In training you have three variables, volume, intensity and frequency. Volume is the how far, intensity is the how hard, frequency is how often. Depending on how you combine these elements you can produce different results. All seem to lead to being tired however.

I was thinking of photography too, your mind wanders off a lot when you are tired. You could describe different kinds of photographers or kinds of photographers with volume, intensity and frequency. Volume would correspond with the amount of work produced, for example, stock shooters produce a high volume of work. Intensity could describe the effort required to make an image. A high intensity photographer might be like Gregory Crewdson. Low volume, but high intensity, with the film lighting, etc. Frequency would describe how often the photographer gets to make images. Crewdson in the last example, would have low frequency. Editorial photographers used to have high frequency. You could also say the intensity was moderate, and the volume was low, usually a page or several pages. Advertising photographers would generally have Low Volume, High Intensity, and Low Frequency. Paparazzi would have High Volume, low intensity and High Frequency. You could make venn diagram or a scatter chart to plot us all!

Well in my training we are nearing the highest volume, the highest intensity, but moderate frequency. I am not running twice a day like olympic hopefuls. And those highs are relative, about one half or one third what serious serious runners do. And I’m getting my butt kicked.

I did mile repeats again on Thursday. Going in this is the workout that I really don’t like, but coming out, it is something that is very satisfying. I think it has to do with how well signposted the workout is. You have a 400m oval. Two straightaways, and two curves. A mile is about 4 laps or 1600m. The workout called for a warmup, 2 miles, and then 4×1mile @7:00/mile. This is nearly a full minute faster than my planned marathon pace of 7:54/mile, which yields 26.2miles in 3:28:23, or sub 3:30:00. Loyal and devoted readers will remember that my first marathon in rainy Long Branch NJ clocked in at 3:49 and change. So this goal of sub 3:30 is pretty ambitious.

There are all sorts of predictors of marathon times, I won’t go in to them. One of them is a recent half marathon time. My last half was the Brooklyn half in late May, which was three and half months ago. Taking that time the prediction is 3:38:00 or so. How to find those 8 minutes? Speedwork.

So this is the drill. I do the warmup and end up back at the RedHook track ready to go. Another high school age group is doing 400m repeats and nasty situps. A football team is scrumming on the inner field. Round we go. The splits are 1:45, 3:30, 5:15 and 7:00. You then get a 800m cooldown before the next interval begins again. Somehow the body knows exactly how fast to go to get around this oval in 1:45. Don’t ask me how or why. It might have something to do with the fact that my heart is pounding out of my chest and I can’t go any faster but I think it is that mental fight or flight thing again. Your body will only give you enough to do what you ask it to do. So I have these goal times already in my head. It will not give me any more. Dumb body, thinks I am being chased by a cheetah and might have to run for miles. So as long as I just stay ahead of death, that is ok. If it thought I was being chased by an old lady on a motorized scooter I guess I’d get 15 minute miles?

These are the splits: first interval 6:52, second 6:55, third 6:59, fourth 7:02. This is only the second time I have run this workout, and it surprises me how close that is. Well the first one is too fast but that is understandable. Perhaps more telling is the rest interval which grows each time, I take my own sweet time to do the 800’s in-between. They are the coaches little gift. I suspect a real coach would not let me take a full five minutes between the third and fourth interval but it has been a long week my friends.

So as I said, you hate it going in, but clocking the last interval, those numbers when you see them on the clock, 1:45, 3:30, 5:15, 7:00 become your little friends, they tell you actually doing it. You get cozy with the pain because it tells you the worse it gets the closer you are to the end. So you sort of bend yourself to it. I did raise my hands at the end in sweet victory, or perhaps trying to relieve that cramp in my side , probably reaching for the imaginary beer I was fantasizing about at the end just to get me through, but it felt better than running a twenty even, which is just long slow death. This is more like wedging a brick against the accelerator and going over a cliff death. Whee!

43 days till NYC Marathon. I live to paint the world red it seems.

This weekend is the Queen’s Half marathon which is most known for it’s inaccessibility from the outside world. There is a bus at the ungodly hour of 5am to get us all there. And no, this is not more punishment, actually it is a relief, the “official” workout was 16 miles, this is a piddly 13.1, and features water stops, gatorade, and maybe some dancing bears. It is a gift really.

Really.