a hockey collision over the winter, an injury that bothers her to this day, and she couldn't run for many weeks, but she didn't ask me for any running advice and I saw no training plan emerge as spring turned to summer, and suddenly her 26.2 mile race was a mere 12 weeks away.

The Blood Draw Deferred.

You might know that runners are obsessive. Perhaps you know that I donated 100 whole units of blood over thirty years and then, once I hit the century mark, I started in on donating blood products. Lately, every time I become available to donate, I drive out to the INOVA donation center and give.

Two weeks ago my next blood donation was due, but my running buddy Leah, who was trying to break four hours in the marathon, had asked me to run the last 7 miles of the Marine Corps Marathon with her the very next week. I wanted to donate blood on schedule, and I thought I could maintain the 9:09 pace necessary to break four hours, but I didn't want to let her down by hitting the wall because of depleted red blood cells. For a week after a donation I can often feel fatigue or a lack of energy during the difficult part of a run, whether doing a fast pace, during the fifth mile or on a long hill.

Leah's marathon PR was 4:51 so nobody thought she could throw down a 3:59, except for her. As for myself, I thought it was possible but unlikely, although I thought for sure she could achieve a huge PR. Last year she ran a 1:50 half-marathon with less-than-optimal training, lowering her PR at that distance by over 25 minutes.

I would do anything for Leah because she is my friend and one of the wisest people I know, and I seek out her counsel when I have an intractable problem. She has been making tremendous strides the last two years as a runner and has surpassed wherever I am, although we still run together. Soon I'll tell you how she did, with minimal training, but suffice to say that I'm glad I didn't donate as soon I could have, or falter in the steady, unchanging pace when I jumped in to accompany her for the last seven miles.

She Broke Two Hours.

My running buddy Leah, a co-worker and friend, runs at noon with me two or three times a week.  We both came back to running from long layoffs due to injuries in 2011 and have worked diligently since then to get back into shape and maintain it.

I was always faster than her, by a lot.  Before my layoff, where I put on a lot of weight, Leah and I wouldn't run together except on certain occasions like, say, an evening Holiday Season Festive Lights run from work.

That was, Back Then.  Now she's faster than me and makes me work to be able to even hang with her on our noontime runs.

I saw this coming while we were training for the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon in mid-September last year and suddenly I was seeing nothing but the back of her on hills and I couldn't catch up, and on the flats too unless I made a conscientious effort to get even with her and stay there.  She posted a 1:50:59 at that race, a huge PR of over 20 minutes, and I came in at 1:54:53, my second slowest half marathon.

My Other Race

On May 25th I ran the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run, a self-timed, short (1.76 mile not 1.86 mile length), flat and free race that has participation t-shirts at the end.  It's open to everyone.  No times are listed for anyone, you can just note the time on the race clock at the finish line for your own purposes if you want.  (At noon on Memorial Day, I had lunch at noon at the Stray Cat Cafe because you never know who might show up at one of these holiday lunches in Westover someday.)

I have my own way of running this affair.  At exactly 9 o'clock in the morning, the time the run kicks off, I run a mile by myself in the neighborhood on a little route I have laid out that brings me into the race course as it traverses down a public street from a different direction, slightly past its midway point.

I join the other runners seamlessly from the side, having already run the same amount of distance as them, and finish the race from there with the rest of the participants.  Actually, my "course" makes the fun run a true 3K length instead of it being a tenth of a mile short.  (After the race, I chatted with another past president of the DCRR Club, my friend Bob Platt, who made sure to point out that he had a faster time than me.)

That has the added advantage of avoiding the incredible crush of massed participants hemmed in on the roadway at the start with kids, strollers, leashed dogs, fast runners and walkers all jostling each other to get to open jogging or walking space, plus I don't have to use up time to go downtown to the start line beforehand, I start the race right from my doorstep.  My "time" this year was 14:52 by my watch for a real 3K(7:58), although the race clock said 16:30 when I finished (I misjudged the race's actual start by a minute and a half since they always have remarks by the mayor beforehand).

The Commish, Final.

At the annual ACLI 3-Mile Capital Challenge race in May, I suddenly found myself on the starting line, unexpectedly so.  A team member had gotten delayed and was not present for the race.

I consulted one last time with the team captain, Commissioner McSweeny, whom I had been coaching for the race and who was a novice racer but a powerful runner.  "There's a lot of sideways running at the beginning of these crowded races," I said, "so stick close behind me, follow me wherever I go and we'll   get through slower clumps of runners as best we can by shooting through holes that momentarily open up between runners to try to get to open roadway."  She looked dubious but said she was glad I was running with her, at least for the first mile.

That was the hurried plan conceited in the last two minutes when it became clear that I would be subbing for a missing, much faster runner.  I would take her out at a proper pace for her, a sub-8-minute mile first mile and she would power it in in the last two miles from there.  I don't have many sub-8-minute miles left in me, and certainly not three consecutive ones or even two in a row.

The gun went off and we started out.  The three fast runners on our team were gone already, far ahead. It quickly became apparently to me that by lining up at our proper station, with the 8-minute mile group, that we were too far back and too jammed in.

After a few hundred yards of darting and dodging, going from side to side of the two-lane roadway to find clear spots, some space opened up that we could operate better in.  The commissioner was still there, just off my hip.  I glanced back every twenty seconds or so to make sure as I set a fast but manageable pace of what I judged to be mid-sevens (7:30-minute miles).

I'm experienced enough a runner to be able to do so by feel.  I've run several hundred races, all but a half dozen in the last decade though.  Things seemed to be going well now, now that we had some open space, although runners were still all around us.  I settled into a good, fast pace, with my head on a swivel as I looked back for the commissioner.

She was gone.  She was definitely not there any more.  Was it possible that she passed me, I wondered?

Nothing up ahead, and I certainly hadn't seen her go by.  I slowed perceptibly, and runners started flowing around me like moving water rushing around the edges of a large stone sticking above the surface in a fast-moving stream.  Where was she?

Five seconds passed, ten seconds, fifteen.  Then suddenly, "Here I am!"  She had caught up to me from behind.  I had dropped her off the back by going a little too fast but now she was caught up again and I adjusted my pace.

So now we started slogging up the out-and-back course.  The minutes passed and the burn came on in my lungs and legs.  Up ahead was the first milepost.

We passed it at 7:50 according to the race clock set up there.  My stop watch, which I set as we actually passed the starting gate, said 7:31, which was within a second of what I wanted for the first mile.  It had taken us 19 seconds after the race started to cross over the starting mat because of the congestion of runners at the beginning.

I told the commissioner to go ahead, that I could no longer match her speed as her youth and strength were now coming into play.  She always finished strong and ran negative splits, at least in the three-mile runs Greg and I had run with her.  Off she went and she soon disappeared into the crowd up ahead.

Now I was struggling.  I know I slowed, although I willed myself on.  The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak.  That's why you train long and hard for your races, like the commissioner had but I hadn't.

My pace fell out of the sevens in the second mile and I was wallowing around, I was sure, at around an 8:30 mile pace.  I was hot and sweating profusely.  I passed around the midway cone and started back, looking for the second mile marker.

I passed it at 16:05 by the race clock, a notable diminution from the first mile.  I think I got even slower in the third mile, although I picked it up with a quarter mile to go and passed everyone who was slightly ahead of me on the roadway during that stretch, five or six runners, and didn't allow anyone behind me to pass me.  The race clock said 24:20 when I finished.  Ugh.  That was a personal worst by a minute and a half.

It got worse.  Somehow my official finishing time was listed as 24:29 (an 8:10 pace).  What are you going to do?  Whine to the scorers about it?  I was DFL on my team.

The commissioner time, officially, was 23:32.  I know she ran faster than that but what are you going to do, whine to the scorers about it?  She ran a great race, sub-eights the whole way.  In addition to our official times being mysteriously many seconds slower than we each thought, our delay in getting over the starting gate wasn't taken into account (chip-time versus gun-time) despite it being a chip-timed race.

By my reckoning I did a 24:01 and the commish did something under 23:13, perhaps a 22:54.  The other runners all had times in the 18 minute or 19 minute range.  My participation perhaps made the commissioner half a minute faster but the fifth team member, me, turned in a time about six minutes slower than the missing team member.  What are you going to do, cry about it?  

I was barely in the top half of runners.  Our team was 17th overall out of 104 teams, ninth in our competitive division out of 34 teams.  We missed eighth place by one point; if only I'd started my finishing kick earlier and picked off one more runner!  The commissioner had the same exact time as three other runners yet they placed her fourth among that group of four.  Places matter in the scoring.  She later said she didn't remember that any runners finishing in a dead heat with her, much less three others.

Greg, who was credited with a 19:40, and I ran back to the office from the race site to begin our work day, a run of 4 more miles.  It was a delightful start to the morning.

The Commish, Part Six.

I have run two races this year, and this would be one of them, quite unexpectedly so.  Where was our last team member?

To avert disqualification, because all five runners must run in order for the team to be scored, two minutes before race time I went to the scorer's table, picked up the last bib and pinned it on.  "Just call me Andy," I said to Greg.  (I was a volunteer at the race in 2010, and I met Meb for the 2d time.)

Greg was delighted.  "Do you think you can pace the commissioner to a 7:30 first mile?"

"Sure," I said, "but that's as good as it gets with me these days and it will use me up for the rest of the race, Greg."  I really hadn't trained or prepared myself for a fast three miles but I was going to try to get the team captain off to a good start while the three burners on the team jack-rabbited off.  (The 2010 team was captained by Commissioner Brill, white-framed sunglasses.)

The Commish, Part Five.

Race day for the team 3-miler dawned.  I was the coach for my agency's entry in the ACLI Capital Challenge and I got up early to take Metro to Anacostia Park so I could cheer my team members on, especially the captain, Commissioner McSweeny, who I had solicited to head up the team and been training with since she was new to running a competitive race.  (The last time I actually ran the race was in 2009 when I finished the 3-mile course in 22:54, my slowest time in the series.)

The race started at 8 o'clock in the morning and I exited the Orange Line at the Eastern Market stop and jogged down Pennsylvania Avenue the mile and a half to the race site, running across the bridge over the Anacostia River which afforded me a grand view of the entire 3 mile race course.  It was a simple one and a half mile run down the embankment-hugging roadway entrance to the park, a turn around a cone set in the road, and a return to the start line which now would be the finish line.  (Meb was there that year, fresh off his NYCM win.)

The team members showed up early, all but one.  The commissioner was already there, and Phil, Tom and Greg soon showed up, with only Andy being tardy.  (Where was Andy?  Should we be worried?)

As race time approached, I warmed up with the commissioner so she could get off to a fast start because the way she runs, slow to start but strong to finish, her first mile would be crucial.  She had been worried about her pacing that first mile and since she didn't have a sports watch with a stop-watch timer or pacing-distance calculator, she had hit upon the idea of wearing her I-Phone tunes with a specially selected music selection which as it played out as soon as the race start gun went off, would alert her by the conclusion of the first or maybe second song to the arrival of the seven-minute and thirty-second mark, which was the goal time we had set for her her for the first mile.  (Our team captain in 2009 was Commissioner Harbour.)