PRTC Indoor Classic 3000m
Right after my 5000m back in November, I was told the organising club holds a yearly indoor track event early March. I immediately was pretty sure I would take part, barring any setbacks from some travel that was to follow later in November and December. I survived those and set my sights on this 3000m.
Training
I kept my training approach pretty much the same as what I was doing (and as described in that previous race report). I don’t quite trust my body to handle much more still, so I am keeping any building slow. What that amounts to most weeks is: five days of running with one run workout day and one long run day, walking for about 1h each on the two other days. For the workouts, I think I most like the “Repetition” work as described in JD (i.e., 200s and 400s at 1500m–mile race pace), but I switched it up enough because I need improvements a bit everywhere. In a regular week, the spread is as follows, but I adjust based on life.
| Day | What |
|---|---|
| Mon | Walk |
| Tue | Jog |
| Wed | Workout |
| Thu | Walk |
| Fri | Run |
| Sat | Jog |
| Sun | Long run |
Over the past months I also jumped up to 70 km per week, which is not a huge increase by any means, but I just want to continue running consistently, so, again, abundance of caution. Long runs are 21–25 km. Workout days 12–13 km. Rest just sort of fills in to get to a distance. Here’s an overview of how the weeks were filled in. Paces were mostly determined based on that previous race, but slightly faster, based on the big kick I still had at the end.
| Week | Distance (km) | Workout Type | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Nov (-16) | 62 | Repetition | 3×(4×200) (goal: 38.5s/200m, jog 200m recovery, 400m between sets) |
| 17 Nov (-15) | 20 | - | Bad sleep and walking from travel ⇒ easier running |
| 24 Nov (-14) | 34 | - | Walking from travel still |
| 1 Dec (-13) | 22 | - | Travel and getting sick right after |
| 8 Dec (-12) | 60 | - | Did not want to do a workout yet due to previous |
| 15 Dec (-11) | 60 | - | First load of snow blocking everything, followed by flying to Belgium |
| 22 Dec (-10) | 61 | - | Still jetlagged + Christmas + flying back |
| 29 Dec (-9) | 61 | - | Giving myself an extra no workout week to get through New Year |
| 5 Jan (-8) | 64 | Repetition | 3×(4×200) (goal: 38.5s/200m, jog 200m recovery, 400m between sets) |
| 12 Jan (-7) | 68 | Repetition | 3×(4×200) (goal: 38.5s/200m, jog 200m recovery, 400m between sets) |
| 19 Jan (-6) | 70 | LT | 3×2 km (goal: 3:45/km, but couldn’t hit it at all, 2 min jogs) |
| 26 Jan (-5) | 57 | - | Down week cause it got cold (and snow everywhere), then knee also acted up |
| 2 Feb (-4) | 70 | LT | 10 min, 11 min. On treadmill so aimed for HR |
| 9 Feb (-3) | 70 | LT | 3×2 km (goal: 3:45/km, ended up a little slower, 2 min jogs) |
| 16 Feb (-2) | 70 | VO2max | 4×1 km (goal: 3:25–3:30/km, reality more 3:35s) |
| 23 Feb (-1) | 63 | LT/VO2max | Moose fartlek |
| 2 Mar | This race | 3000m |
I did not realise how quite interrupted this block has been in terms of workouts. Admittedly, I am still in the “as long as I get my distance in” camp. I just want to run. If there are constraints, workouts are usually the first thing to get thrown out.
As expected, the travelling messed up my training. Jetlag in all directions, walking making me worried about how much I should even be running. This time was just a matter of holding on to some consistency and I knew that was going to be the case heading in.
After that I tried to get back in a workout flow, but the weather decided differently. It snowed a decent amount the weekend of 17–18 Jan. Snow remained through the following week, so I could not use the track. I replaced my Repetition workout with an LT around some neighbourhood block in the area and promptly failed to hit pace targets at all. That following weekend of 24–25 Jan it got cold (-13C high that Saturday) and it snowed a lot. Then the really bad cold remained for an entire week. I planned in a down week to avoid it and eventually moved to my wife’s gym’s treadmill because the cold seemed to be flaring up my knee again. I wonder if that is how I reinjured the knee last winter, that also happened in the cold as I remember hopping over snow (and it hurting right after that hop). For the rest of my outdoor runs up till about 4C or 5C, I ended up wearing thermal underwear under my tights. I wanted to make completely sure that my muscles and tendons could stay warm enough. The week of 2 Feb, some days got warmer (-2C high), but a lot of the week dropped back down to the too cold temps and I did a treadmill LT workout. Week of 9 Feb it got a little warmer again (still freezing all the time), so I ended up using the local rail trail for an LT workout.
Week of 16 Feb, I thought to check out the track, the snow was melting a little bit. The track disagreed. Somebody had cleaned parts of lane 2 and parts of lane 3. I had preferred lane 1 because I wanted to do VO2max workouts, I like my 1 km to be precise. Because things had begun slowly melting, the track was also very wet. I could feel my shoes did not have enough grip, there were several minislips on steps throughout the workout. It did not go well, but I had my excuse ready. That said, I also felt tired all week, so am not surprised I was off pace. As long as the idea of an effort is there?
It snowed some more that Sunday 15 Feb, so Wednesday last week I went to the rail trail again and did a Moose fartlek. That post says how I did, but it boils down to a change of pace workout of 15 minutes at LT, 5 minutes at VO2max. I am not sure where exactly I sat for this race, but I felt things would go alright enough.
Then came Saturday last week.
The snow had been melting a bunch and I thought to finally make some progress again on my running of the entire Horse Shoe Trail. Nature trails here, and the HST in particular, are very rocky. You have to pay attention when you run them. I am not too bad at that in the ups and downs (of which there are a lot). I get complacent when the terrain flattens out a little bit and you feel like you can pick up some speed. Anyway. I got my foot hooked on one rock and couldn’t keep my balance. Fell to the ground, hit my head on a rock, giving me a deep cut in my ear (turns out ears can bleed a bit), scrape on my knee, scrapes on my arm. All that on the right side of my body. In retrospect, I think my left hip also felt a little bit off right after the fall, but I thought nothing of it at the time. After I managed to stop the ear from bleeding, I finished my long run.
My left hip got really sore later that day. Both on the lateral side between the bony parts (very sore) as on the front side around where your front thigh muscle connects, I think (sore, less than the side). Oops. All the scrapes I could ignore, but this soreness was a bit too much. I walked the two days after and even that was unpleasant the first km or two. Tuesday through Friday I did daily jogs (6–8 km) and went to the rail trail to avoid elevation or anything that might further upset the hip. It was slowly healing, but had me worried, especially for Saturday, race day.
On top of all that, the cut in my ear made it so I only dared to sleep on my left side, the painful hip side. A wonderful combo. Sleep was not good this week.
Goal and Strategy
So back when I signed up, I had filled in 9:45 (3:15/km, 39 seconds per 200m lap) as seed time. It was a bit ambitious when I filled it in, but I thought I might be able to put it together with a good race day. After the week I had, I was going to be glad to finish the entire distance. I had already paid money, soooo I figured I would still just show up and hope for the best. As it turns out, my seed time was right at one of the cutoffs they used to decide the heats. I was placed in a heat with 21 other people that all had filled in a seed time of at least 5 seconds faster than I had, and often more than that. If that had not been the case, maybe I would have changed my race planning, but now I figured just aim for that seed time and hope. I did not want to run way slower than everyone right from the getgo.
Pre-Race
Woke up at 7:00 to get ready, 3000m heats were to start at 10:00, I was heat 3. Some oatmeal, some caffeine, toilet use. Had also packed my Vaporflys as my track shoes are in Belgium. I am sure it would look a bit silly on a track, but then those shoes just always look silly. Left at 8:00 to drive into Philadelphia. Arrived at the track a little past 9:00 since we parked a decent walk away from the track; it would be easier for our planning for the rest of the day, i.e., meandering, eating, and drinking in Philadelphia. Checked in, got my sticker bib, got ready, started jogging the track a bit. Did not like how the banked corners felt on my hip, but thought that would be fine at higher speeds, maybe. Did a lot of leg swinging inbetween jogging, hoping to activate all the hip muscles. Not sure whether I achieved anything with it besides noticing that there’s actually still quite some soreness/pain closer to the edges of my range of motion. How’s that for a vote of confidence. Fuck it, I was here, let’s just get on with it.
Saw 60 year old Michelle Rohl break the age group world record with a 10:28 3000m. Damn.
And after that, it was my heat’s turn.
Race
Being the slowest seed, I start on the outside of the track. I’m used to that by now. The start gun caught me a little bit by surprise. In my Belgian track races a jury member would usually walk by, checking everyone’s feet aren’t on the line right before the gun. Here they saw it from the side and just shot the gun. Feel like I lost half a second right there with my slow reaction time. Anyway, that gave me the opportunity to immediately cut to the inner lane. I knew I was going to be last and it seems I was starting out that way.
I had half a mind of trying to hang with the second to last group, but I think I figured out pretty quickly that that was not going to be a good idea. Going by the splits it seems I stayed within half a second for 2 laps (400m total). 0.8 seconds by lap 3, 1.7 seconds by lap 4. Ye, this was going to be a time trial. Also yay for these detailed splits provided by the organization.
Somewhere in those first few laps, the banked corner almost made me fall into infield. I wonder if that’s more common if you’re going slower. Made some weird hand movements there to keep me in.
Through 1 km I was actually a little too fast: 3:13.16. However, I felt that that was not going to last. Laps had been slowing down, breathing had become more laborious. I did not really see my splits, but I knew it was not going right.
For the 2 km mark, I did know what time I had to be at (6:30). Actual time was 6:34.69. Nice, not too far off, but I knew I was running off pace and that I was not going to manage to get back up speed again. So that delta was only going to grow.
With exactly two laps to go, the first guy lapped me. Going by the seed times, I had also expected that, the spread had been more than what I was hoping to run per lap. Because it was expected, it was in no way demoralizing. Some more people followed that first takeover. I stayed in lane 1, but also tried to make sure I did not take up too much room so went a bit too close to the inside. Again almost fell to the infield, had to keep my balance through two left steps before I saved it.
Anyway, I just tried to keep up my own pace somewhat and brought it home.
Results
Official result: 9:59.23. Sub-10 still, at least? Last in my heat by almost 17 seconds. If I had been just on the other side of the cutoff, I would have had a battle for first in the slower heat (and going by the actual time I would have lost, though a battle has a way of pushing me harder). Of the 55 participants across the open 3000m heats, I was 34th. There was also a high performers event, but that is not included in that listing. Those add 11 women (4 faster than me) and 11 men (all faster than me), making me 49th of 77.
The results also provide detailed splits (they provide three numbers past the comma, I include one). I compare the offset to my goal of 39s per 200m, 9:45 for the 3000m.
| Lap | Lap Time | Offset | Time | Offset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 39.2 | +0.2 | 39.2 | +0.2 |
| 2 | 38.2 | -0.8 | 1:17.3 | -0.7 |
| 3 | 38.3 | -0.7 | 1:55.7 | -1.3 |
| 4 | 38.6 | -0.4 | 2:34.3 | -1.7 |
| 5 | 38.9 | -0.1 | 3:13.2 | -1.8 |
| 6 | 40.0 | +1.0 | 3:53.1 | -0.9 |
| 7 | 40.0 | +1.0 | 4:33.1 | +0.1 |
| 8 | 39.8 | +0.8 | 5:12.9 | +0.9 |
| 9 | 40.7 | +1.7 | 5:53.6 | +2.6 |
| 10 | 41.1 | +2.1 | 6:34.7 | +4.7 |
| 11 | 41.2 | +2.2 | 7:15.9 | +6.9 |
| 12 | 41.4 | +2.4 | 7:57.3 | +9.3 |
| 13 | 40.9 | +1.9 | 8:38.2 | +11.2 |
| 14 | 40.9 | +1.9 | 9:19.1 | +13.1 |
| 15 | 40.2 | +1.2 | 9:59.2 | +14.2 |
It is not what I wanted, but oh well. After the week I have had, I am happy to just finish the race without feeling my hip. Looking at equivalences, it is also definitely better than my time at that 5000m in November where I ran 17:42. This 3000m time translates to about 17:17 over 5000m. As I look that up, I also realise that 9:45 would be equivalent with just a little under 17 minutes. Maybe that is why I had originally chosen it as seed time. Ego.
Anyway, I’ll take it. I think that actually means a very small speed up of my workout paces is warranted again. More suffering, here I come.
As an aside, I had a nasty track hack rest of the day. My throat did not like that indoor track race.
Future
I signed up for Broad Street Run, a 10 mile race on 3 May in Philadelphia which, as far as I can tell, is literally just running one long street straight down from north to south. Yay, grids. I forgot what I filled in as seed time there. That race should be busy enough that I can just adjust what I think I am capable of running without being worried I will look like a fool.
Assuming this hip thing is past me, I’m hoping for a good eight week block. The original plan from here on out was three up weeks, a down week, three up weeks, race week. I am now in the process of planning a national park trip and, coincidentally, that seems to be overlapping with the down week. So the down week might end up being an extra-down week to accommodate for the walking that will no doubt happen. I do have to actually still work out the details of that plan, so I best get on that soon enough.
After Broad Street, I do not have any idea of a plan yet.