A Tale of Two Training Runs

As I prepare for Race Week for the Long Beach Marathon, I lay in bed this morning trying to decide whether or not to go on a training run. My stubbornness says that I am:
1) training for an Ironman as the ultimate goal
2) the marathon is just a "warm up" for the Ironman
3) I ran 13.1 miles before my 70.3 mile Half Ironman
4) rest is for the when you're dead
5) I'm still not in Ironman shape so I need it

However, conventional wisdom says "hey dumbass, taper for the marathon." You shouldn't be running that hard or that long during race week.

(Photo credit: http://www.active.com/running/articles/your-12-week-half-marathon-training-plan)

So the little devil had crept in my head, told me I can be lazy and that it's okay to go short or maybe even rest because a marathon training plan said so. Awesome.

Then I tipped the scale... Literally...

I stepped on my Withings WiFi scale and it uploaded me as 179 lbs this morning!!! 179!!! WTF!!!

(Photo credit: http://squarewheelscycling.com/index.php?/topic/24658-wtf/)

Within an instant, my competitive and self loathing mindset kicked in. You S-O-B. How did you let this happen? Why are you a lazy bastard? Now you deserve no rest! Go kick your a$$!

And there I went. Got dressed. Had my banana. Sipped a half cup of coffee. Laced up the Newtons. Slid on the Mio HR. Got the Garmin 910XT finding my location and off I went.

At the end of the 13.1 miles, I came back feeling happy, strong and tipped the scales back at 168 lbs. But the analysis I'll show you next is what is crazy. I'm going to compare the run I had pre-Superfrog 2 weeks ago to the run I just did and it is pretty amazing how different they are.

The only similarities:
1) equipment/gear/clothing - I pretty much wore all the same stuff
2) distance - 13.1 miles
3) route - generally the same route, but some slight differences due to how I felt
4) nutrition - banana and coffee before running, none taken with me aka no water or gels

Highlighting the differences:

Pre-Superfrog:

This Morning:

Looking at the elevation, you can see the route was generally the same. But if you checkout the pace, I went MUCH faster on average (8:39 vs. 10:43) and my pace held much more consistent other than the 2 stop lights I had to wait for.

My HR was also an interesting comparison. I held a much higher average HR (165 vs. 146) yet you can see that my HR generally stayed constant with some rises while my pre-Superfrog run started to jump all over the place (this correlates to when I hit the wall, bonked and started doing a lot of run/walking).

Pre-Superfrog Splits:

This Morning Splits:

The splits also lay it out in similar detail. Supposedly I had a significant elevation gain, but I think maybe my GPS was just off because the map shows that the routes were pretty similar. I may have run around Space Park a 3rd time rather than running more track loops, but it was generally about the same. You can see that I threw down a lot of 10 and 11 min/mile splits pre-Superfrog while this time I had mostly 8 and 9 min/miles this morning. The difference is surprising.

Given all those things, I wondered what could be different? After thinking about all the things mentioned above, the only other thing I could think of was sleep. Maybe I slept more last night as a result of not setting an alarm? Thankfully, I have my Garmin Vivofit so I can check this out. And the verdict is...

Pre-Superfrog Sleep:

This Morning Sleep:

...Sleep is not the answer! I actually had more sleep before my pre-Superfrog run than I did this morning. So sleep wasn't it.

In the end, I guess I just chalk it up to motivation and maybe the fact that I had been eating a little bit more lately so my glucose stores were a little bit higher. I guess I'll never know. But what do I know?

Boom :D #BeastMode Haha