Oh Everest, My Everest

Clock Time: 5:43:08
Chip Time: 5:37:41
Average Pace: 12:53

I am effing exhausted and the mile 14 Tourette's is still in full force, but I did a pretty good job today (not the best, but decent) so here are the splits:

5K - 00:40:50, 13:08 pace, predicted finish: 5:44:20
10K - 1:16:21, 12:17 pace, predicted finish: 5:22:03
15K - 1:51:01, 11:54 pace, predicted finish: 5:12:00
20K - 2:39:46, 12:51 pace, predicted finish: 5:36:54
1/2 - 2:48:32, 12:51 pace, predicted finish: 5:36:54
25K - 3:17:41, 12:43 pace, predicted finish: 5:33:25
30K - 3:59:46, 13:08 pace, predicted finish: 5:44:20
40K - 5:25:13, 13:05 pace, predicted finish: 5:43:01

This is the race I should have run last year. I was hoping I could skip it and go right on to a big improvement. The first three splits had me coming in easily at 5:15, but then I really needed to use the portajohn right before mile 10 and I couldn't just keep running until I got to one without a line (that didn't happen until mile 20). So I waited TWELVE WHOLE MINUTES to use one, though I was at least clever enough to do it at the orange station so I could enjoy my little frozen slice of orange while waiting in line. Between the actual time wasted there and the rough start I had after standing still for 12 minutes, I could have easily made my realistic goal of 5:30. In fact, the 5:30 pace group caught up to me around mile 22 when I started to feel really bad, and I tried to stay motivated and keep pace with them for a while. That lasted all of a mile. Mile 23 rolled around and I realized that while they were doing run-walk like I had resorted to by that point, they were not doing 4/1s like me. They were doing something longer like 5/1 or 6/1, which might as well have been 60/1 or 300/1 considering the shape I was in. It couldn't have been too far off of my own system, but it was just enough to really, really hurt.

My joints seem okay, but my muscles are KILLING me. My calves and IT bands are the worst. I've never had to stop and stretch so much and even sitting still is agonizing with my IT bands wigging out on me. It's most certainly time for some vitamin I. I can't believe I thought I was going to do a speed workout this week. Like, did I smoke some crack when I planned on that and just not remember that I did? Seriously. A marathon is no joke. I take back what I said about 20-milers. Those babies are totally doable. Marathons are the ones that are like plane wrecks. Plain and simple, yo. The human body does NOT want to run that far. Ever. And when we make them do that anyway, they ruthlessly make us pay.

Two-word summary race report: OUCH! BOO-ya.

Labels: blue powerade, caffeine, great weather, GU, MCM, P.R., sport beans

This weekend's 20-miler really highlighted how far I have come since last year at this time. The first indicator of the difference was my ability to walk around, squat, and ride my bike without an extraordinary amount of pain. I didn't even take any NSAIDS to kill the swollen knees! (And they didn't even swell until after I stopped running!) The cold shower took care of that in a jiffy.

Despite not putting as many miles in the bank in preparation for the big marathon withdrawal, my fitness level has been far above where it was at any other time in my life - with the single possible exception of when I was studying karate. I did some mean stuff in those three months, strength-wise, but even then I had nothing close to the endurance I have now. Aside from being in a general fitness arc that's on the rise, I believe I can thank riding fixie all over town since the end of last semester, working for the park service in a job where I had to hike around the sides of the highway carrying a GPS unit on my back, and continuing to run even if it wasn't as regularly as I would have liked. All of this really showed during every step of those 20 miles I ran on Saturday morning.

For one thing, I didn't feel significantly different in the second ten miles than I did in the first. That is pretty unusual for me, with the last five often feeling worlds worse than the first five. Yet it felt to me like a steady forward effort from beginning to end, instead of the game where I guess at which mile my nice day in the park degenerates into never-ending torture. (Yes, it really used to feel that way.) As I have always known about the marathon but perhaps not kept in mind nearly enough, running 26.2 miles is more of a mind game than anything.

The mind game of which I speak is not magic shoes or what do you think will happen if I put my foot in this blender. I am talking about the challenge of getting into the right mindset, of arming yourself with the right tools to succeed. The first step is always to begin with the end in mind (hat tip to Stephen Covey). I think this is where I really let myself down last year (and again in LA). My only goals were to have a good time (what does that even mean in a marathon?) and to finish. Finishing is a worthy goal, but why not finish and also push your limits? Why not see what you are capable of? This never occurred to me while training for MCM'07 because I think the idea of running a marathon was still sort of untouchable to me, and I inexplicably clung to the image of concerts and ball games where the people in the very back are having the best time despite having the worst seats in the house.

This year, my goal is pretty clear. I want to run it a lot faster than last year. Exactly how much faster is not as important because I have a second goal - to cover the distance with more or less a continuous effort. I'm not deluded, because I know things are going to get progressively harder and more painful as the miles add up, but I know that there is a vast difference between last Saturday and one year ago. I want this marathon to be more like last Saturday.

I am going on at length about all of this because I wasted a lot of time on unimportant things during this run, but I did manage to maintain a steady sense of forward momentum while I was running and avoid excessive walking. This was reflected quite accurately by the numbers. I had once again forgotten to turn off the auto-pause function so the timer stopped for every pit stop and loss of satellite reception, and that conveniently separated my short GU breaks (walking) from my getting lost and waiting for people breaks (standing). Leaving out all of the map checking and waiting for people fluff, I finished in 4:07:48 with an average pace of 12:23. This is a pace I can not only live with, but be quite happy about for a marathon finish. That would mean breaking 5:30, which is a significant improvement over my first two marathons.

The really encouraging news is that the actual time for this 20 (when I factor all of that wasted time back into the equation) is 4:40:14, which is a 14:13 pace. (As a reminder, my average pace at MCM'07 was ~14:35.) That means that the worst case scenario is that I continue to waste lots of time by hanging around at the aid stations for way too long and still I am better off than last year! Of course, I am NOT planning to waste so much time again, and am instead figuring out the best way to run with people who are slightly faster than me. There is one candidate in the group this year (my saint from the 18-miler), but she may turn out to be too fast on race day when she has no incentive to wait around for me. My other alternative is to sign up with a pace group. Either way, there are options. I am trying to con some friends from school into showing up on course to pace me for a while, too. This feels like a recipe for success.

Labels: blue powerade, GU, knees

Official Time: 3:16:47
Average Pace: 15:06

I don't have a lot to say about this, except that it was a bloodbath. By itself, it is a challenge and I fully expected to finish in the neighborhood of three hours since my PR is around 2:43 and my first half was Riley's (what I thought was the hilliest of the hilly races), which I did in 3:02. Trail running is new to me and I have been told time and again to expect a much slower time because of the extra effort it takes to cover the terrain. Granted, I had a pretty easy time of the actual terrain thanks to all those day hikes Michele and Keith took me on in my teenage years, but the constant and rapid elevation change was definitely a killer. Not to mention the single track dirt "path" that made it pretty harsh to pass people who are going slower than you or who decide to start walking when you're not ready to do the same. It seemed like every time I got to the bottom of another hill, I'd have just enough energy to keep jogging up with the same effort I was using on my approach but not enough to go faster than that. This cost me many precious minutes as I'd often get stuck behind some walkers without the necessary juice to pass them.

So, I'd say 15 of those 30 extra minutes above PR were because of the race conditions, most of which I knew about in advance. (Next time, I'll quit thinking it's rude to pass nice ladies who start walking in front of me on a narrow, single-wide trail and make sure to save energy to get past them and stay past them.) The other 15 minutes I attribute to all manner of stupidity.

Bobo move #1: donating blood three days before the race after having spent the last 4 months accidentally losing weight because you haven't had time to eat as much as you used to.

Bobo move #2: going through with your blood donation three days before the race even though your period decided to start in the minutes it took you to make your way over to the building with the blood drive.

Bobo move #3: drinking less water than usual for the entire week preceding the race because your nalgene is smelly and heavy, and you don't want to make your bike commute to school more unpleasant than it has to be.

Bobo move #4: leaving your fuel belt at home and not being able to carry any fluids with you on a race through the woods with less than ample course support.

I guess the bright side is that the race premium was a sweet v-neck, short-sleeve performance shirt that happened to match my kicks. While this experience left a bitter taste in my mouth regarding my ability to perform adequately when I fail to plan properly, it did light a fire under my seat about trail running. I like all the muscles that were sore the next day and I particularly like that I didn't have to spend a single moment inside a gym to make them sore. Me and ol' Fountainhead are going to butt heads a few more times this winter and see if we can't be better friends.

Here are my photos at the two deceptively flat sections of the race:

Labels: blood donation, curse of womanhood, fountainhead, GU, half marathon, mountain trail, race, swollen hands

There may be a piece of my brain missing, but I sure do love a good long run in the rain. Last Sunday, I spent three and a half hours slogging through puddles and wiping Tropical Storm Hanna out of my eyes to keep my contacts in. I am fairly certain I complained a lot (at least in my head), and felt like giving up just about every other second. But then I felt guilty for promising to keep a newcomer from getting lost so I did my best to stay with her despite my internal protestations. I was watching her heels and jumping over (or through) enormous puddles most of the time, so my mind was sufficiently occupied. I am thinking they should create a new track & field event - the marathon steeplechase.

The highlights of the run were the ridiculously steep hills at the turn around (miles 8-10) and a group of fellow runners' reactions to a sign warning not to touch the water because the creek was a sewage overflow area. I decided to just keep it to myself that the sign was referring to the water in the ditch about 10 feet below and not to the stuff that was coming out of the sky. I guess that's a little bit evil, but if you don't have enough sense to know that sewage overflow doesn't come from the clouds, then you probably deserve to feel a little icky from thinking that the rain falling on you contains urine. If there were actual human waste getting on them somehow, you can be sure I would not stay silent.

In any case, I am very grateful to the saint who slowed down to run 18 miles with me in order not to get lost because I surely got the better end of that deal. I am also glad to have passed the test I made for myself today! I increased my mileage by 50% in one week, which is generally not advisable, but I didn't injure anything and even made record time. MCM, here I come!

Labels: blisters, GU, long run, purple gatorade, rain

Well, I'm no Ron Burgundy, but today I ran 12 miles at an 11:17 pace. That doesn't sound like such a big deal - it really didn't to me after I did it this morning - but it is. Let me tell you why.

While the whole Run For Kids team stood around me praising my victory, I had this the distinct feeling that I had done this before and couldn't understand why they were so proud of me. I was sure that I had done 11:15s on a long run at least once before, thinking specifically of the LA marathon in March. While I ended up finishing with a worse time than my first marathon that day, I stayed with my brother until mile 18 and I felt strong and fast up through the half and well into mile 15. I started to feel the pain around then and hit a wall (not THE wall, but it's unusually-painful-in-the-joints cousin) and slowed down drastically, eventually being reduced to walking by mile 19. It was walking the last 7 miles that did my great time in. So I must have been averaging 11:15s or 11:30s through the half, right?

Wrong.

I checked the records again and I was going fast (for me, at the time) but not that fast. I was averaging 12:45s through the half, and then the average dropped to 13:55s by the 30K (~mile 18-2/3). So I decided to sort my run log by average pace to figure out just how significant today was.

What I found is that the next best I've done on anything over 6 miles (and there aren't even that many 6-milers this high on my list) was the 10-mile club challenge in February, a week before LA. I averaged 11:35s, slower than today for two fewer miles, and that was only because I knew I wouldn't score if I took more than two hours.

Next on the list are the two Marine Corps half marathons: the inaugural Historic Half in May where I averaged 12:30s and the Quantico Half last September with 12:37s. I shaved off a full minute and a quarter from each mile today, and that's from my best runs. Not counting the handful of runs where I didn't wear my watch, today's run is tied for my 21st fastest run. Ever. And the one that ties it? A dinky 2-miler. Sure, it's possible that there are one or two times in life where I ran faster than that for maybe up to 4 miles, but I really wasn't a runner before last year and I could probably count on both hands how many times I had run a mile or more continuously before training for the 2007 MCM. Here's the breakdown of my 20 faster runs:

Best Pace - 10:03
Highest Mileage - 8

Frequency:
1 mile - 2
1.5 miles - 1
2 miles - 2
3 miles - 9
4 miles - 2
6 miles - 3
8 miles - 1

I would make you a histogram using R, but then I might be tempted to perform some kind of multivariate analysis to figure out what factors are correlated with fast running - and I don't have that kind of time. As it is, I can hardly keep myself from creating a frequency table. So I guess I should get blisters and feel like shit more often. Or, since one of those 6-milers (the other was the Butler Relay in March) and that 8-miler were in LA with Keith, I should find somebody to run with on this side of the country who is faster than me and doesn't leave me behind despite occasional pleas to do so as well as not-so-occasional verbal abuse. (People with virgin ears would do best to steer clear of me on the trails.) I seem to get my best results when feeling hostile. The overly talkative or cheerful need not apply. Oh, and I have to like talking to you for more than five minutes at a time without wanting to strangle you. Not everybody has the special qualities of a good brother-in-law.

(Gee, when I put it that way, it's a wonder people aren't lining up outside my door to go running with me!)

Labels: blisters, GU, hips, knees, liquid breakfast, long run, red gatorade

Clock Time: 2:46:00
Chip Time: 2:43:43
Average Pace: 12:30 min/mi

Today was a lot of fun! Despite my adventures in getting to Fredericksburg when the cops decided to shut down southbound 295 six miles before I could get to the beltway and the being completely disoriented in DC, I ran a great race today. As always, it could have been better. The last three miles left something to be desired, and it figures because that was when my merry group of Marines (or former Marines? or Marine Corps base staff?) disbanded as the two nice ladies got a surge of energy and the man with all the moto cadence lost his and dropped back.

My legs hurt something fierce, too. I think the muscles actually hurt more than they did during either of the two full marathons. Luckily, the joints were okay. I've had more knee and hip joint pain during most of last years training runs over 6 miles than I did today, so that's a good sign. I brought my fuel belt with me, too, so I could avoid the swollen hands I got at Frederick. Still, they swelled at around mile 9! I don't know what the heck is going on, but I want to figure it out fast. Ever since I started running a little faster, most of the noticeable changes have been positive (notably the vanishing joint pain), but I don't like where this is headed with the swollen hands. I brought a good amount of water, gatorade and GU that should have taken care of all my needs, but nothing fixed it until I stopped running, chugged so much water that I could barely walk and stretched. It's hard to believe that it was a lack of water since I was toting around a heavy, swooshing belly of it for the last 4 miles. I wonder if swollen hands may just be a signal that my body has had it (since I didn't really train) and any sort of strenuous activity does that as I reach my wall.

The annoying part is that they don't necessarily hurt (not unless I keep stretching out my fingers and squeezing them into fists), but that swelling is usually a sign for something that is wrong. Everything else feels okay to me. I am not doing a very good job of explaining it, but there is something terribly unsettling about having swollen hands. It's even more unsettling because my feet didn't swell today, and they at least matched when my hands swelled up in Columbia, LA, and Frederick. But there was no hint of the tingly feet today and almost no signs on the old tootsies that I did anything special today at all. So what's the deal with my hands?!

I'm hoping that this problem goes away as I become more responsible and start putting the miles in the bank at this new pace. This could all possibly be explained by the fact that I am only running maybe once a week and in long races, no less. But I may bring a packet of salt with me on the next long run to see if that's the issue.

On a separate note, the staff is taking forever to put up the results and I was too busy trying to pass people at the end to look at the race clock. I have NO idea what my time was since I'm still leaving the Garmin at home for all runs that are timed for me. Was it a PR (felt like it)? By how much? Or am I delusional? I'm hopeful I'll know something tomorrow. Sitting here refreshing my browser on the results page isn't going to make them post it sooner.

EDIT: The results are in, just not on the official race site. New PR, by just shy of two minutes!! I hope to match that at Riley's this year and maybe destroy it at Baltimore if nothing goes wrong.

Labels: blue powerade, GU, red gatorade, sport beans, swollen hands

Clock Time: 6:31:18
Chip Time: 6:28:08
Average Pace: 14:48.5
Split10K: 1:19:05
Half: 2:50:05
Split30K: 4:19:36

Labels: GU, hips, LA marathon, salt peanuts, swollen hands

And how true it can be sometimes!

"Maybe you should just try a little harder."

I kept hearing that in my head as I gloated over an 8-mile run on Wednesday night at a whopping 11:15 pace. 11:15! That's 2 minutes per mile faster than my average training pace and over 3 minutes per mile faster than my actual MCM pace! Maybe I should have just tried a little harder?

Of course, I shouldn't delude myself. I went running with Keith, Mr. Super Trainer Man (also happening to be my brother-in-law) who never gives up on me even when I try to slow waaaaay down so that he'll just go ahead and I can walk or send him ahead without me so I can give up. It felt great particularly because it was my first distance run since the marathon almost a month ago. All that recovery time and no more than a month out from the six solid months of training for MCM left me primed for a great 'first' training run.

The six miles we did with my brother Jay yesterday at a slower pace did not feel as nice. But I guess that happens when you're not used to putting in all the miles you're supposed to and then BAM! one day, you run a total of 14 miles within 3 days after an extended rest period. I didn't like the dirt trail too much yesterday, either. It was too much like sand with the absorbing of all of my energy and my legs were already pretty sore. I wonder if I'll be able to keep up with Samwise and his merry group of hobbits so I don't have to train alone this winter...

Probably not, but I won't be trailing so far behind anymore. That's pretty good for now!

Labels: dirt trail, GU, long run