The Sunshine Double
Live from the 17 hour Amtrak ride to Florida
As I write to you I am en route to Sanford, Florida, where I will get off the train tomorrow morning at 9am, find my car (they wouldn’t let us sit together) and drive to Pompano Beach where I will live for the next 3 weeks as I take on the Naples and Miami half-marathons. In my section of the train I happen to be the youngest passenger by maybe 25-30 years, with the lone exception being a small yappy dog (age unknown) in an admittedly stylish sweater. Everyone in my cabin seems to be unaware that phones have the ability to not disturb an entire train, every text message comes with a loud ding or short snippet of a song I don’t know. The man one row up and to the left of me has watched stand-up comedy clips aloud at medium volume. I thought I was the only one bothered by this, but the woman directly behind him taps him on the shoulder. He turns around, startled. She’s going to ask him to stop… “My grandson loves him!” Ah. She sits back again and digs into one of her three (3!!) bags of popcorn she packed for the trip. One appears to be kettle. Well, at least nobody is in the seat right next to me, I lucked out there. I’m lounging, inventing new ways to sit, people are stopping by on their way to the bathroom to marvel at just how much I can slouch.
Taking my first look at the forecast this weekend I see that the race time temp is going to be 67, ouch. Not used to that right now. Ok, 16mph winds, that’s not great either. 100% humidity, damn. Throw the times out the window. After my last few weeks of workouts I had been building optimism rapidly that this season opener could start with a 64, but now I think 65:XX has to be the aim. That being said, I’m a lot less disappointed than I thought I’d be. I wanted to open up with a quick time but the elite field here is deep and also pretty darn strong at the very top. The primary goal of scrapping for a top 5 finish isn’t swayed at all by the forecast. Perhaps I can even score a slight leg up with my Wednesday arrival and a few extra days to get used to the Florida winter stickiness that we just don’t get to see up north. My hope is that even with some warm races that won’t necessarily represent 100% of my fitness, the time down here will be a huge boost to my overall training and set me up well for the marathon specific block that looms not too far down the line. This first week, particularly with travel, I plan to get a nice little race week taper to be fresh and snappy for Naples. After that I want to throw down my highest mileage week of the block to this point, hopefully 125-130, before dropping slightly to grab 100-110 during Miami Half week. I may not be as fresh for the latter race, but I booked a busy racing schedule this season and can’t come down for all of them.
Here’s how things looked this last week!
Training Week: 1/6/25 - 1/12/25
Monday: 8 + 8 double. Morning session on the snowy SRT. Snowy but not slippery, probably about 2 inches of dry dry powder. Soft surface running I guess? PM run was a sweaty treadmill trot at planet fitness. Was going to go outside but thought dark and snowy may be a bad combo, plus we can call the treadmill heat acclimation for the Florida Trip.
Tuesday: Crazy long indoor track session. 2mi-3mi-2mi-3mi-2mi w/ 2:30-3:00 minutes rest. It’s a good thing I love running on the indoor track because this was a whole lot of it. Assignment was to hit the 2mi reps at goal HMP for Naples, and the 3mi reps at goal MP for end of season. Executed this really, really well. 9:48-15:32-9:47-15:27-9:38. I knew pretty early on that I was cooking a good one, but the second 3mi was a real boost. Every couple laps I would look down and see that I was ahead of pace, intentionally try to put the reigns on, and still find myself cruising ahead. After that, I pushed the final 2mi a bit harder but not so much that I felt I was compromising the goals of the workout. Cooled down feeling really excited to head south and kick off the season.
Wednesday: 11mi AM + 10mi PM. When I have company for both runs I can really stack it up. Wish I could find it more consistently.
Thursday: 15.5mi Medium Long Run. Felt notably good on this one. Only hints of soreness lingering from Tuesday but my sense is that it was less from the effort and more from the 12 miles of quality in lane 1 of a flat indoor track.
Friday: 6mi AM + 10mi PM. A nothing special sort of day.
Saturday: More Indoor Track: 8x1200 w/ 200+ jog and then 3x300 fast. Cool little setup today. I was pacing Mike (one of my athletes, 2:25 marathoner) through some 1000s, and extending my reps out to 1200 to both lengthen my rep and shorten my rest, so that he could do some VO2 max type work while I did threshold. He would jog 200 while I did my extra lap. Then I would turn around at the finish, collect him a few seconds after, jog a recovery lap, then right back into it. Meanwhile, Isaac (another good running friend) was doing some threshold 800s in line with us. After the main bit of work, Mike and I lined up for some mile effort 300s. I was honestly pretty stoked with how the faster turnover felt. My last rep was 44.6, which isn’t anything crazy, but given the way I’m currently training it’s nice to know that is still in there at the end of a long session.
Sunday: 15mi Medium Long. 5 dudes on this one, somehow the biggest group I’ve run with since July. Really helps the miles go down easier.
Totals and Thoughts: 116 miles. Solid mileage with two more high quality sessions. I am by no means the fittest I have ever been, but I am really heading in the right direction with some velocity now. The consistency is there, I haven’t missed a workout or even cut one short in a few months now. I feel really good in the 11Xmi range and more importantly, I’m genuinely excited to bump that up after the Florida swing. I’ve never had MP reps feel this good 3+ months out from race day. The last few cycles I found myself behind the eight ball and rushing to gain fitness and put up big numbers but I finally put myself on the other side of it for once. I have time and time and time. I can afford to be patient and intentional in my process. This first half will be 15 weeks out from marathon weekend and I feel pretty confident saying it will be substantially faster than goal MP despite the hot and humid conditions. I feel like I’ve found the right path again and I really want to make it home this time.
Other Stuff
Run of the Week
The Sunday longish run with the lads. Big group runs remind me of college, and man do I miss the long runs with those guys. There were only 5 of us, but I very rarely run with more than 1-2 people at a time so this felt like a real treat. The true highlight came after the run, however. We cleaned up and headed to a bar to watch the Birds game. Everyone there was fully locked in on the Eagles and the win made it pretty sweet. I knocked down a cheesesteak with the exact aggression you’d expect of someone who hadn’t yet eaten at 4pm despite running 15 miles.
Best Thing I Listened To
No Problems - Ginger Root. I’ve been a Ginger Root fan for a while but this song is just drilled into my head right now along with City Slicker. He describes his music as ‘aggressive elevator soul’ and man it hits my brain just right.
Oddest Run Moment
It’s super common for me to lay hands on a car when they roll through a stop sign or try to turn into me as I’m cruising through Fairmount. I’ve never had a reaction like this though. I’m finishing up my run, just a block from my apartment when a car almost clips me gliding through a stop sign. I punch the hood a little, as one does, and the woman rolls down her window and yells to me, “Hey come on man, I’m having a bad day, cut me some slack.” Just goes to show you don’t know what people are going through, next time I’ll let her hit me.
Alright, I gotta go stare out the window for a while. 15 hours to Florida. See ya next week with a race recap.