Would you believe this is two miles outside of Manhattan?

In NYC this past weekend, our Race with Purpose marathon team challenged themselves to a 21-mile training run which took them from Manhattan over the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey and up the seldom driven Henry Hudson Drive that runs along the Hudson River up to Alpine, NJ. Henry Hudson Drive, is inaccurately referred to as River Road by most locals, which describes the location of the road but certainly doesn’t provide an accurate image of a 8-mile stretch of road that includes a total vertical climb of greater than 4,800 feet including a 1.5 mile 350 vertical foot climb before the turnaround. For those who have recently returned from Ironman Wisconsin, think of it as running 21-miles of the hilly section of the bike course including running Timber Lane two or three times just for fun. Suffice it to say that on this route you are either headed up or you are headed down and perfect technique is required to avoid either straining hip and gluteal muscles on the way up or shins and knees on the way down.

Have you ever seen a course elevation graph give you the finger?

This route has been a favorite of NYC and NJ cyclists because it is one of the few places near to Manhattan that one can work on cycling power and strength with individual hills that can be climbed consistently for 15 minutes or more at maximal effort. Running on this course dominated by cyclists is seen by most as simply crazy. That was reason enough last season to incorporate it into our Race with Purpose training. Last season 500 RwP marathoners headed across the GWB in 85 degrees and 90% humidity and when all came back, the legend of River Road was born.

A much needed Gatorade break at the top of River Road

With the prior year’s experience in mind, and knowing that this year’s team was comprised mostly of marathon veterans, we took it up a notch by including the final 1.5-mile climb to the Ranger Station, increasing the length of the run to 21 miles and incorporating both acceleration intervals throughout and a fast 3-mile finish. Upon announcing the run on the fall 2008 training schedule, we received a barrage of e-mails, some of which reflected the anxiety, fear, and apprehension of the veterans, the others questioning our sanity or our sadistic intention. Publicly, these same team members puffed out their chests when talking to new team members wearing River Road like a battle scar proving their prowess as accomplished endurance athletes. As a coaching staff we publicly responded to these e-mails with words of encouragement, while privately we smiled knowing how quickly a myth can take on a life of its own. In this case, the more the myth grew, the better the training effect for our athletes. Given that our athletes are in a speed build period of their training, we wanted to build up their confidence in their ability to draw upon different metabolic pathways during a sustained effort as well as develop their ability to accelerate at the end of their run. They had all completed a month of strength work so we knew that the hills themselves would not present much of a problem.

Nathan, coming off of IMLP and SOS considered this run a nice recovery

There are a few very good reasons why we include this run on our training schedule and quite frankly non of them is influenced by any desire to inflict unnecessary pain on our team members. To preface my comments, the regular readers of this blog know that Race with Purpose is founded on two precepts, the first being that to be truly successful one must be willing to sacrifice for something larger than oneself, the second being that training should be effective and efficient with each workout having a particular purpose to achieve a particular training benefit. When racing long, we subscribe to the Commute, Warm-up and Race philosophy which supports the sparing of glycogen during the early stages so that it can be exhausted optimally over a limited period at the end of a competitive event. As mentioned previously, the plan for this particular 21-mile run included alternating intervals of 15 minutes at Commute Pace with 5 minutes at Warm-up Pace from the start of the run through mile 18. The final three miles were run at Warm-up Pace (slightly below LT) or Race Pace (above LT) depending on what the individual athletes could muster coming back across the George Washington Bridge.

On face, the overall purpose for the 21-mile run was to develop endurance, it’s a long training run after all. Beyond this obvious training effect, there were a number of other benefits to be derived, some of which were physical and far more were mental. As stated to our Race with Purpose team members, these objectives were as follows:

1. Identify your own personal challenges in running long (are they hills, heat, humidity, boredom, core strength, loss of technique, structural deficiencies, pacing, or lack of focus?)

2. Settle into your pacing using perceived exertion and/or heart rate by incorporating intervals of Commute and Warm-up paces in an environment where monitoring actual pace becomes irrelevant

3. Identify what your Commute pace and Warm-up Pace efforts are (and Race pace for those who could really push at the end during the last 3 miles)

4. Gain confidence what it is like to include accelerations during the entire run and still be able to accelerate to the finish at the end

5. Demonstrate the difference between the capabilities of your legs when you maintain the same cadence and range of motion over multiple hours as opposed to mixing it up every now and then and what the effect of that is at the end of a long run - one being legs that are stiff and locked into a limited range of motion, the other being legs that are still responsive and dynamic.

6. Have a positive and successful long run experience on a very challenging course, illustrating that you are capable of running most anything, no matter how daunting it may appear to be.

Those are a lot of objectives to accomplish in a single run. By combining a challenging course and acceleration intervals with just enough myth and anxiety allowed us to do just that. I caution coaches from trying to explain any or all of this before hand as it can create information overload for the OCD runners in the mix and detract from the experiential process of self discovery that each runner needs to go through to come to their own realizations about their abilities.

Please be careful, police are watching you two

Everyone completed the run under almost perfect weather conditions with light rain early on and sun breaking through as most began to run back across the George Washington Bridge. Temperatures ranged from the low 50’s to the high 60’s and the humidity was moderate throughout he run. In short, it was nothing like the conditions during the prior year. When you are preparing to have your hand cut off and all that you get is your finger pricked, you have reason to celebrate and that’s exactly what happened here. That’s also why we train the way we do. As these marathoners prepare to run in either the Chicago or NYC Marathons, they will be able to look back on this along with other challenges that they have overcome and treat race day as a 26.2-mile celebration. They still have more to do, but over the past 15 weeks, they have gained the self discipline, the awareness, the confidence, the flexibility and the physiological adaptations to put forth their best race performance, however that is individually defined.

Coach Michelle just smiles knowing everyone got back safe and sound