Anatomy of a Training Group (Kenyan Way)

After reading a blog entry by Jamoosh this morning, where he talks about the route we did yesterday, and the fact that he's 'training for a road race not a trail race', and that the route was a lot of 'trail' from the 'goat trails' along the bayou to the, what I call the equivelent of running on a dry rock creek bed, I thought about this on my run of 6 miles this morning...so I figured I would put my thoughts into words...

Kenyan Way is run by Sean Wade.  Sean won the Houston Marathon in 2005 as the overall and did it in 2:09xx.  In 2005 he was in his late 30's.  Now approaching mid 40's he not only was last years Masters Champion (in the US), he pretty much wins every race he enters.  Maybe not overall always, but definitely the masters division.  He runs under a 15min 5K easily.  You can google him if you so choose or look at his wins located on his blog under Coachs Blog off the KW website.  He hails from New Zealand and came to the US to play tennis for Rice and somehow ended up running...not going into that story here.  My point is that Sean started Kenyan Way to train runners as the Kenyans train, or as similarily as one can get here in Houston.  The premise is that Kenyans don't and never did run on paved roads.  They train on hills and a multitude of surfaces.  More often than not in their bare feet (we dont do that :))...It isnt  until they are recruited to run for another country or move somewhere do they 'train' on paved surfaces like the streets we drive on every day.  And when they do hit those surfaces they are lightning fast.  Why?  The thinking is that its because of they way they originally trained and sometimes go back to Kenya to do just that before a big marathon.

Sean himself runs pretty much 100% of his mileage at Memorial Park or along the bayou.  And if you've read my blog long enough or know me personally you know how much I loathe Memorial Park and its surface.  It slows me down while running it and I cant wait till I get off of it and onto the actual road.  The bayou I dont loathe as much, but ...

My point is this:  I think he knows what he's doing.  He has been plagued with long distance training the past couple of years and has to drop from running marathons, but he seems to be in good shape now and will be doing Twin Cities in 2 weeks!  Go Coach!  I am pretty sure hes aiming for overall Masters.  Go Coach!

Most of our routes we run are indeed paved surfaces all the way.  But then there are those routes, such as yesterday, where our legs are taxed moving over these rougher surfaces off and on.  I for one, do not like it either as it wears me out much faster and I am more sore afterwards.  But at the end of the day, I am positive that the reason I have become faster these past few years is indeed to the fact that I am challenged in doing those routes.  It affected me yesterday on my last long run before Chicago, and I indeed walked a bit over those big ass rocks so I didnt fall (as a couple people did) so as not to twist an ankle so close to my marathon.

Now something else he mentioned was the lollygagging at the water stops and that he notices a lot of people chit chatting, stopping watches etc.  This is indeed true.  Not everyone does it and I would say its probably half and half.  The faster groups (sub 3 hour to the 3:45 group) do not.  You just dont see it.  They do their chit chatting, if any, while they are running their run (how they do it I dont know...but then most of them arent chitty chatty for the most part, being a bit more serious about the run).  Then in the 4 to the 4:30 groups you see it a bit more, but I see this more in the summer months as its a way to let the HR come down a bit and drink a bit more.  Once the higher mileage starts hitting, I see it less.  And then the 'slower' groups probably do it also (although I wouldnt know ;)... but again they do a lot of chit chatting along the way as well because they are able to due to a slower pace maybe?  The stopping of the watch thing, I do that.  Not always, but it is done.  Especially if I am going to take a bit of a longer time, which again is usually during the hot/humid runs we've been doing lately.

Kenyan Way is not for everyone that much is true.  Its not a walker friendly group, and if you run a 6 hour or so marathon I wouldnt say its for you either.  There isnt a training pace group for over 5 hours actually, however a lot of the 4:30 and 4:45 pace group people do finish in that time as they are running the actual marathon at the same pace they train at, which is fine.  Example:  training pace for a 4:30 marathon is from 10:40 to 11:30 if I remember correctly.  And most in that group will run their marathon at 11:30 pace.  I dont know if its because they dont understand mp training pace vs actual mp pace...and maybe they try at the marathon but something else goes wrong...has happened to me thats for sure.  To run a 4;30 marathon you need to be able to run 10:18 pace I think for 26.2 miles...something like that. 

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Because of my less than stellar last long run yesterday, finishing in 4:25 (walked a bit more than I would have liked due, as previously mentioned, to the route tiring me out),(not to mention THREE incidents of GI 'distress') I didnt feel all that great about the run.  I only got 2 miles at GMP, but with the weather, it just wasnt going to happen for me to get 6-8 of them.  Yes I know having run a previous 19 and 21 miler, my legs are just freaking tired.  It happens ... by the time you do get to the last one, man you are just worn out.  Anyway, because of that, I decided to do the full 6 miles on my schedule this morning where usually I will bike or just do a short 3 or nothing at all...I needed that 6 miles, making it 27 miles in about 24 hours on my legs to feel 'right'.

I havent downloaded the data from Garmina, but it was a good run.  Just what I needed.  My legs felt ok, yeah I was a bit tired, but really the only soreness I had was surprisingly in my upper back and shoulders.  Possibly from having to steady myself more yesterday on uneven surfaces or just the stress from the effort?  I dont know but it was there and I thought about it more than I should have.  LOL. 

I've been going non-stop today since then and NOW I'm really worn out.  I just realized about 10 min ago that all I've had to eat today was 1/2 pbj 30 min before my run...Football is on, and I have food cooking...laundry still in the dryer, but thats the end of it...I'm ready to relax on the couch :)  Its nice and cloudy out and looks like rain, so maybe a nap is in order as well :)