Commentary — Breakthroughs Happen When You Least Expect Them

I finally had a breakthrough and it came in the strangest of ways.

You see, my training has been going sort of up and down lately. I’ve been so busy that I’ve managed only a bare minimum of runs each week – perhaps three or four. The runs themselves have gone fine and I’ve been making sure to do the runs that count. So in a given week I make sure to do my speed work, a tempo run and a goal-paced run – but that’s about it. ‘No junk’ we often say on the blog and video series. Ain’t no junk here.

And the month of June was particularly killer in terms of travel. I spent three weekends coaching marathons, putting in an average of 35 miles – very slow miles – on each of those race days. That pretty much wrecked me and took away the time that I had for my own long runs.

So when I went into my most recent race, I really didn’t know what to expect. Usually I have a very specific plan, as we always encourage you to have. And having only done two goal paced 10-milers in preparation for this particular half-marathon, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was a little under-prepared. Or so I thought.

When I told Coach Dean about this race and described what happened, he said, “yep, that’s when breakthroughs happen. When you least expect them.” I’ll come back to that later.

Let me first emphasize something. Although I hadn’t been running a lot, I was doing all of the important stuff. I was turning out few miles, but turning them out at faster speeds than I’ve ever run. In fact my two 8 and 10 milers we all at personal best paces. But like I said, there wasn’t much more than that.

Race day
Starting line time and I’m surrounded by people that I know. I talked to two of my friends who were planning on running approximately 10 seconds faster and 10 seconds slower per mile than I was thinking. I remember saying to them, “OK, so I need to stay right between the two of you.”

The gun went off and we went out en masse as normal. I kept myself right on the shoulder of my friend Dan, who was the one that was supposed to be going out 10 seconds faster than my pace. I committed to myself, “don’t pass Dan. Stay on his shoulder.” I also remember saying something along the lines of “this pace feels fast too me,” which is an unusual thing for me to say out loud to other competitors during a race.

In fact, the pace was a little fast, because Dan was right on his pace. The pace was supposed to be 10 seconds faster than I was planning on running. This was actually right around the pace that I’d been training, but I really didn’t think that I could hang onto it for the entire half-marathon.

In those first few miles, I concentrated on working with Dan and two other runners to keep a small pace group together. The pace felt hard, but we were definitely working as a group. Doug Winn, who was trying to set a new American Record for the 60-65 age group, was there in the group with us too. He would pop out to my left and I’d ride along with him. Then Dan would come back up and drop in right in front of me. At one point, I moved to the front and powered down a tree-lined section of road with the group falling in behind me.

Everything was working fine, but there was just one problem: the pace still felt too fast. I kept having the same thought over and over: “I can’t hang on to this pace. I’ll need to back this off at some point.” I played over in my head that moment that was going to come, when I would crack and need to let the other guys go. I would say, “that’s all for me guys.” But the moment didn’t come.

Six miles came and went. The spotter for Doug Winn was yelling him splits every mile. “You’re ahead by 30 seconds Doug, great job!” We had lost contact with Dan and now it was just Doug and me, running along chasing his American Record. No pressure.

Then it was 7 miles and 8 and we were right on pace. Actually our time was gaining on the record. I think we were 50 seconds up at one point. Doug seemed to be laboring. And then something really weird happened. Running side-by-side with Doug it came the following words came out of my mouth: “come on Doug, you can do this.”

Here I am, the one struggling with the pace, and now I’m the one giving encouragement to another runner. A bizarre twist indeed.

At mile 10, we caught up with a guy that had been fading. He picked it up and hooked his wagon to our train. There was another guy in our group now and he started driving the pace down. All of the sudden, I look down at my Garmin and we’re running 5:30 pace. That pace was too fast for me. I backed it off a bit to the previous pace, but now I was alone. The move had splintered the group.

All I had to do was hold on now. I knew I had 10 miles in the bag and if I just didn’t blow up I was going to run a great time. Big if.

Miles 11 and 12 were, frankly, torture. I was just holding on, but I didn’t slip on the pace. I was still right there, but barely. This is what we call ‘the knife-edge’. I had nothing left, but I was still beating the drum, keeping the turn-over high and staying on track.

Finally I could see the farm where the race ended. I was still hanging in there, although I was fading. I heard footsteps coming up on me. There was about 400M left in the race and I was prepared to let whoever it was go past. But when the runner started to pass me, low and behold it was my friend Rich. Rich was the one that was supposed to be 10 seconds per mile slower than me. And here he was passing me, with both of us way ahead of schedule. When I realized it was Rich, I dropped the hammer, holding him off until he finally relented just before the finish. We ended up finishing just two seconds apart.

At the end of the day, the race had been a new personal best by just over a minute. In reflecting on the performance, I think what happened is that I let myself take a big risk with the pace, running at the faster pace that I’d been training, but outside my perceived comfort zone in terms on the distance. In thinking that I would have to back it off at some point, I was just going for it as long as I could. It turned out that all that speed work and just those couple of 10 milers was enough to put the base in place to make it work.

So going back to Coach Dean’s comment: breakthroughs sometimes happen when you least expect them. The opportunity comes up when you have the capability, but you don’t necessarily know it, and you take a risk to give it a try. I remember Ironman triathlete Chris McCormack saying something along the lines of this: ‘I’ll either flame out or set a new course record, but I can’t set that new record unless I’m willing to risk blowing up completely in the process.’ Now I get it. Sometimes it takes a big risk to make a big breakthrough.

Coach Joe finished The Flat at Sauvie Island, Oregon, in 1:16:27, which was a new personal best. Doug Winn missed the American Record for his age group by just four seconds.

Coach Joe English, Portland, Oregon USA
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