Week 8 - Oops

This past week I wanted to alter my run schedule just a little bit. I felt like I could do a little bit higher intensity. Although when you've never really been a runner, it's hard to know how much you can push yourself without overdoing it. What I seem to hear the most is that it's always better to undertrain than it is to undertrain. I don't like how these sentences are sounding. They all have the same cadence and are kind of choppy. You ever notice that?

Anyway, this week was supposed to be 3-6-3, with a 13 miler on Saturday. I decided that I would go with a slight increase to go in between the Novice I schedule Hal Higdon has mapped out, and then the Novice II schedule. Not much of a difference between the two other than that there are more long runs, and the midweek runs are a little bit abbreviated, so total mileage actually goes down a bit.

I did a three mile (almost four) on Monday morning and that felt alright. The six mile was Tuesday night, and during that one I actually felt the strongest. Thursday I ran four, but felt really sluggish. Pace was okay, as I finished at about 34 minutes, but I just felt slow. It's kind of neat to be able to discriminate better how I'm feeling from one run to the next. I think the problem with the Thursday run was that I ran it right after work.

So it seems that circadian rhythms have to do not only with sleep patterns, but eating and exercise patterns as well. I seem to have little trouble running in the morning, other than just getting up early enough to do it. When I'm actually out and running, I feel fine energy/strength-wise. Running after 8 isn't a problem either. But when I get up at my normal hour on a work day, eat at lunchtime, then try and run immediately after work, I feel so drained. Even though I'm always on the down part of my energy cycle when I come home at about 530pm, I thought that just getting out and running would infuse me with enough adrenaline that I could shrug off any of those effects. And while I can still run the distance and make it fine, I still just feel slower, and am for the most part. Just something I thought that was interesting.

Unlike last Saturday, I wanted to make sure that I held to a better schedule of eating and getting to bed the night before so that I could get out in the morning. I was able to do that, although I did get to bed at like 1am. Somehow in my mind 1am is acceptable, while 2am is not. I thought it would be a good idea to get up at 6am and eat my breakfast, go back to sleep for a couple of hours and run sometime between 8-9am. It all was working out fine, but then I didn't have a route planned. With these longer runs it's been getting harder to find ones that are convenient for me to run, that also have some decent scenery without having too much traffic. Hitting a couple of stoplights isn't a big deal when you're covering only 7 miles, but when I'm getting over 10 miles I don't like anything getting in the way of me being able to finish my run. Anyway, I didn't end up starting until about 930.

I thought when I got up that I would be fine with the weather because it had been overcast the last few mornings, but then the cloud cover burned off, and it was mostly just humid and really warm. Again, I stashed a couple of gatorades along the route and that was nice. This week I also decided to try some Gu, which basically give you some calories to burn and electrolytes. I kind of loved them. I won't mind those at all come race time. The problem this week was that not having the route mapped out the day before delayed my departure, and then I wasn't really sure how far I was actually going.

The first several miles everything felt fine. The beginning was a little bit different then anything I had done before so that was nice, and my body and energy all felt fine. For the first time in weeks I hadn't done anything in soccer that would feel like a hinderance during the long run. Being able to map out the runs beforehand is really nice because usually I have a pretty good idea where the mile markers are and when I can drink, take my supplement, etc, and also it helps just knowing how much longer I can expect. I never look at the time until the very end of the run just so I don't get myself antsy. But because of how rushed I was just to get out, I couldn't figure out in my mind how far I had really gone.

Everything in my body during the run was feeling good, except for my energy. I wondered a lot about why I felt like I was lagging so much. My legs were tired, especially behind the knee where the calf and hamstring meet in the middle. I did much better at not trying to rehydrate too quickly. It makes a huge difference not drinking too quickly and feeling that water weight bouncing around, especially with how my sensitivity to everything is heightened as these distances get longer. I had to walk a couple of times, and there were a lot of pauses for stop signs. The temperature was tolerable.

When I finally arrived home I stopped my watch expecting to come in just under 2 hours. My pace the last couple of weeks has been just over 7 mph, and although I had felt pretty tired, I felt like I still held to my pace. To my disappointment, I came in at 2:27 total run time. I couldn't believe it. I went to a birthday immediately following, and I didn't even want to talk about how long it took me because I felt so discouraged at how long it took me. I assumed that I had run a little bit longer, but was sure that it couldn't have been more than 15 miles max. Even if it was 15 miles though, that meant I had a 10 minute pace, which for me would be really slow. I just felt so bummed because I was sure that I could run faster, and was wondering how in the world I was going to be able to make it for another (at least) 2 hours of running. For some reason I had really felt confident that I could finish the marathon no problem as long as I kept it under 4 hours, or thereabouts.

It turns out that I wasn't able to check my route until later that evening, but it wasn't 14 miles that I ran. Not even 15. Turns out that I had actually run 17.37 miles! I can't even tell you how discouraged I had felt from that run to how confident I felt after finding out that bit of information. Instead of a 6 mph pace, it was still above 7 mph, 7.09 mph to be exact. That means that my pace was right around 8:27 per mile, which I thought was pretty good considering the distance that I had covered. AND that run was a full 5 miles longer than anything I had ever done before. AND I was grossly underfueled and not well enough hydrated. In fact, normally I weigh about 173 or so, but after the run I was all the way down to 165. It's kind of crazy to think it's possible to lose that much water weight. Greg was saying that's a full gallon. I do also sweat a good amount.

It's just funny to me what a startling shift it was to feel so disappointed to brimming with confidence about the whole thing. So now I'm like, that's only 9 miles from a full marathon! I can totally do this! Woo!

Some other things worth noting:

• I'm just so disciplined these days. Not only have I been able to keep the running schedule, but I've also been able to keep up with my regular weightlifting routine. I'm still doing shoulder, bicep, chest, tricep, and core exercises in addition to the running. Last week I even jumproped on the day off.
• After finishing, I really thought my whole legs were going to seize and cramp up. I've never had that sensation before. Every muscle group in my legs. It was kind of painful, but I kept stretching, ate a banana, and had a protein bar immediately upon completion.
• Residual soreness hasn't been anything too bad either. Right leg is still sore, but I don't think that will be a problem. I went for a walk yesterday for an hour and I feel like that helped to loosen me up.
• In an 8 day period, I have run 43 miles. Crazy, right?
• I'm very lucky I don't really have any joint pain. With as bad as my ankles have been in the past, I have had no signficant joint/shin/back pain that will prevent me from continuing as scheduled. That's really nice. It makes me feel like I'm well within my abilities, and for that reason I feel like I'm able to step up the training just slightly.
• Talked with a friend who has run the St. George marathon a couple of times. I just love hearing other people's stories about their experiences. It's really fun. My favorite thing was he said you feel like such a man when you finish the race. That's totally what I'm going for.

Oh, and one last thing, but I didn't want to make this a bullet point. I was looking at some numbers for "average" marathoners. In the US, about 400,000 people will finish a marathon this year. I don't know if those are discrete numbers. The average age for a male marathoner? about 40.5 years old. Men finish on average at around 4:21. The differences between 20-34 year olds, and 35-39 year olds? Less than 1 minute. Not statistically different. I thought that comparison was the most interesting because age doesn't seem to have a bearing at all on a person's ability to perform "better" in a race. So what it really comes down to is not youth or ability, but determination. And I think that's what's nice about the marathon. It has little to do with any kind of talent, but just a person's pain tolerance and how willing he/she is to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So far, it looks like I'm going to be shooting for that 4 hour mark. Everything about how Saturday went felt pretty good, now knowing fully the details. I'm looking for the down week - 4-7-4-11. It's still 26 total miles, but knowing that none of my remaining training runs will be longer than 20 miles, only three miles more than what I did this past weekend, makes me feel really good about being able to tackle this challenge.