Mark's Marathon

In what was easily my worst experience ever as a runner, I learned some valuable lessons about how not to approach a 19.3-mile training run.

The main lesson was that specialty fabrics for running in the cold are apparently made out some kind of sponge, and are a BAD choice for driving rain, even if (especially if) it is also cold. The space-age running pants that have served me well in this training program, through near-blizzard conditions and 20 degree weather, became wholly saturated with wind-chilled rain, all the while maintaining tight contact with my legs, keeping them good and cold.

The other side effect of this was that the pants kept wanting to fall down, just from weight of the water, and I had to frequently and awkwardly hike them back up. This almost always caused my almost-rainproof Gor-tex jacket to poor rain, accumulated on the sleeves, down my arms. It also caused me to take my eyes off the road in front of me, and I’d invariably plow right into gigantic puddles. I ran the first 10 miles at an 8:30 pace, but as the rain intensity increased and the terrain got more difficult (I brilliantly back-loaded the course with hills), I rapidly dropped down to 9:30 while miserably chanting “one foot in front of the other” just to make myself finish.

After returning I fought back nausea while getting my clothes up to drip-dry in the garage and my shoes to drain in the laundry room. A long hot shower, peanut butter sandwich, and three hour nap later, I started to feel a little less like a fish.

What has been surprising is that my recovery has been rapid. These multi-hour weekly workouts always take a toll, but I’ve noticed that I’m bouncing back a lot faster than I was a couple months ago.

Next week we scale back the Saturday run to 12 miles, which will be a welcome break. Then one more long run (21 miles) for prep, after which we mercifully start a rapid ramp-down prior to the race.

So Fridays I have to do 60 minutes of ‘cross-training’ which is, for me, an excuse to pedal a recumbent bike at the gym while I catch up on TV. It is practically an off day. Yet this past Friday, 45 minutes into ‘Dollhouse‘, my right knee does something funny. I try to pedal through it and manage to finish the 60 minutes, but something’s definitely not right.

A few hours later I walk over to the Seaport Hotel and discover … surprise! … that I can barely walk down the stairs. Lovely. As I medicate my way through two Bass Ales, I’m figuring that’s it, I’ve somehow managed to blow out my knee and will need surgery, and Christ there goes my NFL comeback. Ugh.

I hobble home, ice the offending knee, and wrap an Ace bandage on it. Saturday morning, it is definitely better but still not right, and I finally decide to NOT do the feared long run (17 miles!) for fear of making it worse. I elevate the knee, watch Olympics and movies and hope for the best.

Sunday, it feels fine, so I suit up and hit the road for the long run. The long run is developing a familiar pattern where with each one you feel surprisingly good for a longer and longer portion of the front end, and yet the last 4 miles are ALWAYS an ordeal. No change with that this week. And at the end of the run my left calf hurt, one of my toes was bleeding (clip those nails, people), and my quads are turning into mashed potatoes … but the knee feels fine.

This week, I also discovered a fun fact about running. In a case of Life Imitating Bugs Bunny, when you run a lot you become accustomed to seeing banana peels in the middle of the road. I could never understand why, and it always reminded me of a Blonde joke I learned when I was nine. Q: “What did the Blonde say when she saw the banana peel on the sidewalk in front of her? A: ‘Oh no, here we go again.’”

But now I know. Bananas turn out to be a great food for the long run. Easy to carry, and a lot easier to consume than those weird packets of super-energy paste. And when you fling the peels to the ground, you know that they are completely biodegradable. Even if they are a pratfall waiting to happen.

Saturday’s 12 miles went off without incident. I am weirdly locked in at almost exactly 60 minutes for the first seven miles of any run, after which anything might happen. The 12 is the first major break from the ladder to 21 miles (in the long run) prior to race day. Next Saturday is 17, and the biggest challenge now is finding a route that will not kill me from boredom before the physical pain gets to me.

After Saturday’s run I hit Marathon Sports to get the shoes I will use on Race Day. These are Brooks Adrenaline runners … Model 10G since, apparently, the 9Gs have been retired since I started my training program in December.

I am also almost at my target for money-raising for the effort. The actual number is a little fuzzy, since the company I work for (Fidelity Investments), matches employee donations 2-for-1, but I don’t know which employees supporting my cause will file the paperwork for the match, and which, of that subset, will be eligible for the 2X matching. But a conservative estimate puts me within $50 of the target, and there is lots of time to keep beating the drum, so I’ll hope to beat my target by a healthy margin.

Don’t tell me that there isn’t more to the mechanisms of this world than our tiny intellects can comprehend. Yesterday I ran 16 miles (ow ow ow ow) in 2 hours and 22 minutes. 2:22, which for my unfortunate TV saturated brain quickly devolved into the theme from the Sixties drama/comedy ‘Room 222′ filling my head and staying there for hours.

And so I wake up today to my usual Sunday morning routine, which includes doing the Boston Globe Sunday puzzle before anybody else gets up. Today, with the unsurprising Valentine’s Day theme, and the first major answer across the top of the puzzle is ‘Actress Karen [Valentine] on Room 222′. Cue the spooky music.

2:22 is a slower pace for me for these long runs, but this experience was a little different because the middle 10 miles of the run involved running up and down a massive series of rolling hills, twice, to the top of Wompatuck State Park (where there is a big fishing pond at the top, which makes no sense to me …. shouldn’t all that water leak out downhill?)

Carol met me halfway with water, and I carried some water pods with me as well. For refueling I tried Clif Shot Bloks instead of Gu. Like massive, slightly bitter grape gummy bears. Easier to consume, but again, I wasn’t aware of any specific boost from this.

Next Saturday is a 12 mile long run, which seems like a welcome respite until you think about it for a second. And then we return to the gradual climb to the 21 mile long run before ramping down prior to the Marathon.

The 15 mile long run went pretty well. It was cloudy and cold, so I donned a safety vest and then strapped on the four-bottle water carrier before heading out the door. Jake took one look at me and said, “Nice utility belt, Batman. Joker back in town?” And I did look a bit like a running geek, but I didn’t get into this (apparently) for the respect.

Since we live in a small-ish community, the one weird moment occurred when I was plodding down Prospect Street and saw the sign saying that I was leaving Hingham and entering Norwell … I’d never run so far that I had to leave town before.

The water seemed to help. The Gu, I don’t know. It didn’t taste too bad … a chocolately paste, and as a long time fan of penny candy, I’ve paid money for worse stuff and eaten it with a smile on my face. I can’t say it made much of a difference.

The last mile was still tough. It was cold enough that my knit hat was a block of ice and there were icicles descending from my iPod’s earphones by the time I finished. But I wasn’t completely spent and the recovery cycle was noticeably shorter from last week’s 14 mile effort.

This week the daily training runs are all bumped up an extra mile. For example, today is ‘5 easy miles’ on the schedule, which seems like a contradiction. Leading to 16 miles on Saturday. A week from Saturday the long run drops down to 12 miles before heading back to 17. You start feeling happy about that, and then realize you are relieved to run only 12 miles. Another contradiction.

I love Wednesdays now. I love them because they are a day off, and come after the ‘SpeedPlay’ training run on Tuesday, which is a grueling affair on a treadmill’s random program. Tempo run tomorrow (not bad) and then some cross-training on Friday (watching ‘Numb3rs’ on my iPod while cycling).

The elephant in the room is the 15-mile long run Saturday. The last two 14-mile affairs weren’t pretty. Both started well and ended in a contest of wills between me and the road surface. My problem is lack of water/fuel. I’ve been treating these runs like my standard 4.5 mile loop, but I need to smarten up.

Caryl, who ran for the HEF team last year, gave me a hydration belt, that holds several small plastic bottles for water, and has net pockets for Gu, the (one supposes) concentrated, easy-to-consume running paste that’s supposed to keep some fuel in the tank. Reminds me of being 10 years old and looking forward to the shining future when we’d all subsist on Tang and Space Food Sticks.

The plan will be to take water and Gu at 30 minute intervals, and see if that doesn’t relieve some of the end-of-run misery. A tall order, since just past halfway I’ll have to go up a 2.5 mile hill through Wompatuk State Park.

All week I’ve been running inside on treadmills. This morning I wake up prepped for the week’s long run and it is 7 DEGREES. Ak. Not me. Not yet. I will wait until Noon and the promised balmy 20 degrees, thank you very much.

The big side benefit to all the training so far has been weight loss. Starting in the mid 190’s, I was at least 20 pounds overweight for my height and age at the outset of this grand adventure. In two months, I’ve dropped 11 pounds! Part of this, of course, is the running. At about 30 miles a week now I’m burning a LOT of calories.

But I’ve also benefited from MyFitnessPal, a free service that let’s me track everything I eat along with my exercise to see if I’m consuming a calorie surplus, or running the slight deficit needed for long term weight loss.

The result is educational. You’ll never look at a bagel and cream cheese or handful of walnuts quite the same way again … I am now acutely aware of small amounts of food that pack a big calorie cost!

Mike found the following blog post from Leo Babauta at zenhabits.net. A good intro for the person considering running for fitness/weight loss.

Read the whole post, which has a lot of good information. I particularly agree with Leo’s advice to start up any such program slowly, walking before running and sprinkling in days off. I also agree with him on equipment … it is a sport that does not demand much, but the new fabrics are nothing short of amazing when it comes to staying warm and relatively dry, especially these days when we run through the cold, and are worth a little money. Shoes, as he points out, have to be selected runner by runner.

I disagree about running partners … I look forward to the solitude of running, and it can be difficult to map your own progress while struggling to match the pace and fitness of a partner. It is true that partners and running groups can make a big difference if you’re good at coming up with excuses not to run, and a little peer pressure can go a long way toward keeping you on the road.

14 miles yesterday and my quads feel like they are filled with sand.  The schedule for today says Rest or 60 Minutes Cross Training.  Yeah, right.  If I make the effort to run as far as the refrigerator for another Diet Dr. Pepper, I’ll call it cross-training.

So, books.  Like any former yuppie, when faced with a daunting new experience, the first reaction I have is to read about it.  Running books abound.  The following two have been pretty good.

The Murakami book, ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’, is a series of essays in which the author tries to describe what running is as a component of his overall self. By his own description he is a mid-pack runner with no pretensions to glory, but his use of running as a means to test, extend, and validate himself is engaging.

‘Chi Running’ goes for a slightly exotic Eastern ambiance which it never really achieves, but the core idea, that there exists an optimal posture and approach to distance running that can be easily learned, does come through loud and clear. Borrowing principals learned from Tai Chi, Dreyer describes a way to strengthen core muscles so that the runner can maintain a slight lean into their stride, engaging gravity to help provide momentum and reduce impact. I spend part of every long run working on this and have had some good results.

Since the last entry there has been one blissful day of rest, followed by a 5-mile ‘tempo’ run (which, for me, on a treadmill, means ratcheting up the speed every mile until I just about can’t take it), and a 60-minute session on a stationary recumbent bike … which I brilliantly prepared for by downloading this past week’s edition of ‘Biggest Loser’ ( we missed the ending due to election coverage), and an episode from ‘Numb3rs’, season 2, and watching it on my iPod Touch while pedalling out the minutes.

All leading up to Saturday’s long run.  Today it was 14 miles on a loop that went to the south end of town, gradually away from the ocean and uphill the whole way, and then back the same way.  Once again, the last mile was a grind, but this now at mile 14 instead of mile 12.

I swear that I am running harder on the treadmills (it feels a lot harder) but there I average about 9 minutes per mile.  On these long runs I go out slow on purpose, and end up slowly because I’m spent, and average 8:45 per mile.  I can’t understand it.

I am currently shuffling around the house like a ninety-year-old man, but already feel a great deal better than when I first finished.

60 minutes cross-training tomorrow, or rest.  Rest is the easy choice, but I may try the elliptical and watch cartoons while I’m at it, trying to loosen up the muscles.