Home stretch!

Two weeks away. Three and a half months of training down. Just two weeks to go.

That fact doesn't faze me too much. While I’m confident I’m physically prepared for the race, mentally it still seems a bit distant to me. So, partially to help re-engage, partially to self-assess, let’s take stock of where I’m at today, Oct. 7:

• Physically, I’m in pretty good shape. My left hip has hurt since I did the 20-mile run. That’s much of the reason why I’ve avoided the other two 20-milers on my training plan, opting instead for shorter (but sometimes faster) runs.
  So my hip hurts at bit, and I feel like my ankles might have gotten a tad weak. I probably should have done more cross-training. And I definitely need to do a better job of icing my aches.
  But I’m not injured.
  That’s a BIG deal. So many people who train for a marathon end up getting injured at some point. Training puts a lot of stress on one’s body, and even if you do everything right, there’s still a chance you could get injured. Maybe you were born with a poor gait. Maybe you step in a hole. Maybe you get chased into a stump by a rabid goose.
  So I’m lucky not to have injured myself (thus far). I feel good about that.
  


• Mentally, I’m not so sure. I never read that book I bought on mental toughness. The task was too daunting. That’s a joke, but it’s probably mostly true.
  Anyway, the running has gotten pretty routine. And the hardest workouts are now behind me. And my training partner, Mike, with whom I would dream and fret about the marathon, was injured, so he can’t do most runs with me. (He’s still planning to go to Niagara, but he’ll be running the Half.) All of that has combined to fog up my mental windshield with regard to the race.
  I’m not sure how much of a detriment that will be. I was, after all, pretty well engaged on my 20-mile run. I broke down a bit in the last third of the run. I walked for a few 1- to 2-minute segments. But I feel like I mostly made it through. The marathon won’t be easier, of course. It will be much harder. But I think I can do it if I just take a nice and easy pace. Which brings me to my third point.


• I’m not going to run a 4:15 marathon. Maybe if everything had gone right in training I could have done it. But it didn’t. My goal now is to finish, and to run a smart race, and to avoid long bouts of walking. I don’t need to be a hero. I think something like 5 hours is more realistic. I’ll be happy if I can do that. More specifically, I’m going to try for a pace of 10:50 per mile, which will put me at 4:44:03. Hopefully I can run most of the miles faster than that – more like 10:30.


• Finally, as I near the end of my training, I’m really looking forward to returning to my regular workout schedule. I won’t be able to take a post-marathon break from running. My over-arching goal for the year is to run at least 1,000 miles. I’ll be somewhere around 800 after the marathon. So I’ll basically need to run 100 miles each of the last two months of the year to make my goal.
  That’s not nothing, but it’s also no major feat; Just one foot in front of the other. I’ll probably do something like two or three 5- to 8-mile runs during the week and then one 10ish-miler on the weekend.
  After four months of Wednesday speed workouts and Saturday long, long, long runs, I’m looking forward to coasting back into my old routine.

Four takeaways from 20 miles

I did it. I ran 20 miles Saturday.

I’ll add the caveat that I did stop a few times for a couple of minutes, generally to drink water or eat Gatorade chews. I finished in 4 hours 4 minutes. That’s slower than I wanted, but I really don’t care so much about time. I’m focused on finishing.

With the run behind me, here are a few takeaways:

• Four hours is a long time. This is obvious, but still worth pointing out. I ran for half a workday. I left a bit before 5:30 a.m. and got back after 9:30 a.m. It was pitch dark when I left, and mid-morning when I returned. I didn’t see another soul for the first two hours of the run.
• Books help. You know that Ryan Hall commercial that aired during the Olympics? The one where he starts streaming an audiobook – Homer’s The Odyssey – on his phone before he takes off for a run, and then he runs so long he has to start another book? (see above) Well, rather than loading a bunch of 30- and 50-minute podcasts into a playlist, I decided to download an audiobook from my public library. I chose The End of Wall Street, by Roger Lowenstein. I specifically chose a nonfiction book because I was afraid I would miss too many details if I chose fiction. That ended up being a good choice. Near the end, my mind wasn’t paying too much attention to the book, but it was still nice to have something to distract me, and it was nice not to have to shuffle podcasts and songs.
• Hydration is key. I brought my Nathan hydration belt, which has four eight-ounce bottles. Still, it wasn’t quite enough. I deliberately didn’t drink anything for the first hour, but I still found myself rationing the water I had left near the end of the run. I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is, other than perhaps drinking more before the run or dropping off a water bottle somewhere along the trail.
• I’m still in one piece. After the run on Saturday, I spent pretty much the rest of the day on the couch. The rest of the day is a blur. That said, I feel like the wear-and-tear on my body was about as minimal as could be expected. My hip hurt a bit yesterday, which is why I skipped my run this morning. And I had a bit of chapped skin and a few new blisters, but nothing I can’t handle. Honestly, the most frustrating thing was that I stubbed my toes a few times after the run on Saturday and Sunday. One toe is now a reddish shade of purple as a result. It really hurt. But it wasn’t directly related to the run.

Saturday’s run really was just the first of four hurdles. I’ve got to run 23 miles this Saturday. Then I get an easier week – just 14 miles. The week after that, it’s up to 24 miles. And then, I taper. After all, by that point I’ll be just three weeks away from the real deal.

Getting real...

This weekend I hit the big-time. Saturday’s long run is 20 miles. It will be a new personal distance record. My current record is 17 miles.

By necessity, I’m treating this long run sort of like a race. I’m going to get plenty of rest the next two nights, and make sure I eat plenty of carbohydrates on Friday evening.

My plan is to get up at 5 a.m. and get out the door as soon as possible. If I can keep to about 11:00 per mile, I should be gone until about 9 a.m.

The weather forecast calls for temperatures in the high 60s/low 70s. But it’s supposed to be humid. I hate that.

I’ll bring my hydration belt and a couple of packs of Gatorade chews on the run. Hopefully that will be enough to get me through the workout.

If memory serves, my current personal record was a run where I initially set out to run 15 miles. I felt pretty good, though, so I kept running a bit further, eventually tallying 17.

Running 20 miles on purpose will be harder, I think. When I’m exceeding my expectations, my mind is usually aglow with positive feelings. When the expectation itself is steep, I often end up dreading the run, and that affects my performance.

So I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about this.

The truth is, one of the reasons I chose this training plan was the fact that it called for near-marathon-length runs. Other training plans maxed out at 18 or 19 miles. I wanted to know, for sure, that I can run a marathon. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.

After this week, I have a 23-mile run. Two weeks after that, I top out at 24 miles. Then I simply taper for the last few weeks until the race itself.

Running 24 miles – without walking – should give me the confidence I need to run the marathon without stopping. The first step toward running the 24 miles without stopping is running the 20 miles on Saturday without stopping. I know I can do it.

Soaking it up

Via Flickr / DerekL

On each of my first two long runs this month, I decided to leave my headphones and hydration belt at home. Each time I regretted the decision.

For this morning's long run, I brought both. Then it rained.

I like running in the rain. We spend most of our lives seeking shelter from storms, popping up umbrellas or running into buildings at the first sign of a sprinkle. There's something thrilling about scoffing at Mother Nature and soldiering on. I've run through rain, snow and wind. I've even run in sleet on icy sidewalks, earning a few bruises along the way.

Today wasn't my rainiest run ever, but I'd put it in the top three. My rainiest run ever was a few years ago, when I was running through town and a drenching rain suddenly began to splash down upon me. I had my iPod with me, and I was worried it would be ruined. As I ran, I kept seeing thin blue plastic newspaper bags in people's driveways. Inside each bag was the local Penny Saver-type paper that nobody asks for and nobody wants. The delivery person had neatly tied the open end of the bag into a knot, keeping the newspaper crisp and dry inside. 

As I ran, I started plotting how I might pick up one of the papers (I figured nobody would care), open the bag, put my iPod inside and re-tie the knot. I might have done it, too, except I was afraid my iPod might get drenched in the process, or that I might get water on the inside of the bag, thus defeating the purpose.

I decided to keep my iPod in my pocket, and it survived.

Since then, I've made a point not to run with my iPod, or now my iPhone, if there is a chance of rain.

Today, I woke up to what sounded like mild thunder. I looked outside and saw a gray, gloomy day and the remnants of a rain shower. The weather app on my phone listed a 50-percent-or-greater chance of rain for the rest of the morning.

Then I turned on the TV.

The weather lady said a cold front had come through. She said there were showers off to the east. She said Sunday would be better than today. But then she showed the radar. It looked as if the storms had just passed our area. When she sped up the radar to forecast the rest of the day, the line of green blotches quickly evaporated. 

Not only that, but she kept bragging about how proud she was of the radar. How it had been particularly accurate in its depictions of storms lately, and how we could therefore trust the radar, even more than usual.

I was in the clear. At least that's what I thought for the next 20 minutes. Then the rain started. I was only about a mile and a half into my 10-mile run. A trio of couples that had been ahead of me took refuge under a bridge; the only bridge -- and only shelter -- there would be on the entire run. But I knew I had to plow on. So I did.

It pretty much rained for the rest of my run. There was a short break at the halfway point, but to my chagrin the rain started again shortly thereafter. I couldn't fully enjoy the run because I was worried about my iPhone. But the interior pocket of my shorts and the technical shirt hanging over it seemed to keep it fairly well protected. One of my headphones gave out near the end after a teardrop of rain dripped into my ear. I'm hopeful it will return to working order once it dries off. 

At any rate, I still made decent time, even though my shoes were sopping wet and my clothes were slick and see-through by the time I finished up. 

But hey, at least I had my hydration belt.

Half Empty

It’s been two weeks since I ran my first and only August half marathon. The results weren’t good.

I finished in 2:25, well over my PR. It involved walking.

In my mind, I had thought it would be OK to race in the middle of summer, because I figured Massachusetts would be coolish. I was wrong. When I checked my phone at the end of the race, the temperature was 85.

The other major problem was that I willfully, wrecklessly started out way too fast again. The whole point of running the race was to pace myself, and yet once the race started I somehow decided it would be a good idea to run the first half of the race at 30 seconds faster than my goal marathon pace. Not smart.

Needless to say, this wasn’t the confidence-booster I needed on my last race before the marathon. That said, I’m fairly certain Niagara Falls in October won’t be nearly as hot as Massachusetts in August. And I run considerably better when the temperature is under, say, 70 degrees.

Still, I’m not sure I can make a 4:15 marathon time. And I’m not sure how smart it is to try. The most important thing to me is that I finish. The second-most important thing is that I finish without walking. Time is a distant third.

Half Time

This weekend I’m driving up to Massachusetts to run in the YuKanRun Half Marathon, on Cape Anne. My friend Mike (the same person who talked me into the Warrior Dash and Tough Mudder) found the race online and suggested we incorporate it into our marathon training. So we’re trading out Saturday’s scheduled 15-mile easy run for a 13.1-mile race on Sunday.

My plan is to use the race to practice my marathon race pace. To do the marathon in 4:15, I’ll need to run at a pace of 9:40 per mile, but my training book suggests aiming for 9:30 per mile, at least in the early going, in order to bank some extra time for late in the race.

If I do that, I’ll finish in something like 2:07. In a way, that’s disappointing. I always try to finish in under two hours, even though my last few halfs have fallen short of that goal. That said, this race really is just a training run, so I don’t want to set a goal I can’t reach, or force myself to give 110 percent. I want to try hard, but I don’t want to depress myself. I need to keep the positive energy flowing.

This all leads me to a subject that’s been bothering me lately: Pace.

Pace is such a mysterious thing. I just can’t wrap my mind about it. I’ll go on a long run, running maybe 10:30 per mile, and I’ll be really tired afterward. The prospect of shaving off a minute per mile seems daunting.

Then, I’ll do a 4-mile fartlek workout, averaging 9:15 per mile, and feel good. But in the back of my mind, I’m still thinking, “Can I go that fast, without the slow jogs mixed in, for six times the distance?”
All that said, I’m sure I can run a 9-minute pace for at least 13.1 miles. I know that because I’ve done it. Maybe it was the thrill of the race; maybe it was mental focus.

My brain is constantly doing these calculations, gauging my performance, my exhaustion level and my times in a futile attempt to draw conclusions about how the marathon will go.

I guess my point is that pace is something of a mental hurdle for me. It gets in my head. I need to stop that. That’s why I’m really just hoping to use this half marathon to prove to myself that I can get through 13.1 miles at a 9:30 pace without straining myself too much.

That’s the goal. The rest is just mind games.

Feeling a bit wobbly

I stayed up late last night to watch the U.S. women’s gymnastics team take home the gold medal. It’s one of my favorite events to watch, even though it’s excessively nerve-racking; a bunch of teenagers doing dangerous stunts, all just one slip or fall away from a devastating score, if not a devastating injury.

It’s compelling though, for two reasons: 1) The moments of greatness; and 2) The wobbly moments when there’s a 50-50 chance the gymnast will fall or regain her balance.

Luckily, Team U.S.A. was on the winning side of the wobbles last night. Still, I couldn’t help but think of injury risk as I was doing 14 200-meter sprints this morning. As my foot hit the edge of the sidewalk or slipped in a surprisingly soggy spot of grass, my mind went back to those gymnasts. What if I fall? What if I break my ankle? What if I hurt myself and can’t compete in the marathon?

I’m a bit too superstitious to be writing about such stuff. But let’s be honest: It’s a concern. It’s not a major concern. It’s not something I think about every day. But the truth is, when a person signs up for a marathon, he’s implicitly making a bet that he can train hard for two, three, four months without injuring himself.

The only bone I’ve ever broken is in my hand. I’ve never been hospitalized, except for, you know, my birth. So I’d say I’ve got pretty good odds of making it to October unscathed. Still, the fear is lurking in the back of my mind. I’d better work on my balance – maybe with some balance beam workouts – just in case!