Feedback

I have received a bunch of good feedback here  regarding my Pikes meltdown.  Most of this has been that I need to get over it, move on, keep my chin up.  And that is absolutely correct.  THANKS to all of you who given me kind words and kicks in the arse to get over this and keep on living it.  Amen to that.   Mentally I have gone through a few states of disappointment, anger, confusion but now I am already feeling a small itch.  What’s next?  But before I get to what is next … I am still looking at what went wrong.

 

I received, as I have throughout the summer, some great feedback from Lucho.  I really can’t thank Lucho enough for the help he has given me.  We have easily exchanged probably 200 emails over the last six weeks – with him being incredibly responsive to my questions and concerns.  He’s caring, he’s honest and he’s committed to improvement and success.  His most recent feedback as to what went wrong essentially said I was over my head early:  I have alluded also to the idea that 180 is over your LT? Since a 2:30 marathon can't be run near LT it makes sense. I had thought that your LT might be over 180 too, but it isn't. This goes back to my old preaching about getting fast at a low HR or an easier effort. Because you can't race within a certain percentage of your LT, you must get fast at this lower percentage. If your LT is 178 then you have to be able to run fast at HR 170.  If that makes no sense to you – I will translate:  I went out too fast for my current fitness.  Yeah, 81 minutes maps up well to what I did going up to Barr Camp in the BTMR, but then I started running down (and actually after 70 minutes there).  I still had to run up at least that same time at Pikes.  I ran fine for a run up to Barr Camp.  Just not for a run that had me keep going for another six miles and 4000 feet up and then 13 miles and 7800 feet down.

So while I am sitting in a meeting this AM, I get a mail from the PPM winner himself – Matt Carpenter.   Unsolicited, Matt looked at my post, my data and gave me the following feedback (slightly edited).

Wait – before I post that, did I say I got the email in a meeting while at work?  Yeah – think about that.  Here is a guy fresh off his kabizillionth victory at Pikes and he is taking time and energy to do analysis and write an email about my race?  So I was suddenly a bit ADD in this meeting because I glanced at the mail, but knew I had to focus on work!  Call it a man crush, but I continue to be impressed as to what this guy does for the sport at a variety of levels.  Thanks Matt!  Matt’s note – some highlights (bold) by me for emphasis…

Great write up on your race!  Sometimes you just need to step back and look for the obvious. Sorry dude but your HR graph gives it away. You went out too fast. Sure you can post that your AHR was ~175s through the Ws but that is an average from when it was still working its way up. UP to the freaking 180s!!! Hell, that would kill me!!! How many times must it be said that uphill running is like swimming. You can double your effort but you don't go twice as fast. The gains are not worth it. The couple of minutes you got ahead in the Ws cost you 10+ up top. But let's move away from HR to actual times to see if that analysis jives. Just for grins I took each of you cumulative times and splits and put them into the pace calculator. On the left is your overall pace on the right was your split pace. Rather telling I should think:

 

R    2:09

H     2:29      2:38

WS  2:36     2:40

NN  2:39     2:43

78   2:39     2:42

BC  2:41      2:46

BP  2:44      3:04

AF  2:52      3:27

2    2:53      3:04

1    2:56      3:15

t     2:57:31 3:18

I don't know what your Ascent goal was. (GZ note – I thought 2:45 was do-able) You wrote on 8/7 "I feel that I can ascend faster than 2:50" but through the Ws you were WAY WAY under that and still WAY under that through BC. (Yes, I ignore the Ruxton split and can't for the life of me figure out why my Ruxton split works but everyone else is LIGHT years ahead of pace there) but beyond Ruxton you were going too fast especially  when you factor in "the day" which I don't think was that good – as shown by those 180s you were running. I call it the PP factor.  Too many ignore that Pikes can have its own set of rules that change day by day and do not care about our goals.  If we stick to our goals it is going to eat us up and spit us out like it has done to solid granite for eons. Yet instead of adjusting for "the day" you stubbornly hung onto that effort (the 180s) until your body could not do it anymore and then look at the HR graph again! Like a cliff and not too much later you were talking about a bad patch. Sorry again, but bad patches don't happen - they are made by us because we did not do something correctly. I went back to your BTMR HR graph where you had a great race and what a freaking difference! Who the heck you think you are that you do a shorter race like the BTMR never much over 175 and kept things pretty level but then in a race that is 2X as long go that long at 180? Bad patch indeed! But the bad patch did not come when you were feeling bad at Barr Camp, it came when you were feeling good in the Ws. Since you like fancy plots and graphs why don't you overlay your BTMR HR graph on top of you PPM HR graph and look at the first 30 mins of your PPM. Game over!

At any rate, chin up, get over it and get on with it. Resolve to run smarter next time. We all do stupid stuff.

But as I think I said before sometimes it is best to keep it simple once and a while. The tweaks I made between Leadville 04/05 and North Face 07/08 were  minor, minor, minor! But the difference is huge. Based on your BTMR you don't even have to tweak your training. You just have to stick to your game plan …

Go out hard, when it hurts speed up...

Matt Carpenter

As Stan Lee used to say … ‘nuff said.