We’ve entered the truly hot days of summer this past week in the Northeast, so kudos to everyone out there who has been keeping at it and piling up some miles. The first weeks of summer running are always an awakening for me, as they necessitate renewed strategies for hydration, skin protection, and post-run recovery. As it turns out, running in direct sunlight and humidity over 80 percent takes a lot more out of you than running in mild spring conditions. This Runner’s World article claims that the heart rate increases by 10 beats per minute when the temperature is over 75 degrees Fahrenheit. There’s no shame in adjusting your speed expectations accordingly when it’s hot, but you can also look at the summer as time to improve your baseline. For those of us on the East Coast, the heat and humidity is the closest thing we have to training at altitude (although science tells us that altitude actually affects us much differently than humidity). Much more on climatological conditions and how they can affect running in a future post to come.

Going All Out: A Virtual 5K Strategy

The past couple of weeks have gotten away from me a bit, but I wanted to share the positive personal experience I had as a virtual racer in Rylee’s Run 5K. It is strange, and even a little surprising, but I believe that I set a personal best for the 5K race at 23:27 (and I also finished third place out of 53 participants). I’m taking this as a sign of progress. However, I also thought the experience warranted some more reflection, as I realized that I almost never run at full capacity for more than a couple hundred meters at a time when I’m on my own in the park or at a track.

Going all out on a virtual race, or even on a solo training run, is good to do every now and then, especially if you want to get faster. What I mean by “going all out” is running as fast as I possibly can for the duration of an intended distance, or what some might call a “time trial.” It’s an opportunity to push one’s V02 max up and stress our body’s systems, and these kinds of runs can be particularly effective after an extended time of not racing. Running as hard as I did in Prospect Park (for me, I should emphasize) made me realize that this is perhaps the first time I’ve left it all out on the course for a 5K since the pandemic started. And it’s a reminder that even in a virtual race setting, you can do things to replicate a race experience that will pay dividends in future events.

In my case, though, I was keen on new things I did during Rylee’s Run that I can ultimately incorporate into my race day preparation. In this case, I warmed up. Normally, when I arrive at the start of a race (no matter the distance of the race), I am a little bit spent by the ordeal of just getting to the start line. The subway, the parking, or the ferry each take a toll, unless it’s the Staten Island Ferry, which is always free. It may be early in the morning, and I may be focused on preserving as much energy as possible, or I just don’t want to be seen as one of “those people” who anxiously runs around the corral areas or side streets before the race, behavior which I always thought of as the runner’s version of costly signaling. Either way, I tend to do minimal-to-no warm up before a race, and instead I focus on getting into the corral and making sure my playlist is queued up.

As I get older, though, I have started to realize the virtue of warming up before taxing my muscles for any length of time. Warming up helps. Before Rylee’s Run, I ran about two miles at a medium pace, or at about the speed I would run at the start of a long run. It might seem a bit counterintuitive to run two-thirds of the actual race distance itself before starting the race, but there are benefits to doing this, especially in a virtual race scenario. I was able to settle into a comfortable pace and then stop my warm-up run, reset my watch, and immediately begin the “race” portion of my run without any delay. The two miles gave my body enough time to loosen up and run the actual 5K distance at my best.

As I spend the summer and fall stacking up miles in training for longer runs, I may experiment with testing this concept a bit more. Is it too much to run 4 miles as a warm-up for a 10K? 7 miles as a warm-up for a half marathon? Probably so, but the upshot is that the benefits of running after warming up are real, and I will continue to explore the process when I can, even just in training or virtual race situations.

Regardless, the best thing about Rylee’s Run was the $14,000 the event raised for LeBonheur Children’s Hospital Neuroscience Institute and NICU. I was glad to take part in the event from afar.

New Races on the Horizon

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had been anxiously awaiting the resolution scenario of the New York City Marathon in 2021. The word is out now that anyone who had registered for 2020 and still wants to run in 2021 is in, so I will be running this November officially! Thus begins training for my 6th NYC Marathon. I cannot wait to be back on the streets this fall.

PhDistance is on Instagram and Strava

If you like reading what we’ve come up with so far in the newsletter, you might also want to connect with Ph.Distance on two of the leading social media platforms out there today: Instagram and Strava. That’s right! We’ve created an Instagram feed at phdistancerunning and a Strava club. Jeff and I would love to have you join either of these.

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Newsletter 12: “Going All Out”